Jefferson Davis (1808 to 1889) was a planter, soldier, and politician from Mississippi, who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States during the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). A veteran of the Mexican-American War (1846 to 1848), Davis was elected Confederate president in 1861 because of his fervent defense of the American South and the institution of slavery during his years in Congress. Despite initial popularity, he was soon criticized throughout the Confederacy for his handling of the war and would eventually be blamed for its defeat. After the war, he was imprisoned in Fort Monroe, Virginia, for two years before living out the rest of his life in retirement.

Jefferson Finis Davis was born on 3 June 1808 in Davisburg, Kentucky (modern Fairview), less than 100 miles (160 km) away from where his great rival, Abraham Lincoln (1809 to 1865), would be born just eight months later. He was the last of ten children born to Samuel Emory Davis, a veteran of the Continental Army, and his wife Jane Cook; his parents had met in South Carolina in 1783 during the waning months of the American Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783) and had moved west a decade later. Though Jefferson's elder siblings were given biblical names, he was named after President Thomas Jefferson (1743 to 1826), whom his father greatly admired.

A few years later, Sam Davis moved his family out to Mississippi, where he purchased a small cotton plantation and twelve slaves. Young Davis was sent back to Kentucky for his education and, in 1823, was enrolled in Transylvania University near Lexington. He was still there the following year when he learned that his father had died – most of Sam Davis's land and slaves had been bequeathed to his eldest son, Joseph. 23 years older than Jefferson, Joseph Davis was already a respected planter who owned a large estate called Davis Bend, just south of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Filling the role of father figure for his younger siblings, Joseph used his influence to get Jefferson appointed to the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1824.

Jefferson Davis proved to be an unruly cadet. During his first year at the academy, he was court-martialed for drinking – he was found guilty but was later pardoned – and, two years later, was implicated in the infamous Christmastime mutiny that would go down in West Point history as the 'Eggnog Riot'. Still, he managed to graduate in 1828, ranking 23rd in his class of 33. He went on to serve in the 1st Infantry Regiment under the command of Colonel Zachary Taylor (1786 to 1850). During the first years of his military service, he was beset with illnesses like pneumonia and bronchitis and was therefore incapacitated during the brief Black Hawk War of 1832. However, he returned to duty in time to escort the Sauk chieftain Black Hawk into captivity; Black Hawk would later recall that Davis "treated us all with much kindness" (quoted in Encyclopedia Virginia).

In January 1833, Davis struck up a romantic relationship with Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of his commanding officer. Colonel Taylor disapproved of the match and did what he could to prevent it, even transferring Davis to a different unit. Undeterred, Davis resigned from the army and married Sarah in 1835. Tragically, their marriage was cut short when Sarah died of malaria only three months after their wedding. Distraught and with no other prospects, Davis sought help from his brother Joseph, who carved out 800 acres of land from Davis Bend to give to him so he could start his own cotton plantation. Davis named this estate Brierfield, and, by 1840, it had become quite prosperous. By then, he owned 40 slaves; by 1860, he would have 112.

In the early 1840s, Davis became active in politics, constantly travelling to the state capital of Jackson to work with the Democratic Party. In 1844, he was one of Mississippi's six presidential electors and cast his vote for Democratic candidate James K. Polk (1795 to 1849), who won that year's election. In 1845 – the same year that he married his second wife, 18-year-old Varina Howell – he won election to the US House of Representatives. Upon taking his seat in Congress, Davis supported Polk's expansionist agenda, including the annexation of Oregon from Britain. He voted for war with Mexico on 11 May 1846 and afterward left Congress to lead the newly raised 1st Mississippi Regiment as a colonel.

Davis used his political connections to arm his troops with newer percussion rifles instead of the older smoothbore muskets used by most other units – due to their association with Davis and his Mississippians, this gun became known as the 'Mississippi Rifle'. His regiment served in the army of his former father-in-law, General Zachary Taylor, and saw action at the Battle of Monterrey (21 to 24 September 1846) and the Battle of Buena Vista (22 to 23 February 1847). Davis distinguished himself at Buena Vista, where his Mississippians played a major role in repelling a Mexican attack. Near the end of the Mexican-American War, Davis left the army to accept an appointment to fill a vacancy in the US Senate.

In the Senate, Davis quickly carved out a reputation as a champion of slavery and states' rights. Indeed, particularly after the death of John C. Calhoun (1782 to 1850), he was recognized as the main spokesman for the slave-holding South. The issue of slavery had already begun to divide the nation along sectional lines, pitting the 'free states' of the North against the Southern 'slave states'. In 1849, Davis vigorously opposed the admittance of California into the Union as a 'free state' on the basis that doing so would upset the delicate balance of power in Congress, forever subjecting the Southern states to the will of the North. This put him at odds with Taylor, who had just been elected president but would die only a year into his term. Though the situation was temporarily diffused by the Compromise of 1850, tensions got so heated that Davis nearly challenged an Illinois congressman to a duel.

