Jefferson Davis lived in Montreal, Canada in 1867. He lived on the same street as I live today

Jefferson Davis lived in Montreal, Canada in 1867. He lived on the same street as I live today

[link to lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.ca]

After enduring two years incarceration at Fort Monroe, Virginia and facing an unknown fate, Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederate States of America was released from custody in May 1867 after which he and his wife and young children traveled from Virginia to New York City and eventually north to Montréal where he was finally reunited with his two older children who had been sent from Savannah to Montréal before Davis’ capture and who had been living there with his mother-in-law. “My children were assembled here to receive me and were all in good health.” They had grown up so much during his imprisonment. Varina Davis had hoped to settle the family in Canada where the federal authorities could not harass them and she continued to visit her children there while Davis was still in prison. Despite reports that Davis was taunted at various stops through New York, his trip to Montréal was an easy one; “so devoid of incident that like the weary knife grinder I have no tale to tell.”

The family took up residence in a modest boarding house where Davis hoped to find some peace and quiet. They would later reside briefly in the mansion of John Lowell, an Irish-born publisher of a Tory newspaper, at the corner of Ste. Catherine and Union across from the Christ Church Cathedral. Lowell’s family “gave us every care and assistance that friendship could render,” Varina Davis would later write. Perhaps Davis and his family had found a new home in Montréal, if only a temporary one. “Davis did not like crowds, and often moved about the city incognito or stayed inside. He declined numerous invitations to dinner and drinks, and to fishing trips into the nearby countryside. He and Varina would occasionally attend the theater in the city. A friend in Boston wrote to him glad to know “that you have reached a quiet home in Canada, away from the turmoil and useless excitement of our Northern cities.” The peace and quiet lasted only briefly.

Shortly after his arrival in Montréal, Davis received a letter from Jubal Early, one of his most reliable generals, inviting him to meet in Toronto. Davis departed Montréal by steamer on May 29, 1867 in the company of Colonel Charles Helm, a former Confederate agent in Havana. They traveled down the St. Lawrence River via Prescott and Kingston, arriving in Toronto on the following day where he received a warm welcome by former Confederates and Southern sympathizers. Many were surprised by Davis’ weak and emaciated appearance. “I feel that I am once more breathing free air,” Davis exclaimed upon his arrival. His reception was reported in The New York Times. It “proves that the Canadians are in a very bad condition of mind. They want to recover their equanimity until they are formally annexed by us.”

The next day he traveled across Lake Ontario in a small boat with James M. Mason, the former Confederate ambassador to Great Britain and France, to spend a couple days at Mason’s home in Niagra, Ontario. From the outside looking in, Davis could see Fort Niagra, on the American side of the Niagra River, the Stars and Stripes flying above the ramparts. “Look there Mason,” Davis said with some bitterness in his voice. “There is the gridiron we have been fried upon.” Joining other former compatriots, Davis offered some remarks about Canada that were later reported in the New York Times.
I thank you sincerely for the honor you have this evening shown to me; it shows that true British manhood to which misfortune is always attractive. May peace and prosperity be forever the blessing of Canada, for she has been the asylum for many of my friends, as she is now an asylum to myself. I hope that Canada may forever remain a part of the British Empire, and may God bless you all, and the British flag never cease to wave over you.
This is certainly a change of heart for a man who as a US Senator from Mississippi told the Maine Agricultural Society in September 1858 that the entire North American continent should eventually fall under US sovereignty. Ironically, the British North American Act establishing an independent Dominion of Canada was enacted by the British parliament a month later, on July 1, 1867. After a few days in Niagra, Davis returned to Montréal via Toronto on June 5. His health somewhat improved and his spirits raised, Davis was still saddened by his fellow Confederates forced into exile and “waiting like Micawbar.”

Back in Montréal, Davis had to consider his own plight. “Unless one had capital this seems to me a poor country for a Confederate; though it is due to the people to say that they have shown me more attention and cordiality than it would have been reasonable to expect.” Upon his arrival in Montréal Davis had invested $2000 of his scarce funds in a copper mining venture near Sherbrooke; he hoped “to make something out of it.” His Canadian partners hoped his name might lend some cachet to their business dealings there and in New York. Upon his return from Niagra, the Davis family would move into another friend’s residence at 247 Mountain Street [today rue de la Montagne] between rue Ste-Catherine and Dorchester (today Boulevard Réne-Lévesque). Described as a “narrow three-storey house, with steep front stairs leading up to the drawing room level,” the house also had a facade “marked by high, stone arched windows, and a black iron fence surrounded the green patch of garden.” It was leased from Reverend Henry Wilkes and rent was allegedly paid by anonymous Confederate donors. The house was eventually razed in the 1980s.