Jefferson Davis
History
Jefferson Davis served as the first and only President of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865. Under his administration, the Confederate States attempted to establish their independence from the United States. He served with distinction as an officer in the Mexican-American War and as a U.S. Senator prior to the war, and after the Confederate defeat, served as a symbol of reconciliation and Southern pride.
Early Life
Davis was born in either 1807 or 1808 in Kentucky, the last of ten children to Samuel Emory Davis and Sarah Simpson, whose homestead established the community of Fairview. His exact birth year is uncertain; throughout his life, Davis switched between them, using one year for a period of time before settling on the other. In addition to his native Kentucky, Davis moved with his family to Louisiana and Mississippi. At one time, he was the only Protestant attending the Catholic school of Saint Thomas in Washington, Kentucky. He attended Jefferson College in Washington and Transylvania University in Lexington while these institutions were still roughly equivalent to modern high schools. He then studied at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1824. While there, he was placed under house arrest following the Eggnog Riot of Christmas 1826, in which whiskey was smuggled into the then-dry academy to make titular beverage. He graduated 23rd in a class of 33 in 1828.
Early Military Career
After his graduation from West Point, Davis served under future U.S. President Zachary Taylor in the Wisconsin Territory. Though he was in Mississippi on furlough during the Black Hawk War, he was assigned to escort Chief Black Hawk to prison on his return to duty. The chief would note in his autobiography that Davis treated him "with much kindness" and empathy.
Private Life
Davis fell in love with General Taylor's daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor. Her father refused to allow them to marry, wanting to spare her a difficult life as a military wife on frontier border posts. Despite the general's objections, Davis resigned his commission and they married on June 17, 1835. While visiting his sister's Louisiana plantation later that year, both of them contracted malaria or yellow fever. Davis recovered, but Sarah died.
After the death of his first wife, Davis traveled to Havana, Cuba, with his only slave at the time, James Pemberton, and observed the Spanish fortifications there. He later traveled back to Brierfield, land that had been given to him by his brother after his first marriage, and developed it into a plantation. By 1860, Davis owned 113 slaves. He also used this time to study government and history.
In 1844, Davis met his second wife, Varina Banks Howell, granddaughter of New Jersey Governor Richard Howell. They married in February 1845, over her parents' objections. During this time, he had been convinced to run for the House of Representatives, winning that election and his first government office. Together, Davis and Varina has six children; three of them died before adulthood. His youngest daughter died in 1898, having never married after her parents refused to let her marry into a northern abolitionist family. Davis himself would suffer from repeated bouts of malaria, injuries sustained in the Mexican-American War, a chronic eye infection that left him unable to tolerate bright light and trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder that causes severe facial pain.
Mexican-American War
Upon the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, Davis resigned his seat in the House and formed a volunteer regiment with himself as its colonel. This unit was under the command of his former father-in-law, General Taylor. While most American units were armed with smoothbore weapons, Davis and President James K. Polk agreed that if Davis remained in Washington long enough for an important tariff vote, his unit would receive newly developed rifles. These rifles allowed Davis' unit to be particularly effective in combat, earning it the nickname "Mississippi Rifles" after their signature weapon. The agreement between President Polk and Davis also began a lifelong feud between Davis and General Winfield Scott.
Davis served with distinction during the war, leading a successful charge on the La Teneria fort during the Battle of Monterrey. He was shot in the foot during the Battle of Buena Vista; his actions during this battle prompted President Polk to offer him a federal commission to brigadier general and command of a militia brigade. Davis declined, believing that the Constitutional power to appoint militia officers rested with the states, not the federal government. After the battle, General Taylor is reputed to have said, "My daughter, sir, was a better judge of men than I was."
