August 31, 2006 | Read Time: 4 minutes
The stately mansion where Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America, made his last home is well-known for its wraparound porch. Deep-set, it sweeps around three sides of the white-columned antebellum home in Biloxi, Miss. Or it did, until Hurricane Katrina unleashed a crushing wall of water that tore the porch clean off, in addition to opening a huge gash in the roof.
It looks a bit like what William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union general, might have done to the place if he had had a crack at it during the Civil War.
Nevertheless, when Rick Forte, chairman of the Mississippi division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which owns the historic property, saw Beauvoir for the first time after the storm, he was relieved. “It looked bad, but it was there,” he says. “I knew it could be restored.”
One year later, however, any such restoration seems a long way off. Unlike many other projects to save hurricane-damaged historic sites, Mr. Forte’s organization has found itself bogged down by a civil war of its own, fraternal infighting that has hampered efforts to raise money. And prickly racial issues still surround Beauvoir like so many undulating strands of tree-hung Spanish moss.
While Beauvoir has been stabilized, with its roof temporarily sealed, little more has been done toward the estimated $20-million restoration of the registered national historic landmark and related buildings.
Beyond the mansion, the site includes a Confederate soldiers’ museum and gift shop, both of which were obliterated by Katrina. A trim, period cottage known as the Library Pavilion — where Mr. Davis spent his twilight years writing the history of his failed quest — was reduced to a slab of bricks and a stairway to nowhere.
The modern Jefferson Davis presidential library still stands, but its ground floor was swept clean by the storm. Swords, uniforms, and other relics were left strewn about in the post-storm mud. Many artifacts, Mr. Forte fears, were dragged back into the dark waters of the gulf and lost forever.
Mr. Davis’s military saddle and catafalque — the ornate structure that supported his casket at his 1889 funeral — are but two missing items that might have met this fate. (But Mr. Forte says he and others are monitoring the Internet auction site eBay and other sites looking for scavengers trying make a quick buck off of relics purloined from the ravaged property.)
The Sons of Confederate Veterans, which before the storm had a $900,000 budget generated by admission fees and gift-shop earnings, has started a fund-raising drive to help save the house. More than $500,000, including $25,000 from the New York developer Donald Trump, has been raised so far.
The fund-raising effort has been hampered, however, by a lawsuit filed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans against another nonprofit group, also called Beauvoir, that was created in 1902 to manage the property. At issue was which organization had control over the house and the fees paid by the 1,500 members of the veterans’ group. The courts ruled in favor of Mr. Forte’s group in July.
It also hasn’t helped that the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP is not keen to see Beauvoir rise again, calling it “a divisive symbol.”
Still, Mr. Forte and others hope that Beauvoir will receive at least some of the $40-million in federal aid that Congress has appropriated to repair Gulf Coast historic sites.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, in Washington, names the home as one of the “landmarks of the Mississippi coast” in its 2006 list of America’s most-endangered places. And last fall Beauvoir received a $300,000 grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives, as well as a $30,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
But Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP chapter, insists that no government money should be spent to repair it. “Before you begin to restore historic sites, the government should be helping individuals without homes who are hurting the most,” he says.
Mr. Forte declines to comment on Mr. Johnson’s position. But he says that, aside from leading the doomed Confederacy, Mr. Davis was important historically for being a hero of the Mexican-American War, a U.S. senator, and Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce.
Now Mr. Forte has set a goal of restoring Beauvoir over the next two years. He says he is optimistic the home can be restored by June 3, 2008 — the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis.
