JEFFERSON DAVIS.

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD.

JEFFERSON DAVIS was born in 1808. He died in 1889. During the intervening period of over fourscore years, by his stainless personal character; by his unflagging and unselfish devotion to the interests of the South; by his unsurpassed ability as an exponent and champion of her rights and principles, as well as by his distinguished public services in peace and war, and his high official station, he was universally regarded, both at home and abroad, as pre-eminently the representative of a great era, a great cause, and a great people.

The era is closed, the cause sleeps, but the people survive, and revere the memory, and mourn him dead, whom, living, they delighted to honor. It is for them that I write this memoir and vindication of his political action. In vindicating him I also vindicate them; for he spent

his long life in their service, and was rewarded with their love and confidence from his cradle to his grave.

In the fulfilment of this sacred task I shall endeavor to be guided by the spirit that inspired him during his whole life—a spirit of unswerving devotion to truth and duty, of unyielding antagonism against all assailants of justice, without regard to their prejudices or their numbers, but mindful of the fact that every opponent, even to the death, is not necessarily an enemy, and that sincerity of belief is entitled to respectful consideration even when found arrayed against us. I shall endeavor to do exact and equal justice to the antagonists of the South, as well as to her leaders; "naught to extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." If I fail, it will be because my love for the Southern people, and their lost cause and leader, may unconsciously influence my judgment of the men and beliefs that were arrayed in deadly conflict during the war between the States.

As to the plan of the work, I shall endeavor, as far as possible, to make the book an autobiography-to tell the story of my husband's life in his own words; to complete the task he left unfinished. For, during the last year of his life, after having spent the summer in preparing "A Short History of the Confed

erate States," he yielded to the repeated requests, both of his personal friends and publishers, to write an autobiography.

Shortly before his last journey to Briarfield he dictated to a friend, as an introductory chapter, this account of his ancestry and early boy. hood. He was too weak to sit up long at a time, and lay in bed while his friend and I sat by and listened. No verbal or other change has been made in the dictation, which Mr. Davis did not read over:

"Three brothers came to America from Wales in the early part of the eighteenth century. They settled at Philadelphia.

'The youngest of the brothers, Evan Davis, removed to Georgia, then a colony of Great Britain. He was the grandfather of Jefferson Davis. He married a widow, whose family name was Emory. By her he had one son, Samuel Davis, the father of Jefferson Davis.

"When Samuel Davis was about sixteen years of age his widowed mother sent him with supplies to his two half-brothers, Daniel and Isaac Williams, then serving in the army of the Revolution. Samuel, after finding his brothers were in active service, decided to join them, and thus remained in the military service of Georgia and South Carolina until the close of the war. After several years of

service he gained sufficient experience and confidence to raise a company of infantry in Georgia. He went with them to join the revolutionary patriots, then besieged at Savannah.

"At the close of the war he returned to his home. In the meantime his mother had died, and the movable property had been scattered. The place was a wreck. It was a home no more; so he settled near Augusta. His early education had qualified him for the position of county clerk, and the people, who had known him from boyhood, gave him that office.

There was only one political party in those days the Whigs. The Tories had been beaten or driven away. During his service. in South Carolina he had met my mother, and after the war they were married. Her maiden name was Jane Cook. She was of ScotchIrish descent, and was noted for her beauty and sprightliness of mind. She had a graceful poetic mind, which, with much of her personal beauty, she retained to extreme old age. My father, also, was unusually handsome, and the accomplished horseman his early life. among the mounted men' of Georgia naturally made him. He was a man of wonderful physical activity."

At this point of the narrative my husband was interrupted by a question, which he an