Jefferson Davis
Mississippi senator and Secretary of War who resigned in 1861 to become Confederate president.
Overview
Davis represented Mississippi in the Senate from 1847 to 1851 and again from 1857 to 1861, with a term as Franklin Pierce's Secretary of War between, during which he expanded the army, sponsored survey routes for a transcontinental railroad, and the purchase of the Arizona strip from Mexico. A rigorous constitutional defender of southern rights and a critic of Douglas's popular sovereignty from the southern side, he resigned from the Senate in January 1861 after Mississippi seceded and was selected president of the Confederacy, for which he was later imprisoned and indicted, then released.
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