Davis was born in Christian County, now Todd, Kentucky, on June 3, 1808. He was the one and only President of the Confederate States of America, he was a decorated war veteran and politician.
Jefferson Davis received his academic education in early boyhood at home, and was then sent to Transylvania University in Kentucky, where he remained until 1824, at the age of sixteen he was appointed by President Monroe to West Point military academy as a cadet. A classmate at West Point said of him, "he was distinguished in his corps for manly bearing and high-toned and lofty character. His figure was very soldierlike and rather robust; his step springy, resembling the tread of an Indian 'brave' on the war-path." He graduated in June 1828, at twenty years of age, assigned at once to the First infantry and commissioned on the same day brevet second-lieutenant and second-lieutenant.
His first active service in the United States army was at posts in the Northwest from 1828 to 1833. During the Blackhawk war of 1831, his regiment engaged in several of its battles, in one of which the Indian chieftain, Blackhawk, was captured and placed in the charge of Lieutenant Davis; and it is stated that the heart of the Indian captive was won by the kind treatment he received from the young officer who held him prisoner.
On March 4, 1833, Lieutenant Davis was transferred to a new regiment called the First Dragoons, with promotion to the rank of first-lieutenant, and was appointed adjutant. For about two years following this promotion he had active service in various encounters with the Pawnees, Comanches and other tribes.
His sudden and surprising resignation, due to health, occurred June 30, 1835, with an immediate entrance upon the duties of civil life.
For some time he had been requested by friends and family to be involved in politics, but he hesitated and then yielded to their wishes. Perhaps also the attractions of Miss Sallie Knox Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor, commanding the First infantry, to whom he became engaged, contributed to the decision.
The marriage between them has been often spoken of inaccurately as an elopement, but it was solemnized at the house of the bride's aunt, near Louisville, Kentucky.
Mr. Davis now became a cotton planter in Warren county at the age of twenty-seven, and while engaging successfully in this pursuit he devoted much of his time to studies that would prepare him for public life. His first appearance in political life on a general field was in the gubernatorial canvass of 1843. He was sent as a delegate to the Democratic convention of that year and made such impressions by his speeches as to cause a demand for his services on the hustings. In 1844 his abilities were again required as an elector for Polk and Dallas. In this canvass he took a firm position for strict construction, the protection of States from Federal encroachment, and incidentally advocated the annexation of Texas. The reputation which he made during this year as a statesman of the State rights school bore him into the Congress of the United States as the representative of Mississippi from his congressional district. Davis took his seat in Congress December 8, 1845, at a period when certain great questions were at issue, and with only a brief and commendable delay, took a foremost place in the discussions. The Oregon question, the tariff, the Texas question, were all exciting issues. It is especially noticeable in view of his later life that in these debates he invisioned a devotion to the union and glory of his country in eloquent speeches, and in a consistent line of votes favorable to his country's growth in greatness. One of his earliest efforts in Congress was to convert certain forts into schools of instruction for the military of the States. His support of the "war policy," as the Texas annexation measure was sometimes called, was ardent and unwavering, in the midst of which he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi regiment of riflemen. His decision to re-enter military life was quickly carried into effect by resignation of his seat in Congress June, 1846, and the joining of his regiment at New Orleans, which he conducted to the army of General Taylor on the Rio Grande.
He had succeeded in arming his regiment with percussion rifles, prepared a manual and tactics for the new arm, drilled his officers and men diligently in its use, and thus added to Taylor's force perhaps the most effective regiment in his little army. He led his well disciplined command in a gallant and successful charge at Monterey, September 21, 1846, winning a brilliant victory in the assault on Fort Teneria. For several days afterwards his regiment, united with Tennesseeans and drove the Mexicans from their redoubts with such gallantry that their leader won the admiration and confidence of the entire army. At Buena Vista the riflemen and Indiana volunteers under Davis evidently turned the course of battle into victory for the Americans by a bold charge under heavy fire against a larger body of Mexicans. It was immediately on this brilliant success that a fresh brigade of Mexican lancers advanced against the Mississippi regiment in full gallop and were repulsed by the formation of the line in the shape of a V, the flanks resting on ravines, thus exposing the lancers to converging fire. Once more on that day the same regiment, now reduced in numbers by death and wounds, attacked and broke the Mexican right. During this last charge Colonel Davis was severely wounded, but remained on the field until the victory was won. General Taylor's dispatch of March 6, 1847, makes special complimentary mention of the courage, coolness and successful service of Colonel Davis and his command. The Mississippi regiment served out its term of enlistment, and was ordered home in July, 1847.
President Polk appointed Colonel Davis brigadier-general, but he declined the commission on the grounds that that appointment was unconstitutional.