In March 1853, President Franklin Pierce (1804 to 1869) selected Davis as his secretary of war. Davis proved quite energetic in this post. He enlarged the size of the army, helped pass the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, and advocated for a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific, which he believed was necessary for national defense. He also introduced the minié ball to the US Army – this was a hollow-based, conical bullet that allowed for increased accuracy and would partially account for the high casualties of the Civil War. At the end of the Pierce Administration in 1857, Davis returned to the Senate, where he continued to speak on behalf of the South. However, in early 1858, he contracted an illness that left him partially blind in his left eye.

In November 1860, the slavery issue reached its boiling point when Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the antislavery Republican Party, was elected president. In response, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union on 20 December 1860, and it was followed by a string of others, which ultimately joined together as the Confederate States of America. Davis, though initially opposed to secession, resigned from the Senate on 21 January 1861 shortly after Mississippi voted to secede, referring to it as the saddest day of his life. He returned home to Brierfield, expecting to be called upon to serve as a general in the Confederate Army. Instead, he was surprised – and somewhat dismayed – to learn that a convention of delegates had chosen him as the provisional president of the Confederacy. He reluctantly travelled to Montgomery, Alabama, where he was sworn in on 18 February 1861.

In April 1861, secessionists in South Carolina fired on the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, kicking off the American Civil War. Shortly thereafter, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion, triggering a second wave of states leaving the Union. When Virginia seceded in May, the Confederate government transferred the national capital to Richmond, in recognition of Virginia's symbolic and economic significance. Davis, at this time, was quite popular throughout the Confederacy, both because of war fervor and because of his record as champion of the Southern cause. He easily won election to a full six-year term as president and was inaugurated in Richmond on 22 February 1862 alongside his vice president, Alexander Stephens of Georgia.

Davis understood that his primary responsibility was to win the war and secure Southern independence. His methods, however, caused him to lose much of the initial goodwill afforded to him by his fledgling nation. For starters, Davis believed – as did Lincoln across the Potomac River – that centralized authority and temporary suspensions of some constitutional liberties were necessary to achieve ultimate victory. Like Lincoln, he suspended habeas corpus in some instances, and in others, confiscated private property or imposed martial law. He was aware that the Confederacy's available manpower was vastly inferior to that of the North, and, in April 1862, he pushed a conscription bill through the Confederate Congress – Davis was therefore responsible for the first military draft in American history (Lincoln would soon follow suit). Since men who owned 20 or more slaves were exempt from the draft, the bill caused tension between classes and fueled claims that Davis was making poor men fight a rich man's war.

Most of these policies earned Davis more enemies than friends. Fire-eating secessionists believed they were fighting a war to protect states' rights and therefore accused Davis of betraying the ideals of the Confederacy by wielding too much executive power. Newspapers belittled the administration while powerful politicians, including Vice President Stephens, turned against Davis and began publicly criticizing him. It did not help that Davis's cabinet had quite a high turnover rate; over the course of only four years, he went through four different secretaries of war. Davis was accused of micromanaging his cabinet, just as he was accused of interfering in military matters. In both instances, critics claimed that he disproportionately appointed friends or fellow West Point graduates to important positions, tending to overlook their faults.

One of Davis's appointments, however, would arguably be the most important decision of his presidency. On 1 June 1862, he appointed General Robert E. Lee (1807 to 1870) to lead the Army of Northern Virginia. Up until now, Lee had served as Davis's military advisor but had nothing else to show from the war except for a bungled campaign in western Virginia the year before. But the president's faith in Lee was quickly justified; in the Seven Days' Battles (25 June to 1 July 1862), Lee's army defeated a much larger Union force in a series of swift engagements, chasing the Northerners away from the gates of Richmond.

Davis and Lee worked quite well together. Cognizant of their limited military resources, they devised a so-called 'offensive-defensive strategy', whereby Southern armies would mostly fight defensively but would constantly look for opportunities to act aggressively and go on the offensive. The goal was to prolong the war and wear down the North's will to fight, as well as to procure foreign recognition of the Confederacy. Lee proved adept at this kind of warfare – by taking long-odds gambles and acting aggressively when the opportunity arose, he won some of the South's most important victories including the Second Battle of Bull Run (28 to 30 August 1862), Battle of Fredericksburg (11 to 15 December 1862), and Battle of Chancellorsville (30 April to 6 May 1863).

