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• Born: 3 June 1808
• Birthplace: Christian County, Kentucky
• Died: 6 December 1889
• Best Known As: President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War

Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederate States of America, the group of southern states that seceded from the United States and prompted the Civil War (1861-65). Davis was born in Kentucky and spent his childhood in Mississippi. A graduate of West Point military academy, Davis was a distinguished soldier in the Black Hawk War (1832) and the U.S. war with Mexico (1846-47). He served Mississippi as a congressman (1845) and a U.S. senator (1847-51 and 1857-61), and was President Franklin Pierce's Secretary of War (1853-57). A gifted orator and longtime champion of states' rights, he resigned his senate seat in 1860 and reluctantly joined the secessionists. The provisional congress of the newly-formed Confederate States of America chose Davis as president and commander of its military forces, and in February of 1862 he was elected by the popular vote. After the Confederacy lost the war, Davis was captured in Georgia (10 May 1865), thrown in jail and later charged with treason. After two years in prison, he was released on bail and the charges were dropped. He published The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) and lived and worked in Mississippi until his death at the age of 81.

Davis's first wife was Sallie Knox Taylor, the daughter of president Zachary Taylor; the couple married in 1835 and she died unexpectedly a few months later... He married Varina Howell in 1845.

Davis, Jefferson Finis (1808-89). Davis was commissioned from West Point in 1828 and served in the Black Hawk war, but resigned to become a Mississippi planter in 1835. Elected to Congress as a States Rights Democrat in 1845, he resigned the following year to raise the 1st Mississippi Rifles and commanded them with distinction in the Mexican war. He was a Senator from 1847 to 1851, and again from 1857 to 1861. Between 1853 and 1857 he served, very capably, as Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce. He announced the secession of Mississippi from the Union following the election of Lincoln. He hoped for command of the Confederate armies, but instead he became a compromise provisional president in January 1861 and was confirmed by popular vote in December. Although his military, legislative, and administrative experience should have given him a head start for the post, he was not a success. He was faulted for refusing to delegate and for favouring incompetent friends, while his austere and overbearing manner led to clashes with state governors and military commanders. Nonetheless, his personal determination did much to keep the Confederacy in the war, and his dignity in defeat helped restore him to popular favour in the post-war South.

— Richard Holmes

(1808–1889), soldier, senator, U.S. secretary of war, and the only president of the Confederate States of America

Jefferson Davis was born in Kentucky on 3 June 1808, and the family moved to Mississippi when he was an infant. In 1828, he graduated from West Point with a modest record and an infantry commission. He served in a variety of posts in Missouri, Oklahoma, and the Old Northwest, resigning in 1835 as a first lieutenant of dragoons.

Receiving a Mississippi cotton plantation from an older brother, Davis married the daughter of Gen. Zachary Taylor, but she died three months later. In 1845, he married Varina Howell and began a political career with election to the House of Representatives.

During the Mexican War, Davis commanded a Mississippi regiment with distinction at the Battle of Monterrey (1846) and the Battle of Buena Vista (1847), where he was wounded. Returning a hero, he was appointed U.S. senator in 1847, resigning to run unsuccessfully for governor in 1851. Under fellow Democrat Franklin Pierce, he served effectively as secretary of war, 1853–57, adopting improved rifled muskets; increasing pay; and obtaining four new regiments from Congress, which doubled the size of the regular army to protect western expansion.

A staunch states' rights Democrat as well as the owner of many slaves, Davis justified black slavery and championed Southern economic and territorial expansion to counter growing Northern influence. Returning to the Senate in 1857, Davis became a leader of the Southern bloc as well as head of the Military Affairs Committee. In the crisis following Lincoln's election, Davis was not a secession leader, but he resigned the Senate when Mississippi seceded in January 1861, and was immediately given command of his state's militia as a major general.

Chosen as president by the Confederate provisional government established at Montgomery, Alabama, Davis was inaugurated in February 1861. Subsequently, he was elected to a six‐year term as president of the Confederate States of America and inaugurated at Richmond, Virginia, in February 1862.

