Senator, Secretary of War, war hero, and disgraced Confederacy President. All of these words describe Jefferson Davis. Davis served many roles in his life, most notably as the President of the Confederate States of America during the full duration of the Confederacy's existence alongside the American Civil War.
Jefferson Davis Facts and Life
Keep reading to learn about the life of Jefferson Davis.
Early life:
Jefferson Davis was born in Fairview, Kentucky in 1808 to Sam and Jane Davis. At the age of three, his family moved to Louisiana and then to Mississippi a year later. He went to school near his family's cotton plantation in Mississippi until he was sixteen years old.
In 1824, his father passed away, and he began to attend the military academy at West Point, and graduated in 1828. Davis was involved in the Black War of 1832 and was among the soldiers assigned to escort the captured Black Hawk to prison.
In June 1835, Davis resigned from the military and got married, and then went to work overseeing a part of his older brother Joseph's large plantation near Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Three months into his marriage, Davis and his wife Sarah fell very ill, and Sarah died in September. Following his wife's death, he traveled to New Orleans, Cuba, and Washington, D.C. before returning to Mississippi.
Did you know? Jefferson Davis was the youngest of ten siblings!
Pre-war career:
Jefferson Davis's first entry into politics began in 1840 with the Democratic party in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he became a delegate to the Democratic state convention. He carried on with his involvement in the party and remarried in 1845, in which year he was elected to the US House of Representatives.
Davis returned to the military during the Mexican-American War in 1846, serving as a Colonel in a rifle regiment. After the war, he became a US Senator, but resigned in September 1851. He left the office in an unsuccessful run for governor of Mississippi.
Davis was then appointed as the Secretary of War in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce in 1853. Then, he started a general rearmament effort of the US Army to transition them from primarily using smooth bore muskets to rifles, as his regiment had done in the Mexican-American War.1
He returned to the US Senate in 1857 and continued in pro-slavery politics until his home state of Mississippi voted to secede from the United States in January 1861. He then resigned from the Senate and returned home.
Davis was briefly appointed Major General of the Army of Mississippi by Mississippi Governor John Pettus before the newly formed Confederate States elected him as provisional President in February.
Fig. 1: President Jefferson Davis by Matthew Benjamin Brady
Jefferson Davis and Slavery
Jefferson Davis was a supporter of the practice of slavery. In 1810, Davis moved from Kentucky to Mississippi. In the 1830s, he became the owner of a plantation. His plantation kept over 70 enslaved people. This was prior to his time-fighting in the Mexican-American war.
Fig. 2 Jefferson Davis
Confederate President Jefferson Davis
One of Davis' first acts as President was to send a delegation to Washington, D.C. offering to settle the Southern States' responsibilities toward the US national debt. He offered to pay for any US government property and installations that were now in Confederate territory.
President Lincoln refused, as he would rather not recognize the Confederacy as a legitimate government.
Davis began to organize his military and the seizure of federal properties in the Confederate states. During the crisis at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Abraham Lincoln refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Davis' office, and so contacted only South Carolina governor Francis Pickens about his intention to resupply the fort.
Faced with the possible reinforcement of the fort and a military threat, Davis issued a demand for Fort Sumter's surrender and authorized a bombardment of the fortress when his demand was refused.
Fig. 3: Confederate Bank Note.
Jefferson Davis: Civil War
- As more states seceded from the Union and joined with the Confederacy throughout 1861, Davis moved to the new capital in Richmond, Virginia, and transitioned from the role of provisional President to President following an election in November. He was officially inaugurated in February 1862.
Until the end of the war, Davis was in overall command of his armies, unlike Lincoln who appointed a series of generals to that task in the Union. Though Davis maintained a circle of advisors, he kept himself controlling the Confederacy's military strategy. Davis favored a defensive strategy of attrition, as he did not believe that the Confederacy was well suited to win a war against the Union.
