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Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 –
December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as President of the
Confederate States of America for its entire history, 1861 to 1865, during the
American Civil War. See the fine art prints featuring Jefferson Davis
below, and underneath that more history of Jefferson Davis.
A West Point graduate, Davis fought in the
Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and was the United
States Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in
the Pierce Administration, he served as a U.S. Senator from Mississippi. As a
senator he argued against secession but believed each state was sovereign and
had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.
Davis resigned from the Senate in January 1861, after receiving word that
Mississippi had seceded from the Union. The following month, he was
provisionally appointed President of the Confederate States of America. He was
elected to a six-year term that November. During his presidency, Davis was not
able to find a strategy to defeat the larger, more industrially developed Union.
Davis' insistence on independence, even in the face of crushing defeat,
prolonged the war.
After Davis was captured in 1865, he was charged with treason, though not
convicted, and stripped of his eligibility to run for public office. This
limitation was removed in 1978, 89 years after his death. While not disgraced,
he was displaced in Southern affection after the war by its leading general,
Robert E. Lee. Early life and military
career
Davis was the youngest of the ten children of Samuel Emory Davis (Philadelphia,
Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, 1756 – July 4, 1824) and wife (married 1783)
Jane Cook (Christian County, (later Todd County), Kentucky, 1759 – October 3,
1845), daughter of William Cook and wife Sarah Simpson, daughter of Samuel
Simpson (1706 – 1791) and wife Hannah (b. 1710). The younger Davis' grandfather
Evan Davis (Cardiff, County Glamorgan, 1729 – 1758) emigrated from Wales and had
once lived in Virginia and Maryland, marrying Lydia Emory. His father, along
with his uncles, had served in the Continental Army during the American
Revolutionary War; he fought with the Georgia cavalry and fought in the Siege of
Savannah as an infantry officer. Also, three of his older brothers served during
the War of 1812. Two of them served under Andrew Jackson and received
commendation for bravery in the Battle of New Orleans.
During Davis' youth, the family moved twice; in 1811 to St. Mary Parish,
Louisiana, and in 1812 to Wilkinson County, Mississippi near the town of
Woodville. In 1813, Davis began his education together with his sister Mary,
attending a log cabin school a mile from their home in the small town of
Woodville, known as the Wilkinson Academy. Two years later, Davis entered the
Catholic school of Saint Thomas at St. Rose Priory, a school operated by the
Dominican Order in Washington County, Kentucky. At the time, he was the only
Protestant student.
Davis went on to Jefferson College at Washington, Mississippi, in 1818, and to
Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1821. In 1824, Davis entered
the United States Military Academy (West Point).He completed his four-year term
as a West Point cadet, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in June 1828
following graduation.
Davis was assigned to the 1st Infantry Regiment and was stationed at Fort
Crawford, Wisconsin. His first assignment, in 1829, was to supervise the cutting
of timber on the banks of the Red Cedar River for the repair and enlargement of
the fort. Later the same year, he was reassigned to Fort Winnebago. While
supervising the construction and management of a sawmill in the Yellow River in
1831, he contracted pneumonia, causing him to return to Fort Crawford.
The year after, Davis was dispatched to Galena, Illinois, at the head of a
detachment assigned to remove miners from lands claimed by the Native Americans.
Lieutenant Davis was home in Mississippi for the entire Black Hawk War,
returning after the Battle of Bad Axe. Following the conflict, he was assigned
by his colonel, Zachary Taylor, to escort Black Hawk himself to prison—it is
said that the chief liked Davis because of the kind treatment he had shown.
Another of Davis' duties during this time was to keep miners from illegally
entering what would eventually become the state of Iowa.
Marriage, plantation life, and early political career
Davis fell in love with Zachary Taylor's daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor. Her father
did not approve of the match, so Davis resigned his commission and married Miss
Taylor on June 17, 1835, at the house of her aunt near Louisville,
Kentucky.
The marriage, however, proved to be short. While visiting Davis' oldest sister
near Saint Francisville, Louisiana, both newlyweds contracted malaria, and
Davis' wife died three months after the wedding on September 15, 1835. In 1836,
he moved to Brierfield Plantation in Warren County, Mississippi. For the next
eight years, Davis was a recluse, studying government and history, and engaging
in private political discussions with his brother Joseph.
The year 1844 saw Davis' first political success, as he was elected to the
United States House of Representatives, taking office on March 4 of the
following year. In 1845, Davis married Varina Howell, the granddaughter of late
New Jersey Governor Richard Howell whom he met the year before, at her home in
Natchez, Mississippi.
