Who is jefferson davis and what did he do

He was injured at the Battle of Buena Vista when he blocked a charge of Mexican swords — an incident that earned him nationwide acclaim. Davis held his Senate seat until and went on to run for the Mississippi governorship, but lost the election.

Explaining the way his position on the Union had evolved during his time in the Senate, Davis once stated, "My devotion to the Union of our fathers had been so often and so publicly declared; I had on the floor of the Senate so defiantly challenged any question of my fidelity to it; my services, civil and military, had now extended through so long a period and were so generally known, that I felt quite assured that no whisperings of envy or ill-will could lead the people of Mississippi to believe that I had dishonored their trust by using the power they had conferred on me to destroy the government to which I was accredited.

Then, as afterward, I regarded the separation of the states as a great, though not the greater evil. In , Davis was appointed secretary of war by President Pierce. He served in that position until when he returned to the Senate. Although opposed to secession, while back in the Senate, he continued to defend the rights of Southern slave states. Davis remained in the Senate until January , resigning when Mississippi left the Union. In conjunction with the formation of the Confederacy, Davis was named president of the Confederate States of America on February 18, On May 10, , he was captured by Union forces near Irwinville, Georgia, and charged with treason.

Davis was imprisoned at Fort Monroe in Virginia from May 22, , to May 13, , before being released on bail paid partly by abolitionist Horace Greeley.

Following his term as president of the Confederacy, Davis traveled overseas on business. He was also urged to make another run for the Senate, though he would have required approval from both the Senate and the House to hold office again, under terms of the 14th Amendment. In , he wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in an effort to defend his political stance.

Davis lived out his retirement years at an estate called Beauvoir in Mississippi. Around 1 a. It was later relocated to a specially constructed memorial at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. Tensions ran so high that House members engaged in fistfights and Davis reportedly challenged an Illinois congressman to a duel. After an unsuccessful run for governor of Mississippi, Davis was appointed secretary of war by U. He proved to be the most active and effective secretary of war since the s, increasing the size of the army, improving training, and establishing a medical corps.

After leaving the War Department in , Davis returned to the Senate. Although generally opposed to secession, as many Southern moderates were, he nevertheless reestablished himself as a leading defender of the rights of slave states. Shortly after returning to Mississippi, Davis learned that he had been chosen by a convention of seceded states meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, to be provisional president of the newly created Confederate States of America.

When the Lincoln administration attempted to resupply the garrison, Davis authorized Beauregard to open fire, which led to its surrender on April 13, Although its proximity to Washington, D.

Six months later, Davis won election to a six-year term as Confederate president. In Richmond, Davis established a close relationship with Robert E. Davis was particularly piqued with what he considered to be a less than vigorous pursuit of the enemy after the First Battle of Manassas , an engagement to which he had traveled to witness personally.

He directed his ire at Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston , the two principal Confederate commanders at the battle, and the resulting conflict would only intensify and become more personal over time.

A month after the First Battle of Manassas, the Confederate Congress authorized Davis to appoint five men to the rank of full general.

He and Johnston, backed by powerful allies in and out of the Confederate Congress, would become bitter enemies of the administration. In fact, historian James M. Davis also had trouble with his western armies. His friendship with Leonidas Polk—an Episcopal bishop who was third cousin to former U. Polk—unwittingly encouraged insubordination, and Joe Johnston, since transferred, seemed to long more for a return to Virginia than for the responsibilities of his immediate command.

As a consequence, a poisonous atmosphere developed in the Army of Tennessee that did much to compromise its effectiveness, and Davis, unlike Lincoln, deemed it necessary on occasion to travel outside the capital to involve himself in these contretemps.

Like Lincoln, Davis was an inviting target for disgruntled military men and politicians. His critics charged him with favoritism, citing his clear preference for West Point-educated officers.

And while he brought great energy and attention to detail to his role as chief executive, his subordinates complained of micromanagement. Judah P. Like Lincoln, he used the war as justification to suspend, on several occasions, basic liberties such as habeas corpus. Still, there were many successes. Mobilization was one. There was simply no time to carry out a forgery plot. The accounting of events in Richmond on March 4, as already narrated, covers virtually every minute of that busy afternoon and evening—the papers being passed from Pollard to Fitzhugh Lee, from Lee to President Davis, from Davis to the War Department, from the department back to Davis and then back to the department, and finally the gathering of editors to receive their copies of the Dahlgren papers for publication.

Each step in the sequence produced discussion and required a detailed briefing on the papers and the circumstances of their capture. Credible witnesses document each step. It is inconceivable that in those few hours, amid hectic circumstances, a secret plot to exploit the papers could have been hatched, the many necessary decisions made, special stationery printed, expert copyists located, the forged papers properly aged, and, finally, a cover story concocted and promulgated.

A similar forgery at breakneck speed would have been required for the pocket notebook, which reached Richmond on March 31 and was in print the next day. Thus, the charge of forgery must be dismissed out of hand on this single count: It was literally impossible for the Confederates to have carried it off for lack of time. That is hardly a cast of conspirators likely to universally bear false witness. In order to finally close the case, however, it is necessary to dispose of certain peripheral evidences of alleged forgery, as set forth by Duane Schultz in The Dahlgren Affair.

