Who was Jim Limber?

And what did he do to be in the middle of a controversy? He’s the child holding Jefferson Davis’ right hand in a life-size bronze sculpture that nobody seems to want. Until recently he was hardly more than a footnote in history. Limber was African-American. The Sons of Confederate Veterans commissioned the sculpture.

The story of Jim Limber is unique and heartwarming but also tragic.

It began Feb. 14, 1864, when Mrs. Davis — Varina —  saw him on the street in Richmond, terribly beaten and abused by his guardian, a free woman who claimed the child’s mother had given him to her when the mother died. Mrs. Davis couldn’t stand to see a child abused, so she took the boy home with her to the Confederate White House.

There probably wasn’t a busier man anywhere than Jefferson Davis, but he took the time to go to city hall and have the little boy’s papers registered to make sure he didn’t get back under the control of the cruel guardian.

The little boy said his name was Jim Limber when he was in his everyday clothes, but he was “Jeems Henry Brooks” when he wore his best suit on Sundays. He appeared to be about 7 years old and became the constant playmate of Jeff Jr., who was 8.

Mary Boykin Chestnut, keeper of the famous Dixie diaries, wrote Feb. 15, 1864, the day after Mrs. Davis had rescued the child, that she “saw in Mrs. Howell’s room the little negro boy Mrs. Davis rescued yesterday from his brutal negro guardian … dressed up in little Joe’s clothes and happy as a lord. He was very anxious to show me his wounds and bruises, but I fled.” (Mrs. Howell referred to was Varina Davis’ mother; little Joe was the Davis son who fell from the White House balcony and died from his injuries).

Jim fit right in with the other children, and he became a fierce ally of the sons of the upper crust, who lived near the White House. They were the “Hill cats,” and they had a longstanding hereditary hate that went back almost a century to the “Butcher cats,” sons of the working class who lived at the bottom of the hill.

A shower of stones and bricks was likely to come at any time, and there were also set battles which were usually won by the Butcher cats. All was fine — just boys being boys — until one day Jim Limber came home with blood pouring down his face from a scalp wound.

That’s when Davis the peacemaker decided it was time to walk down the hill and meet with the Butcher cats. Once back at the house he amusedly told Varina their response: “President, we like you, we didn’t want to hurt any of your boys but we ain’t never going to be friends with them Hill cats”

As the sun began to set on the Confederate government and the first family and high-ranking officials had to flee, Mrs. Davis went on ahead with her children, maids and coachman. On April 19, 1865, she wrote her husband and included the news that “the children play all day — Billy and Jim are fast friends as ever.”

After Davis had joined his family, they were captured in south Georgia;  Jim Limber was with them. Just a few days earlier, Varina Davis had written that ,“Limber is thriving but bad.”

The president’s family and entourage were taken to Savannah and sent by ship to Virginia as prisoners, and a boisterous Union captain, Charles Y. Hudson, decided to take Jim Limber. (Despite the child’s “free” papers, some Northern officials claimed he was one of the slaves from Brierfield). The man, who was described by Varina Davis as “a drunkard, thief, and liar,” went out of his way to cast insults upon the family, but Varina wrote that the man’s intention “to take our poor little negro protege as his own” troubled them more than his insults.

As fortune would have it, among the victors at Port Royal was an old friend, Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton, who held the title of inspector of plantations and settlements of freedmen on confiscated Sea Island estates. The Davises had known Saxton before the war, and they had total faith in him. They asked him to take Jim Limber, to save him from Hudson’s degrading influence, and see to it that got an education. Saxton agreed, and the child was handed over to the officers on the tugboat that had come alongside.

When Jim Limber realized he was being taken from the Davises, “he fought like a tiger,” and the Confederate vice president, Alexander H. Stephens who witnessed the episode, wrote that the child “had to be held to prevent his jumping overboard.” Then the Davis children — Margaret, Jeff Jr. and Billy began crying and screaming, too. Varina Davis and her maid, Ellen, wept. When Mrs. Virginia Clay, whose husband was a prisoner, threw him some money, he paid no attention, and Varina Davis wrote, he “kept on scuffling to get loose; he was wailing as long as he could be … seen by us.”

According to The Papers of Jefferson Davis, edited by Dr. Lynda L. Crist, the child was sent to nearby Old Fort Plantation where there was a school for free people, then lived for a time in Charleston with Gen. Saxton. He accompanied a teacher in 1866 to the North where he was given a good practical education until he was old enough to support himself.

The Davises never saw Jim again, but Varina wrote beside a photo of him, “A great pet in the family and known as Jim Limber.” Years later a Massachusetts paper claimed that he bore marks of beating he had received from the Davis family, scars that he would carry to his grave. If there were any, they came from the cruel guardian. Varina knew he would never have said such a thing, “for the affection was mutual between us, and we had never punished him.”

Jefferson Davis’ devotion to children, and their immediate gravitation to him, was well-known in his day. Even his last act in life, when he was terribly ill, was to grant the request of a child at Brierfield.

Back to the present: what is so objectionable about a statue of a great leader holding the hand of a child he befriended?

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.