There is a portrait of Mrs. Jefferson Davis in old age at the Jefferson Davis
Shrine in Biloxi, Mississippi, painted by Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862-1947) in 1895
and dubbed 'Widow of the Confederacy'. It was exhibited at the Durand-Ruel
Galleries in New York in 1897. The Museum of the Confederacy at Richmond,
Virginia, possesses Müller-Ury's 1897-98 profile portrait of their daughter
Winnie Davis which the artist presented to the Museum in 1918.
Second military career
The year 1846 saw the beginning of the Mexican-American War. He resigned his
House seat in June, and raised a volunteer regiment, the Mississippi Rifles,
becoming its colonel. On July 21, 1846 they sailed from New Orleans for the
Texas coast. Davis armed the regiment with percussion rifles and trained the
regiment in their use, making it particularly effective in combat.
In September of the same year, he participated in the successful siege of
Monterrey. He fought bravely at the Battle of Buena Vista on February 22, 1847,
and was shot in the foot, being carried to safety by Robert H. Chilton. In
recognition of Davis's bravery and initiative, commanding general Zachary Taylor
is reputed to have said, "My daughter, sir, was a better judge of men than I
was."
President James K. Polk offered him a Federal commission as a brigadier general
and command of a brigade of militia. He declined the appointment, arguing that
the United States Constitution gives the power of appointing militia officers to
the states, and not to the Federal government of the United States.
Return to politics
Senator
Because of his war service, the Governor of Mississippi appointed Davis to fill
out the Senate term of the late Jesse Speight. He took his seat December 5,
1847, and was elected to serve the remainder of his term in January 1848. In
addition, the Smithsonian Institution appointed him a regent at the end of
December 1847.
The Senate made Davis chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. When his
term expired, he was elected to the same seat (by the Mississippi legislature,
as the Constitution mandated at the time). He had not served a year when he
resigned (in September 1851) to run for the Governorship of Mississippi on the
issue of the Compromise of 1850, which Davis opposed. This election bid was
unsuccessful, as he was defeated by fellow senator Henry Stuart Foote by 999
votes.
Left without political office, Davis continued his political activity. He took
part in a convention on states' rights, held at Jackson, Mississippi in January
1852. In the weeks leading up to the presidential election of 1852, he
campaigned in numerous Southern states for Democratic candidates Franklin Pierce
and William R. King. Secretary of War
Pierce won the election and, in 1853, made Davis his Secretary of War.[4] In
this capacity, Davis gave to Congress four annual reports (in December of each
year), as well as an elaborate one (submitted on February 22, 1855) on various
routes for the proposed Transcontinental Railroad. The Pierce Administration
ended in 1857. The President lost the Democratic nomination, which went instead
to James Buchanan. Davis' term was to end with Pierce's, so he ran successfully
for the Senate, and re-entered it on March 4, 1857.
[edit] Return to Senate
His renewed service in the Senate was interrupted by an illness that threatened
him with the loss of his left eye. Still nominally serving in the Senate, Davis
spent the summer of 1858 in Portland, Maine. On the Fourth of July, he delivered
an anti-secessionist speech on board a ship near Boston. He again urged the
preservation of the Union on October 11 in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and returned to
the Senate soon after.
As Davis explained in his memoir The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government, he believed that each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable
right to secede from the Union. He counseled delay among his fellow Southerners,
however, because he did not think that the North would permit the peaceable
exercise of the right to secession. Having served as Secretary of War under
President Franklin Pierce, he also knew that the South lacked the military and
naval resources necessary to defend itself if war were to break out. Following
the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, however, events accelerated. South
Carolina adopted an ordinance of secession on December 20, 1860, and Mississippi
did so on January 9, 1861. As soon as Davis received official notification of
that fact, he delivered a farewell address to the United States Senate,
resigned, and returned to Mississippi.
President of the Confederate States 1861-1865
Four days after his resignation, Davis was commissioned a
Major General of Mississippi troops.[1] On February 9, 1861, a Constitutional
convention at Montgomery, Alabama named him provisional President of the
Confederate States of America and he was inaugurated on February 18, 1861. In
meetings of his own Mississippi legislature, Davis had argued against secession;
but when a majority of the delegates opposed him, he gave in.
