Payne-Strachan House- 1134 1st Street
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, died at this double gallery Greek rival house. Davis fell ill while traveling and was taken here, the home of his friend Judge Charles Fenner (son-in-law of owner Jacob Payne). A stone marker in front of the house bears the date of Davis’s death, December 6, 1889. (Davis was buried in magnificent Metairie Cemetery for 2 years and then was disinterred and moved to Virginia.) This house is a classic antebellum Greek Revival home. Note the sky-blue ceiling of the gallery — the color is believed to keep winged insects from nesting there and to ward off evil spirits.
During and after the War for Southern Independence, Jefferson Davis was accused of a wide variety of offences. Northerners made the most extensive and lasting attacks upon Davis. In one of these insults — a letter embossed with an American eagle crushing “Secession” and holding proudly in its beak a U.S. banner announcing “Death to Traitors” — a New Yorker wrote: “Jeff Davis you rebel traitor here is the beauty of America one of the greatest treasures that ever waved over your sinful head. Now I want you to look at this motto and think of me for — say death to cession and death to all traitors to their country and these are my sentiments exactly. Yours not with respect for I can never respect a traitor to his Country a cursed traitor.”
Davis became, and remained to Northerners, the quintessential wrongdoer. Later generations of liberal progressives would consider him an American Hitler. Immediately after the War for Southern Independence Yankee authorities put Davis in jail and left him there for two years without a trial, while they tried to implicate him in the assassination of Lincoln, alleged cruelty to Federal prisoners, and treason itself.
During and after the war the New York Times depicted him as a murderer, a cruel slaveowner whose servants ran away, a liar, a boaster, a fanatic, a confessed failure, a hater, a political adventurer, a supporter of outcasts and outlaws, a drunkard, an atrocious misrepresenter, an assassin, an incendiary, a criminal who was gratified by the assassination of Lincoln, a henpecked husband, a man so shameless that he would try to escape capture by disguising himself as a woman, a supporter of murder plots, an insubordinate soldier, an unwholesome sleeper, and a mean-spirited malingerer.
The death occurred at New Orleans about one o’clock a.m., December 5, 1889, and the event was announced throughout the Union. The funeral ceremonies in New Orleans were such as comported with the illustrious character of the deceased chieftain, while public meetings in other cities and towns of the South were held to express the common sorrow, and the flags of State capitols were dropped to half-mast. Distinguished men pronounced eulogies on his character, and the press universally at the South and generally at the North contained extended and laudatory articles on his character.
The burial place in New Orleans was selected only as a temporary receptacle, while a general movement was inaugurated for a tomb and monument; which resulted in the removal of the body to Richmond, the capitol of the Confederacy. The removal took place by means of a special funeral train from New Orleans to Richmond, which moved day and night almost literally in review before the line of people assembled to see it pass. Finally in the presence of many thousands the casket was deposited in the last resting place in the keeping of the city, which had so long withstood the rude alarms of war under his presidency. He died in 1889, having never requested the official pardon that would have restored his U.S. citizenship.
It is believed that the ghost of Jefferson Davis continues to walk the halls and rooms of this mansion. Numerous visitors have encountered his ghost who is always asking “where are my boots?” It is unknown why he continues to ask for them. It could be because he was a soldier, that he would have preferred to die with his boots on. Others think possibly he could be referring to boots that he invented for soldiers in the field. It was a boot that fit either foot.
Kalila Smith, except from New Orleans Ghosts, Voodoo, & Vampires, 1997