Senator
Davis was appointed to take the seat vacated by U.S. Senator Jesse Speight of Mississippi after the senator's death by Mississippi Governor Brown in recognition of his war service. He was later elected to serve the remaining two years of Speight's term in 1848. Davis served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution and as a member of the Committee on Military Affairs and the Library Committee. He proposed an amendment to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to annex most of northeastern Mexico, but the amendment failed. When Cuban revolutionaries attempted to forcibly liberate Cuba from Spanish rule, he was offered command of an expedition to the island, but declined, recommending Robert E. Lee in his place; Lee, too, would decline. The Senate named him chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in December 1849 and later that month, he was elected to a full six-year term in the Senate by the Mississippi legislature. He opposed the Compromise of 1850 and ran against fellow Senator Henry Stuart Foote for governorship of Mississippi on the issue; Foote defeated him by 999 votes. Now without political office, Davis attended a convention on states' rights in 1852 and campaigned in the South in support of Franklin Pierce and William R. King.
Secretary of War and Return to the Senate
Following Pierce's victory in the 1852 presidential election, Davis was appointed his Secretary of War. In this capacity, Davis ordered the Pacific Railroad Surveys to find possible routes for the proposed Transcontinental Railroad. He also supported the Gadsden Purchase of what is now southern Arizona because he believed it would provide an easier southern route for the railroad. With Congressional approval, he increased the salaries of the regular army for the first time in 25 years and added four regiments, increasing the size of the army from around 11,000 to around 15,000. He also introduced general use of the rifles that had made his unit so successful in Mexico. President Pierce also gave Davis responsibility for construction of the Washington Aqueduct and the expansion of the U.S Capitol. After Pierce lost the Democratic nomination to James Buchanan in 1857, Davis ran for the Senate, as his term as Secretary of War would end with Pierce's administration. He won, and re-entered the Senate on March 4, 1857.
The divisive issue of slavery dominated Davis' second run in the Senate. During this time, talk of Southern secession from the Union began. Following an 1858 illness that almost cost him his left eye, Davis urged the preservation of the Union during two speeches in Boston. Though he stated his belief that each state was sovereign and had the right to secede in his memoir, he urged the Southern states to remain in the Union because he believed the North would not allow them to leave peaceably. Also, as a result of his time as Secretary of War, he knew the South did not have the resources necessary to defend itself in a war. He remained in the Senate following Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 as several Southern states, including Mississippi on January 9, 1861, seceded, until he recieved an official notification of Mississippi's secession on January 21. On what he called "the saddest day of my life," he gave a farewell speech to the Senate, resigned and returned to Mississippi.
President of the Confederate States of America
Davis offered his services to Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus, who appointed him Major General of the Army of Mississippi on January 23. During a constitutional convention in February, Davis and Robert Toombs of Georgia were considered for the presidency of the newly formed Confederate States of America. With the support of six of the then-seven states, Davis was elected provisional Confederate President by acclamation and inaugurated on February 18, 1861. He attempted to negotiate the turnover of remaining Union forts in Confederate territory in return for cash payments and the Southern portion of the national debt, but President Lincoln refused to meet with his commissioners. Though informal negotiations with Secretary of State Seward and Supreme Court Justice John A. Campbell hinted that Fort Sumter would be evacuated, there was no guarantee; Davis placed General P.G.T. Beauregard in command of all Confederate troops in Charleston. When Lincoln attempted to resupply the fort, Davis was faced with the choice of allowing the fort to be reinforced or to interfere. Davis and his cabinet chose to attempt to prevent the ships from reaching the fort, which refused to surrender. General Beauregard opened fire on the fort and President Lincoln called up state militias to recapture Federal property in the South. The Civil War had begun.
Davis' first actions as the wartime Confederate President moved the capital to Richmond, Virginia, when that state joined the Confederate States and named General Robert E. Lee commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He reserved the main strategic decisions for himself, with Lee's input, and decided that the Confederacy, with its limited resources, must fight a mostly defensive war. He allowed offensives when he thought Northern morale could be shaken and when peace movements could be strengthened, but each of them met with defeat; at Antietam in 1862, the Confederate Heartland Offensive in Kentucky in 1862, and Gettysburg in 1863.
