Howell Cobb to His Wife.
Montgomery [Ala.], 20 Feby., 1861.
Mv Dear Wife, . . . President Davis, as you have seen, has arrived and been inaugurated. His inaugural was highly satisfactory and the occasion was one of the most impressive scenes I ever witnessed. The crowd was large and decidedly the finest audience of such numbers I ever saw. It was estimated from five to twenty thousand. I should say there were ten thousand.
The Cabinet is not yet appointed, and no one knows who will be, as Davis consults no one out of his own State, as far as I have heard. I have positively refused to go into the cabinet. I hear that Toombs has been offered either the State or Treasury, but I can’t say certainly, as Toombs has been called home by the severe illness of his daughter, and the offer, if made at all, was by telegraph. I give you the names as I hear from the rumors of the street—talked of for the cabinet — viz. Yancey, Capt. Bragg, Benjamin, Judge Walker of Alabama, Memminger of S. C, Henry Jackson, Benning and Bartow of Ga., also Johnson, but notice has been given that his name will be fought. I really have as little idea as you in Macon who will be the Cabinet,
Mrs. Davis is not here but expects to come on in a short time, as soon as the President gets a house. . . .
From Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911.
Howell Cobb was an American political figure. A southern Democrat, Cobb was a five-term member of the United States House of Representatives and Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as the 40th Governor of Georgia and as a Secretary of the Treasury under President James Buchanan. Cobb is, however, probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederacy, having served as the President of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States.