Jefferson Davis, American Read online

  On the twenty-first, those who pressed into the Senate chamber saw Davis in his final moment of national power. Though “pale and evidently suffering,” he still commanded attention. Just under six feet tall, slender, with the erect military bearing that had marked his posture since West Point, Davis had presence. His face was more striking than handsome. In many ways the eyes predominated. Icy blue and intense, full, deepset, they drew in listeners, though a film, the legacy of a ravaging ophthalmologic disease in 1858, partially covered the left one. By this time gray tinged his brown hair, wrinkles lined his full forehead, and his features had a sharply chiseled look. High, prominent cheek-bones accentuated hollow cheeks. Thin lips curved above a strong chin displaying a fringe beard.7

  Jefferson Davis, c. 1860 (photograph by Mathew Brady).

  Library of Congress (photo credit iprl.1)

  Rising to speak early in the afternoon, with “firm & manly” manner Jefferson Davis faced his colleagues and a crowded chamber. The gallery was full, with barely standing room available. Ladies were even sitting on the floor against the wall. To ensure herself a seat, Varina Davis had sent a servant at 7 a.m. to hold her a place. Four southern senators, the two Alabamians and the two Floridians, preceded the Mississippian. With what Davis termed “heart wringing words,” he announced to his audience that he had received “satisfactory evidence” that Mississippi, “by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, ha[d] declared her separation from the United States.” The independence of Mississippi, he continued, meant that he was no longer a citizen of the United States, and certainly no role remained for him in the United States Senate, for he would never play the obstructionist. Acknowledging that the time for argument had passed, Davis still thought it appropriate “to say something on the part of the State I here represent, on an occasion so solemn as this.”8

  Davis began his brief remarks, which probably lasted about fifteen minutes, by reminding his fellow senators that “for many years” his insistence on “State sovereignty” included “the right of a State to secede from the Union.” Thus, whether or not he agreed with the action of Mississippi, his “allegiance” bound him to abide by it. But he hastened to add that he did believe Mississippi had “justifiable cause” to end her connection with the United States. According to Davis, the disconnection meant that all the benefits of the Union, “and they are known to be many,” had been surrendered.

  In Davis’s view the justification for his state’s decision was simple yet profound—“a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our Fathers have bequeathed to us.” He asserted that the anchors of liberty for the South and southerners, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, had been pulled up in the cause of antislavery and racial equality to support “an attack upon [southern] social institutions.” The Declaration, Davis proclaimed, had trumpeted the great truth that “no man was born—to use the language of Mr. Jefferson—booted and spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal—meaning the men of the political community.” These “great principles,” in Davis’s interpretation, were now “invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.” Davis, on the contrary, insisted that the precepts of the Declaration referred solely to “each member of the body politic.” In his reading “they ha[d] no reference to the slave.” To Davis the meaning of the Constitution had been equally corrupted. He noted that the Constitution provided for “that very class of persons as property.” “They were not,” he pointed out, “put upon the footing of equality with white men.”

  As Davis perceived the political world, the subversion of the founding documents, from protection of slave property to assaults upon it, endangered the liberty of white southerners. To his mind the southern recourse was clear: “we recur to the principles upon which our Government was founded.” We declare, he went on, “the right to withdraw from a Government which thus perverted threatens to be destructive of our rights.” When the South proclaimed its independence, it “but tr[od] in the path of our Fathers.” Davis further defined his understanding of secession as defensive by asserting that the South seceded “not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit unshorn to our children.”

  He underscored that secession did not signify enmity, either on his part or on that of his constituents. He addressed those with whom he had sharply disagreed: “I … now say in the presence of my God, I wish you well.” Both he and those who elected him, Davis avowed, hoped for peaceful relations with their former associates.

  At the same time he let all know that he and the other southerners leaving the Union understood the hazard of their undertaking. If the North denied the right of separation, Davis said forthrightly, “We will invoke the God of our fathers who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.”

  Concluding, Davis became quite personal, even intimate. He noticed several senators with whom he had long served, and he admitted that there had been “points of collision.” But now he jettisoned all ill will and acrimony. “I carry with me,” he assured his colleagues, “no hostile remembrance. Whatever offense I have given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been demanded, I have, Senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer you my apology for any pain which, in heat of discussion, I have inflicted.” Then, in the last words Jefferson Davis ever uttered in the United States Capitol, he addressed the vice president and the senators: “it only remains for me to bid you a final adieu.”

