Everything about Jefferson Davis totally explained
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 from 1861 to 1865 during the
American Civil War. During his presidency, Davis was never able to find a strategy that would defeat the larger, more industrially developed
Union. Davis's insistence on independence, even in the face of crushing defeat, prolonged the war, and while not exactly disgraced, he was displaced in
Southern affection after the war by the leading general,
Robert E. Lee. After Davis was captured in 1865, he was charged with
treason (although never convicted) and was stripped of his eligibility to run for public office. This limitation was removed in 1978, 89 years after his death. A
West Point graduate, Davis prided himself on the military skills he gained in the
Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and as U.S.
Secretary of War under
Franklin Pierce.
Early life and military career
Davis was the youngest of the ten children of Samuel Emory Davis (
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
1756 –
4 July 1824) and wife (married
1783) Jane Cook (
Christian County, (later
Todd County),
Kentucky,
1759 –
3 October 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'd 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
Colonel Taylor's daughter,
Sarah Knox Taylor. Her father didn't 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. 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.
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 didn't 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.
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. In meetings of his own Mississippi legislature, Davis had argued against secession; but when a majority of the delegates opposed him, he gave in. Davis wasn't opposed to secession in principle; he counseled delay because he didn't believe the North would agree to the peaceable exercise of the claimed right, and he knew that the South wasn't prepared for war.
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 wasn't 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 advisors. 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. On
May 10, he was captured at
Irwinville in
Irwin County, Georgia. After being captured, he was held as a prisoner for two years in
Fort Monroe, Virginia.
Administration and Cabinet
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, as a member of the
Secret Six, had earlier 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. 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 also turned down the opportunity to become the first president of The Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas, which is 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.
Legacy
- 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.
- 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 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 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 in a park on the spot he was captured, 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. (External Link
)
- 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.
- The Jefferson Davis Highway was named in his honor.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- There are also two bronze statues, one larger than life and the other is life size, in the Vicksburg National Military Park located in Warren County, Mississippi. Warren County, Mississippi is where the Davis family Plantations where located.
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