President Davis emphasized representation from the various Confederate states in his Cabinet, even insisting upon Stephen Mallory of Florida's appointment to Secretary of the Navy despite his name not being put forward for the position. This policy became strained as more states joined the Confederacy; there were more states than Cabinet positions. He also realized that the Southern economy was dependent on the export of cotton and the slave labor that produced it. He attempted to solicit intervention from European powers, whose markets were fed by Confederate cotton, but Union successes and a reluctance to support a slave-owning society prevented official recognition and intervention. Though the Union blockade of Confederate ports starved the European powers of cotton, slavery and Confederate losses in the field convinced them that the South did not have the strength to win the war. He attempted to defend all Confederate territory with equal effort, diluting already limited resources. The armies of the east, which protected Richmond, were also favored over the heavily-pressured western armies.
Davis focused his attention on military strategy rather than on crises at home. The common citizens of the Confederacy began to resent what they saw as favoritism of the rich and powerful. Rather than rallying the citizens with speeches, he asked them to die for their new country. He only embarked on two trips across the new country, each lasting about one month, and only met a few hundred people. Few Confederates saw him, even in Richmond, where the president spent most of his time. Despite his support of states' rights, Davis' administration interfered heavily in the economy, to a much greater degree than in the Union. His government attempted to finance the war through bonds; though taxes were low, collection was inefficient and when bond sales and European investment did not meet demand, the government printed more money. Inflation grew from 60% in 1861 to 600% in 1864. Davis cracked down on food riots and looting in Richmond in April 1863. He fought consistently with his vice-president, Alexander Stephens, and with powerful state governors, who refused to release their militias for national use under states' rights doctrine.
After the War
As the war came to a close, Davis ordered the enlistment of slaves into the Confederate Army in March 1865, with a promise of freedom for service. Few slaves were enlisted, and the war ended in April. He fled Richmond as Grant's army approached the Confederate capital, moving his government to Danville, Virginia, where he received word of Lee's surrender. On May 5, 1865, he convened the Confederate government for the last time and officially dissolved it. During this time, he was the subject of a Union search and was captured on May 10 in Georgia. He was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe in Virginia and was initially allowed no visitors. His health began to decline until he was given new quarters and allowed visitors; he even received correspondence from Pope Pius IX, himself a prisoner in the Vatican. Though indicted on charges of treason, no trial was ever held. He was released after two years of imprisonment on $100,000 bail and was released from liability via amnesty by President Johnson in December 1868.
Davis became president of the Carolina Life Insurance Company in Memphis, Tennessee in 1869 and was elected to the Senate for a third time in 1875. He was refused office due to provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment preventing former Confederate leaders from holding public office. He opposed Republican Reconstruction policy in the South and felt that military rule was unjustified. He completed two works, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) and A Short History of the Confederate States of America (1889), and was received warmly by many ex-Confederates. He urged Southerns to be loyal to the nation, stating "United you are now, and if the Union is ever to be broken, let the other side break it." He attended ceremonies honoring the "Lost Cause," and continued to believe in the legality of secession. In November 1889, he came down with a severe cold that developed into bronchitis. He died on December 5, at age 81.
Judgment of History
Because Davis served in many roles during his life, his legacy is complex. He is remembered as a brave and resourceful soldier, as well as an active and accomplished politician, though he never fully completed any of his terms in office. As the President of the Confederacy, however, Davis is widely viewed as an ineffective wartime leader even in the face of the daunting task of defending the Confederate States against the much stronger Union. After the war, he simultaneously fostered reconciliation between the North and South, while remaining a symbol of Southern pride. As was the case with many prominent Confederates, Davis was stripped of his citizenship after the war and specifically included from several resolutions to restore citizenship to ex-Confederates. On October 17, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed Senate Joint Resolution 16, posthumously restoring his citizenship. President Carter believed this to be the last act of reconciliation after the Civil War.