Davis did, however, respect the experience of Robert E. Lee–one of his top generals. He approved of Lee's offensive campaigns in 1862 and 1863, hoping that the operations would have an effect on morale in the Union and encourage them to sue for peace.
The defeats at Antietam and then Gettysburg proved costly to the South. Following Gettysburg, Davis maintained a strategy of defense from that point until the end of the war.
Davis hoped to win support from European powers in the war against the Union because of the importance of Southern trade with Europe. However, Lincoln had declared that any foreign recognition of the Confederacy would be seen as a hostile action, which successfully deterred them.
Did you know? Many powerful European countries held anti-slavery beliefs and therefore pro-Union sympathies, and none wanted to risk war with the United States.
Ultimately, Davis' strategic decision-making did not advance the cause of the Confederate war effort successfully. He divided his forces widely in an attempt to defend all of his territories, which left his forces vulnerable to Union offensives. His approval of Lee's offensive campaigns also came at the expense of the Western Theater, where the Union won a series of important strategic victories throughout the war.
Fig. 4: Robert E. Lee
The fall of the crucial city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, came at almost the same time as Lee's defeat at Gettysburg. Davis also proved ineffective in coordinating his generals and using his armies to support one another. At the end of January 1865, Davis decided to appoint General Robert E. Lee commander of the Confederate armies.
Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis also struggled with internal issues.
Davis struggled with:
- overseeing a financial crisis that resulted in massive inflation
- shortages of food
- shortages of other basic needs
He rarely left the capital and rarely addressed the public during the war. In a final desperate bid to bolster Confederate manpower, Davis approved General Order 14 in March 1865, which allowed enslaved people to enlist in the military and to be granted freedom at the end of their service.
Did you know? General Order 14 did little to help, as within a month the Confederacy's armies began to surrender en masse in response to Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House.
While fleeing from Union forces who sought to capture him, President Jefferson Davis brought together his cabinet one final time on May 5, 1865, and officially dissolved his government. Five days later, on May 10, he was captured and imprisoned by Union forces.
Fig. 5: Jefferson Davis.
Post-war:
Jefferson Davis spent two years in federal custody and was officially charged with treason, though he was never prosecuted. He was released in 1867 on bond and traveled to Montreal, Canada, to rejoin his family who had gone there. He stayed in Quebec until 1868, and then traveled to Europe and to Cuba, and eventually back to the United States.
On December 25, 1868, President Andrew Johnson issued a general pardon and amnesty for everyone who had rebelled against the United States in the Civil War, which included Davis. The case of treason against him was officially dismissed in February 1869, which prompted him to resettle in Memphis, Tennessee.
Did you know? Davis worked running an insurance company following his return to the United States, and eventually also wrote memoirs about his experience.
Pardon
If you pardon someone convicted of a crime, you let them go without punishment.
Amnesty
A government order allowing a group of people to go free.
Jefferson Davis' US citizenship had been taken from him as a result of the Civil War. He was excluded from various congressional resolutions to posthumously restore citizenship to various Confederate officials, such as the one that restored Robert E. Lee's citizenship in 1975.
Did you know? A resolution was passed in October 1978 under President Jimmy Carter to restore Davis' citizenship.
Jefferson Davis Death
Jefferson Davis became sick while traveling and died in December 1889 in New Orleans, Louisiana at the age of 81. He died of an upper-respiratory infection.
Jefferson Davis - Key takeaways
- Jefferson Davis gained military experience through West Point Academy and the Mexican-American War prior to his entry into politics
- Davis served as a politician in the US House of Representatives and the United States Senate, as well as the Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. His politics were pro-slavery and in the general interests of the southern plantation-owning class.
- When the American Civil War broke out, Jefferson was elected President of the Confederate States of America and served until the Confederacy's defeat and dissolution at the end of the war.
- Despite leading the rebel government, charges of treason against Davis were not brought to court and were dropped several years after the war in the interest of reconciliation.
References
- 1. Dodd, William E. Jefferson Davis. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs and Company 1996.
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