That Should Be A Movie: The Story of Jim Limber

A Young African-American Boy is Freed and Adopted by the Family of the President of the Confederate States of America.

Now That Should Be A Movie.

Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is Jim Limber Davis: A Black Orphan in The Confederate White House by Rickey Pittman, illustrated by Judith Hierstein, from Pelican Press.

Jim Limber, also known as James Henry Books, was born into slavery in Virginia. At age five he was orphaned when his parents died of a fever. In February 1864 he was being beaten by his elderly guardian when Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, passed by in a carriage. Varina rebuked the abuser and took Jim to the Confederate White House, where she cleaned and bandaged his wounds. Jefferson Davis, according to Varina, “went to the Mayor’s office and had his free papers registered to insure Jim against getting into the power of the oppressor again,” and, although there was no legal precedent for it in Virginia at the time, adopted him into The First Family of the Confederacy.

Jim was probably privy to much history. He was affected when Joseph Evan Davis, the five-year-old son of the president, died after falling twenty feet from a balcony on April 30^th, 1864. He was probably caught up in the excitement when the Union cavalry officers Hugh Judson Kilpatrick and Ulric Dahlgren tried to raid Richmond and supposedly capture President Davis, in an intriguing plot known as the Dahlgren Affair which could be a movie of its own. He may have met Mary Bower, a female slave in the Confederate White House who was also a spy for the Union. She deserves a movie as well. Watching Jim play soldier with his sons as part of the Hill Cats Gang might have helped change President Davis’ perspective on African-Americans being soldiers, causing him to sign a law similar to General Patrick Cleburne’s proposal of emancipating slaves in exchange for service in the Confederate Army.

Jim was with the Davis family when they fled Richmond and was at Irwinville, Georgia when Jefferson Davis was captured by Union cavalry. What happened to Jim afterward is the stuff of Lost Cause mythology and historical guesstimation. Mr. Pittman believes Jim was kidnapped by Union soldiers and made a traveling freakshow exhibit, having his bear back revealed to audiences as a ringleader explained that the scars, which were really from his abusive guardian, had been given to him by Jefferson Davis. The more likely story is that due to threats from an unsavory Union captain named Charles T. Hudson to take Jim away, the Davis family asked a friend in the Union army, General Rufus Saxton, to take care of him during Jefferson Davis’ imprisonment. It was during this separation that Varina said of Jim, “As soon as he found he was going to leave us fought like a little tiger and was thus engaged the last we saw of him.” A sentimental version of the story ends with the Davis family searching for Jim for the rest of their lives but never finding him. However, not enough evidence has turned up to substantiate this claim. In Varina’s memories, she writes that she hopes he found his way in the world, having seen in a Boston newspaper article the claim that he would bear to his grave the scars given him by the Davis family. She was sure Jim had not said this, “for the affection between us was mutual, and we had never punished him.” The last we know of Jim is that he was receiving an education in Boston before he disappeared into the footnotes of history.

There is also debate about the nature of the relationship between Jim and the Davis family. Since The Free Negro Register of Richmond burned with the city in April 1865, the Davis account of freeing Jim from slavery cannot be collaborated. Since there were no adoption laws in Virginia that would have made Jim a legal member of the family, the more proper term for Jim’s relationship with the Davis family is “ward” or “foster child.” There is also the question of Jim’s race. In different sources he was referred to as “black” and in other sources, he was referred to as “mulatto” (biracial). Since the only surviving photograph of Jim Davis clearly shows a child with black skin, and laws in the South regarding racial ancestry required several generations to remove non-white blood from one’s lineage, see The Lost German Slave Girl, before one could be considered white, he would have been considered black in mid-nineteenth century America. Then there’s the nature of the relationship between Jim and the Davis family. Some modern scholars see references in Varina’s writings to Jim as “protégé” or “pet,” a nineteenth-century term of endearment, as a reason to throw shade on the relationship. However, eyewitnesses to the Jim and Davis family relationship say otherwise. The diarist Mary Boykin Chestnut wrote that she saw “the little negro Mrs. Davis rescued yesterday from his brutal negro guardian. The child is an orphan. He was dressed up in little Joe’s clothes and happy as a lord.” In April 1865, as the Davis family fled the advance and pursuit of the Union Army, Varina wrote, “The children are well and very happy—play all day—Billy & Jim fast friends as ever …” and “Billy and Jeff are very well—Limber is thriving but bad (sick).” Margaret Davis, nine years old, wrote her older brother, Jefferson Davis, Jr, “Jim Limber sends his love to you…” Perhaps the best testament to the relationship of the Davis family to Jim is the observation of Elizabeth Hyde Botume, a Bostonian who taught school to freed slaves at the Sea Islands Freedman Colony where General Saxton took him. She wrote in First Days Amongst the Contrabands, “As he was the constant companion and playmate of Mrs. Davis’ children, he considered himself as one of them, adopting their views and sharing their prejudices. President Davis was to him the one great man in the world. Mrs. Davis had given him the kindly care of a mother, and he had for her the loving devotion of a child.” So, no matter the splitting of linguistic and legal hairs, the fact remains that the president of the Confederacy freed and treated a young African-American boy like he was part of his family.

I believe Jim’s story would make a great movie introducing school children to the American Civil War. It would teach children that history is complicated and that the other side is human too, creating peace and understanding in the future. It would be a clear rebuke to the intolerance on display in New Orleans when millions of dollars that could have been spent on improving intercity schools were wasted on taking down hundred-year-old statues. I am not a fan of Jefferson Davis, who was a very, very flawed individual, but I was shocked at the historical ignorance put on display by the Take ‘Em Down movement which compared him to genocidal dictators like Hitler. When anger over injustices from 100 years ago causes people to vandalize public property with profanity, then perhaps the simple story of the child Jim Limber could remind us of the humanity and capability of goodness on both sides of a conflict and bind up the wounds of a nation.

Because it is a great way to introduce children to the American Civil War while creating peace and understanding today, I believe that the story of Jim Limber as told in Jim Limber Davis by Rickey Pittman Should Be A Movie.