Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  The following morning he once again proceeded toward Washington, reaching the national capital on December 26. His physical recovery had only been temporary, however, for he arrived “with a severe cough and considerable fever, which latter became intermittent.” There flulike symptoms confined him to his room at Brown’s Hotel for almost a week. By January 1, 1838, he felt “free of disease,” though the inclement weather made him “fearful of exposure.” Thus, he remained “a prisoner.”39

  Once improved, Davis went to the Capitol to renew his friendship with his old companion of Transylvania and Fort Crawford days, George W. Jones. Now a delegate to Congress from Wisconsin Territory, Jones lived in a boardinghouse on Capitol Hill, as did so many senators and representatives. “Overjoyed” to see his visitor, who yet “look[ed] quite ill,” Jones invited Davis to share his quarters and join his mess at the boardinghouse. When Davis agreed, Jones had his luggage transferred from his hotel. Jones took it upon himself to introduce Davis to a number of political luminaries, including President Martin Van Buren, various senators and congressmen, and members of the cabinet. Davis told his brother that he had attended a public reception at the White House, but on that day, “being weak of body and luke warm of spirit,” he had not been formally presented to the president. Family tradition narrates another visit to the mansion for breakfast with President Van Buren when the two men talked of the army, of politics, and of Davis’s shoes made in New Orleans, which the president greatly admired.40

  Although Jefferson Davis certainly enjoyed his reunion with George Jones and meeting new people who made him a part of their social life, one occasion led to a serious accident. Davis went to a “large party” with Jones and Senators William Allen of Ohio and Lewis Linn of Missouri. About midnight Jones and Linn decided to go home. Searching for their comrades, they found them in “the banqueting room” still eating, drinking, and having a good time. Even so, they all decided to leave—Davis and Allen in a carriage with Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. After reaching Crittenden’s abode, Allen stated, he and Davis decided to go the rest of the way on foot, walking up Capitol Hill in order to “digest our supper and wine.” As they started up the hill with Allen in the lead, they missed the bridge spanning Tiber Creek (which at that time flowed just beyond First Street not far up the hill) and plunged into the creek. In Allen’s words, “Davis fell headforemost upon the stones and was nearly killed.” Though inebriated, Allen managed to get Davis back to Jones’s room. When he arrived, Davis had “blood, mud, and water trickling down [his] face.” Alarmed at Davis’s cuts and his bleeding, Jones roused Linn, a physician as well as a senator, who treated the “mute” Davis and dressed “the terrible wounds on his head.” The next morning when Jones tried to wake the injured man, he found Davis “speechless and almost dead,” and called Dr. Linn. Immediately, the doctor responded and used camphor and laudanum, “soon restoring him to consciousness and life again.” According to Jones, Dr. Linn believed that without prompt treatment Davis would have died. Whether that diagnosis was correct is impossible to ascertain, but in all likelihood the fall resulted in a concussion as well as lacerations.41

  In this instance Jefferson Davis had obviously imbibed too much alcohol, though in later years both Jones and Davis’s widow insisted that he never drank to excess. Yet Senator Allen, whom Jones described as drunk, admitted that both he and Davis needed the fateful walk to help them handle their consumption of food and drink. In his thirtieth year Jefferson Davis still enjoyed a good time that included parties and spirits. He was also fond of smoking a pipe, at least since army days. One army chum reminisced about Davis “sucking the cob” at Jefferson Barracks. In the future Davis did seem to keep his drinking under control, though always taking pleasure in a glass of whiskey. Relishing his pipes and cigars throughout his life, Davis never gave up smoking despite his recurring bronchial problems.42

  Not all of Davis’s northern activities revolved around social events, however. The record does not reveal the full motives behind this extensive trip, yet one purpose is apparent. Once again, he was thinking about the army. Although the extant documents are silent on exactly what caused him to reconsider the decision he made in 1835 to resign his commission, they do make clear that he was rethinking that choice. By all accounts his career as a planter had begun auspiciously; business associates and relatives, including Joseph, talked about his success in his new work. Perhaps, then, he wanted to remove himself physically and emotionally from the scene of his great sadness.43

  Talk abounded that in 1838 Congress might add three new regiments to the army, and unquestionably Davis wanted to position himself to receive a commission in one of them. From Washington he described to Joseph, obviously privy to his intentions, his efforts to accomplish this goal. “Tomorrow I hope I shall be able to call on such persons as I know in public life here and adding the Missi. delegation to whom I must become known, review the whole & then endeavor to estimate what influence I can bring to bear on my purpose.” In April 1838 Congress did augment the size of the army, but by only one regiment, not three. Whether that smaller increase adversely affected Davis’s chances is unknown, but no appointment ever came to him.44

  With the arrival of spring, Davis bade his farewells and set out for Mississippi, returning by the western route. Leaving Washington on April 5, he first went north to Philadelphia, then west to Pittsburgh. There he boarded a steamboat for the trip down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and back to Davis Bend and Brierfield.45

  At home Davis did not devote all of his time to learning about the cultivation of cotton and the management of slaves. In his words, “located in a very retired place … the cane break in which I lived,” he undertook the ambitious reading program that as a young army officer he had outlined to his sister Lucinda. Books were available in Joseph’s richly stocked library, which both brothers undoubtedly kept adding to.46

  In this library political economy and political philosophy held a central place. From the British giants John Locke and Adam Smith to the American founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Davis sought to understand the founding principles of his country. He also immersed himself in the classic legal treatises by the Englishman Sir William Blackstone and the American James Kent. Legislative and congressional debates, along with newspapers and other periodicals, both American and British, kept him abreast of contemporary political events and thought.

