Originally aired on June 02, 1995 - In part 40 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the life of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
#40 – Jefferson Davis
This weekend, in ceremonies at Richmond, Washington, and elsewhere, large numbers of Americans will honor the birthday of Jefferson Davis. A tint of martyrdom will hang over each of the observances, for Davis has come to personify all that was noble and lamentable about a confederacy often hailed as “The Lost Cause”.
Davis might become angry that so many Southerners (by birth as well as by preference) now honor the dream when his efforts to make that dream come true brought the support of only a third of his people. Davis has also suffered from the historical accident of being a contemporary and Southern counterpart of the incomparable Abraham Lincoln.
Another, fatal impediment for Davis was his position as president of a confederation. The phrase itself is self-contradictory. He was expected to lead eleven loosely linked sovereignties to victory against the most powerful federation in the Western Hemisphere. Davis failed, of course, but so would anyone else place in the same predicament.
This Kentuckian by birth and Mississippian by adoption deserves plaudits as well as pity. He might well have dominated any other age, despite serious flaws in personality.
Educated at Transylvania University and West Point, Davis spent seven years in virtual seclusion on his brother’s plantation following the premature death of his first wife. He read everything he could find (including incredibly dull issues of the Congressional Globe), and he became one of the most knowledgeable men of his age.
Valor in the Mexican War led to election first to the lower house of Congress and then to the U. S. Senate. Davis’ four-year tenure as Secretary of War in the administration of Franklin Pierce was so outstanding that many consider him the nation’s most accomplished war secretary. Davis then returned to the Senate and became an able successor to John C. Calhoun as chief spokesman for the South.
That was a major factor behind his election in 1861 as the leader of the Southern Confederacy. Davis’ reputation as a political conservative also appealed to Southern statesmen who saw that a steady hand was badly needed to steer the new ship of state. No on in the wartime South labored harder or more faithfully than did Davis. Yet too many obstacles, many of them inherent, sapped his effectiveness.
He was courtly and handsome, despite blindness in one eye. An aristocratic demeanor made him the kind of man that people at a gathering instinctively turned to watch. Few Americans of that age could match his experience in both political and military affairs. Those were his leading assets. They were not sufficient to offset the negatives.
Davis was a poor administrator who wasted time with trivia. He lacked popular appeal in part because he simply could not get along with people. Davis neglected burning civil matters in favor of military issues – the one area in which the Confederacy had outstanding figures. Ill health and a lack of capacity for growth in office added to the other liabilities that made Davis an isolated and lonely man throughout his four years as the Confederacy’s chief of state.
Let it be said in Davis’ defense that his basic weakness may have been his abiding strength. He lacked the ability to see that his love of country – his burning nationalism – his firm belief that God would bless the Southern cause – was above and beyond the devotion of most of his countrymen.
Every age needs a dreamer. Jefferson Davis answered the Confederacy’s call. If his dedication to the wartime South was unrealistic, it was also magnificent. That is what organizations will be honoring this weekend. It is a quality of mind called “patriotism”. We do not hear that word too often anymore.