As president of the Confederacy and commander in chief of its armed forces, Davis led the South's military effort in the Civil War and also tried to deal with wartime economic and political matters. Despite his dedication to the task, Davis did not prove as politically able or publicly inspiring a war leader as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Both presidents realized increased centralization was necessary for the war effort, but the South was much more resistant to such reduction of states' rights. As the war dragged on with diminishing hope and increasing deprivation, domestic political opposition mounted against Davis, who seemed politically and temperamentally hard put to deal with the rising dissent in the Confederate Congress and the Southern statehouses.

As a commander in chief who was also a West Pointer, war hero, and former secretary of war, Davis had considerable confidence in his own military judgment. He was closely involved with the army, particularly its organization and strategy, and became engaged in arguments with many of his generals. In his assignments, Davis made some excellent choices, such as Robert E. Lee, and some poor ones, such as Braxton Bragg. For a long time, Davis failed to have a general in chief at Richmond to administer the army, and the burdens of personally performing that task contributed to his debilitation.

Strategically, Davis believed that the Southern forces must protect all of the Confederacy, east and west, and preserve territory rather than overthrow enemy armies. He sought to divide the South's outnumbered military resources to block logical avenues of approach, and to concentrate two or more large commands—particularly via railroads—to confront any major Union advance. It was a strategy that was ultimately overwhelmed by simultaneous advances from numerous numerically superior Union armies. Despite the claims of his contemporary critics, most experts consider Davis to have been a sound strategist and a competent commander in chief under extremely adverse circumstances.

With the Confederacy collapsing, Generals Lee and Joseph E. Johnston surrendered their armies in April 1865 against the wishes of Davis, who wanted to continue the war. Fleeing south, the Confederate president was captured at Irwinville, Georgia, in May, and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe on charges of treason. He was released on bail in May 1867 after his physical and emotional health had deteriorated. Davis refused to take the oath of allegiance, and in 1881 published a history of the Confederacy. He died in 1889.

[See also Civil War, Military and Diplomatic Course; Confederacy, the Military in the; Confederate Army.]

Bibliography

• Lynda L. Crist, et al., eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis, 9 vols., 1971–.
• Clement Eaton, Jefferson Davis, 1977.
• Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism, 1978.
• William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour, 1991

Davis, Jefferson (1808?-89) president of the Confederate States of America and U.S. senator, born in Christian (later Todd) County, Kentucky, but reared largely in Mississippi. Davis studied at West Point (1824-28), where he was noted more for his escapades than for his academic achievements and barely escaped dismissal. Dissatisfied with the verdict in a court-martial for insubordination, Davis resigned from the army (1835). After several years farming on his brother's Mississippi plantation, he entered politics and was elected to Congress (1845), where he became a strict states' rightist. His exploits during the Mexican War (1846-48), in which he played a prominent role in the capture of Monterrey (1846) and in repelling an attack by Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista (1847) (in which he was wounded), made him a military hero in Mississippi. Appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1847, he spoke out strongly in favor of expansionism and in defense of slavery, fiercely opposing the Compromise of 1850. After resigning from the Senate and unsuccessfully running for governor, Davis became secretary of war in the administration of President Franklin Pierce, where he was considered competent and hard-working and acted as an influential pro-Southern voice. He re-entered the Senate in 1857, where he was a voice of moderation in working for states' rights within the union and he did not favor immediate secession when President Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860. His moderation during the secession crisis helped make him an attractive choice for president of the Confederate States once the dissolution of the Union became reality. In pursuing his goal of independence for the South, Davis built a powerful central government, insisting that state troops be merged into one military body. He obtained extensive power over railroads and shipping, encouraged industries, and procured materials through impressment. As president of the Confederate States, Davis obtained a power then unprecedented in American history: the power to conscript men to fight. Though he labored over the details of military planning and support, he did not meddle excessively with commanders in the field. His style of leadership, however, and neglect of the common people's suffering, hampered his ability to counter problems of morale. More committed to independence than to the maintenance of slavery, late in the war he proposed arming and freeing the South's slaves. After the war Davis was imprisoned for two years. Though defeated, he remained an unrepentant Confederate throughout his life.

Davis was briefly married to Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of President Zachary Taylor. She died within three months of their marriage in 1835.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. His honesty, character, and devotion elevated his cause above a quest for the perpetuation of slavery to a crusade for independence.

History has served Jefferson Davis badly by placing him opposite Abraham Lincoln. Davis is grudged even the loser's mite, for Fate chose Robert E. Lee to embody the "Lost Cause." Yet Davis led the Confederacy and suffered its defeat with great dignity, and he deserves a better recollection.