  Jefferson Davis as a young man.

  Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (photo credit i4.3)

  He did not overlook literature. Renewing his acquaintance with Latin authors, he went on to consume Shakespeare and other English writers such as Lord Byron and Oliver Goldsmith. Two special favorites were the notable Scotsmen Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. In addition, he spent considerable time with the Bible, committing a substantial portion of it to memory. His correspondence began to contain literary quotations. Borrowing from Burns, he began one letter: “I long hae thought my honored friend A something to hae sent ye.”47

  At the same time Jefferson Davis was absorbing the printed page, he was also engaged in an ongoing colloquy with Joseph. The two brothers—surrogate father and surrogate son—spent many hours discussing numerous topics besides agriculture and slaves. Indicating his respect for Jefferson, Joseph consulted him on investment strategy. Both men were avid admirers of horses and had superb animals. While traveling, Joseph described in detail the magnificent “Natures Nobles” he saw on a horse farm in Kentucky.

  Politics occupied a central place in the brothers’ deliberations. Although Joseph had not been in public office for many years, he retained an active interest in Mississippi and national politics. Jefferson, of course, had never previously been involved in politics, but he came to share Joseph’s fascination. The course of the Mississippi legislature and the outcome of state elections keenly interested them. In Washington in the winter of 1838, Jefferson evinced interest in congressi
onal goings-on and enjoyed the company of politicians, both old friends, like George Jones, and new acquaintances.

  Slavery as a political question also came under the brothers’ scrutiny. Jefferson reported on the abolition-petition controversy that was generating so much heated debate in Congress. Events much closer to home greatly upset Joseph. On hearing speeches in Kentucky urging local planters to reduce their slave population and not tie their futures to “the Cotton planters and Sugar planters” farther south, he was so distressed that he wanted to respond personally. “You may readily Suppose the feelin[gs],” he wrote Jefferson, “of any Southern man on hearing Such principles in Such a place.”48

  At this time a strong partisan rivalry between the Democratic and Whig parties divided the country and Mississippi. The Davis brothers lined up with the Democrats, though the record does not reveal the genesis of their party loyalty. It is reasonable to assume that Joseph made his choice first, before Jefferson, and that he had an influence on his youngest sibling’s decision. Without doubt, the person of Andrew Jackson was a formative force. The Davis family had been admirers of Jackson at least since the Battle of New Orleans, and for Jefferson the general who became president had been a hero since childhood. As a United States senator, Davis recalled that the first vote he ever cast was for Jackson for president.49

  Additionally, both Davises saw Jackson’s Democratic party as a bastion of the states’ rights political philosophy they associated with their political saint, Thomas Jefferson. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 composed by Jefferson and his comrade James Madison became their political creed. The Resolutions emphasized states’ rights, limited federal powers, and strict construction of the Constitution. The Davis brothers disliked the views of Jefferson’s arch-antagonist Alexander Hamilton, whom they perceived as the great advocate of federal power and a broad or loose interpretation of the Constitution. For them the Whig party represented a continuation of Hamilton’s political and constitutional views.50

  The Davises made a logical choice. The Whig party did not in general champion states’ rights, though in the late 1830s there were some states’ rights Whigs in Mississippi and other southern states. Still, most states’ rights stalwarts dressed in the Democratic uniform, and their number increased after the rapprochement in 1837 between the most prominent states’ rights politician, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, and the Democratic party. The Calhoun-Democratic alliance had a direct impact in Mississippi, where it ensured that the Democratic party would be the majority party in the state.

  In their home county, however, the Davis brothers found themselves in the minority. Dominated by wealthy planters, Warren County was a Whig stronghold, as were the other rich cotton counties along the Mississippi south to Adams County and Natchez. Unlike the Davises, most rich slaveowners in the river counties subscribed to Whig economic and financial policies and did not become excited by the doctrine of states’ rights and strict construction. They kept their counties in the Whig column.51

  The documentary record provides little information on Jefferson Davis’s early attitudes on specific issues. After he became a senator, he told a friendly newspaper editor that up to 1837 he had taken no part in politics except to vote. Later in life he declared that he had made up his mind on one momentous issue. If the Nullification Crisis between South Carolina and the United States government in 1832–33 had resulted in armed conflict, he had, he maintained, decided to resign from the army rather than participate in a war against a state. The crisis, of course, was resolved without violence; so Davis never had to confront that decision.52