  Davis’s conclusion met with an emotional response. Both senators and spectators had given “the utmost attention” to all five southerners. Now listeners and observers seemed “spellbound.” His farewell “left many in tears”; it even “drew tears from the eyes of many Senators.” Soon, however, senators, Republicans as well as Democrats, began moving toward Davis and his fellow seceders, where “a general and very cordial shaking of hands took place.” At last, a “grief-stricken” Davis departed from the chamber and the building.9

  His immersion in the day was not yet over. Six weeks later he would speak of his remarks as not merely words, “but rather leaves torn from the book of fate.” Even though that book would provide him with twenty-eight more years filled with momentous events and tumultuous emotions, this year remained unique. In the evening a colleague spent several hours with Davis, who was preparing to start for Mississippi the next day. He reported Davis in “great agony” and “tortured” emotionally and physically. Earlier, talking with friends just after his senatorial farewell, Davis held the hand of one; “this is the saddest day of my life.” And he meant it; he never forgot 1861, when the Union he treasured disappeared. After the Civil War he would even sign the books he acquired on page 61.10

  CHAPTER ONE

  “There My Memories Begin”

  Jefferson Davis was born on June 3, 1808, in Christian County, Kentucky. Located in the west-central section of the state and bordering Tennessee, Christian County at that time was a sparsely settled part of the western frontier. The infant was named for his father’s political hero, the sitting president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. His parents also gave him a middle name, which by early manhood he dropped completely; only the initial F. survived. For Samuel Emory Davis in his early fifties and his forty-eight-year-old wife, Jane Cook Davis, this boy, their tenth child, would be their last.1

  In searching for a home on the American frontier, Samuel Davis followed literally in the steps of his father. Samuel’s grandfather, the first of this Davis family on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, emigrated from Wales to Philadelphia, perhaps as early as 1701, when a number of Welsh Baptists landed in the Pennsylvania port, and surely befo
re 1720. The place and date of Evan Davis’s birth are not known. All genealogical authorities agree on his Welshness, and he was undoubtedly born sometime during the final two decades of the seventeenth century. He had a wife, but only her first name has survived. When and where he and Mary Davis were married is also unknown.2

  Evan Davis found Philadelphia and Pennsylvania hospitable to his efforts to advance his station and to raise a family. He spent the remainder of his life in the city. The colony’s tolerant religious policy permitted him to remain loyal to his Baptist faith. Even though Evan Davis spent most of his working years as a carter, he managed to accumulate enough money to buy property. A deed conveying a city lot to him in 1734 carries the colony’s first official notice of him. Although he became a property owner, he never learned to read or write. Neither did his wife. All of his legal documents, including his will, he signed with his mark. Late in life he changed occupations to become an innkeeper. When his will was drawn up in 1743, he identified himself as a carter; but the inventory of his estate prepared after his death in 1747 listed him as an innkeeper. Mary survived him for eleven years, dying in 1758.

  While Evan Davis was striving to improve his financial status, he and Mary were caring for a large family. They had six children, five sons and one daughter. At the time Evan Davis had his will written, four of them had reached their maturity. He evidently favored the two youngest, who were both still under twenty-one, for he provided that Joseph and Evan Jr. should receive larger shares of his estate than their brothers and sister. In addition to their portions of the property, they were bequeathed cash payments—Joseph £10 and Evan Jr. £20, quite respectable sums, payable when each became twenty-one. The four elder Davis siblings never left Philadelphia, but the two youngest emulated their father in his youth and struck out for new horizons.

  Once both reached twenty-one and were in possession of the money from their father’s estate, Joseph and Evan Jr. headed southward, probably around 1750. Initially they went to South Carolina. The historical record does not indicate why they chose that destination, nor does it designate how they traveled or where they first located. In all likelihood they stopped either in Charleston or the Welsh Neck, a settlement about 100 miles northeast of the city, populated by Welsh Baptists. Joseph stayed in South Carolina, ultimately settling near Broad River. Evan decided on a different course.

  Before departing from his brother, Evan found another partner. In South Carolina he met and married Mary Emory Williams, a widow with two sons. As in the case of his parents, neither the place nor the date of the younger Evan’s wedding is known. Additionally, no evidence gives the date when Evan and Mary Davis moved on to Wilkes County, Georgia. But both the marriage and the journey had to have taken place by 1756, for in that year the Davises, living in Georgia, had their first and only child. Named for a paternal uncle and his mother’s family, Samuel Emory Davis was also the only grandchild of the senior Evan and Mary Davis.

  Evan Davis, Jr., died soon after the birth of his son, though exactly when is unknown. It had to be prior to 1762, for in that year one of his older brothers, William, purchased the property in his father’s estate from his living siblings. The deed omitted Evan’s name along with that of another brother, both of whom were deceased. After Evan’s death his widow evidently lost touch with his brothers, for her name is not mentioned in the 1762 deed. In 1767, when William Davis sold the Davis property to someone outside the family, the deed contained the names of neither Mary Davis nor Samuel Emory Davis. Although Samuel certainly possessed a legitimate claim to his father’s part of the property, his uncle William left him out of the transaction. Whether William Davis acted out of ignorance or malice cannot now be ascertained. Clearly, however, young Samuel Davis was deprived of his inheritance from his grandfather Davis’s estate.

