Atlanta History Center: Jeff Davis Underwear
Atlanta, Georgia
As with any large history museum, the Atlanta History Center has its share of both lavish and quirky artifacts. It displays, for example, the locomotive Texas, the less-famous engine that chased (and caught) The General.
There are entire galleries devoted to Southern subjects such as folk art (with strange Appalachian face jugs) and barbecue (with equally strange plates of plastic chicken). The Center doesn't shy away from the city's less savory past, either, showcasing relics such as a well-thumped drum used in Ku Klux Klan parades; the bizarre "Eternal Flame of the Confederacy" lamp post; and Izzy, Atlanta's spectacularly underwhelming mascot from its 1996 Olympics.
The Civil War marched right through Atlanta (as featured in the museum's Cyclorama) and it provides grist for many grim displays, ranging from a sad war widow to a large showcase of artillery bombs.
Less noticeable, nestled in the Turning Point section within a case of small mementoes, is the Center's most overlooked treasure: a square of red flannel from Confederate President Jefferson Davis's underwear. It was preserved as a relic, according to its typewritten label, by Clement Claiborne Clay, a Confederate Senator from Alabama who was imprisoned with Davis after the war, and who apparently had access to a pair of scissors when Davis wasn't looking.
We mentioned the underwear to Gordon Jones, curator of the Atlanta History Center. He was delighted that we had noticed it, and confessed that one of his secret dreams as a historian was to somehow find all of the other flannel pieces and reassemble the complete underwear of the Confederate President.