Confederate Mona Lisa

By Doug York and Ronald S. Coddington 

Long before Vicksburg became ground zero in the federal campaign to control the Mississippi, the city thrived as an important transportation gateway. A seemingly endless procession of steamboats laden with goods chugged to and from its piers, leaving trails of smoke puffing from iron stacks. High above the river and sprawled across rugged cliffs, streets buzzed with all the noise and bustle of daily business.

The social life of the city was as vibrant as its commercial enterprises, and it intensified during the heady days following secession. Gala parties celebrated the birth of the Confederacy and the volunteer Southrons called to arms in defense of the new nation.

One such event in the spring of 1861 provided the setting for a romance between an Alabama belle and a Marine lieutenant with family and friends in high places.

The belle, Virginia Frances Ware, was a 16-year-old beauty born and raised in Alabama. The youngest of five children, she enjoyed a privileged life. Her father, William Ware, a Georgian and the son of Irish immigrants, had moved his family to Alabama around 1842, a few years before Virginia’s birth. He established a plantation in Perry County, part of a 650-mile-stretch of fertile territory known as the Canebrake region. Well-suited for largescale cotton cultivation, landowners here referred to themselves as “Canebrake Planters,” a term of pride that embodied their wealth, power, dignity and honor. A sizeable slave population toiled in their fields, including 68 men, women and children of color owned by Ware.

In 1856, then 11-year-old Virginia suffered tragedy when her mother died. At some point afterwards, she journeyed 200 miles west to Vicksburg and became a houseguest of the Hicks family. Her connection to the Hicks and motivation for the visit is unclear. Martha M. Cowan Hicks, the matriarch of the family, was a widow in her early 40s. The death of her prominent physician husband some years earlier left her to raise four sons, with the assistance of three slaves.

Martha’s second eldest, William Anderson Hicks, held the rank of midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy when Mississippi legislators passed the state’s Ordinance of Secession on Jan. 9, 1861. About two months later, as his senior year wound down, he resigned his U.S. commission in protest to the incoming administration of President Abraham Lincoln. According the news reports, young Hicks headed to Montgomery to offer his services to the Confederacy. By early April, he was at home awaiting orders for his first assignment in gray.

Also in Vicksburg was a former U.S. Marine lieutenant and native Mississippian. Becket Kempe Howell, a 20-year-old born in Natchez, had recently resigned his commission for the same rank in the Confederate Marines. He was connected to the highest level of the Southern government. First lady Varina Davis was his sister. President Jefferson Davis served something of a role model for Howell, having helped him with his military career.

Howell likely knew Hicks, considering their Mississippi ties and the small size of the peacetime U.S. navy. Hicks probably also introduced Howell to his houseguest, Virginia. There can be no question that they met. In Virginia’s surviving papers, an invitation written by Howell to Virginia, in care of Martha Hicks, reads: “Lieut. Howell sends his compliments to Miss Ware and wishes to know if she would care to accompany him to the party Saturday next to the River Park. Yours to Command—.”

Command she did. Virginia wrote her answer on the back of the invitation. “Miss Ware would be greatly honored to attend Miss French’s party with Lieut. Howell and shall be ready on the half hour before.” Though the event date is not included, evidence suggests it occurred in April 1861.

The party appears to have been a success for the pair. A month later, on May 3, Howell gave Virginia a lock of his hair, a sure indication of a courtship. Virginia placed the lock in an envelope and annotated it in pencil.

That same day, Howell left for New Orleans. He had orders to report for duty aboard the bark-rigged screw steamer Sumter, the Confederacy’s first raider. He joined a crew hand-picked by the vessel’s commander, former U.S. navy officer Raphael Semmes. According to a fellow officer, Howell was “a big-hearted, generous fellow, every ready to please a shipmate. Semmes’s affection for him was marked.”

Howell likely left Vicksburg with Hicks, also selected by Semmes to be part of the crew. Hicks ranked as midshipman. All three men were aboard the Sumter on June 30, 1861, when the cruiser steamed into the Gulf of Mexico and eluded the Union sloop-of-war Brooklyn, after a dramatic four-hour chase. The Richmond Daily Dispatch reported that the Sumter had run “the paper blockade of Lincoln-Abolition war steamers off the mouth of the Mississippi. As she has now made a good offing, and is far out on the ocean wave, we hope soon to hear of some dashing exploits in the way of captures.”