Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Finally, the possibility of obtaining a decent education had opened in Wilkinson County with the organization of the Wilkinson County Academy, headed by John A. Shaw from Boston. No teacher like Shaw had ever before appeared in Wilkinson County. He had nothing in common with the previous masters of the three R’s. Samuel Davis brought Jefferson back to Poplar Grove and placed him in the new academy. For the next five years Jefferson lived at home and regularly attended John Shaw’s school.

  John Shaw left a marked imprint on his young student. Davis saw him as “the first of a new class of teachers in our neighborhood.” Others of similar ability followed Shaw and brought more effective teaching, which greatly improved the performance of their students. Calling Shaw “a scholarly man” and “a quiet, just man,” Davis professed, “I am sure he taught me more in the time I was with him than I ever learned from any one else.”24

  Shaw did not succeed in every undertaking. To augment his teaching income, he took on the task of preaching every Sunday. But because Woodville had no church building, he held services in the courthouse. The boys at the academy were required to join the congregation. Before long his students made up his only audience; the adults stopped coming. Asserting that the absence of adult worshippers indicated his ineffectiveness, Shaw gave up his ministerial duties. He then devoted himself totally to the academy. After a time Shaw returned to Massachusetts, but later he ended up in charge of public schools in New Orleans.25

  Despite his later profession of respect and admiration for John Shaw, the youthful Jefferson Davis on one occasion questioned the value of school. He received an assignment that he believed beyond his ability to memorize. Protests to the instructor brought no reduction in the quantity of material assigned. In class the next day young Jefferson had not mastered the subject matter. Upon the threat of sanctions, he took his books, went home, and told his father.

  Samuel Davis offered the rebellious scholar an alternative. “Of course, it is for you to elect whether you will work with head or hands,” father informed son. But he did not stop there: “My son could not be an idler. I want more cotton-pickers and will give you work.” Next morning the recalcitrant student with bag in hand walked to the cotton field. For two days he participated in the hot, hard physical labor with the other cotton pickers, including slaves. As Davis remembered, the experience persuaded him that school was “the lesser evil.” Upon leaving the field on the second day, he told his father of his new view. Samuel Davis listened to the resigning farmhand with “perfect seriousness.” Then he spoke about “the disadvantages” of a man “gently bred” working as a laborer. He concluded by telling his son that if he felt the same way tomorrow, he should return to the classroom. That is precisely what Jefferson Davis did. And he suffered no consequences, for the teacher took no notice of his absence—in Jefferson’s opinion, because his father had so arranged it.26

  Jefferson Davis pursued his studies at the Wilkinson County Academy until his early teenage years. By the spring of 1823 it was decided that for his education to progress he would have to enter a real college. Going to college meant, of course, that once again he would have to leave home and Woodville. Without doubt Samuel Davis participated in this decision; he had always desired the best possible education for his youngest son. By this time, however, his eldest, Joseph, twenty-four years older than his brother Jefferson, was also probably involved. Joseph had become a prominent and prosperous attorney in Natchez as well as a substantial landowner. At the same time, Samuel Davis’s financial fortunes were in decline. He was even unable to complete payment for the land he had bought; to aid his father, Joseph in 1822 had purchased the family farm. Thus, Joseph’s financial support as well as advice was critical. Never hesitating to profess his praise and respect for Joseph, Jefferson later described him as “my beau ideal when I was a boy,” who became “my mentor and greatest benefactor.” That relationship began even before Samuel Davis’s death in 1824. In 1823, the Davises concurred. For the best collegiate opportunity the fourteen-year-old Jefferson would retrace his steps to the state of his birth.27

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Put Away the Grog”

  The Davises looked toward Kentucky because no colleges existed in Mississippi. Moreover, Transylvania University in Lexington had acquired a sterling reputation in much of the West. With the decision made about Transylvania, the youthful Jefferson sometime in the late winter or early spring of 1823 began his second trip northward. Unlike his first time seven years earlier, the historical record is silent on this second journey. But at some point, after the spring semester had already begun, the teenager reached Lexington.