Davis was born on June 3, 1808, in what is now Todd County, Ky. The family soon moved to Mississippi. After attending Transylvania University for 3 years, he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 1828. He served in the infantry for 7 years. At Ft. Crawford, Wis., he fell in love with Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of post commandant Zachary Taylor. Col. Taylor disapproved of the proposed match. Davis resigned his commission in 1835, married Sarah, and took her to Mississippi; within 3 months she died of malaria. Davis contracted a light case of it, which, combined with grief, permanently weakened his health. From 1835 to 1845 he lived in seclusion at Brierfield, a plantation given him by his brother, Joseph. He and Joseph were close, shared reading habits, argued, and sharpened each other's wits and prejudices.

During these quiet years Davis developed a Southerner's fascination for politics and love for the land. In December 1845 Davis and Varina Howell, his new bride, went to Washington, where Davis took a Democratic seat in the House of Representatives. The Davises made a swift impression. Varina entertained well; Jefferson earned notice for his eloquence and the "charm of his voice."

War with Mexico interrupted Davis's congressional service. He resigned in 1846 to command a volunteer regiment attached to Zachary Taylor's army. Col. Davis and his men won quick approval from the crotchety old general, and the earlier hostilities between the two men were forgotten. Distinguished service by Davis's outfit at Monterey, Mexico, was followed by real heroism at Buena Vista (Feb. 22, 1847). Wounded, Davis returned to Mississippi and received a hero's laurels. In 1847, elected to the U.S. Senate, Davis became chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. But in 1851 Mississippi Democrats called him back to replace their gubernatorial candidate, thinking that Davis's reputation might cover the party's shift from an extreme secessionist position to one of "cooperationist" moderation. This almost succeeded; Davis lost to Henry S. Foote by less than 1,000 votes.

U.S. Secretary of War

When President Franklin Pierce appointed Davis secretary of war in 1853, Davis found his happiest niche. He enlarged the Army, modernized military procedures, boosted soldiers' pay (and morale), directed important Western land surveys for future railroad construction, and masterminded the Gadsden Purchase.

At the close of Pierce's term Davis reentered the Senate and became a major Southern spokesman. Ever mindful of the Union's purposes, he worked to preserve the Compromise of 1850. Yet throughout the 1850s Davis was moving toward a Southern nationalist point of view. He opposed Stephen A. Douglas's "squatter sovereignty" doctrine in the Kansas question. Congress, Davis argued, had no power to limit slavery's extension.

At the 1860 Democratic convention Davis cautioned against secession. However, he accepted Mississippi's decision, and on Jan. 21, 1861, in perhaps his most eloquent senatorial address, announced his state's secession from the Union and his own resignation from the Senate and called for understanding.

Confederate President

Davis only reluctantly accepted the presidency of the Confederate States of America. He began his superhuman task with very human doubts. But once in office he became the foremost Confederate. His special virtues were revealed by challenge - honesty, devotion, dedication, the zeal of a passionate patriot.

As president, Davis quickly grasped his problems: 9 million citizens (including at least 3 million slaves) of sovereign Southern states pitted against 22 million Yankees; 9,000 miles of usable railroad track against 22,000; no large factories, warships, or shipyards; little money; no credit, save in the guise of cotton; scant arms and no manufacturing arsenals to replenish losses; miniscule powder works; undeveloped lead, saltpeter, copper, and iron resources; and almost no knowledge of steelmaking. Assets could be counted only as optimism, confidence, cotton, and courage. Davis would have to conjure a cause, anneal a new nation, and make a war.

With sure grasp Davis built an army out of state volunteers sworn into Confederate service - and thus won his first round against state rights. Officers came from the "Old Army" and from Southern military schools. Supplies, arms, munitions, clothes, and transportation came from often reluctant governors, from citizens, and, finally, by means of crafty legerdemain worked by staff officials.

When supplies dwindled drastically, Davis resorted to impressing private property. When military manpower shrank, Davis had to ask the Confederate Congress for the greatest military innovation a democracy could dare - conscription. In April 1862 Congress authorized the draft.

