Legend has it that an on-the-run Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, was wrapped in woman's clothing when captured at Irwinville, Ga., by Union troops before dawn on May 10, 1865. Fast-forward 152 years and one day to a predawn Wednesday in Mid-City, and a statue of Davis is covered in green bubble wrap and yellow nylon hoist straps as construction workers remove the bronze monument to him from a pedestal on the New Orleans avenue that bears his name.
In truth, Davis was wearing a loosely fitting, water-repellent overcoat and his wife's black shawl over his head and shoulders when captured. It was raining that morning, after all. But that didn't stop northern newspapers from twisting the story, with one lithograph portraying him as wearing a hoop skirt and bonnet. Years later, a driving force behind the Davis monument in New Orleans was a Jim Crow-era attempt to restore his honor "as a statesman," said historian William Cooper, a retired LSU professor and widely acknowledged expert on Davis and his presidency.
