DAVIS, JEFFERSON (1808-1889), American statesman, president of the Confederate States of America, was born on June 3, 18o8 on a farm on the present site of Fairview, Todd county, Ky. He was the tenth and youngest child of Samuel Davis (1755-1824), a descendant of a Welsh family that had settled originally in New Jersey, and he probably was a cousin of Samuel Davies (1 724-1 761 ), president of Princeton. Samuel Davis was born in Georgia, was a captain of infantry in the American revolution and subsequently was a planter. He married Jane Cook (1759-1844) of Scotch-Irish stock. They moved to south-western Kentucky in 1796, thence to Louisiana about 1810 and still again to Wilkinson county, Miss.
Schooled in Kentucky and in Mississippi, Davis attended Tran sylvania college, Ky., in 1821-24, entered the U.S. Military Acad emy in Sept. 1824, and graduated no. 23 in a class of 33, in July 1828. Albert Sidney Johnston was in a higher class during Davis' cadetship, and Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston belonged to the next junior class. Davis remained in the army seven years, and served chiefly in Wisconsin, where a severe attack of pneu monia left him with a facial neuralgia that often incapacitated and sometimes blinded him. After 1831 he was never a man of robust health or of a normal nervous system.
Finding in 1835 that army life had become a routine, Davis resigned his commission as lieutenant and after marrying Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of Col. Zachary Taylor, started as a cotton-planter in Mississippi. His young bride died within three months of their marriage, and he spent the next ten years of his life on his plantation with his leisure devoted to hard reading. He soon developed a system that was almost a model in the relations of master and slaves. He gave the servant community a large measure of self-government and left in its hands, through an interesting jury system, the trial of all petty offenders. His own experience shaped his views : knowing that his negroes were well-fed, happy and advancing, he could not believe the evil alleged against slavery.
An unsuccessful candidate of the legislature in 1843 and a Democratic presidential elector in 1844, Davis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1845. He was married that same year to Varina Howell (1828-1907), granddaughter of Gov. Richard Howell of New Jersey. His service in Washington had hardly begun when the war with Mexico broke out and he was named colonel of the First Mississippi Infantry. He resigned from Congress in June 1846, and speedily had his troops well drilled and ready to join in the advance of the army under Gen. Zachary Taylor. Davis and his regiment acquitted themselves well in the battle of Monterey, Sept. 21-23, 1846, and when Taylor's reduced force was attacked at Buena Vista on Feb. 22, 1847, a stand by the Mississippians saved the day for the Ameri can forces and made Davis something of a national figure. He was wounded in this battle and was forced to return to Mis sissippi, in the company of his troops, whose term of enlistment had expired. He declined President Polk's complimentary com mission as brigadier-general of volunteers, on the ground that officers of volunteers should be named by the States, but in Aug. 1847 he accepted appointment to the United States Senate and soon was named chairman of its committee on military affairs. In 1851 the Democrats of Mississippi prevailed upon him, in the party's interest, to become a candidate for governor. He was defeated by a narrow vote, and was again in retirement for 18 months, but upon the inauguration of Franklin Pierce in he became secretary of war and served for four years. During this time he strengthened the coast-defences, enlarged the army, directed valuable surveys for a railroad to the Pacific, introduced various betterments at West Point, and experimented with the use of camels as draft animals in the West. Expansionist plots in Cuba and in Nicaragua were supposed to have his support. President Pierce's endorsement of the repeal of the Missouri com promise was probably the result of Davis' influence with him.
Davis re-entered the United States Senate on March 4, but an affection of the eyes limited his activities for nearly two years. In 1859-6o he was one of the foremost leaders of Southern Democrats in opposition to Stephen A. Douglas. During his first term in the senate (1847-51) he had argued that all the territories should be opened to slavery, but he had been willing to accept an extension of the line of the Missouri compromise to the Pacific. After the verdict of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, he became more aggressive in his views of Southern rights and repudiated Stephen A. Douglas' doctrine of squatter sovereignty. He asserted that Congress had no right to deny admission to the Union to any territory because of the existence or non-existence of slavery, which he now frankly defended. His opinions were fully set forth in a series of resolutions offered on Feb. 2, 186o, and subsequently adopted. He did his utmost to prevent the nomination of Douglas for the presidency, and after the split in the Democratic convention at Charleston, he sup ported Breckinridge and Lane, though he did not canvass for them.
Always a believer in the right of secession, Davis had favoured a convention of the Southern States in 1851, to consider what action they should take on the compromise of 185o, but until after the election of Lincoln in Nov. 186o he never felt that circumstances justified a withdrawal from the Union. The vic tory of the party opposed to slavery, the uncompromising attitude of the Republican senators, and the unwillingness of President Buchanan to concede the right of a State peaceably to leave the Union, combined in the early winter of 186o-61 to convince Davis that the South in self-protection should exercise its right of secession and should form a separate confederation. He united with six other senators from the cotton States in an historic dec laration to this effect. At the instance of his colleagues he con sented to serve on the "committee of thirteen" that sought a last minute settlement of slavery, but when he found that the Republi can members would accept no compromise, he voted against the committee's report. Although he believed further efforts at ac commodation were futile, he intervened in South Carolina's behalf in an attempt to have the Federal garrison withdrawn from Charleston harbour. Then, following the secession of his own State, he bade farewell to the senate on Jan. 21, 1861, in a moving address.