The Papers of Jefferson Davis is a documentary editing project based at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
From the roughly 100,000 Davis documents in our files, we are producing a selective letterpress set that is being published by Louisiana State University Press. Eleven volumes have been published thus far, covering Davis' life through May 1865. They may be ordered directly from the press. Fifteen volumes are projected.
Since we have the largest collection of Davis materials, our office also serves as a research center for scholars and others interested in the life and times of the Confederate president.
As noted Civil War scholars Frank E. Vandiver and Allan Nevins worked at the Huntington Library in the early 1960s, they discovered a number of important Davis items not available in print and decided that a new edition was needed. Vandiver, then a professor at Rice, secured sponsorship from the university, and in 1963 the Jefferson Davis Association was incorporated by the State of Texas. Editorial offices opened in December 1964, and after several years of scouring the country for documents, the first volume was published in 1971.
Rice University sponsors and shelters the Davis project. Our primary resources are grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), a division of the National Archives, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). We also receive support from the State of Mississippi, the Davis family, and many other organizations and persons.
There is no formal membership in our project; however, financial and research support of this nonprofit venture are gratefully accepted. We receive matching funds for contributions, and all contributors are listed in the acknowledgments section of our volumes. For more information, see How You Can Help.
Editor and project director Lynda Lasswell Crist has contributed to all the published volumes, has been editor since the fourth volume, and also worked on The Papers of Andrew Johnson. Her predecessors as editor were Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., and the late James T. McIntosh. Mary Seaton Dix retired in 1995 after twenty-six years with the project, but as coeditor emerita continues to volunteer her considerable expertise. The Rice History Department generously supplies the project with graduate student editorial assistants.
The editorial advisory board was headed by the late Frank E. Vandiver and is composed of distinguished historians from across the country. They are Richard E. Beringer, William J. Cooper, Jr., Judith F. Gentry, Harold M. Hyman, Edwin A. Miles, T. Michael Parrish, James I. Robertson, Jr., John Y. Simon, Richard J. Sommers, and Emory M. Thomas.
The board of directors includes Bertram Hayes-Davis (president), Jefferson Davis' great-great-grandson and a Colorado businessman; Percival T. Beacroft (vice-president), an attorney who has restored Davis' boyhood home (Rosemont) in Woodville, Mississippi; John B. Boles (secretary-treasurer), managing editor of The Journal of Southern History and professor of history at Rice University; Elbert R. Hilliard, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History; William P. Hobby, former lieutenant governor of Texas; and Allen J. Matusow, professor of history at Rice University.
The Papers of Jefferson Davis
Rice University--MS 43
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, Texas 77251-1892
Phone: (713) 348-4990
Fax: (713) 348-4383
E-mail: davis@rice.edu
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