Remember Jeff Davis? Many say forget it

updated 11:56 p.m. ET Feb. 23, 2008

It hasn't been easy getting people excited about celebrating the 200th birthday of that tall, gaunt, bearded, Kentucky-bred president who was born in a log cabin and went on to lead his people through a bloody civil war.

No, not Abraham Lincoln. Last week, President Bush himself helped kick off a two-year celebration of the Great Emancipator's Feb. 12, 2009, bicentennial that will include dozens of events in Kentucky, Illinois, Washington and beyond.

It's that other tall, log cabin-born Kentuckian, Jefferson Davis, whose 200th has turned out to be something of a lost cause.

"The response to date has been timid," acknowledges Bertram Hayes-Davis, head of the Davis Family Association and great-great grandson of the only president of the short-lived Confederate States of America. "Nobody has said no. Many haven't said yes."

Because Davis was a former secretary of war, Hayes-Davis wrote to the Department of Defense to see if it was interested in participating in some activity "to educate the public about the real Jefferson Davis." The agency didn't even reply.

Even Mississippi, the state where Davis made his plantation fortune and to which he retired after the war, gave the idea of commemorating Davis a lukewarm reception. A bill to establish a commission "for the purpose of organizing and planning a celebration in recognition of Jefferson Davis' 200th birthday" easily passed the House, only to die in the Senate appropriations committee.

Crowning of ‘Miss Confederacy’
Oh, there will be a "Miss Confederacy" crowned during the June 7-8 festival at the Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in Fairview, Ky., where a 351-foot concrete obelisk stands near the site of Davis' cabin birthplace. But that's an annual event.

The Davis Family Association is holding its reunion May 31 through June 1 at the Rosemont Plantation, Davis' childhood home in Woodville, Miss.

And on June 3, Davis' actual birthdate, the family will gather in Biloxi for the rededication of Beauvoir House, the hip-roofed, Gulf-front mansion where Davis spent the last 12 years of his life and which was nearly swept away by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Last week, Hayes-Davis stood on the Corinthian-columned portico of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery to re-enact the inaugural ceremony with which his ancestor formally severed the Southern states from the federal government he felt had been "perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained."

Taking his place on a six-pointed brass star marker alongside the great-great grandson of Howell Cobb, president of the Provisional Confederate Congress, Hayes-Davis placed his right hand on the Alabama State Bible used in the original swearing-in 147 years earlier. Hayes-Davis did not recite the oath, but simply kissed the Bible as his ancestor did, turned to the crowd and said: "So help me God."

But Davis events are well, a bit anemic — especially compared to the hoopla surrounding the 16th president.

That's to be expected, says William J. Cooper, a professor of history at Louisiana State University and author of "Jefferson Davis, American."

Lincoln "saved the Union. He emancipated the slaves. I mean, he won the war," Cooper says. "Fighting against Lincoln is, you know, fighting against motherhood."

MORE FROM LIFE

Life Section Front

Pool club denies turning away minority kids Bodies dug up, cut up at black cemetery Downdrafts blamed in Fossett crash At 84, man gets high school diploma Local governments face painful choices Another furlough to close Calif. offices Tot plays hide-and-seek much too well 5 killed when Amtrak train hits car in Mich. Woman vanishes at NYC skyscraper State puts federal marriage law on trial Life Section Front   Add Life headlines to your news reader: