Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/14

DAVIS. 1862. and was a justice of the United States Su- preme Court from 1802 to 1877. In 1872 he accepted the Presidential nomination from the National l,abor Keform Party, but afterwards withdrew liis name. From 1877 to ISS.'i he was a United States Senator, and, when Chester A. Arthur left his presiding chair in the Senate to become President, Davis succeeded him and served until 1888. In politics he was an inde- pendent, but usually acted with the Democratic Party.

DAVIS, George Royal (1840—). An Ameri- can soldier and politician, born at Palmer, Mass. He served throughout the Civil War, and rose to be colonel of the Third Rhode Island Volun- teer Cavalry. From 1S79 to 1885 he was a Re- publican mi'mbcr of Ccmgress from Illinois, and in 1884 and again in 1888 was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He has also long been a member and officer of the National Committee of his party. In 1890 he was made director-general of the Columbian Exposition of 1893.

DAVIS, Henry Wiliam Banks (1833—). An Englisli painter, born at Finchley. He was a pupil of the Royal .eademy. and was elected a member in 1877' ilany of his subjects repre- sent the French coast about Boulogne, where he lived for several years. His landscapes have frequently been engraved. Among them may be noticed :' "Spring Ploughing" (1866); "Dewy Eve" (18701 : "After Sundown" (1877) ; "Sliow- ers in .June" (1882) ; "The Road to the Sanc- tuary;" "Lost Sheep;" "Sea and Land Waves;" and "Contentment." He nearly always intro- duces cattle into his pictures. His treatment of landscape is exact and delicate. These traits characterize the largest as well as the smallest of his canvases, without taking from their atmos- pheric etlect.

DAVIS, Henry Winter ( 1817-65). An Ameri- can legislator. He was born in Annapolis. Md., graduated in Kenyon College in 1837, and studied law at the University of Virginia. In 1850 he settled in Baltimore, where he became very prominent as a lawyer. He was a member of Congress from 1855 to 1861, and again from 1863 to 1865, first as a Whig, then as a Know- Xothing or American, and finally as a Repub- lican, and made himself conspicuous by his de- votion to the l"nion and his advocacy of the emancipation of the slaves. During his latter term (1863-65) he was chairman of the Com- mittee on Foreign Affairs. He published The AVar of Oniiiizd and Ahriman in Ihc Xineteenth Century (1853). His speeches, edited by Cress- well, were published in New York in 1867.

DAVIS, James. See Hall, Owen.

DAVIS, JEFFERSON (1808-89). A soldier, statesman, and the President of the Confederate States of America. He was born in Christian, now Todd. County, Ky.. .Tunc 3. 18(1S. the chief strains in his blood being Welsh and Scotch- Irish. His family removed during his infancy to Mississippi, with which State his fame has always been connected. He received a gentle rearing, although his education was at first limited, owing to the conditions of the country. After a year or two at a Roman Catholic school in Kentucky, and a short ])eriod at a college in Mississippi, he entered Transylvania University at Lexington, Ky., an institution which seems to have done good work for those times. Here he received the elements of a classical education; but in 1824, before graduation, he was trans- ferred to West Point. He graduated rather low- in his class, but be had given evidence of soldierly qualities and had won the regard of his classmates. Entering the army at once, in 1828, with the usual brevet of second lieutenant, he served seven years on the northwestern frontier, manifesting capacity to conuuand, to jierforin arduous duties, and to win confidence and affec- tion. In 1S35, falling ill. he resigned from the army, in which he had risen to the rank of first lieutenant, and in the same year married a daughter of Zachary Taylor. The young wife died, however, in a few mouths, and Davis sotight restoration for his shattered health in Cuba, After a short stay in Washington, where he began his friendship with Franklin Pierce, he returned to Mississippi and devoted himself to planting and study. This period from 1837 to 1845 was spent in an almost hermit-like seclusion, and Davis, who, as early as 1833, when the Xulli- flcation controversy was at its height, had made up his mind that it was unconstitutional to coerce a State, now gained fluency and logical consistency in advocating the States' rights doc- trines held by Calhoun. After some little par- ticipation in local politics, he was elected to Congress in 1845. where he favored the annexa- tion of Texas. He was a ready and dignified speaker, and an ardent but by no means servile follower of Calhoun. The next year, on the out- break of the Mexican War. he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi Volunteers and distin- guished himself at Monterey and Buena Vista, his famous formation of the reentering angle at the latter engagement being a gallant exploit. On his retirement from the war with a severe wound, the Governor of Jlississippi in 1847 ap- pointed him to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate, and in I84S the Legislature elected him for the residue of the term; in 1850 he was reelected. In the debates relative to the intro- duction of slavery into the Territories, Davis was zealous for the institution and for a strict construction of the Constitution. In 1851 he resigned in order to make the contest for the Governorship against the T'nionist candidate. Davis made a vigorous canvass, but was defeated by a small majority. In March. 1853, he became Secretary of "ar under President Pierce, and made an ellicient otticial, improving the senice in various ways. In the matter of the Kansas-Ne- braska legislation he proved a bad adviser to the President, but he was thoroughly conscientious. When he reentered the Senate in 1857, he was the acknowledged leader of the Southerners, he- coming the most determined, though not the most radical, of the States' rights men in the stormy days just before the war. in IStiO Davis offered in the Senate a series of resolutions which were adopted, to the elfect that the States had formally accepted the Constitution as independent sovereigns, delegating to the General Government a portion of their power for the sake of security; that the intermeddling on the part of any one of them with the domestic institutions of another was not only insulting, but dangerous to the domestic peace and tending to destroy the Union; that negro slavery was legal, and that neither Congress nor Territorial legislation had the right to interfere with it. Yet Davis was devoted