Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) is an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, from 1861 to 1865.

Davis was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane (Cook) Davis.

After attending Transylvania University, Davis graduates from West Point and fights in the Mexican–American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment.

He serves as the United States Secretary of War under Democratic President Franklin Pierce.

Both before and after his time in the Pierce administration, he serves as a Democratic U.S.

Senator representing the State of Mississippi.

As a senator, he argues against secession, but does agree that each state is sovereign and has an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.

On February 9, 1861, after Davis resigns from the United States Senate, he is selected to be the provisional President of the Confederate States of America; he is elected without opposition to a six-year term that November.

During his presidency, Davis takes charge of the Confederate war plans but is unable to find a strategy to stop the larger, more powerful and better organized Union.

His diplomatic efforts fail to gain recognition from any foreign country, and he pays little attention to the collapsing Confederate economy, printing more and more paper money to cover the war's expenses.

Historians have criticized Davis for being a much less effective war leader than his Union counterpart Abraham Lincoln, which they attribute to Davis being overbearing, controlling, and overly meddlesome, as well as being out of touch with public opinion, and lacking support from a political party (since the Confederacy had no political parties).

His preoccupation with detail, reluctance to delegate responsibility, lack of popular appeal, feuds with powerful state governors, inability to get along with people who disagreed with him, and neglect of civil matters in favor of military ones all worked against him.

After Davis is captured on May 10, 1865, he is charged with treason.

Although he is not tried, he is stripped of his eligibility to run for public office; Congress posthumously lifts this restriction in 1978, 89 years after his death.

While not disgraced, he is displaced in Southern affection after the war by the leading Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

However, many Southerners empathize with his defiance, refusal to accept defeat, and resistance to Reconstruction.

Over time, admiration for his pride and ideals make him a Civil War hero to many Southerners, and his legacy becomes part of the foundation of the postwar New South.By the late 1880s, Davis begins to encourage reconciliation, telling Southerners to be loyal to the Union.

He is aided in the last decade of his life by the generosity of Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey, a wealthy widow.

First she invites him to her plantation in 1877 near Biloxi, Mississippi at a time when he is ailing, and gives him a cottage to use for working on his memoir.

She bequeaths Davis her plantation before her death in 1878, as well as additional funds for his support.

This enables him to live in some comfort with his wife until his death in 1889.

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