This is quickly done. It is equally obvious that thereafter Dahlgren operated on a need-to-know basis. Until Richmond was entered and the prisoners released, nothing needed to be said about arson and murder, if for no other reason than the destructive impact the orders would surely have had on morale.

It is safe to say that these troopers, Regulars and volunteers alike, had not enlisted to be assassins. In any case, the released and maddened prisoners were to carry out the heinous acts, not the raiders. It was perfectly proper for him to inform John McEntee, however, for McEntee and his BMI intelligence team were there to serve as guides once Richmond was entered; Dahlgren was aware they knew where to find Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. George A. Custer, ordered to march toward Charlottesville, would have been only some thirty miles from the point where Dahlgren intended to cross the James.

A manuscript of unknown origin, and therefore uncertain credibility, even has Dahlgren revealing his secret orders to Custer. However that may be, it at least indicates the two were together prior to the raid. As for the Confederates forging these Custer references, there is nothing on the record to indicate that by March 4, when any deceit had to be completed, they even knew Custer would lead the cavalry diversion.

Finally, no possible purpose would be served by adding this entirely irrelevant Custer detail to their forgery plot. Beale—made little or no mention of the infamous papers in their reports. In any event, Pollard, in an unpublished account of the incident, offered a fulsome description of the contents of the papers.

By then, March 9, everyone knew of the papers and their contents, and there was no need for colorful writing. Nothing here supports a case for forgery. Dahlgren was in fact utterly inexperienced in a command position.

His voluminous note-taking suggests anxiety about that role, and his failure to take the basic precaution of destroying any mission papers he was carrying, much less these explosive ones, is evidence of his inexperience and his poor command judgment. Ulric Dahlgren was reckless, immature, and careless of consequences, characteristics perhaps suited to executing a bloody agenda like his but certainly ill-suited to rescuing a mission gone bad.

It can be accepted then that the authenticity of the Dahlgren papers is established beyond a doubt. There is not the least scrap of credible evidence for their forgery. There is ample evidence, on the other hand, for their content being exactly what was printed in the Richmond newspapers.

That does not end the story, however. It leaves one further question of crucial importance to be answered: Who authorized the secret agenda of arson, pillage, and murder as set forth in the papers? Still, a credible presumption of guilt can be offered. On March 7, two days after the Dahlgren papers appeared in print, an editor of the Richmond Sentinel expressed an opinion on the question of guilt that was widely applauded across the South.

Truly there is no depth of dishonor and villainy to which Lincoln and his agents are not capable of descending.

It is indeed quite impossible to imagine Ulric Dahlgren dreaming up this murderous scheme on his own. A willing instrument he certainly was but nothing more than that. The notes and instructions in his papers, especially those in his notebook, refer to plans of other commands beside his own and include notations about what are clearly orders and directions given him by his superior—who was, of course, Judson Kilpatrick.

General Meade obviously recognized this, for he made sure that Judson Kilpatrick never again served in the Army of the Potomac. Kill-Cavalry next surfaced under Maj. William T. If young Dahlgren did not conceive the crime, the perpetrator of his deadly orders can only have been Judson Kilpatrick, conceiver and commander of the expedition. Assigning Kilpatrick to investigate the Dahlgren papers after their story broke in the Richmond papers was akin to assigning the fox to investigate casualties in the hen house.

He smugly reported seeing a harmless address written by Colonel Dahlgren before the raid, thereby immediately marking the investigation closed. No matter how the case turned out, no matter what the perfidious Rebels might claim or forge concerning the papers, no one would be implicated but the late, lamented colonel.

Adding that he had marked the address approved in red ink was simply a red herring. Everything we know about Judson Kilpatrick indicates he would have had no scruples about plotting and executing a scheme of murder and destruction as outlined in the Dahlgren papers. But everything we know about him further suggests that he would never have dared to carry out this plot without at least tacit approval from some higher authority.

From first to last, there had been no intervening stops anywhere in the chain of command. Army commander Meade, whatever his views afterward, originally knew nothing beyond the stated objectives of the raid. Stanton was never one to demonstrate respect for the niceties of civilized warfare. He had been, for example, the behind-the-scenes author of the set of draconian measures inflicted on Southern civilians in He was also exceedingly devious.

To his new patron, the thought of liberating the suffering prisoners from Belle Isle and Libby Prison to wreak vengeance on their captors would have seemed a pleasing rationalization for the scheme. To be sure, there is no certain evidence tying Edwin Stanton to the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren plot. Only the fact of their February 12 meeting can be documented. Yet no other reasonable explanation meets the case. It cannot be imagined that Kilpatrick had the courage to carry this out on his own without sanction, and only Stanton could have filled such an approving role.

It certainly cannot be imagined that the president countenanced political assassination and black flag warfare against civilians. Lincoln approved the capture of Davis, perhaps as a hostage for the release of Union prisoners, but nothing we know about the man suggests he would have gone beyond that. During his presidency, Davis was unable to find a strategy to defeat the better organized and more industrially developed North.

Perhaps his most successful military move came in June , with the appointment of Robert E. Lee to lead the Army of Northern Virginia. While many have criticized Davis' leadership during the war, most believe he guided the South as well as could be expected, given the limitations of the Confederacy.

Recognizing these limitations, Davis' general strategy was defensive.