As war loomed in March 1861, President Jefferson Davis sent Ambrose Dudley Mann on an important diplomatic mission abroad to seek recognition of the Confederate States of America from the chief European powers. When the war ended four years later, Mann took up residence in France and stayed there as a voluntary exile for the rest of his life.
In Paris, and at his country estate in Chantilly, he kept up a correspondence with Davis and other friends. Most of Mann's papers have been lost to history, but this book presents a newly discovered collection of his letters written from 1867 to 1879.
They are deeply personal writings revealing a personality dominated by two great earthly passions, the first of which was an independent South, and the second, a beautiful widow from South Carolina, Mrs. Susan Sparks Keitt, to whom all the letters are addressed. Mann writes of other ex-Confederates in Paris, Reconstruction politics in America, the horrific conditions in Paris when the city was under siege during the Franco-Prussian War, and visits by his treasured friend Jefferson Davis.
Mrs. Davis wrote that the two men loved each other "like David and Jonathan, until extreme old age." Mann also cherished Mrs. Keitt until his death, and his letters are a testament of his devotion to her and his beloved South.