Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  When Jefferson Davis was getting underway for Washington, he not only had to deal with an extraordinarily tense family situation but also had to cope with poor health. His war wound had been flaring up and he had suffered from “a severe attack of sickness” marked by fever, most likely malarial. When he made public appearances in Jackson and Vicksburg, observers commented on his “very feeble health.” Even after he reached Washington, his foot remained troublesome. He stood with crutches when he took his oath of office in the Senate chamber on December 6. During the winter his foot did improve, but not until spring did he report, “my health is almost restored.”15

  Even though emotional stress and physical problems plagued him, Brierfield was thriving. Before he got home in June 1848, Joseph let him know that all was well at Brierfield, both crops and slaves. The plantation he had built had become prosperous, with the rich alluvial soil producing bountiful harvests of cotton. During Davis’s stay in Washington, the same arrangements made for his military absence took effect. James Pemberton, his overseer as well as slave, still had responsibility for the operations at Brierfield, under Joseph’s watchful supervision, of course. As senator, Jefferson Davis could rest assured that capable and loyal men, one black, the other white, watched over the major source of his financial well-being.16

  On November 11, 1847, Davis steamed up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg with his senatorial colleague and fellow Democrat Henry S. Foote as traveling companion. Davis and Foote had known each other at least since the campaign of 1844, when both, as rising Democratic stars, served as presidential electors. Although they got along at this point, strains would develop over the next two years, growing into animosity. In a week they reached Cincinnati, where former president John Tyler, who happened to be in the city, came on board their vessel for a visit. Then they continued up the Ohio River and finally headed east, arriving in Washington on November 25. Davis initially registered at Gadsby’s New Hotel on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Third Street, but soon moved to Mrs. Owner’s boardinghouse on Capitol Hill.17

  On December 6, Davis went to the Capitol for his swearing in as a U.S. senator. He entered a Senate chamber that had long been in use and would house the Senate until it moved to newly constructed quarters in the north wing in 1859. A compact, semicircular room, 75 feet at its longest, 45 at both its widest and tallest, this space provided a human-sized home for the sixty senators. The principal light entered from the east side above the vice president’s chair, which sat on an elevated platform; apertures at the top of the dome and a chandelier added illumination. Marble columns of the Doric order formed a screen on either side of the vice president’s post. The senators’ mahogany desks were arranged in concentric semicircles on gradually rising platforms, one long-armed chair and a cuspidor for each. Heat came from open fires—four grates beneath the shelves in the corridor behind the vice president’s place—and from two Franklin stoves near the main entrance. Davis’s desk was located on the far right side of the last row to the right of the vice president, next to his old friend William Allen of Ohio.18

  When he took his Senate seat, the thirty-nine-and-a-half-year-old Jefferson Davis was a vigorous person, though the wound he sustained at Buena Vista yet hobbled him and he was getting over his most recent malarial attack. A young reporter who saw him in the Senate in 1848 pictured him as “handsome, possessing a symmetrical figure, well up to medium size, a piercing but kindly eye, and a gamy chivalric bearing.” This observer, who liked Davis because of his “genial personal kindness,” thought him “a fluent and sometimes an eloquent speaker,” with “a fine, sensuous voice.”19

  Politically, Davis found himself in the majority, for the Democrats had a comfortable lead of seventeen over the rival Whigs, though that party outnumbered the Democrats in the House of Representatives. Not surprisingly, Davis found himself appointed to the Committee on Military Affairs; in addition, he served on the Pension and Library committees as well as on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Viewing the prospects for this first session of the Thirtieth Congress, he saw the war as the major issue. Despite vigorous Whig opposition to the conflict that had developed in 1847, Davis was convinced that under the leadership of President Polk, whom he found optimistic and confident, the Democrats could “discomfit the enemy,” at home as well as in Mexico. One measure that he discounted was the Wilmot Proviso, introduced in Congress back in 1846 by David Wilmot, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, and brought up again in the most recent congressional session. The proviso, which drew overwhelming bipartisan support from northerners in Congress, proposed to prohibit slavery in any territory taken or purchased from Mexico. Davis foresaw no real problems with the measure, a noxious proposition to southerners, predicting that it “will soon be of the things which were.” In this monumental underestimation he may have followed the lead of Zachary Taylor, who had made that judgment while sharing with Davis his opinions on political matters.20

  As a new senator who wanted to remain a senator, Jefferson Davis kept his own political situation in sharp focus. Governor Brown’s naming him to the Senate did not guarantee a lengthy tenure because the legislature meeting in January 1848 would elect a man to finish the two years left in Jesse Speight’s unexpired term. From the moment he accepted the appointment, Davis intended to stand for election, and he very much wanted the legislature to choose him. As he confided to a friend, “I now feel greater interest than I should have done had I remained at home, because to be beaten under present circumstances is to be recalled.”21

