On this day in 1861, Jefferson Davis is elected president of the
Confederate States of America. He ran without opposition, and the election
simply confirmed the decision that had been made by the Confederate Congress
earlier in the year.
Like
his Union counterpart, President Abraham Lincoln, Davis was a native of
Kentucky, born in 1808. He attended West Point and graduated in 1828. After
serving in the Black Hawk War of 1832, Davis
married Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of General (and future U.S. president)
Zachary Taylor, in 1835.However,Sarah contracted malaria and died within
several months of their marriage. Davis married Varina Howells in 1845.He
served inthe Mexican War (1846-48), during which he was wounded. After the war,
he was appointed to fill a vacant U.S. senate seat from Mississippi, and later
served as secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce.
When the Southern
states began seceding after the election of Abraham Lincoln in the winter of
1860 and 1861, Davis suspected that he might be the choice of his fellow
Southerners for their interim president. When the newly seceded states met in
Montgomery, Alabama, in February1861, they decided just that.Davis expressed
great fear about what lay ahead. “Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits,
and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles and thorns innumerable.” On
November 6, 1861 Davis was elected to a six-year term as established by the
Confederate constitution.
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