Confederate Strategy

Nor was Davis timid in using his armies. Relying usually on leaders he knew, he put such men as Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, James Longstreet, Thomas J. Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and Robert E. Lee in various commands. He developed a strategy to fit Confederate circumstances. Realizing that the weaker side must husband and hoard yet dare desperately when the chance came, Davis divided the Confederate military map into departments, each under a general with wide powers. He sought only to repel invaders. This strategy had political as well as military implications: the Confederacy was not aggressive, sought nothing save independence, and would fight in the North only when pressed. Davis's plan brought impressive results - First Manassas, the Seven Days, Second Manassas, and the clearing of Virginia by September 1862. Western results seemed equally promising. Shiloh, while not a victory, stabilized the middle border; Bragg's following campaign maneuvered a Union army out of Tennessee and almost out of Kentucky.

These successes led Davis to a general offensive in the summer and fall of 1862 designed to terrify Northerners, themselves yet untouched by war; to separate other, uncertain states from the Union; and to convince the outside world of Southern strength. Though it failed, the strategy had merit and remained in effect. Checks at Fredericksburg, Holly Springs, and Chancellorsville stung the North. When Union general U. S. Grant moved against Vicksburg in spring 1863, it looked as though he might be lost in Mississippi, with Gen. Joseph Hooker snared in Virginia's wilderness.

But Grant's relentless pressure on Vicksburg forced Davis to a desperate gamble that resulted in the Battle of Gettysburg, the loss of Vicksburg, and a cost to the South of over 50,000 men and 60,000 stands of arms. Men and arms were irreplaceable, and Davis huddled deeper in the defensive.

Davis had tried perhaps the most notable innovation in the history of American command when he adopted the "theater" idea as an expansion of departmental control. Joseph E. Johnston became commander of the Department of the West, taking absolute power over all forces from the Chattahoochee River to the Mississippi River, and from the Gulf of Mexico to Tennessee. It was a great scheme for running a remote war and might have worked, save for Johnston's hesitancy in exercising his authority. Davis lost faith in his general but not in his plan.

In 1864, after Atlanta's fall, Davis approved Gen. John Bell Hood's plan of striking along William T. Sherman's communications into Tennessee, with the hope of capturing Nashville. Logistical support for this bold venture was coordinated by P. G. T. Beauregard, the new commander of the Department of the West. But Beauregard also distrusted his own authority. Hood failed before Nashville; but by then things had so deteriorated that the blame could hardly be fixed on any one in particular.

Wartime Innovations

Innovation was essential: the armies had to be supported - and in this quest Davis himself changed. Ever an advocate of state rights, he became an uncompromising Confederate nationalist, warring with state governors for federal rights and urging centralist policies on his reluctant Congress. Conscription and impressment were two pillars of his program; others included harsh tax laws, government regulation of railroads and blockade running, and diplomacy aimed at winning recognition of Confederate independence and establishing commercial relations with England and France. Davis came to advocate wide application of martial law. Finally he suggested drafting slaves, with freedom as the reward for valor. These measures were essential to avoid defeat; many were beyond the daring of the Confederate Congress.

Congress's inability to face necessity finally infuriated Davis. Though warm and winning in personal relations, he saw no need for politicking in relations with Congress. He believed that reasonable men did what crisis demanded and anything less was treason. Intolerant of laxity in himself or in others, he sometimes alienated supporters.

Southern Defeat

As Confederate chances dwindled, Davis became increasingly demanding. He eventually won congressional support for most of his measures but at high personal cost. By the summer of 1864 most Southern newspapers were sniping at his administration, state governors were quarreling with him, and he had become the focus of Southern discontent. The South was losing; Davis's plan must be wrong, the rebels reasoned. Peace sentiments arose in disaffected areas of several states, as did demands to negotiate with the enemy. Davis knew the enemy's price: union. But he tried negotiation. Yet when the Hampton Roads Conference in February 1865 proved fruitless and Davis called for renewed Confederate dedication, the Confederacy was falling apart, and there was almost nothing to rededicate. Confederate money had so declined in value that Southerners were avoiding it; soldiers deserted; invaders stalked the land with almost no opposition. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865; Johnston surrendered on April 26. Davis and a small party were captured at Irwinville, Ga., on May 10.