  Samuel grew up with his mother and two stepbrothers on a farm in Wilkes County. No details about his early years have survived. When the American Revolution convulsed the Georgia and South Carolina frontiers, Samuel Davis entered the conflict and the historical record. With his stepbrothers, Samuel joined the patriot militia and fought as a private soldier in both Georgia and South Carolina. In 1779 he formed and led a company that participated in the sieges of Savannah and Augusta.3

  In mid-1782, when hostilities ended in Georgia, Samuel Davis returned to Wilkes County. Although his mother had died before he returned, Samuel did not long remain without a woman prominent in his life. In South Carolina during the war he met Jane Cook, from a Scots-Irish family, whom he married in 1783. He and his new bride began clearing a farm on 200 acres beside Little River in Wilkes County, land which the state of Georgia had given him for his military service in the Revolution.

  For the next several years Samuel and Jane Davis strove to enhance their position. An ambitious young man, Samuel was able to add substantially to his acreage from the abundant, inexpensive land on the Georgia and South Carolina borderlands. By 1785 he owned around 4,000 acres of predominantly uncleared land. A year earlier Samuel and Jane had greeted their first child, Joseph Emory. Holding to the Baptist faith of his forebears, Samuel joined with fellow settlers to organize a local Baptist church and build a log chapel, though Jane did not become a member. By 1787 Samuel had acquired his first slave, a woman named Winnie. All the while his and Jane’s family grew. By early in the new decade four more babies, three boys and a girl, had arrived.

  Still, Samuel Davis was dissatisfied. Even in the 1780s white fears and Indian depredations disrupted life on the Georgia frontier, undermining the safety and value of many of Samuel’s acres. With or without Indians, the prosperity enjoyed by some of his neighbors eluded him. In 1793 he turned away from Georgia toward what he saw as a better opportunity. Disposing of his property and joining South Carolina relatives of Jane, Samuel Davis took his family north and west to the new state of Kentucky. They journeyed along the trail taken by thousands of hopeful and aspiring settlers across the Appalachian Mountains and through the Cumberland Gap.

  Once in Kentucky, Samuel Davis did not quickly find a location to his liking. He had to pass through the rich Bluegrass region because much of the land had already been occupied and because the remainder was too expensive. Before the end of the 1790s he had tried two different places, in Mercer and Warren Counties, where he had worked hard to establish a farm in the wilderness. Initially he rented land until he bought a 100-acre plot, but he remained discontented. By 1800 he had moved his family farther west and south to Christian County.

  Christian County seemed to be a good choice for the wandering and growing Samuel Davis clan. He cleared and plowed his 200-acre farm with the help of his older children and his two slaves. When he sold his Warren County land in 1801, he used the proceeds to buy another slave and more horses. Raising tobacco, corn, and wheat as well as cattle, hogs, and horses, Samuel Davis became a successful pioneer farmer, and he added to his acres. At the same time his family was expanding. In 1797 Jane Davis gave birth to a daughter, their sixth child and first in Kentucky. During the next decade four more—three girls and one boy—would become part of the large family. Adding to their responsibilities, Samuel and Jane Davis obtained a tavern license and became innkeepers.

  As a sign of his increased prosperity Samuel Davis built a new cabin on the site of present-day Fairview, then in Christian County, now partly in Todd County. He put up a double log cabin with two large rooms on either side of a covered passageway, the classic dogtrot design. Each room had its own fireplace and a small shed attached in the rear. The timbers were cut in nearby forests and were hewed into shape by hand. Hand-wrought iron nails and heavy wooden pins kept the logs in place. The cabin contained puncheon floors and heavy wooden doors hung on leather hinges fastened with wooden buttons. The glass panes, undoubtedly the most expensive detail in the house, stood out in the small windows. Sticks and mud, the stack construction, were used for the chimneys at each end of the house. A well in the yard provided the water, known throughout the neighborhood f
or its quality.4

  Birthplace of Jefferson Davis.

  Library of Congress (photo credit i1.1)

  In this cabin on June 3, 1808, Jefferson F. Davis became the tenth and final child born to Samuel and Jane Davis. By then the two oldest boys had moved out, but eight Davis children lived in the cabin with their parents.

  Despite his apparent success in Christian County, Samuel Davis decided shortly after the birth of his newest son once again to move west. Precisely why he made that decision is not clear, but the ambition that brought him to Kentucky surely helped take him away from the state. Evidently, he still had not done well enough. He began selling his 1,100-acre farm and buying additional horses and slaves. Around 1810 he yet again turned his face westward and southward. He was not thinking, however, of a nearby county or even an adjoining state. Samuel Davis took aim on a site some 600 miles southwest of Christian County, Bayou Teche, in southern Louisiana. With an entourage of wife, children, slaves, and animals, he made the arduous overland trek in about two months. But the supposedly permanent location in Louisiana turned out to be only a temporary halt. After less than a year in that swampy region, pestilential mosquitoes and recurring illnesses among the younger children prompted still another move.

  This time Samuel Davis, now in his mid-fifties, charted a sharply shorter course. The new destination would be only some 100 miles to the north in Wilkinson County in the southwestern corner of Mississippi Territory, which would become in 1817 the state of Mississippi. Samuel Davis located what would be his final stopping place on a small farm two miles east of Woodville, the county seat. The county tax rolls placed him there in 1810.5