Jefferson Davis and Montgomery Blair

Born in Kentucky and raised in Mississippi, Jefferson Davis was the first and only President of the Confederate States of America for the duration of the Civil War (1861-1865). Graduated from West Point, Davis soon joined the army to serve in the Mexican War. By 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed him as Secretary of War. Jefferson served in this office and in 1857 reentered the Senate, where he continued to advocate the spread of slavery into the territories. During the secession crisis, he resigned from the Senate and in 1861 was chosen by acclamation to be the Confederate president. One of Davis’s first acts as President of the Confederacy was to appoint a Peace Commissioner to negotiate payment for federal facilities in the South along with the South’s share of the national debt. Davis fought to preserve the independence of the South, but failing to manage congressional opposition or inspire the southern public, the Union armies surrounded Richmond, and Jefferson fled for the south, only to captured in Georgia that May, arrested and charged with treason for being in favor of secession from the Union. By 1889, Jefferson Davis was stripped of his U.S citizenship and later died in New Orleans, Louisiana. Montgomery Blair was born on May 19, 1813, in Franklin County,