Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis (June 3, 1808—December 6, 1889) was an American soldier and politician, most famous for serving as the first and only President of the Confederate States of America throughout the American Civil War.
Early life and military career
Jefferson Davis was born June 3, 1808 in a farm in Christian County, Kentucky, now called Todd County. Davis, the last of the ten children of Samuel Emory Davis and his wife, Jane, had come from a family of rich American history. The younger Davis's grandfather had immigrated to the United States from Wales and had lived in Virginia and Maryland, working as a public servant. His father, along with his uncles, had served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, his father serving with the Georgia cavalry and leading in the battle of Savannah as an infantry officer. His older brothers, too, served: During the War of 1812, three of Davis's brothers fought the British, two of them serving with and were commended by Andrew Jackson for bravery in the Battle of New Orleans.
During Davis's youth, his family moved several times, in 1811 to St. Mary Parish, Louisiana and in 1812 to Wilkinson County, Mississippi.
In 1813, Davis began his education together with his sister Mary, attending a log cabin school a mile from their home. Two years later, Davis entered the Catholic school of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Washington County, Kentucky. He 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 at West Point, New York as a cadet.
Jefferson Davis successfully completed his four-year term of study at West Point, and graduated as a Second Lieutenant in June 1828. He was assigned to the US 1st Infantry Division and stationed at Fort Crawford. His first assignment, in 1829, was to supervise the cutting of timber on the banks of the Red River for the repair and enlargement of the fort. Later the same year, he was reassigned to Fort Winnebago, Wisconsin. 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 next year, Davis was dispatched to Galena, Illinois, at the head of a detachment assigned to remove miners from lands claimed by Native Americans. His first combat assignment was during the Black Hawk War of the same year, after which he escorted Black Hawk himself to prison — it is said that the chief liked Davis because of the kind treatment he had shown. Another of Davis' duties during this time was to keep miners from illegally enterering what would eventually become the state of Iowa.
In 1833, Davis was promoted to First Lieutenant of the 1st Dragoon Division and made a regimental adjutant. 1834 saw his transfer to Fort Gibson. On June 17, 1835, Jefferson Davis married Sarah Knox Taylor at the house of her aunt near Louisville, Kentucky. (Sallie's father, then-Colonel Zachary Taylor, would go on to become a General and later U.S. President). On June 30, Davis resigned from the Army.
Leadership of the Confederacy
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 the 18th.
He immediately appointed a Peace Commission to resolve the Confederacy's differences with the Union (USA). Not wishing, however, to rely on paths of negotiation, he appointed P.G.T. Beauregard to lead Confederate troops in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina. The government moved to Richmond, Virginia in May, 1861, and Davis took up his residence there on the 29th.
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 this was not destined to be the first. He was inaugurated on February 22, 1862. On May 31, he assigned General Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia, the main Confederate army. That December, he made a tour of Confederate armies in the west of the country.
In August 1863, Davis declined General Lee's offer of resignation on account of some criticism. 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 make a right flanking maneuver and encircle Richmond, Davis escaped for Danville, Virginia, together with the Confederate cabinet. Six days later, he proceeded to Greensboro, North Carolina. On April 16, he made a break for Meridian, Mississippi, but was captured at Irwinville, Georgia on May 10 with Postmaster General John Henninger Reagan and Texas governor Francis R. Lubbock.