Confederate President Almost Converts

When he was a child, future Confederate President Jefferson Davis attended Catholic school for a short while, the College of St. Thomas near Springfield, Kentucky. (In those days, “college” was a loose term meaning anything from grammar school through junior college.) Founded by the Dominican Fathers in 1812, St. Thomas was the first school west of the Appalachians, so many of its students were Protestant. But daily attendance at Catholic religious services was mandatory, and “little Jeff” (as his teachers called him) thought about converting. Davis later wrote that he thought “it would be well that I should become a Catholic.” He talked to one of his teachers, Father Thomas Wilson, who suggested waiting a while because he was so young. Rather than discouraging him, this experience gave Davis a better impression of Catholics than ever. One biographer writes that “he remained prejudiced in their favor.” Davis was a lifelong Epsicopalian, but he wrote: “When I was a child, the kindness of the Friars so won upon my affection that the impression has never been effaced, but has rather extended from them to their whole Church.” During the 1850’s, as a U.S. Senator from Mississippi, he was a strong opponent of the Know-Nothings. He later sent his daughters to Catholic school, and he never passed a nun without raising his hat “in involuntary reverence.” Later in life, it was said that he wore a Miraculous Medal he received from a nun who helped him and his family in the aftermath of the Confederacy’s defeat.