Jefferson Davis was born in a log cabin in Kentucky the same year as Abraham Lincoln. He grew up in Mississippi and served that state in the United States Congress.

Davis graduated from the West Point military academy, fought in the Mexican War, and served as Secretary of War in the administration of Franklin Pierce.

He opposed the Compromise of 1850 as being unfair to the South. He also demanded protection by legislation for slavery in the territories.

In February of 1861, delegates from seven seceding states elected Jefferson Davis president of The Confederate States of America. He served in that capacity until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Davis succeeded in eluding the Federal troops who captured Richmond and escaped into South Carolina where he was eventually captured posing as a woman.

For many years after the American Revolution, state legislatures and the United States Congress debated about slavery. Many prominent legislators and senators such as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and others proposed legislation to appease those who advocated abolishing slavery and at the same time ease tensions between the southern states and the North. One of the centerpieces of the slavery question was what to do about slavery in the territories that were administered by the United States. Territories including soon-to-be states, such as Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas, and California, were coming into the union and there was great controversy as to whether they should be allowed to approve of slavery or be forced to entry into the union as a free state.

Senators in the United States Congress proposed the Compromise of 1850 that was accepted by some and heatedly condemned by others. Eventually it passed and in 1861 Virginia seceded from the United States over the issue of States Rights, followed rapidly by South Carolina and the remaining states that formed The Confederate States of America. South Carolina declared war on the United States and fired artillery at Federal forces in FortSumter located in Charleston harbor.

Federal and Confederate forces clashed at Bull Run, or Manassas, near WashingtonD.C. in the first major battle of the war and were soundly beaten.

Robert E. Lee, a former colonel in the United States Army, was appointed to take command of all the Confederate forces and led The Army of Virginia throughout the Civil War. His mandate from The Confederate government was simply to protect Richmond, Virginia, the capitol of the Confederacy. He routinely defeated Union forces in battle after battle until a little known general from the west became head of the union armies, Ulysses S. Grant.

Through Grant’s bulldog persistence, he forced Lee into surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia and the Civil War came to an end. The Confederacy was disbanded and Federal forces maintained martial law for a number of years in the South until Reconstruction came to an end.

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