"Jefferson Davis was caught in a dress"

Someone said, "Confederate President Jefferson Davis was caught fleeing from the Union dressed as a woman."

Where This Comes Up

When people get worked up (like they do about the Civil War), they start throwing insults. The idea is that Davis was such a coward that he was trying to escape his responsibility as president but also as a man. 

It's only in the last couple of decades that calling a man a crossdresser was anything other than an attack on his morals and masculinity. It still stands that running away in disguise is cowardly even if what that disguise was is irrelevant today.

When This Started

When big newspapers ran the report that Union troops captured a fleeing Davis, many also ran a cartoon of Davis in a dress like the one above.

What Part is True

By his own admission, Jefferson Davis was wearing at least two pieces of woman's clothing when he was captured.

Why It's Complicated

• Jefferson Davis hated this rumor so much that he released a photo of what he was allegedly wearing when he was captured. 
• Davis himself claimed that he grabbed his wife's overcoat by accident in the chaos of his escape and she put the shawl on him herself.
• Accounts from his captors at the time say that Davis's men threw a dress and shawl over his shoulders in an attempt to disguise him.
• Accounts later from one of his captors say he was wearing a dress and shawl.
• In 19th century aristocratic fashion, an overcoat could look a lot like a dress. There's a chance that most people recounting these stories thought they were telling the truth.
• With no photo evidence, there's no real way to know what Davis looked like when he was captured and the people who were there all benefited from lying about it. If Davis was wearing a dress, lying helped protect his honor. If he was not in a dress, the Union benefited from a memorable bit of propaganda. 

Who Talked About It

"He [a journalist] says I was dressed in female attire, and said that Mrs. Davis in her own justification told him 'she did dress Mr. Davis in her attire and would not deny it.' But that attire appears by his own statement to have been a water proof cloak and a shawl; now where is the hoop skirt and the petticoat and the sun-bonnet, which has been the staple of so many malignant diatribes and pictorials."

Jefferson Davis, August 1875

Click here to read Jefferson Davis's own account of his capture

Click here to read the report newspapers ran after Davis was captured.