In conformity with a resolution of the Confederate Congress, Davis immediately
appointed a Peace Commission to resolve the Confederacy's differences with the
Union. In March 1861, before the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the Commission was
to travel to Washington, D.C., to offer to pay for any Federal property on
Southern soil, as well as the Southern portion of the national debt, but it was
not authorized to discuss terms for reunion. He appointed General P.G.T.
Beauregard to command Confederate troops in the vicinity of Charleston, South
Carolina. He approved the Cabinet decision to bombard Fort Sumter, which started
the Civil War. When Virginia switched from neutrality and joined the
Confederacy, he moved his government to Richmond, Virginia, in May 1861. Davis
and his family took up his residence there at the White House of the Confederacy
in late May.
Davis was elected to a six-year term as President of the Confederacy on November
6, 1861. He had never served a full term in any elective office, and that would
turn out to be the case on this occasion as well. He was inaugurated on February
22, 1862. In June, 1862, he assigned General Robert E. Lee to replace the
wounded Joseph E. Johnston in command of the Army of Northern Virginia, the main
Confederate army in the Eastern Theater. That December, he made a tour of
Confederate armies in the west of the country. Davis largely made the main
strategic decisions on his own, or approved those suggested by Lee. He had a
very small circle of military advisers. Jefferson Davis openly pushed for the
acquisition of Cuba upon completion of the Civil War.
In August 1863, Davis declined General Lee's offer of
resignation after his defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. As Confederate
military fortunes turned for the worse in 1864, he visited Georgia with the
intent of raising morale.
On April 3, 1865, with Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant poised to capture
Richmond, Davis escaped for Danville, Virginia, together with the Confederate
Cabinet, leaving on the Richmond and Danville Railroad. He issued his last
official proclamation as President of the Confederacy, and then went south to
Greensboro, North Carolina. Circa April 12, he received Robert E. Lee's letter
announcing surrender.
President Jefferson Davis met with his Confederate Cabinet for the last time on
May 5, 1865 in Washington, Georgia, and the Confederate Government was
officially dissolved. The meeting took place at the Heard house, the Georgia
Branch Bank Building, with fourteen officials present. He was captured on May
10, 1865 at Irwinville in Irwin County,
Georgia.
After being captured, he was held as a prisoner for two years in Fort Monroe,
Virginia.
Imprisonment and retirement
On May 19, 1865, Davis was imprisoned in a casemate at Fortress Monroe, on the
coast of Virginia. He was placed in irons for three days. Davis was indicted for
treason a year later. While in prison, Davis arranged to sell his Mississippi
estate to one of his former slaves, Ben Montgomery. Montgomery was a talented
business manager, mechanic, and even an inventor who had become wealthy in part
from running his own general store.
After two years of imprisonment, he was released on bail which was posted by
prominent citizens of both northern and southern states, including Horace
Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Gerrit Smith (Smith, a former member of the
Secret Six, had supported John Brown). Davis visited Canada, Cuba and Europe. In
December 1868, the court rejected a motion to nullify the indictment, but the
prosecution dropped the case in February 1869.
In 1869 Davis became president of the Carolina Life Insurance Company in
Memphis, Tennessee, where he resided at the Peabody Hotel. Upon Robert E. Lee's
death in 1870, Davis presided over the memorial meeting in Richmond, Virginia.
Elected to the U.S. Senate again, he was refused the office in 1875, having been
barred from Federal office by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution. He turned down the opportunity to become the first president of
the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University).
In 1876, he promoted a society for the stimulation of U.S. trade with South
America. Davis visited England the next year, returning in 1878 to Beauvoir
(Biloxi, Mississippi). Over the next three years there, Davis wrote The Rise and
Fall of the Confederate Government. Having completed that book, he visited
Europe again, and traveled to Alabama and Georgia the following year.
He completed A Short History of the Confederate States of America in October
1889. Two months later on December 6, Davis died in New Orleans of unestablished
cause at the age of eighty-one. His funeral was one of the largest ever staged
in the South, and included a continuous cortège, day and night, from New Orleans
to Richmond, Virginia. He is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
Confederacy Articles and Art Prints
The Confederate States of America (also called the Confederacy, the Confederate
States, and the CSA) formed as the government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven
southern states of the United States of America that had declared their
secession from the U.S. We've combined articles revolving around the historical
context of the Confederacy in the Civil War plus we present these Civil War
paintings and posters for the Civil War enthusiasts, or help in teaching history
to students. Memorials
* The Jefferson Davis Presidential Library, on
the grounds of Davis's last home, Beauvoir, at Biloxi, Mississippi, was
dedicated in 1998 by the state of Mississippi and includes a bronze statue of
Davis by Mississippi artist Bill Beckwith.
