Davis, Jefferson

Jefferson (1808-1889), president of the Confederate States. He was a native of Kentucky, but was reared in Mississippi. He was graduated from West Point in 1828, and served in the Black Hawk War of 1831-2. In 1835 he resigned and undertook the management of a cotton plantation in Mississippi. In 1845 he took his seat in Congress, but resigned to lead a regiment of Mississippi volunteers in the Mexican War. In 1850 he was elected to the United States Senate. During President Pierce's administration he was secretary of war, and again took his seat in the Senate in 1857. He was a constant advocate of the doctrine of state rights. When his state seceded he made a farewell speech in the Senate, February 9, 1861. The provisional congress of the Confederacy chose him president, a position which he held continuously until the collapse of the Confederacy. At the beginning of war he made an appeal to the North to allow the South to secede peaceably, claiming that the Southern States had a perfect right to do so under the Constitution. Whether due to circumstances, or whether the duties of the presidency required him to do disagreeable things, the fact remains that Davis was not respected, either in the North or in the South, as were Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The South considered him arbitrary and tyrannical; the North held him responsible for the sufferings of soldiers in the Southern prisons. At the close of the war he was arrested and conveyed to Fortress Monroe. The grand jury of the District of Columbia indicted him for treason. He lay in prison for about two years without being brought to trial. He was then released on bail, Horace Greeley being one of the bailsmen. After his release by the general amnesty act of 1868 he went into business at the head of an insurance company, retiring finally to his estate in Mississippi. His remains were interred at Holly Wood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia. His views of the Civil War are worded in The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, published in 1881. See Secession