Civil War letters from W.Va. reveal marriage that defied secession

CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — John James Davis was shocked to learn that the Virginia Convention had endorsed secession on April 17, 1861. A Clarksburg lawyer, he was devoted to the Union and believed the decision was wrong. A few days later, he sent off a letter to his fiancée, Anna Kennedy, who lived in Baltimore with her father. In their regular correspondence, John and Anna always began with the same salutation: “Dear friend.”

Davis was very distraught by political events, and confessed to Anna, “You do not know how sad I am tonight. Darkness, gloom, and blood hang over the future, and how it will all end, the Almighty alone knows. Before you hear from me again or perhaps, before this reaches you, my own state may be drenched in blood – My country, the Union, to preserve which I would have laid down my life, is gone – gone beyond the hope of reconstruction – You and I are no longer citizens of the same government... We are foreigners. I hope we shall never be so in feeling. Madness ruled the hour, and our people are now to fight the battles of South Carolina upon their own soil... I shall battle for the Union as long as there is any hope at all. You are not a secessionist, I believe.”

But Davis was incorrect about Anna’s feelings on this conflict. She replied two days later, “Dear friend,” she began, “I have received your letter. I, too, am heartsick. You have, of course, heard our troubles here. Thank God, however, we are almost a unit here and have no feuds among ourselves. Indeed, Mr. Davis, if you were but here now, you too would feel it better to secede immediately than live under the administration of such a weak villain as I believe Lincoln to be. I have loved the Union, you know I have loved it, but, O, I hate the present government and whatever so weak an arm as mine can do shall be done to shake its fetters off. I am trembling now so that I can scarcely write. I am not alarmed, but I have been in a perfect fever of excitement since Friday.”

Fearing she might have stepped over a line expressing her political opinion, she wrote, “Well, I guess I had better stop talking about it. I am afraid you will think me now more political than is quite ladylike.” But she could not refrain from asking at the close of the letter, “Of course, though you are a Unionist, you will fight for your state, won’t you? Oh, me!”

Over the next several weeks, the two lovers continued a regular correspondence, in which they alternated statements about their mutual affection with disagreements over politics. These, at times, tested their relationship. John began one letter to Anna with a slight twist to the usual salutation: "My dear friend—See how I italicized that word friend—are you satisfied now that you have not lost the title which you claim to be ‘inalienable?’ My pen has a great inclination sometimes, to be more familiar, but lest I offend I restrain it.”

He assured Anna that “Difference of opinion ought not and must not make us disagree on one point.—that we are friends. If I err in opinion on subjects of interest to us all, it is an error occasioned by a lack of ability to perceive what is right, and not from any improper motive. I wish to do what is right if I can. Whatever opinions I express are the honest convictions of my mind. And I am willing to concede to others the same honesty of purpose and motive.”

Neither James nor Anna was willing to let politics come between them, and in the summer of 1862, with the war still raging, John James Davis and Anna Kennedy married.

Davis’s Unionist convictions made him the odd one out in his family. Not only did his wife support the Confederacy, but so too did his father and his new father-in-law, and his brother Rezin Davis joined the Confederate Army. Despite this, John James Davis adhered to his “honest convictions,” and he was elected to represent Harrison County in the assembly of the Loyal Reorganized Government of Virginia. Over time, he came to support the new state movement.

In 1863, when Congress insisted on emancipation as a condition of West Virginia’s admission to the Union, Davis, who was from a slaveholding family, joined a handful of other Conservative Unionists in opposing West Virginia statehood under that condition. With this turn against the new state, Davis found himself once again holding an unpopular view, and he received several anonymous, threatening notes from supporters of the new state. One wrote: “Sir: You’re in danger—be slightly careful of your conduct. Your course is entirely repugnant to all true patriots & sensible men, therefore I advise you to desist from being too ambitious in your anti-new state sympathies.”

That Davis’s inclination to hold to his views even when those around him disagreed did no permanent damage to either his career as a lawyer or his personal life. He remained in Clarksburg after the war and continued to practice law. He was even elected to the West Virginia legislature for a term in 1869. And John and Anna stuck to their vows to remain together “until death do us part.” John passed away on March 19, 1916, at the age of 80. One year later, his “dear friend” Anna passed away in a hospital in Baltimore. Her family returned her body to Clarkburg to be reunited with John in death.

You can visit their grave in the Oddfellows Cemetery at 414 S. Chestnut St., Clarksburg, West Virginia.