Years of Decline

Accused of complicity in Lincoln's assassination, and the object of intense hatred in both North and South, Davis spent 2 years as a state prisoner. He was harshly treated, and his already feeble health broke dangerously. When Federal authorities decided not to try him for treason, he traveled abroad to recuperate, then returned to Mississippi and vainly sought to rebuild his fortune.

Through a friend's generosity Davis and his family received a stately home on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. Here from 1878 to 1881 Davis wrote Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. And here, at last, he basked in a kind of fame that eased his final years. He died in New Orleans on Dec. 6, 1889, survived by Varina and two of their six children.

Further Reading

A primary source is Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches (10 vols., 1923), which includes an autobiography in volume 1. Biographies include Varina H. Davis, Jefferson Davis: A Memoir (1890); William E. Dodd, Jefferson Davis (1907); Allen Tate, Jefferson Davis, His Rise and Fall (1929); Robert W. Winston, High Stakes and Hair Trigger: The Life of Jefferson Davis (1930); Robert McElroy, Jefferson Davis: The Unreal and the Real (2 vols., 1937); and Hudson Strode, Jefferson Davis (3 vols., 1955-1964). See also Burton J. Hendrick, Statesmen of the Lost Cause (1939); Robert W. Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (1944); Frank E. Vandiver, Jefferson Davis and the Confederate State (1964) and Their Tattered Flags (1970).

For more information on Jefferson Davis, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: June 3, 1808, Fairview, Ky.
• Political party: Democrat
• Education: St. Thomas College; Jefferson College; Wilkinson County Academy; Transylvania University; United States Military Academy, graduated, 1828
• Representative from Mississippi: 1845–46
• Senator from Mississippi: 1847–51, 1857–61
• President of the Confederate States of America: 1861–65
• Died: Dec. 6, 1889, New Orleans, La.

“I have an infirmity of which I am ashamed,” Senator Jefferson Davis once admitted. “When I am aroused in a matter, I lose control of my feeling and become personal.” A West Point graduate with military bearing and self-control, Davis could turn hot-tempered, ready to challenge an opponent to a duel. As the leading spokesman for the South in Congress just before the Civil War, Davis showed these contradictory tendencies. He denounced Northern “disunionists” but talked of secession to protect Southern interests. As the South moved toward secession, Davis joined the Committee of Thirteen to find a compromise to keep the nation united. But when Mississippi left the Union, Davis knew he must resign and return home. On January 21, 1861, he spoke in the Senate for the last time, forgiving his opponents for their offenses toward him and offering his apologies for any offenses he had given them. Applauded from both sides of the aisle, Davis left the Senate chamber looking “inexpressively sad.” A month later he became President of the Confederacy.

Sources

• William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (New York: Harper Collins, 1991)

(1808-1889), politician and president of the Confederate States of America. Davis had an impressive political career before he became president of the Confederacy, but he was appointed, not elected, to many of the offices he held in his antebellum career. His limited experience with electoral politics was a handicap to his presidency, and, perhaps more important, he lacked the personal qualities that made Abraham Lincoln a successful president.

Raised on the Mississippi frontier, Davis's life was shaped by his brother Joseph, who was twenty-four years his senior. Joseph Davis made a fortune as a lawyer and planter, and he played a paternal role in Jefferson's life for many years. After Jefferson graduated from West Point and served in the army, Joseph gave him a plantation and the slaves to farm it. In the 1840s, Joseph managed the plantation so that Jefferson could go into politics.

Jefferson Davis became a staunch states' rights Democrat and champion of the unrestricted expansion of slavery into the territories. He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1845--his only successful electoral campaign--and then was appointed to the Senate after he became a hero while serving in the army during the Mexican War. In the Senate he opposed the Compromise of 1850, particularly the admission of California as a free state. In 1851 he resigned from the Senate to run unsuccessfully for the Mississippi governorship. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed Davis secretary of war. Davis served ably in this office and in 1857 reentered the Senate, where he continued to advocate the spread of slavery into the territories. During the secession crisis, he resigned from the Senate and in 1861 was chosen by acclamation to be the Confederate president.

Davis worked very hard at his presidential duties, concentrating on military strategy but neglecting domestic politics, which hurt him in the long run. He could not manage congressional opposition as successfully as Lincoln, nor could he inspire the southern public as Lincoln did his public in the North. Davis was also a poor judge of people, unlike Lincoln. The Confederate president protected incompetents, such as Braxton Bragg, and he did not make use of talented men he disliked, such as Joseph E. Johnston. In April 1865 the Union armies finally surrounded Richmond, and Davis and his family fled the city for the Deep South, only to be captured in Georgia in May.