  Nothing charts precisely the growth of Jefferson Davis’s interest in becoming more than a political spectator. After expressing his doubts about President Van Buren’s financial policy in an 1839 letter to George Jones, an obviously self-conscious Davis remarked, “You perceive that when I write of Politics I am out of my element and naturally slip back to seeding and ploughing.…” Yet politics did attract him. Joseph’s wealth and prominence would certainly give Jefferson an immediate identity among Warren County Democrats, but anything beyond that entrée would necessitate his own effort.53

  He began inconspicuously. In August 1840 he became more than an onlooker when he attended a Democratic meeting in Vicksburg and wound up being named as one of around 100 delegates to the party’s state convention in Jackson. Two years later he once again found himself chosen to attend the gathering of Democrats in Jackson, and in 1843 he traveled all the way along the political road from observer to participant.54

  At age thirty-five, Jefferson Davis became the Democratic candidate for the state House of Representatives from Warren County and Vicksburg. The party had not intended to sponsor him, but when its original choice ran into difficulty with certain groups, Warren County Democrats decided to make a change, even though the election was rapidly approaching. Less than a week before the balloting, the county convention on November 1, 1843, turned to the untried Davis for its standard-bearer. Even though he knew that he faced an extremely tough contest in heavily Whig Warren, Davis readily accepted the nomination. Later, he admitted that he expected to lose, but despite that conviction he leaped at the chance to make the race.55

  He made a spirited run. It was now only a few days before the balloting, so little time remained for campaigning. The Democratic paper in Vicksburg praised Davis as “a sterling Democrat,” who would make an excellent legislator. Even the Whigs recognized him as an intelligent and honorable man, and they certainly took his candidacy seriously, for they brought out their biggest name, not Davis’s actual opponent, for the only speaking engagement. Seargent S. Prentiss, a Vicksburg attorney famed as an orator, spoke for his side.56

  The speeches, delivered at the courthouse in Vicksburg on the very day of the election, November 5, presented contrasting styles. Although the arrangement was for each man to have fifteen minutes, Prentiss told Davis that he could never hold to such a limitation. Davis agreed that Prentiss could extend his time, provided that he stayed on the subject. The “great stump orator” held the podium and the crowd for three hours with a speech that even the Democrats called a “brilliant, dazzling thing.” Davis himself remembered that Prentiss argued “closely and powerfully.” Still, undaunted by his opponent’s performance, Davis rose and, according to his partisans, “successfully replied” with a “classical and chaste” speech of thirty minutes in which he “[m]aintained his position.” Obviously, he knew he could not match Prentiss’s fireworks, but his exertions satisfied his supporters.57

  The only substantive matter discussed in the debate was the repudiation question, the defining political issue in Mississippi from the late 1830s to the mid-1840s. In the economic boom of the 1830s, Mississippians of all political persuasions clamored for banks to provide desperately needed credit, and by 1837 the state had chartered twenty-seven banks. In that year the legislature created the Mississippi Union Bank, “a quasi-official state institution.” To ensure its success the legislature pledged the faith of the state through the issuance of $15.5 million to provide part of the necessary start-up money. As required by the state constitution for any measure that called for financial backing by the state, the bill came back before legislators in 1838. Once more it was approved, but with a supplement that called for the governor to purchase $5 million of bank stock, the money to be raised by the sale of state bonds. This act changed the relationship between the state and the bank; the state became a stockholder, not simply a backer of the bank. Despite this significant alteration, the amended charter did not return to the legislature in 1839 for a second approval.58

  When the economic collapse caused by the Panic of 1837 hit Mississippi, many Democrats wanted to refuse to pay the Union Bank bonds. They cried for repudiation to preclude the taxation of hardworking, struggling Mississippians to pay bondholders, most of whom resided in the Northeast or in England. Whigs countered that the faith and good name of the state were on the line. A contract ent
ered into by the state, they argued, had the same legal force as a contract between two private partners; as a result, repudiation meant dishonor.

  By the time of Jefferson Davis’s initial race, the dispute had been decided by the Mississippi legislature’s repudiation of the debt. Still, the topic of repudiation retained both its volatility and its partisan nature. Among the Democrats, however, a minority believed the bonds legitimate. Through this political minefield the novice Jefferson Davis navigated carefully. Although he did think payment of the bonds illegal, he did not support legislative repudiation. Instead, he insisted that the courts provided the proper forum to settle the matter. Because the Mississippi constitution permitted the state to be sued, Davis and others argued that the anti-bond forces could go to court claiming that the failure of the amended charter to go before two legislatures made it unconstitutional. At some political risk, Davis adhered to this stand. He never backed the majority Democratic position of legislative repudiation, though he was placed in that camp by enemies, especially during the Civil War. Almost to the end of his life he angrily denounced those who branded him a repudiator.59

  In his single recorded campaign appearance Davis stated his case against Prentiss, who attacked the Democratic party as the haven of repudiation. In all probability the words of neither Prentiss nor Davis had much effect on the outcome of the election because as it traditionally did, Warren County went Whig. Davis garnered 512 votes to 685 for his victorious Whig opponent.60