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