In August, 1847, the governor of Mississippi appointed Mr. Jefferson Davis to the vacancy in the United States Senate caused by the death of Senator Speight, and he took his seat December 5, 1847. The legislature elected him in January for the remainder of the term, and subsequently he was re-elected for a full term. His senatorial career, beginning in December, 1847, extended over the eventful period of 1849 to 1850, in which the country was violently agitated by the questions arising on the disposition of the common territory, and into which the subject of slavery was forcibly injected. The compromise measures of 1850 proposed by Mr. Clay, and the plan of President Taylor's administration, were both designed to settle the dangerous controversy, while extreme radicals opposed all compromise and denounced every measure that favored slavery in any respect. Senator Davis advocated the division of the western territory by an extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific ocean, because it had been once accepted as a settlement of the sectional question. A majority refused this mode of settlement. On this proposition to adhere to the old Missouri Compromise line of settlement, the vote in the Senate was 24 yeas and 32 nays. All the yeas were cast by Southern senators. All nays were by Northern senators except Kentucky one, Missouri one and Delaware two. Mr. Davis thought that the political line of 36 deg. 30' had been at first objectionable on account of its establishing a geographical division of sectional interests, and was an assumption by Congress of a function not delegated to it, but the act had received such recognition through quasi-ratifications by the people of the States as to give it a value it did not originally possess. "Pacification had been the fruit borne by the tree, and it should not have been recklessly hewn down and cast in the fire." He regarded this destruction of the Missouri Compromise line in 1849-50 by Northern votes in Congress as dangerous to the peace of the country. In his opinion at that time the theory of popular sovereignty in the territories "was good enough in itself, and as an abstract proposition could not be gainsaid," but its practical operation, he feared, would introduce fierce territorial strife. He now saw very little in the compromise legislation of 1850 favorable to the Southern States. According to his view it "bore the impress of that sectional spirit so widely at variance with the general purposes of the Union and destructive of the harmony and mutual benefit which the Constitution was intended to secure." He did not believe the Northern States would respect any of its provisions which conflicted with their views and interests. His attitude, however, toward the measures of Mr. Clay was not positively hostile, though it was emphatically distrustful. But during the perilous discussions of those times Mr. Davis did not align himself with any disunionists North or South. He says for himself, "My devotion to the Union of our fathers had been so often and so publicly declared; I had on the floor of the Senate so defiantly challenged any question of my fidelity to it; my services, civil and military, had now extended through so long a period and were so generally known, that I felt quite assured that no whisperings of envy or ill-will could lead the people of Mississippi to believe that I had dishonored their trust by using the power they had conferred on me to destroy the government to which I was accredited. Then, as afterward, I regarded the separation of the States as a great, though not the greater evil." The votes and speeches of Mr. Davis accorded with the instruction of the Mississippi legislature, and his public record is entirely consistent with this avowal of his devotion to the whole country and his patriotic desire to preserve it from the evils of fanaticism. Reference to this Union sentiment is not made in this sketch or elsewhere in this general work as apologetic in its bearings. But it is in rebuke of those careless or vicious statements often made against Mr. Davis and other Confederate leaders that they were for many years engaged in a conspiracy to break up the Union.Senator Davis entered upon his new and full term as senator from Mississippi March 4, 1851, from which date there were before him six years of honor in the position he preferred to all others. There was a strong probability also that if living he would be continued in the Senate, since the Southern States were accustomed to the retaining of their eminent men in office. No man had less reason than himself for conspiracy against the government. With this advantage and under the influence of strongly conservative feeling he canvassed the State of Mississippi in 1851, bravely advocating the policy of determined resistance to sectional aggressions, and insisting that the country should be defended from the perils of Congressional usurpation. His argument was that reverence for the constitutional reservations of power would alone save the Union, and upon this view he taught that statesmen who revered the Constitution most, loved the Union best. The overwhelming sentiment of Mississippi that year was to accept the compromise measures of 1850 as a finality, and consequently the State rights party which had been organized upon a vague platform proposing to devise some undefined method of securing guarantees against sectional usurpations, was defeated. Mississippi accordingly joined the other Southern States in acquiescence with the settlement of 1850 "as a finality".
Davis took little part in the secession movement until Mississippi seceded in January, 1861, whereupon he withdrew from the Senate. He was immediately appointed major general of the Mississippi militia, and shortly afterward he was chosen president of the Confederate provisional government established by the convention at Montgomery, Alabama, and inaugurated in February, 1861. Elected regular President of the Confederate States he was inaugurated at Richmond, Virginia in February, 1862. Davis realized that the Confederate war effort needed a strong, centralized rule. This conflicted with the states' rights policy for which the Southern states had seceded, and, as he assumed more and more power, many of the Southern leaders combined into an anti-Davis party. Originally hopeful of a military rather than a civil command in the Confederacy, he closely managed the army and was involved in many disagreements with the Confederate generals; arguments over his policies raged long after the Confederacy was dead. Lee surrendered without Davis's approval. After the last Confederate cabinet meeting was held in April, 1865, at Charlotte, North Carolina, Davis was captured at Irwinville, Georgia. He was confined in Fortress Monroe for two years and was released in May 1867 on $100,000.00 bail submitted by Horace Greeley and other friends he had in the North. The federal government proceeded no further in its prosecution of Davis. After his release he wrote an apologia, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in 1881. He was buried at New Orleans, but his body was moved in 1893 to Richmond, Va.
