Karen Parrish, age 15, of Columbia, Tenn., for her question:
HOW LONG WAS JEFFERSON DAVIS CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT?
Jefferson Davis is the first and only President of the Confederate States of America. He served as chief executive for four years from 1861 until 1865.
Davis was a planter in Mississippi from 1835 to 1845, when he was elected to the U.S. Congress as a member of the House of Representatives. He resigned his seat in 1846 in order to serve in the Mexican War and fought at Monterrey and Buena Vista, where he was wounded.
Davis then served as the U.S. senator from Mississippi from 1847 until 1851, as secretary of war in the Cabinet of President Franklin Pierce from 1853 to 1857 and again as a U.S. senator from 1857 to 1861.
As a senator Davis often stated his support of slavery and of states rights. As a Cabinet member he influenced Pierce to sign the Kansas Nebraska Act, which favored the South and increased the bitterness of the struggle over slavery.
In Davis' second term as senator he became the acknowledged spokesman for the Southern point of view. He opposed the idea of secession from the Union, however, as a means of maintaining the principles of the South. Even after the first steps toward secession had been taken, Davis tried to keep the Southern states in the Union, although not at the expense of their principles. When the state of Mississippi seceded, Davis withdrew from the Senate.
On Feb. 16, 1861, the provisional Congress of the Confederate States made Davis provisional president. He was elected to the office by popular vote the same year for a 6 year term and was inaugurated in richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy, on Feb. 22, 1862.
Davis failed to raise sufficient money to fight the American Civil War and could not obtain recognition and help for the Confederacy from foreign governments. In 1865 Davis realized defeat was imminent and fled from Richmond. On May 10, 1865, he was captured at Irwinville, Ga. After federal troops captured Davis at Irwinville, Ga., on May 10, 1865, he was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe, Va. Davis was indicted for treason in 1866 but in 1867 he was released on a bond of $100,000 signed by the American newspaper publisher Horace Greeley and other influential Northerners.
In 1868 the federal government dropped the case against Davis.
From 1870 to 1878 Davis engaged in a number of unsuccessful business enterprises and from 1878 until his death in New Orleans on Dec. 6, 1889 at the age of 81 he lived near Biloxi, Miss. His grave is in Richmond, Va.
During the Civil War Davis was responsible for the raising of the formidable Confederate armies, the notable appointment of Gen. Robert E. Lee as commander of the Army of Virginia and the encouragement of industrial enterprise throughout the South. His zeal, energy and faith in the cause of the South were a source of much of the tenacity with which the Confederacy fought the Civil War.