  Even though Davis ran as the incumbent with his war hero’s image, victory was not a foregone conclusion. A tradition of Mississippi politics worked against him—dividing the Senate seats between the northern and southern sections of the state. Davis’s senior colleague Foote lived in Jackson, considered in the southern part, and as Davis well knew, some Democrats in northern Mississippi thought their area deserved the position Davis held. They intended to support Roger Barton, an attorney in Holly Springs, who had been in the legislature and had twice before tried for the Senate. Long a champion of Davis, the leading party newspaper, the Jackson Mississippian, publicly refused to take sides and praised both men as “Democrats of the sternest school.”22

  Davis did not sit idly by. Within a week of reaching Washington, he requested that a political associate in Mississippi mail him a “list of Correspondents” because he had not been able to locate “the books and papers” he had left in the capital back in the summer of 1846. In order to keep abreast of state affairs, he also asked that the editor of the Mississippian be reminded to send him the paper. Davis did not focus his attention only on Democrats, however. Aware that many Whig legislators who recognized they could not elect one of their own preferred him to any other Democrat, he made known his pleasure in their support. When Mississippi’s lone Whig congressman, Patrick Tompkins, wrote to inform Davis of rumors that he would refuse Whig backing, Davis answered on the same day that he would happily accept Whig votes because as a senator he represented the entire state, not just his party. Proclaiming that no one could doubt Davis’s partisan credentials, his home county Democratic newspaper asserted that he would never, and should never, make a “quixotic” pledge to spurn Whig aid.23

  When the legislature met, Jefferson Davis overpowered Roger Barton. With the Democrats dominating the body by more than a two-to-one majority, any Democratic candidate who commanded their allegiance would win easily, but if a bitter division wracked their ranks, the thirty-five Whigs could decide the outcome. Caucusing on January 10, 1848, in the Hall of Representatives, the Democratic legislators decided without contention that a majority would be required for nomination and that no one could vote in the caucus unless he pledged to support its nominee before the legislature, guaranteeing, of course, victory for the party’s choice. Because all knew that only Davis and Barton were contestants, the caucus dispensed with formal nominations and proceeded directly to the voting, which it had
agreed to do viva voce rather than by ballot. Davis’s power was unmistakable; he won by 54 to 34, sweeping the south of the state and doing well in the north. In an unusually short time he had moved to a position of remarkable strength in the overwhelmingly dominant political organization in his state. The next day the full legislature chose Davis by acclamation; Whigs as well as Democrats voted for him. A reporter described a crowded Hall of Representatives, with many ladies present, for “Mississippi was about to reward her hero, and the people flocked together to witness the triumphal ceremony.” It was an “extraordinary occurrence,” cried the Mississippian, while proudly proclaiming Senator Davis “the pride and boast of the State at home and abroad.”24

  Secure now that he had been elected in his own right, Davis turned his attention to policy matters. From the outset he involved himself with issues arising out of the ongoing Mexican War. Just over three weeks after taking his seat, he visited the White House along with Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, a senior Democrat, to press President Polk to relieve General Winfield Scott. Davis wanted Zachary Taylor in Scott’s place, and he also relayed to the president information from army friends indicating the Mexican government would welcome a peace mission. Although Polk shared the senators’ unhappiness with Scott, he was unwilling to go with Taylor, and left Scott in command. As for peace, Polk wanted it but had determined more punishment would be required before Mexico would make the territorial concessions he demanded.25

  When Davis began his senatorial duties, deep division on the war, basically following partisan lines, divided both country and Congress. The Whigs were never happy with the conflict and by late 1847, with Mexico City in American hands and the shooting basically stopped, they took the political offensive, attacking the administration for dragging out the war for unwarranted territorial aggrandizement. The Whig-controlled House of Representatives had gone so far as to pass a resolution declaring that the war had been “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States.” Crying for a prompt cessation of hostilities, Whigs had an ally in the nominal Democrat Senator John C. Calhoun, who had never supported what he thought of as an offensive war and who had become deeply concerned by talk among some Democrats of annexing all of Mexico. Facing this combined Whig-Calhoun pressure, and with a public generally yearning for peace, President Polk and his party found themselves forced to defend both intentions and measures.26

  This antiwar opinion underlay the Whig-led attack on the Ten Regiment Bill. With more troops needed in Mexico, the administration wanted Congress to authorize ten additional regiments for the regular army. Accordingly, Senator Cass, chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, reported a bill doing just that. Whigs resisted a larger regular army, which they saw as evidence that Polk had no intention of quickly ending the war. Although they opposed increasing the size of the regular military establishment, the Whigs had no intention of allowing themselves to be accused of failing to provide the forces needed in Mexico. As a result, they called for additional militia units.

