Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis is one of the most complex and controversialfigures in American political history (and the man whom Oscar Wildewanted to meet more than anyone when he made his tour of the UnitedStates). Elected president of the Confederacy and later accused ofparticipating in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he is asource of ongoing dissension between northerners and southerners.This volume, the first of its kind, is a selected collection of hiswritings culled in large part from the authoritative Papers ofJefferson Davis, a multivolume edition of his letters andspeeches published by the Louisiana State University Press, andincludes thirteen documents from manu* collections and oneprivately held document that have never before appeared in a modernscholarly edition. From letters as a college student to his sister,to major speeches on the Constitution, slavery, and sectionalissues, to his farewell to the U.S. Senate, to his inauguraladdress as Confederate president, to letters from prison to hiswife, these selected pieces present the many faces of the enigmaticJefferson Davis.

As William J. Cooper, Jr., writes in his Introduction, “Davis’snotability does not come solely from his crucial role in the CivilWar. Born on the Kentucky frontier in the first decade of thenineteenth century, he witnessed and participated in the epochaltransformation of the United States from a fledgling country to astrong nation spanning the continent. In his earliest years hisfather moved farther south and west to Mississippi. As a young armyofficer just out of West Point, he served on the northwestern andsouthwestern frontiers in an army whose chief mission was toprotect settlers surging westward. Then, in 1846 and 1847, ascolonel of the First Mississippi Regiment, he fought in the MexicanWar, which resulted in 1848 in the Mexican Cession, a massiveaddition to the United States of some 500,000 square miles,including California and the modern Southwest. As secretary of warand U.S. senator in the 1850s, he advocated government support forthe building of a transcontinental railroad that he believedessential to bind the nation from ocean to ocean.”