* Jefferson Davis is included on a bas relief sculpture on Stone Mountain, which
is just east of Atlanta, Georgia.
* A monument to Jefferson Davis was unveiled on June 3, 1907, on Monument Avenue
in Richmond, Virginia and a life-sized statue by George Julian Zolnay marks his
grave at Hollywood Cemetery in that city.
* A statue of Jefferson Davis stands in Confederate Park in Memphis, Tennessee.
* A statue of Jefferson Davis stands on the South Mall of the University of
Texas at Austin.
* A 351-foot (107 m) tall concrete obelisk at the Jefferson Davis State Historic
Site in Fairview, Todd County, Kentucky marks the site of his birth place in
what was then Christian County, Kentucky.
* A bust statue of Jefferson Davis is located at the Jefferson Davis Memorial
Historic Site on the spot he was captured, outside of Irwinville, Georgia near
Fitzgerald, Georgia.
* Another bust of Jefferson Davis is located outside of the Jeff Davis County
Court House building in Hazlehurst, Georgia.
* The state of Alabama celebrates Jefferson Davis's birthday on the first Monday
in June. The state of Mississippi observes Davis's birthday in conjunction with
the Memorial Day Federal holiday.
* In the State of Florida, Jefferson Davis's birthday, June 3, is a legal
holiday and public holiday.
* In Pensacola Florida an obelisk was dedicated in 1891 in memory of Jefferson
Davis, Stephen R. Mallory, Edward Aylesworth Perry, and the Uncrowned Heroes of
the Southern Confederacy.
* Jefferson Davis was honorarily inducted into the Kappa Sigma Fraternity
(University of Arkansas - Xi chapter) following his son's death. He is currently
the only honorary member of the fraternity.
* Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi; Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana; Jeff
Davis County, Texas; and Jeff Davis County, Georgia: all created after the civil
war, were named after Jefferson Davis.
* Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
barred from office anyone who had violated their oath to protect the
Constitution by serving in the Confederacy. That prohibition included Davis. In
1978, pursuant to authority granted to Congress under the same section of the
Amendment, Congress posthumously removed the ban on Davis with a two-thirds vote
of each house and President Jimmy Carter signed it.. These actions were
spearheaded by Congressman Trent Lott of Mississippi. Congress had previously
taken similar action on behalf of Robert E. Lee.
* The desk of Jefferson Davis on the floor of the U.S. Senate, repaired after
Union soldiers damaged it during the Civil War, is reserved by Senate Rules to
the senior Senator from Mississippi.
* The former transnational Jefferson Davis Highway was named in his honor.
* A statue of Jefferson Davis is depicted in the National Statuary Hall in the
U.S. Capitol Building, for the state of Mississippi.
* There is a carved stone memorial to Jefferson Davis at First and Camp Streets,
next to the home where he died, in New Orleans, La, as well as a life-sized
statue at the corner of Jefferson Davis Parkway and Canal Street.
* A statue commemorating the bicentennial of Davis's birth was recently
completed by noted Civil War artist Gary Casteel, on behalf of the Sons of
Confederate Veterans.
* There are statues of Davis in the Alabama, Virginia and Kentucky State
Capitols -- in Montgomery, on the grounds in front of the main entrance where he
was sworn in as President of the Confederacy; in Richmond, in the old house of
delegates chamber; and inside the rotunda at Frankfort.
* Vicksburg National Military Park located in Warren County, Mississippi (where
the Davis family plantations, Brierfield and Hurricane, were located) contains
two statues of Davis, the first a stand-alone, larger-than-life figure known
simply as the Davis Monument and the second, a life-sized figure, which appears
beside a statue of Lincoln as part of the Kentucky monument. A bust of Davis and
his second wife, Varina, is located in the rose garden outside the Old
Courthouse Museum in Vicksburg.
* While not precisely a memorial, Davis appears as a character in Robert Penn
Warren's novel All the King's Men as an acquaintance of Cass Mastern, the
subject of narrator Jack Burden's (unfinished) Ph.D. dissertation in American
history.
Civil War Movies
Gone with the
Wind
Civil War Books
This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War
Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography
The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861
Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836
The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861
The South Vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of
the Civil War
Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the
Civil War (Nation Divided: New Studies in Civil War History)
Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War
Powers
Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (Vintage)
The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861
What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States)
Gone
with the Wind
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