Pursuit:. Clint Johnson
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see what he thought were chair legs about six feet above the ground, indicating that the coming terror was a drunken chair mender who terrified children in the region by his unusual and rude behavior. As his sister started to run into the woods, Jefferson grabbed her hand and told her that he was not scared of the man, and he would protect her from harm. Together, the two children waited for the man to approach them. As the chair legs grew closer, Jefferson saw that the chair was actually a buck deer’s antler rack. The deer itself turned into the woods when it saw the two small children. For the first time in his life, the future president of his nation had stared down what he perceived to be a danger to himself and family. He had told his sister that he would take care of her and he had.
Keeping promises would be a hallmark of Davis’s life.
After transferring from Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, into the United States Military Academy in 1824, Davis learned for the first time in his life that authority figures often expected him to follow their rules rather than his. Davis did not like anyone telling him—not even academy instructors—what to do. On several occasions he found himself in trouble, usually involving minor offenses such as not being in his room for the head count, but also for more serious problems such as being caught off campus in a local bar called Benny Havens.
At a court martial that could have resulted in his expulsion, Davis maintained that while a superior officer had seen him in the bar, the officer had not seen him drinking alcohol, so the officer’s assumption that he had been drinking could not be proved. Impressed with Davis’s quick thinking of coming up with an improbable defense, the court martial judges declined to dismiss Davis from the academy.
Davis proved his coolness and bravery in the face of real danger later in the year when a laboratory accident nearly caused an explosion as the class was experimenting with chemicals. After the instructor ran from the room when the experiment went wrong and the chemicals began an unexpected reaction, Davis calmly threw the materials out the window. The same officers who had been willing to dismiss him now gave him credit for saving lives and academy property. Davis never became a favorite of the academy officers, nor did he try any harder to fit into the system. He graduated twenty-ninth out of thirty-seven cadets in 1828.
Despite his discipline problems, Davis remembered that “the four years I remained at West Point made me a different creature from that which nature had designed me to be,” he wrote to a sister after his graduation.
Davis proved to be a good infantry officer, overcoming his reputation as a stubborn student. When he assisted in the 1832 capture of Black Hawk, an Indian chief who led an uprising in Illinois, the Indian proved prophetic when he spoke admirably of the “good and brave young chief” who treated him with respect while Davis was taking him to a fort where he would be imprisoned.
One good thing came out of the Black Hawk war for Lieutenant Davis. He met Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of his commander, Colonel Zachary Taylor. After clashing with another officer and undergoing another court martial that resulted in his acquittal, Davis resigned from the army to marry Sarah. His young wife would be dead from malaria within a few weeks of moving to her new home in steamy Mississippi. His former father-in-law would blame Davis for his daughter’s sudden death. They would not make peace with each other until another war brought them together.
Devastated and guilt ridden that he had somehow contributed to his bride’s death for taking her into a region known for malaria, Davis threw himself into his civilian life for the next ten years by building his plantations. He did it as he did everything else he had always done in his life—his way.
Davis and his brother Joseph ran their plantations in a different way than any of their neighbors. They believed themselves to be responsible for their slaves’ long-term well-being. Davis forbade whipping as discipline for slaves, and he encouraged his people to create their own government and courts to deal with minor offenses such as stealing from each other. Other slaveholders looked askance at his liberal attitude toward slaves, but Davis ignored them.
THEN CAME THAT DAY when the sober, successful planter met the 17-year-old visitor at the party. He had ignored the opportunity to meet other women for more than a decade. Now, something about her bold, mature ways surprised him and helped change him from the recluse he had been since Sarah’s death.
About the same time Davis met Varina, he took up his brother Joseph’s challenge to get involved in politics. After failing to win a state House seat, but winning the attention of party elders, Davis came back the next year and captured a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1844. Davis found that voters enjoyed his speeches, even though he did not like meeting them personally.
Davis learned that politicians never counted little white lies as being dishonest. On at least one occasion during his House campaign, Davis told the crowd that if elected, he would be proud to serve “Mississippi—the land of my birth.” He had been born in Kentucky.
Davis arrived in Washington in 1845 nationally unknown, but he did not go unnoticed. One fellow freshman representative, Henry W. Hilliard of Alabama, vividly remembered Davis’s arrival in the capitol with a description that would follow him for the rest of his life: “His appearance was prepossessing. Tall, slender, with a soldierly bearing; a fine head, an intellectual face; there was a look of culture and refinement about him that made a favorable impression from the first.”
The newcomer did not follow protocol from the opening days of the Congress. Instead of sitting back and watching the incumbents conduct business while keeping his freshman mouth shut, Davis rose repeatedly to offer his and Mississippi’s opinions on issues facing the United States. He was in favor of speeding up the process of allowing foreigners to become American citizens. He was against allowing Great Britain to expand its colonies in the far northwestern territory of Oregon. He was all in favor of the idea of manifest destiny, that the nation had a God-given right to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Davis was such a good speaker that on at least one occasion, Varina remembered that he attracted the attention of an elderly congressman from Massachusetts who sat transfixed, watching Davis talk.
“We shall hear more from this young man, I fancy,” said former president John Quincy Adams, who loved governing so much that he spent the rest of his life in the House of Representatives.
It was while in Congress that Davis showed future political friends and enemies that he never backed down from a position. Once in a debate where Davis was trying to win appropriations to build forts along the Gulf Coast, a congressman from the North who was seeking appropriations for his own district along the Great Lakes asked if Davis were willing to trade votes.
Davis stared at his fellow Congressman and then carefully in measured tones made his position clear: “Sir, I make no terms. I accept no compromises.”
In the spring of 1846, Davis turned his attention to modernizing the United States Army. He suggested issuing rifles to two regiments of the peacetime army, replacing the older, short-range, smoothbore flintlock muskets that were the standard, but obsolete, weapon the army still used. The bill passed. A few months later, the need for a modern army would manifest itself when on April 25, the Mexican Army crossed the Rio Grande River into Texas. They eventually clashed with a U.S. force under the overall command of General Zachary Taylor, Davis’s former father-in-law. Blood was drawn. On May 9, 1846, President James K. Polk declared war.
Davis made known his war views when he wrote a letter to the editor of the Vicksburg Sentinel and Expositor saying: “Let the treaty of peace be made at the city of Mexico,” meaning that he felt the United States had the right to invade Mexico and capture its capital to end the war. He also hinted that if Mississippians were willing to form a volunteer regiment, he would be willing to leave Congress to lead it. The editor added to Davis’s message by leading the cheer for volunteers and asserting that Davis was “the native, gallant, glorious son of our soil” ready to “lead you to your country’s service.”
Once again it appeared in print that Davis was a native of Mississippi rather than Kentucky. He did not write a letter back to Vicksburg to correct the editor’s mistake. He had been in Mississippi so long, Davis himself might have forgotten his own roots.