  In the early 1820s, Lexington, in the center of the rich Bluegrass region, was an impressive place, and the young Mississippi farm boy surely took note. Observers tried to capture the appeal and the distinctiveness of both the setting and the town. “Poetry cannot paint groves more beautiful, or fields more luxuriant,” wrote one; “the country neither hilly nor gentle; but gently waving.” Some 5,000 people resided in a town where “the streets are broad, straight, paved, clean and have rows of trees on each side.” Most of the homes were of brick, with a “rural and charming appearance.” In addition to its attractiveness, Lexington was also a cosmopolitan town, notably so for a community of its size. The Athenaeum stocked newspapers and periodicals from East Coast cities. The public library held 6,000 books; in addition, the library at Transylvania contained more than 5,000 volumes, and the two debating societies owned another 1,000.1

  Transylvania contributed the vitality and resources of a flourishing institution of higher learning. By the time Davis entered, Transylvania had become a “proud university” with some 400 students—an enrollment that matched the numbers at Princeton and Harvard. The university included a preparatory school and programs in law and medicine, as well as an undergraduate curriculum. It had not always been so. As recently as 1818, Transylvania had been little more than a grammar school with fewer than 80 students. In that year Horace Holley came to Lexington as the school’s new president. Holley, a New England Unitarian minister, worked with zeal and dedication to transform Transylvania. With his energy and sense of purpose, along with generous financial assistance from the state of Kentucky, he succeeded.2

  Presidents of colleges and universities have always been important, but in the antebellum period they were absolutely critical to the welfare of their institutions. The president was not only the chief administrative officer but also a key member of the faculty, who invariably taught the required senior course on moral philosophy that was the capstone of the curriculum. Additionally, he served as the main fund-raiser, the chief public-relations official, and the dean of students. Presidents could make powerful imprints, and Horace Holley surely did. But his success was short-lived; by the late 1820s sectarian disputes and political difficulties led to Holley’s departure and the decline of Transylvania. Still, for a time, Horace Holley turned Transylvania into a thriving and sophisticated university that offered its students a first-class education. Such it was when Jefferson Davis arrived. In fact, it was as much a university as any other place in the United States. The college building, “a handsome edifice of three stories surmounted by a tall and ornamental cupola, affording not only capacious lecture and recitation rooms, etc., but numerous apartments for students,” formed the centerpiece of the campus. On three sides stood the fine brick homes and broad, paved streets so characteristic of Lexington. To the north of the campus extended the cultivated fields and beautiful rolling countryside of the Bluegrass. Leading citizens of the area, including the eminent political figure Henry Clay, sat on the board of trustees.3

  Holley recognized, of course, that an impressive academic building and notable trustees were not enough, that the kind of university he envisioned required a quality faculty and superb scholarly resources. And he obtained both. As early as 1821 he sent a faculty member to Europe with $17,000 to purchase books. The scientific equipment was “exceptionally complete for the
time,” including botanical microscopes, an achromatic telescope, magnets, barometers, prisms, a model of a human figure for anatomy, and more than 40,000 botanical and natural history specimens. As professor of philosophy and belles lettres, Holley led a faculty that in 1823 totaled thirteen members covering ancient languages, modern languages, history, mathematics, natural history, botany, chemistry, natural philosophy, anatomy, surgery, medicine, obstetrics and diseases of women, common and statute law, and national and civil law.4

  To take advantage of the university that Holley had built, students had to meet entrance requirements and pay fees. Tuition was $35, along with a $5 registration fee. Annual expenses for board, lodging, fuel, lights, and laundry were estimated at $105. The requirements for admission, like those at most colleges of the day, emphasized the classical languages. Applicants must have a “good knowledge” of Greek and Latin grammar, the Greek New Testament, Collectanea Graeca Minora, Virgil, the orations of Cicero and Sallust. Familiarity with ancient and modern geography was expected. Finally, the prospective student had to understand common arithmetic.

  Fourteen-year-old Jefferson Davis officially encountered Transylvania when he faced the entrance tests. Because of his solid background in the classical languages, the Greek and Latin portions posed him no problems. Nothing gave him difficulty but the arithmetic; there his experience was altogether different. The faculty found him inadequately prepared for admission to the sophomore class, Jefferson’s wish. Explaining his shortcomings in later years, Davis maintained that mathematics had not been stressed in Wilkinson County Academy. The faculty, not concerned with the cause of the deficiency, decided that he must join the freshman class. Davis recalled that this decision “quite disappointed” him. It meant that he would be placed with mostly younger boys, whereas heretofore he had been grouped with older boys. “I felt my pride offended,” he remembered. He obviously made his feelings known in a persuasive way, for the mathematics professor agreed to tutor him privately for the remainder of the session and through the summer. With that proviso the faculty allowed him into the sophomore class, albeit on probation. In the fall he would be examined for full admission to the junior class; during the spring and summer Jefferson did the necessary extra work. At the beginning of the fall semester he passed the requisite examination and became a full-fledged junior.5

  The undergraduate Jefferson Davis flourished at Transylvania. He received an excellent classical education in ancient languages, history, and science. Though arduous, the prescribed daily schedule certainly did not occupy all of a student’s time. At daybreak, collegians had to attend daily prayer in the chapel. Classes dominated the morning, with dinner at 2 p.m. Afternoons were mostly free, and many students participated in athletics. Davis took some of that time for private lessons in French and dance.6

  As an old man, Davis spoke fondly of certain classes and professors. He always believed the pronunciation of Greek and Latin taught by his classics professor to be “the purest and best of our time.” He remembered his history professor, the Reverend Robert H. Bishop, a Scotsman with a broad accent, a devout Presbyterian, as a man of “large attainments and very varied knowledge,” whose lectures impressed him for “their wide information [and] for their keen appreciation of the characteristics of mankind.” Professor Bishop had a memorable classroom style. Inattentive or unprepared students could spark an explosion. “Ye’re like Jacks, and if you can’t learn through the ears you shall learn through the back.”7

  At the end of his junior year in June 1824, Jefferson took examinations with his classmates. A public event, the examinations drew many townspeople who gathered to watch and hear the faculty test the students. The testing began at 10 a.m., adjourned at 1 p.m. for dinner, resumed at 3 p.m., and continued until sunset. Acquitting himself with distinction, Davis received honors and was chosen to give an address at the upcoming junior class exhibition scheduled for June 18. He entitled the speech “An Address on Friendship.” No record of his remarks survives, but he evidently made a positive impression in his first appearance at a public rostrum. A local newspaper reported: “Davis on friendship made friends of the hearers.”8

  Jefferson succeeded socially as well as academically at Transylvania. He made friends, including people he would later work with in Congress like David Rice Atchison, who became a senator from Missouri. George W. Jones of Indiana, a future senator from Iowa, remained devoted to Davis until Davis’s death. Davis joined the Union-Philosophical Society, one of two debating societies at the university. Sponsoring dinners with wine, they provided social along with intellectual activities.9

  Davis was well liked. Jones, though surely a partisan observer, recalled that Davis “was considered the best looking as he was the most intelligent and best loved student in the University.” Perhaps long affection colored Jones’s opinion. But at a celebration held by the Union-Philosophical Society just seven months after Davis had departed for West Point, a classmate offered a toast—“To the health and prosperity of Jefferson Davis, late a student of Transylvania University, now a cadet at West Point: may he become the pride of our country and the idol of our army.”10

  At Transylvania, Jefferson Davis witnessed more than the world of students. He lived with the family of Joseph Ficklin in their brick home on the southwestern corner of High and Limestone Streets. A friend of the Davis family, Ficklin provided the teenaged Jefferson a home away from home. Davis never forgot Ficklin, whom he later visited and called his “friend and guardian” while at Transylvania. Several other students boarded at the Ficklin home, which also served as a center of community activity. As postmaster and a newspaper editor, Ficklin was a well-known Lexingtonian, who had numerous callers. His residence was a lively place.11

