Jefferson Davis

The five-year period from 1841 to 1846 saw the beginning of Jefferson Davis' political career. In this, the second volume of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, the documents cover Davis' unsuccessful race for the state legislature, his selection as a Democratic state elector, his marriage to Varina Howell, his election to the U. S. House of Representatives, and his departure therefrom to assume command of the First Mississippi Regiment in the Mexican War. In the congressional documents Davis emerges as a hardworking freshman representative who quickly won for himself the respect and esteem of his fellow congressmen. There were, however, notable exceptions. One such exception was Andrew Johnson, a tailor by trade, who strongly resented Davis' remark on the floor of the House that a ""blacksmith or tailor"" could not be expected to achieve the same results in battle as a trained military man. In the somewhat bitter exchange that followed, some have professed to see the beginnings of the long-standing animosity between Johnson and Davis. The 255 documents in this volume (two appendixes contain undated and late-arriving items) provide a clear picture of Jefferson Davis, the man and the politician, and give an intimate view of Mississippi in the 1840s. Throughout the volume are rumblings of the then distant storm that was to break so disastrously over the nation in the 1860s.

Much of Jefferson Davis' life and career has been obscured in controversy and misinterpretation. This full, carefully annotated edition will make it possible for scholars to reassess the man who served as President of the Confederacy and who in the aftermath of war became the symbolic leader of the South. For almost a decade a dedicated team of scholars has been collecting and documenting Davis' papers and correspondence for this multi-volume work. The first volume includes not only Davis' private and public correspondence but also the important letters and documents addressed to and concerning him. Two autobiographical accounts, a detailed genealogy of the Davis family, and a complete bibliography are also included. This volume covers Davis' early years in Mississippi and Kentucky, his career at West Point, his first military assignments, and his tragic marriage to Sarah Knox Taylor. Together, the letters and documents unfold a human story of the first thirty-two years of a long life that later became filled with turbulence and controversy.