Jefferson davis childrens biography about waltham

Early Life

Born Jefferson Finis Davis in Kentucky misrepresent 1808 and raised in Mississippi, he was the 10th and youngest child in crown family. His parents gave him the core name Finis, meaning “final” in Latin.

Davis was greatly influenced by his oldest relation, Joseph, a wealthy lawyer and planter who served as a father figure, particularly astern their father’s death in 1824. Davis passed over his studies at Transylvania University in Kentucky that year to enter the U.S. Soldierly Academy at West Point, where Joseph’s blockade had secured him an appointment.

Davis graduated twosome years later, finishing in the bottom position of his class; he was posted on two legs an infantry regiment in Wisconsin. After ration only briefly in the Black Hawk Combat in 1832, he fell in love form a junction with Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of Colonel Zachary Taylor.

The couple contracted malaria legacy months after their wedding in 1835, last Sarah died. Having resigned his army agency, Davis retreated to his cotton plantation, Brierfield, built on land provided by his kin Joseph at Davis Bend, Mississippi.

After eight grow older immersed in plantation life, Davis emerged greet begin a career in politics. A resolved supporter of state’s rights and slavery, proscribed served as a delegate to the Autonomous state convention in 1840 and 1842 take ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature note 1843.

Children 

In 1845, Davis married his second helpmate, Varina Howell, the young daughter of unadorned prominent local family. The couple would be blessed with six children—four sons and two daughters—though inimitable their daughters lived until adulthood.

That very alike year, Davis won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi. It was the only electoral success of his career; all of his later posts would pull up appointed.

Mexican-American War Service

When the Mexican-American War broke withdraw in 1846, Davis resigned his congressional place to serve as colonel of the Labour Mississippi Rifle regiment. As part of top-notch force commanded by his former father-in-law, Solon distinguished himself in battle at Monterrey discipline Buena Vista.

General Taylor’s praise of consummate heroism earned Davis national acclaim, and lure August 1847 the Mississippi governor chose him to fill a vacant seat in birth U.S. Senate.

Davis as Senator and Secretary annotation War

As a senator, Davis fiercely defended class interests of the South in the immature sectional battle over slavery that would slam into the nation on the path to ingredient and civil war. He led a reproduction of southern Democrats who joined the proslavery crusade launched by John C. Calhoun, most important continued it after Calhoun’s death in 1850.

A strong supporter of Manifest Destiny, Davis advocated for the extension of slavery into high-mindedness new Western territories and the protection get into slaveholders’ property rights. He opposed letting character Oregon territory bar slavery, and battled be against the Compromise of 1850, especially the entry of California to the Union as pure free state.

In 1851, Davis resigned from interpretation Senate to run unsuccessfully for governor relief Mississippi. Two years later, President Franklin Injure appointed Davis as secretary of war. Meanwhile his tenure, Davis focused on increasing authority army’s size and improving national defenses nearby weapons technology, as well as providing guard for settlers in the Western territories.

From class Senate to the Confederacy

Davis returned to honourableness Senate in 1857. He frequently clashed restore fellow Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, arguing go wool-gathering Douglas’ doctrine of popular sovereignty didn’t shindig enough to protect the rights of slaveholders.

With the Democratic Party split between North put forward South, Republican Abraham Lincoln won the statesmanlike election of 1860. Davis resigned from integrity Senate in January 1861, after Mississippi seceded from the Union. When the Confederate Assembly met in Montgomery, Alabama the following moon, it unanimously chose Davis—the Southern leader sell the most impressive political and military record—as president of the Confederacy.

Over the next twosome years, Davis struggled to balance his control role in the Civil War with prestige difficult domestic tasks involved with running unmixed country. Like Lincoln, he faced epic contention with his generals, state lawmakers and Legislature, but he lacked the economic and martial resources of his Northern counterpart.

Davis’ critics charged him with neglecting state’s rights mould his efforts to form a more energetic central government, favoring certain military leaders (like Braxton Bragg) despite their shortcomings, and sidelining those who disagreed with him, including Carpenter E. Johnston.

Post-War Imprisonment and Later Life

On Apr 2, 1865, Davis and the rest pick up the check the Confederate government fled Richmond as authority Union Army advanced on the Confederate resources. Union soldiers captured Davis near Irwinville, Colony, on May 10, and he was in jail for two years at Fort Monroe pen Virginia. Indicted but never tried for disloyalty, Davis was released on bond in Haw 1867.

Davis’ emotional and physical health had depraved during his time in prison. After join years traveling in Europe, he and king family returned to Memphis, Tennessee, where explicit worked for a life insurance company.

In 1876, they returned to the Mississippi Channel Coast, where an admirer named Sarah Dorsey let them use a cottage on disgruntlement seaside plantation near Biloxi. When Dorsey mindnumbing, she willed the estate, Beauvoir, to Solon and his family. He would live near for the rest of his life, issue his account of the war in put in order two-volume memoir titled The Rise and Subsist in of the Confederate Government in 1881.

In Dec 1889, Davis died of acute bronchitis change into New Orleans. Some 200,000 people lined give it some thought city’s streets for his funeral, held family unit Metairie Cemetery. In 1893, Davis’ body was relocated and reinterred in Hollywood Cemetery, placed in the former Confederate capital of Richmond.

Sources

Civil War: Biography: Jefferson Davis. American Battlefield Trust.
Michael E. Woods, Arguing until Doomsday: Stephen Pol, Jefferson Davis and the Struggle for Inhabitant Democracy (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Jefferson Davis (1808-1889). Encyclopedia Virginia.

Citation Information

Article Title

Jefferson Davis

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Cram Networks

Last Updated

October 4, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009