  In June 1824 the world seemed right with the sixteen-year-old Jefferson Davis. He had prospered at Transylvania, succeeding both in the classroom and with his fellow students. This agreeable situation lasted but fleetingly, however. In July he learned that his father had died. It was a terrible blow. “You must imagine,” he explained to his sister-in-law Susannah, “I cannot describe the shock my feelings sustained, at that sad intelligence.” Jefferson respected and loved his father, and Samuel Davis’s recent and growing financial problems had troubled his youngest child. Writing to his sister Amanda, the youthful Jefferson gave full expression to these feelings. “He was a parent ever dear to me, but rendered more (if possible) by the disastrous storms that attended the winter of his old age.”12

  Samuel Davis’s quest for prosperity, which carried him hundreds of miles and underlay several new starts, ended calamitously. Sometime after 1820 his fortunes began a headlong retreat. He had to sell his land to Joseph. Then he made an arduous journey to Philadelphia, searching vainly to recoup some of his lost inheritance from his grandfather Davis. From Philadelphia in the summer of 1823, a distressed father wrote his college-student son a melancholy letter of what might have been. “If I had applied some thirty year ago,” Samuel grieved, “I might now have been immensely rich but I fear all is lost here by the lapse of time.” Yet Samuel, his old drive still flickering, pledged, “I shall continue to search every thing to the extent before I leave here which will likely be late in Aug. or early in Septr.”13

  The search yielded nothing. Back in Mississippi, Samuel tried to work his farm, now owned by Joseph, with his third son, also named Samuel, but “some Misunderstanding” between father and son wrecked that effort. Following that debacle, the father headed for his son Joseph’s new plantation some 100 miles north in Warren County fronting the river. En route, he became sick with fever and died on July 4 shortly after reaching his destination. Samuel Davis was buried there, not back at Poplar Grove.14

  Although Samuel did not leave a substantial estate, he still provided Jefferson with a powerful legacy. Samuel Davis’s belief in education, his insistence on it, surely helped shape his youngest child. In that generally sad letter from Philadelphia, the father voiced delight that the son was in college, and
expounded on that: “Remember the short lessons of instruction offered you before our parting use every possible means to acquire usefull knowledge as knowledge is power the want of which has brought mischiefs and misery on your father in old age. That you may be happy & shine in society when your father is beyond the reach of harm is the most ardent desire of his heart.”15

  Samuel Davis’s death had a profound impact on the youthful Jefferson. He not only lost his father at an impressionable age; his oldest brother became entrenched as a surrogate father. Joseph, as noted earlier, had already assumed critical importance in Jefferson’s life, for he was surely involved in the decision to send the boy to Transylvania. Now, however, Joseph had a different design. Just as committed to Jefferson’s education as their father had been, Joseph was also quite ambitious for his youngest brother. Clearly, Transylvania did not fulfill his hopes. He obtained through Secretary of War John C. Calhoun an appointment for Jefferson to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

  Jefferson’s reaction to Joseph’s plans and the possibility of West Point was not surprising. He had surely known for some time about the exertions to gain him an appointment, though he did not receive his official notification, dated March 11, until the summer of 1824. Once notified, Jefferson formally accepted the appointment, though not without reluctance. As a triumphant rising senior, he really did not want to leave Lexington and Transylvania for West Point, where he would enter a completely new environment and have to begin as a freshman.16

  “It was no desire of mine to go,” he admitted to his sister Amanda, but still he was a dutiful sixteen-year-old who respected the wishes of his oldest brother-become-father. Acknowledging the dynamics, he confessed to this sister, “as Brother Joe evinced some anxiety for me to do so, I was not disposed to object.” Making clear that he understood the seriousness of the change impending in his life with the move to West Point, Jefferson recognized that “I will probably remain four years.” At the height of his triumph in Lexington, he headed north and east for another, quite different world.17