2008 The Year of Jefferson Davis
Song "Confederate March"
“It was a Monday in Washington, January 21; Jefferson Davis rose from his seat in the Senate. South Carolina had left the Union a month before, followed by Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama, which seceded at the rate of one a day during the second week of the new year”1. The resignation of Jeff Davis from the Senate was twelve days after his beloved state had seceded from Union. After his farewell speech to the Senate he left the crowded chamber and with his head lowered , went out into the street. That night Mrs. Davis heard him pacing the floor. “May God have us in His holy keeping,” she heard him say over and over as he paced, “and grant that before it is too late, peaceful councils may prevail.” He sent his wife home and he left Washington a short time later.
February 10: he and Mrs. Davis were out in the garden, cutting a rose bush in the early blue spring weather, when a messenger approached with a telegram in his hand. In that moment of painful silence he seemed stricken; his face took on a look of calamity,. Then he read the message to his wife. It was headed “Montgomery, Alabama,” and dated the day before.
Sir:
We are directed to inform you that you are this day unanimously elected President of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America, and to request you to come to Montgomery immediately. We send also a special messenger. Do not wait for him.
R. Toombs,
R. Barnwell Rhett…2
He spoke of it, Mrs. Davis said, “as a man might speak of a sentence of death.”
Thus began a new chapter in the life of Jefferson Finis Davis.
Davis was born in Christian County (now Todd), Kentucky, June 3,1808 and died in New Orleans, La,. December 5, 1889. He was born not far from Abraham Lincoln in time or distance, the only President of the Confederacy was a decorated war veteran and politician. He graduated West Point in 1828 and married the daughter of Zachary Taylor in 1835. She died shortly thereafter.
In 1845 Davis married Varina Howell, the daughter of a Mississippi aristocrat and plantation owner He successfully ran for the U. S. House of Representatives, only to resign in 1846 to join his former father-in-law in Texas preparing for the Mexican-American War. Leading a regiment from Mississippi, Davis held his position at Buena Vista thanks to some expert artillery work by a young captain named Braxton Bragg saving Zachary Taylor from defeat.
Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America on February 18, 1861 on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol. A portion of his inaugural address follows:
“Gentlemen of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, Friends and Fellow-Citizens/: Called to the difficult and responsible station of Chief Executive of the Provisional Government which you have instituted, I approach the discharge of the duties assigned to me with an humble distrust of my abilities, but with a sustaining confidence in the wisdom of those who are to guide and to aid me in the administration of public affairs, and an abiding faith in the virtue and patriotism of the people. Looking forward to the speedy establishment of a permanent government to take the place of this, and which by its greater moral and physical power will be better able to combat with the many difficulties which arise from the conflicting interests of separate nations, I enter upon the duties of the office to which I have been chosen with the hope that the beginning of our career as a Confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the separate existence and independence which we have asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence, intend to maintain…..3
In conformity with a resolution of the Confederate Congress, Davis immediately appointed a Peace Commission to resolve the Confederacy's differences with the Union. In March 1861, before the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the Commission was to travel to Washington, D.C., to offer to pay for any Federal property on Southern soil, as well as the Southern portion of the national debt, but it was not authorized to discuss terms for reunion. He appointed General P.G.T. Beauregard to command Confederate troops in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina. He approved the Cabinet decision to bombard Fort Sumter, which started the war between the states. When Virginia switched from neutrality and joined the Confederacy, he moved his government to Richmond, Virginia, in May 1861. Davis and his family took up his residence there at the White House of the Confederacy in late May.