Thursday, June 5, 2014

Jefferson Davis's Birthday at First White House Confederacy

Tuesday, June 3, 2014 marked Jefferson Davis's 206th birthday at the First White House of the Confederacy.  A good crowd attended the 11:00 am speech and celebration honoring the first and only President of the Confederate States of America. As most readers know, the First White House in Montgomery was the executive residence of President Davis and family while the capital of the Confederacy was in Montgomery, Alabama.


David Tyrone Crowley of Prattville, Alabama was the speaker for the commemoration. Mr. Crowley is a retired Professor of Language from Prattville, Alabama. who spent the last twenty years with the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, where he served as instructor and course director at the Foreign Officers School. His wife Carol was in the audience.


Mr.. Crowley spoke first to the children present, telling them the story of Jim Limber, an African American child who was being abused by his caretaker.  Mrs. Davis, upon seeing this, took him home with her to live with them as one of their "adopted" sons.


This brief talk was followed by heartfelt remarks about the President. Crowley said that Jefferson Davis could have had his civil rights restored but he refused to repent, because he thought the South was in the right. Davis said if he had it all to do over, he would have done the same thing again, saying,  "he would never call the Civil War a 'lost cause' ".


Dressed in period dress, Crowley read from comments Davis made to a joint session of the Mississippi Legislature in Jackson, Miss. on March 10, 1884. Davis died in 1889. It was a most fitting way to commemorate the  anniversary of the birth of this great Confederate leader who was born in 1808.




 Mr. Crowley had the honor of portraying Jefferson Davis at the reenactment of Davis's Inauguration  in Montgomery on February 19, 2011, after having done a dress rehearsal at the First White House the day before.

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