News of former Confederate president Jefferson
Davis's capture by Union forces on May 10, 1865--and especially reports
that, in an effort to evade arrest, he was wearing his wife's
dress--afforded P. T. Barnum with an opportunity to create an attraction
for the American Museum that would appeal to the northern public. "I
will give five hundred dollars to the Sanitary Commission or Freedman's
Association," Barnum telegrammed Secretary of War Stanton five days
after the capture, " for the petticoats in which Jeff Davis was
caught." Barnum was unable to obtain the garments (if they ever
existed) but a wax figure, dubbed "The Belle of Richmond" was
shortly mounted in the American Museum.
Cartoons and illustrations from contemporary newspapers and magazines about the incident that inspired the American Museum attraction.
G. Querner, John Brown Exhibiting His Hangman, lithograph, Cincinnati, 1863Jefferson Davis as an Unprotected Female, wood engraving, Harper's Weekly, May 1865
Burgoo Zac, The Chas-ed "Old Lady" of the C.S.A., lithograph, Cincinnati, 1865
Capture of Jefferson Davis, at Irwinsville, GA., wood engraving, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 1865
Burgoo Zac, Finding of the Last Ditch, lithograph, Cincinnati, 1865
The Clothes in which Davis Disguised Himself, Harper's Weekly, June 1865
"Jeff's Last Shift," lithograph (HarpWeek: American Political Prints, 1766-1876)
"Jeff's Race for the Last Ditch," sheet music cover (HarpWeek: American Political Prints, 1766-1876)
"Jeff Davis Caught at Last," lithograph (American Memory, Library of Congress)
Press coverage and other contemporary observations about the Barnum attraction, including the controversy it provoked and its fate after the fire.
The New York Times coverage of the fire July 14, 1865
Scholarly views about the meaning and significance of "The Belle of Richmond" story and the American Museum attraction.
Mark E. Neely, Jr., Harold Holzer, and Gabor S. Boritt, "The Belle of Richmond," in The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987).Nina Silber, "Intemperate Men, Spiteful Women, and Jefferson Davis: Northern Views of the Defeated South," in The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
Kenneth S. Greenberg, "Masks and Slavery," in Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as A Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).