Davis and Edgerton

February 18, 2023

Dear Ms. Lunelle, 

On this day of February 18th, many years ago, the Honorable President Jefferson Davis would stand on the Capitol steps in Montgomery, Alabama and give his 1st Inaugural speech for the Presidency of the Confederate States of America. 

Little did he know that several decades later that on this day of February 18th, the Honorable Rev. Roland Rogers and Annabelle Robinson Edgerton would give birth to a son (HK) who would stand on the Star placed on this very spot in remembrance of this occasion as the son of former slaves touting not only his legacy to the Confederacy, but also championing the legacy of the Davis families of the Davis Bend Plantations who would garner a path of social vertical mobility for the African people in their charge that had no parallel in the annals of mankind. 

And not to forget the little slave boy, Jim Limber of whom President Davis and his wife stop a beating of, and took him into their home as a son.

President Davis and all the men who served in his forward command were men of great honor and courage who loved the Union just as their ancestors who had forged the compact that brought its existence. Yet who would follow the legal path of the great State of South Carolina to separate its people from the Unión that no longer exhibited a charge for their posterity and existence. 

And then there was the Southern African, Freedmen of Color and Indentured; never mind that most had no knowledge of the Morrill Tariffs, or the Corwin Amendment. He served the Confederacy and felt the same pride and urgency of his Southern White