 |
Jefferson Davisb. 3 Jun 1807/1808, on a site in Christian County, Kentucky [1] |
| Title: | President of the Confederate States of America |
| Term: | 18 Feb 1861 - 22 Feb 1862 |
| Chronology: | 9 Feb 1861, elected by the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Montgomery, Alabama [2] |
| 18 Feb 1861, sworn in, public ceremony, in front of the State Capitol, Montgomery, Alabama [2] | |
| 22 Feb 1862, expiration of term (Constitution for the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America, Article II, Section 1) [2] | |
| Term: | 22 Feb 1862 - 10 May 1865 |
| Chronology: | 6 Nov 1861, electors appointed/popular voting |
| 4 Dec 1861, elected by electoral college | |
| 22 Feb 1862, sworn in, public ceremony, in front of the State Capitol, Richmond, Virginia [3] | |
| 10 May 1865, ceased to exercise the functions of President after being taking captive by the US troops outside Irwinville, Georgia | |
| Names/titles: | Used middle initial F. as Jefferson F. Davis in 1824-1833 [4] |
| Biography: | |||||||||||
Graduated from the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., in 1828; served in the Black Hawk War in 1832; promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in the First Dragoons in 1833, and served until 1835, when he resigned; married (17 Jun 1835) Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor (president of the United States 4 Mar 1849 - 9 Jul 1850); moved to his plantation, 'Brierfield,' in Warren County, Mississippi, and engaged in cotton planting; elected (4 Nov 1845) as a Democrat to the 29th Congress (sworn in 8 Dec 1845); served until 4 Jul 1846, when he left Washington, D.C., to assume command of the First Regiment of Mississippi Riflemen in the war with Mexico; resigned his seat in the House of Representatives (resignation delivered to the Congress 18 Oct 1846); appointed (10 Aug 1847) to the Senate to fill a vacancy; took seat in the Senate 6 Dec 1847; subsequently elected (11 Jan 1848) and served until 23 Sep 1851, when he resigned; chairman, Committee on Military Affairs (30th - 32nd Congresses); unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Mississippi in 1851; appointed Secretary of War by President Franklin Pierce (sworn in 7 Mar 1853; resigned 4 Mar 1857); served as acting secretary of the navy (1 Jun 1853 - 15 Jun 1853); again elected (16 Jan 1856) as a Democrat to the Senate and served from 4 Mar 1857, when he took oath, to 21 Jan 1861, when he withdrew with other secessionist Senators; chairman, Committee on Military Affairs and the Militia (35th and 36th Congresses); commissioned major general of the Mississippi State militia (23 Jan 1861); chosen president of the Confederacy by the Congress and inaugurated on 18 Feb 1861; elected president of the Confederacy for a term of six years and inaugurated on George Washington's birthday, 22 Feb 1862; fled the Confederate capital of Richmond on 2 Apr 1865; captured by Union troops in Irwinville, Georgia, 10 May 1865; imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, indicted for treason, and was paroled in the custody of the court in 1867; returned to Mississippi and spent the remaining years of his life writing. [5][6] |
|||||||||||
| Election results: | |||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Information source: 9 Feb 1861 [2], p. 40; 4 Dec 1861 [3], pp. 8-9. | |||||||||||
| Sources and notes: | |||||||||||
| [1] | It is unclear whether Davis was born in 1807 or 1808, and Davis himself was unsure. He wrote an acquaintance in 1858 that "there has been some controversy about the year of my birth among the older members of my family, and I am not a competent witness in the case, having once supposed the year to have been 1807, I was subsequently corrected by being informed it was 1808, and have rested upon that point because it was just as good, and no better than another." ("The Papers of Jefferson Davis", ed. by Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., and James T. McIntosh, Vol. 1: lxv-lxvi) | ||||||||||
| [2] | "Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865", (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office: 1904), Volume I, p. 40, 63, 904. | ||||||||||
| [3] | "Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861-1865", (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office: 1904), Volume II, p. 15. | ||||||||||
| [4] | From 30 Nov 1824, until mid-1833, Davis' name on official lists and at times his signature included the middle initial "F." The name is not spelled out in full in any known document. In his story of Davis' life, Hudson Strode claimed that the final son born to Samuel and Jane Davis was given the middle name "Finis" because "it seemed unlikely that Jane Davis would ever bear another child" ("Jefferson Davis: American patriot, 1808-1861", by Hudson Strode [New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955], p. 3). The "Finis" myth has been repeated so often that it has become accepted as fact by many scholarly resources, but there is no evidence for it. Davis had been at West Point for at least three months before the middle initial in his name showed up for the first time, on a monthly conduct report. The last known "J. F. Davis" signature is on a note of 3 Oct 1832. As of the publication of Davis' appointment as second lieutenant of Dragoons on 4 May 1833, the "F." had disappeared from official documents as well. | ||||||||||
| [5] | The Papers of Jefferson Davis, a documentary editing project based at Rice University in Houston, Texas (web site). | ||||||||||
| [6] | Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (web site). | ||||||||||
| Image: photograph by Mathew B. Brady, c. 1860. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. | |||||||||||
Main Projects
RSS feed 