Today in History: Confederate President Jefferson Davis Is Captured

05/10/10

Jefferson Davis, who served as president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, was captured by Union forces on May 10, 1865. Davis had fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, in early April, as Union troops under General Ulysses S. Grant threatened the city. He evaded capture for several weeks before he was finally apprehended in Irwinville, Georgia.

Born in 1808, Davis served in the U.S. military during the Mexican-American War and then represented Mississippi in the U.S. Senate. When Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861, Davis resigned his seat and made a farewell address to the U.S. Senate. Although he had argued against secession, Davis believed that the Southern states had a sovereign right to leave the Union. Upon being elected president of the newly formed Confederate States of America, he presented a tentative plan for the future in his inaugural address.

Davis’s presidency lasted until the Confederate government was dissolved in 1865. He was imprisoned for two years following his capture by Union forces. Although Davis was indicted for treason, the charges were dropped in 1869. He remained a prominent defender of the Confederacy for the rest of his life. He sought to vindicate the cause of the South in his book Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, published in 1881.

Read JEFFERSON DAVIS’S FAREWELL ADDRESS TO THE U.S. SENATE
Read JEFFERSON DAVIS’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS
Read the PREFACE TO JEFFERSON DAVIS’S RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT

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