Beschreibung:

Alfred W.G. Davis and Charles Lewis Davis Collection, 1831-1966. Confederate Quartermaster Department; 180 items (18 war date; 5 items relating to Confederate veterans’ organizations; 157 other docs, perhaps 40% pre-war) Two generations of Davises served as quartermasters for the Confederacy during the Civil War, overseeing the strategically vital post at Greenville, S.C., a terminus of the Greenville and Columbia Railroad and a major transshipment point for the supply of corn, textiles, and other goods. The elder Davis, Alfred W.G. Davis, had been a roommate of Jefferson Davis at West Point, and although he left before graduating, his future turned out well. Davis went on to study law, earning an appointment as attorney general of Arkansas Territory from Andrew Jackson Davis built connections all across the south, moving to Mississippi in 1831 to plant cotton, and after marrying a few years later, living in southwestern Virginia (his wife’s home), Texas, and Mississippi. Initially opposed to secession, Davis nevertheless quickly joined the cause when secession became a fact. Through connections, he was commissioned Major in the Quartermaster’s Department in Sept. 1862 and assigned to Greenville, however he resigned just one year later, allegedly for failing health. Davis’s son was similarly moved to join the Southern cause. A graduate of the University of Virginia and a physician, Lt. C. L. Davis served in the renowned Stonewall Brigade as a Captain in the 27th Virginia Infantry. Wounded early in the war, perhaps twice, he was reassigned as Quartermaster on Jan. 1, 1863, and ordered to report for duty under QM General A.R. Lawton, and later to Inspector General Samuel Cooper Though in some ways less glamorous than front line service, the duties of the quartermaster are essential to the success of any military enterprise. At Greenville, the Davises were responsible for everything from issuing coupons for soldiers and freight to travel by rail and stage to providing quarters for troops, furnishing transport for quartermaster and commissary stories to and from troops near Greenville, purchasing goods for the soldiers’ use, issuing clothing to soldiers, supplying hospitals, and finding forage for cavalry. The elder Davis was politically connected and the few letters of his that survive from the period of the war suggest just how much. On May 10, 1862, he wrote to his old roommate Jefferson Davis to support the promotion of a fellow Virginian: My experience with and among the men composing the bone and sinew of more particularly the South Western part of Virginia, but in fact the whole western part of the State, sends me to the sincere conviction that the particular person these men ask for their leader at the present time is the one who has been their leader before, namely Gen. John B. Floyd. The feeling of that portion of Virginia is decidedly with him and they having that feeling would rally under his command. Davis’s second letter, however, has a very different tone, suggesting that his health was not the only reason he resigned: finances and frustrations at position seem to have weighed just as heavily: This war has left me without means to educate my family, he wrote. Private enterprises become a necessity to me to supply the means necessary for that purpose. I have performed my duties as Quartermaster till I believe I stand at the head of those with the rank of Major. The rank nor the duties of a Major Quartermaster has never gratified my aspirations nor been agreeable to my inclination. I accepted the office at the request of the President, and shall only resign with his approbation... A letter from Burton N. Harrison (Private Secretary to Jefferson Davis) to Davis, dated June 25, 1863, adds some detail regarding the resignation: in which you express apprehension lest he should think it strange that you are not more actively engaged in the service of the country, and explain the apparent inactivity as attributable to dis