  During the Senate debate Davis spoke for the Ten Regiment Bill, though as a proud former commander of militia troops he did not disparage their virtue. He argued that the surest way to convince the Mexican government to negotiate seriously was the rapid augmentation of U.S. forces. Our enemy, he told his fellow senators, could not miss that signal. He made clear that he did not doubt the bravery and fighting ability of citizen-soldiers, but he insisted that the critical question concerned the kind of service intended for these new units. He pointed out that because these troops would perform chiefly garrison and guard duty, regulars would be preferable; they would more readily submit to the necessary discipline than militia volunteers, who should not be “wasted in the mere duties of the sentinel.” Davis maintained that the administration wanted peace, not further combat, but to ensure the commencement of negotiations as well as their satisfactory outcome the U.S. Army would have to continue occupying the territory it had conquered. A month after first giving his views, Davis summarized: “Again, I will state as my reason for wishing to increase our army so largely, the belief that its visible strength must be such as to destroy in the enemy all hope of resistance before he will seriously incline to peace.”27

  Senator Davis did not hesitate to support the president’s war policy, even against the opposition of Calhoun, whom he so admired. In the eyes of many, Polk had made an offensive move by his initial order to General Taylor to advance all the way to the Rio Grande; but Davis countered that because Mexico disputed the American claim to all of Texas, not just the area below the Nueces River, Polk had not acted in a belligerent fashion. The president, Davis insisted, had shown great “forbearance” in his dealings with an intransigent foe. He also denied that either he or the administration desired to take all of Mexico, but some land would have to be given up, and he defended the proposition that if Mexico did “not give us peace willingly, we will coerce a peace.” Denouncing those who branded the war as odious, Davis proclaimed that “the events of this war will live in the history of our country and our race, affording, in all ages to come, proof of the high state of civilization amongst the people who conducted it—proof of the intelligence which pervaded the rank and file who fought its battles—proof of the resources of such a Government as ours, wholly unembarrassed in the midst of war, conquering one nation and feeding another!”28

  During the congressional struggle over the course and future of the war, a peace treaty arrived in Washington. Even though this agreement contained the cession of the territory Polk had gone to war to obtain—chiefly California and New Mexico, which placed more than 500,000 additional square miles under the American flag—the president wanted to reject it. Recognizing the general public desire for peace, however, he concluded that he simply had to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. When the senators voted on March 10 to endorse the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Jefferson Davis cast his ballot for approval, but not before he had tried to alter the stipulated boundary to include much of present-day northern Mexico. Because Mexico was unlikely to accept such a substantive change, Davis was in fact proposing to continue the war so that the Mexicans would be forced to agree to new terms. Although Davis’s effort had the support of several Democratic colleagues, northern as well as southern, it fell far short of obtaining a majority. Attempts by Whigs to delete all territorial acquisitions also failed. After those two futile moves, the Senate ratified the treaty by 38 to 14, with Davis voting aye. The Mexican War was over.29

  The war was not the only question on which Davis discovered himself differing with Calhoun. As a member of the House in 1846, he had refused to follow the great Carolinian’s constitutional justification for federally sponsored improvements on western rivers, finding specious the argument that defined rivers, even the Ohio and Mississippi system, as inland seas. During an April 1848 discussion of an appropriation to repair the Cumberland Island Dam because its disrepair was disrupting shipping in the Ohio River, Davis spoke in favor of spending the money, but only because the federal government had constructed the dam. Although agreeing that the government should pay to maintain what it had built, he took pains to repeat that in general he opposed all internal improvements because they rested upon “an assumption of power not conferred by the Constitution.” He rejected both regulation of commerce and Calhoun’s specific brief on buoys and lighthouses as the basis for this expenditure. His support derived solely from the particular circumstances of this instance.30

  Even though issues of war and peace as well as constitutional interpretation occupied Senator Davis, he did not neglect service to his constituents. He recommended several veterans of the First Mississippi Regiment for army commissions. For others who had served with him he worked to ensure the government’s attention to their applications for bounty lands. Letters soliciting appointments to West Point for young Mississippians received his attention as did the collectorship of customs at Natchez. The editor of the Washington Union, a s
emiofficial organ of the administration, got a note from Senator Davis requesting that he send the newspaper to a Mississippi voter. He also asked Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker to help his father-in-law, William B. Howell, obtain the postmastership in Natchez. As in the House, he still plugged away at trying to get a navy yard for Ship and Cat Islands on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.31

  As the congressional session moved into the summer, Congress and Jefferson Davis confronted directly the issue that would dominate the national legislature over the next two years and would remain at the forefront until it tore the Union apart: slavery in the territories. The question arose in the most unlikely of places, Oregon, which still had no territorial government, even though the treaty with Great Britain had been signed in 1846. Although debate focused initially on Oregon, it aroused such fervor because all recognized that Oregon would serve as a dress rehearsal for the Mexican Cession, California and New Mexico. Tabled since February 1848, the Oregon bill was brought up at the end of May and talked about intermittently for three weeks until an antislavery senator proposed to extend to the territory the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which would bar slavery. Countering, Jefferson Davis offered an amendment to prevent prohibition of slavery in Oregon. Now the Senate riveted its full attention on this vexing and volatile matter. On July 12, Davis rose to defend his proposition; even more important, he would present for the first time in Congress his vision of slavery and the territories, the topic that would occupy so much of his thought over the next dozen years.32