Davis's life after the war was bleak. Charged with treason, he went to prison in Fort Monroe, Virginia, where he remained for two years. In prison his physical and emotional health deteriorated, and he was never the same after he was released in May 1867. He and his family traveled abroad for two years. When he returned to America, he had trouble making a living. He worked for an insurance company in Memphis, but the company went bankrupt, and when he published a history of the Confederacy, it did not sell well. He lived off the charity of friends and relatives until his death in New Orleans in 1889. He refused to take the oath of allegiance to regain his citizenship, which was restored only posthumously by the U.S. Congress in 1978.

Bibliography:

Clement Eaton, Jefferson Davis (1977); Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (1978); Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., et al., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (1971-).

Author:

Joan E. Cashin

See also Civil War; Confederate States of America.

1808–89, American statesman, President of the Southern Confederacy, b. Fairview, near Elkton, Ky. His birthday was June 3.

Early Life

Davis's parents moved to Mississippi when he was a boy. He was given a classical education at Transylvania Univ. and was appointed to West Point, where he was graduated in 1828. He spent the next seven years in various army posts in the Old Northwest and took part (1832) in the Black Hawk War. In 1835 he married the daughter of Zachary Taylor, but she died three months later. Davis spent the next 10 years in the comparative quiet of a Mississippi planter's life. In 1845 he married Varina Howell.

Early Political Career

Elected (1845) to the House of Representatives, he resigned in June, 1846, to command a Mississippi regiment in the Mexican War. Under Zachary Taylor he distinguished himself both at the siege of Monterrey and at Buena Vista. Davis was appointed (1847) U.S. Senator from Mississippi to fill an unexpired term but resigned in 1851 to run for governor of Mississippi against his senatorial colleague, Henry S. Foote, who was a Union Whig. Davis was a strong champion of Southern rights and argued for the expansion of slave territory and economic development of the South to counterbalance the power of the North. He lost the election by less than a thousand votes and retired to his plantation until appointed (1853) Secretary of War by Franklin Pierce. Throughout the administration he used his power to oppose the views of his Northern Democratic colleague, Secretary of State William L. Marcy. Davis favored the acquisition of Cuba and opposed concessions to Spain in the Black Warrior and Ostend Manifesto difficulties, and he also promoted a southern route for a transcontinental railroad, therefore favoring the Gadsden Purchase. Reentering the Senate in 1857, Davis became the leader of the Southern bloc.

The Confederacy and After

Davis took little part in the secession movement until Mississippi seceded (Jan., 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, Ala., and inaugurated in Feb., 1861. Elected regular President of the Confederate States (see Confederacy), he was inaugurated at Richmond, Va., in Feb., 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 (Apr., 1865) at Charlotte, N.C., Davis was captured at Irwinville, Ga. He was confined in Fortress Monroe in Virginia for two years and was released (May, 1867) on bail. 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 (1881). He was buried at New Orleans, but his body was moved (1893) to Richmond, Va.

Bibliography

See his papers, ed. by H. M. Monroe, Jr., J. T. McIntosh, and L. L. Crist (10 vol., 1972–); biographies by W. E. Dodd (1907, repr. 1966), H. Strode (4 vol., 1955–66), W. C. Davis (1991), and W. J. Cooper, Jr. (2000); V. H. Davis, Jefferson Davis: A Memoir (1890); B. J. Hendrick, Statesmen of the Lost Cause (1939); M. B. Ballard, Long Shadow: Jefferson Davis and the Final Days of the Confederacy (1986); W. C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (1992); J. T. Glatthaar, Partners in Command (1994).

(1808-1889)

1881

The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Davis offers an account of his administration and a defense of his actions as president that is seldom penetrating or self-revealing. It concludes with a call for an end to recriminations. An abridgment, A Short History of the Confederate States of America, would appear in 1890.

A political leader of the nineteenth century. He was a powerful cabinet officer in the 1850s. When his home state of Mississippi seceded from the Union (see secession), Davis left the Senate to join the government of the Confederacy. He served as president of the Confederacy throughout its existence.