This strategy would only go so far, however. Despite Lee's brilliant victories in Virginia, he was never able to achieve a victory on Northern soil; his invasion of Maryland was turned back at the Battle of Antietam (17 September 1862), while his invasion of Pennsylvania met with defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg (1 to 3 July 1863). These defeats cost the Confederacy its best chances to win foreign recognition. By 1864, Lee was fighting solely on the defensive, struggling to hold back Ulysses S. Grant's Yankee horde as it scratched its way toward Richmond in the Overland Campaign (May-June 1864).

By then, the South was running dangerously low on manpower, with casualties becoming ever more difficult to replace. The situation grew worse that autumn – Lee's army had become trapped in a 30-mile-long (48 km) line of fortifications below the capital at the Siege of Petersburg (June 1864 to April 1865), while the western Army of Tennessee was annihilated in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign (October-December 1864). The noose around the Confederacy's neck was tightening, but Davis refused any peace offer from the North that did not recognize Southern independence.

In late March 1865, Lee notified the government that his army could not hold out much longer around Richmond and that he would soon be forced to abandon the defense of the capital. Davis evacuated his wife and children before leaving the city himself on 2 April, the day before Richmond fell to Union forces, and a week before Lee's ultimate surrender at Appomattox. After issuing a proclamation in which he urged Confederate citizens to keep resisting, Davis made his way south, in the hopes of scraping together enough soldiers to continue the fight. He did not find much support across the war-weary South, however, and was arrested by Union cavalry near Irwinville, Georgia, on 10 May. He had tried to evade capture by disguising himself in a loose-sleeved cloak and shawl, giving rise to a rumor that he had attempted to flee in women's clothing.

He was imprisoned in Fort Monroe near Norfolk, Virginia, where he was confined to a small room and always monitored by Federal soldiers, tasked with ensuring that he ate his food and that he did not try to make escape or suicide attempts. Due to public outcry, his situation gradually improved; before long, he was afforded spacious quarters and allowed to receive visitors, including his wife Varina, who took up residence in the fort in 1866. By then, Davis was perhaps the most controversial man in the country – some Americans wanted to see him hanged for treason, while others viewed him as a martyr for Southern liberty. Indeed, the US government seemed unsure of what to do with him. Though he had been arrested for his suspected complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, authorities could not find sufficient evidence to try him for this or for war crimes.

In June 1866, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution to try Davis for treason. This, however, carried its own set of problems. Davis would likely be tried before a jury in Richmond, where he still had many sympathizers. Should he be acquitted, his trial might validate the constitutionality of secession. Davis himself pushed for a treason trial for this reason, while his lawyer argued that Davis could not have committed treason at all, on the grounds that he had not been a US citizen after Mississippi seceded from the Union. The US government ultimately decided the situation was too messy and opted not to move forward with proceedings. Davis remained imprisoned until 13 May 1867, when prominent citizens, including Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt, paid his bond of $100,000. Davis fled with his family to Montreal, Canada, and did not return to the US until 1869, when he learned the government was no longer pursuing charges against him.

After returning to the United States, Davis kept a low profile. He rarely appeared at public events, although he made an exception to speak at a memorial for Lee, who died in October 1870. Davis spent the next decade looking for ways to make money; he briefly worked as the president of a life insurance company and made investments in railroads and mining ventures. In 1877, he accepted an offer from author Sarah Dorsey to live with her on her estate of Beauvoir, Mississippi. The close friendship between Dorsey and Davis caused a scandal, especially since his wife Varina was living separately. When Dorsey died in 1879, she left Beauvoir to Davis in her will. Only then did Varina join him to live on the property.

Davis spent his last years trying to vindicate his actions and those of the former Confederacy. In 1881, he published a two-volume work entitled The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in which he argued that secession was morally and constitutionally justifiable. He downplayed the role that slavery played in causing the Southern states to secede, claiming that the slaves had been happy and content in their antebellum servitude. His book, therefore, helped build the 'Lost Cause of the Confederacy' movement, which sought to whitewash and glorify the motives of the former Confederate States. He wrote another book entitled A Short History of the Confederate States of America, which was finished just before his death.

In November 1889, Davis fell sick during a trip on a Mississippi River steamboat. He was brought to New Orleans, where he was diagnosed with bronchitis. Davis died there on 6 December 1889 at the age of 81, surrounded by Varina and several friends. His funeral, held in New Orleans a few days later, was one of the largest ever held in the South and was attended by over 200,000 people. In the many decades since his death, Davis's legacy has been controversial. While he was once mythologized by 'Lost Causers' as a tragic hero, today he is more commonly perceived as a traitor and defender of slavery. Most of his memorials throughout the US were removed in the early 21st century. Nevertheless, his legacy remains an integral part of US history and still looms uncomfortably large in American consciousness today.