DAVIS, d EFFERSON ( 811S-89 A statesman. and the President of the Confederate states of America. Ile was born in Christian, now Todd. County. Ny...1 • 3. 1S0s, the chief strains in his blood being Welsh and Seotch Irish. His family removed during his infancy to Mississippi. with which State his fame has always been connected. Ile received a gentle rearing, although his education was at first limited. owing to the conditions of the country. After a year or two at a Roman Catholic school in Kentucky. and a short period at a colh•ge in Mississippi, he entered Transylvania University at Lexington, un institution which seems to have done good work for those times. Here he received the elements of a classical education; but in 1824, before graduation, he was trans ferred to West Point. Ile graduated rather low in his class. but he had given evidence of soldierly qualities and had won the regard of his classmates. Entering the army at once, in 1828, with the usual brevet of second lieutenant, he served seven years on the northwestern frontier, manifesting capacity to command. to perform arduous duties, and to win confidence and affec tion. In 1835, falling ill, lie resigned from the army. in which he had risen to the rank of first lieutenant, and in the same year married a daughter of Zachary Taylor. The young wife died. however. in a few mouths, and Davis sought restoration for hi-, shattered health in Cuba. After a short stay in Washington, where he began his friendship with Franklin Pierce. he returned to Mississippi and devoted himself to planting and study. This period from 1837 to 1845 was spent in an almost hermit-like seclusion, and Davis, who, as early as 1833, when the Nulli fication controversy was at its height. had made up his mind that it was unconstitutional to coerce a State. now gained 81)411(7 and logical consistency in advocating the States' rights doe trines held by Calhoun. After some little par tieipation in local polities, he was elected to Congress in 1845. where he favored the annexa tion of Texas. lle was a ready and dignified speaker. and an ardent but by no means servile follower of Calhoun. The next year, on the out
break of the Mexican War, he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi Volunteers and distin guished himself at Monterey and Buena Vista, his famous formation of the reiintering angle at the latter engagement being a gallant exploit. On his retirement from the war with a severe wound, the Governor of Mississippi in 1847 ap pointed him to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. and in 1818 the Legislature elected him for the residue of the term; in 1850 he was reelected. In the debates relative to the intro duction of slavery into the Territories. Davis was zealous for the institution and for a strict construction of the In 1851 he resigned in order to make the contest for the Governorship against the Unionist candidates Davis made a vigorous canvass. hut was defeated by a small majority. In March, 1853, he became Secretary of War under President Pierce, and made an efficient official, improving the serviee in varimb, ways. hi the matter of the Kansas-Ne braska legislation lie proved a bad adviser to the President, hut lie was thoroughly conscientious. When he reentered the in 1857, he was the acknowledged leader of the Southerners, be coming the most determined, though not the most, radical. of the States' rights men in the stormy days just before the war. In 1840 Davis offered in the Senate a series of resolutions which were adopted. to the effect that the States had fo• mally accepted the Constitution as independent sovereigns, delegating to the General Government a hirdo]] of their power for the ke of security: that the intermeddling on the part of any one of them with the domestic institutions of another was not only insulting. hut dangerous to the domestic peace and tending to destroy the Union; that negro slavery was legal, and that neither Congress nor Territorial legislation had the right to interfere with it. Vet Davis was devoted to the Union. and when on the secession of Mississippi in lStll he left the Senate, it was with real sadness that he set forth his principles in a farewell speech to which a crowded audience listened with deep attention.