Henry Winter Davis
Encyclopedia
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
from the 4th
Maryland's 4th congressional district
Maryland's 4th congressional district comprises portions of Prince George's and Montgomery County. The seat is currently represented by Donna Edwards, a Democrat, who has represented the district since 2008....
and 3rd congressional districts of Maryland
Maryland's 3rd congressional district
Maryland's 3rd congressional district is a congressional district from the state of Maryland. It comprises portions of Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel counties, as well as a significant part of the independent city of Baltimore...
, well known as one of the Radical Republicans during the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
.
Early life and career
Born in Annapolis, MarylandAnnapolis, Maryland
Annapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Maryland, as well as the county seat of Anne Arundel County. It had a population of 38,394 at the 2010 census and is situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east of Washington, D.C. Annapolis is...
, his father, the Reverend Henry Lyon Davis (1775-1836), was a prominent Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
Episcopal clergyman and was for some years president of St John's College
St. John's College, U.S.
St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher...
at Annapolis. The son graduated at Kenyon College
Kenyon College
Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...
at Gambier, Ohio
Gambier, Ohio
Gambier is a village in Knox County, Ohio, United States. The population was 1,871 at the 2000 census.Gambier is the home of Kenyon College and was named after one of Kenyon College's early benefactors, Lord Gambier....
in 1837, and from the law department of the University of Virginia
University of Virginia School of Law
The University of Virginia School of Law was founded in Charlottesville in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson as one of the original subjects taught at his "academical village," the University of Virginia. The law school maintains an enrollment of approximately 1,100 students in its initial degree program...
in 1841, and began the practice of law in Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2009, the city had a total population of 139,966. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as well as...
, but in 1850 removed to Baltimore, Maryland, where he won a high position at the bar
Bar (law)
Bar in a legal context has three possible meanings: the division of a courtroom between its working and public areas; the process of qualifying to practice law; and the legal profession.-Courtroom division:...
.
Davis was a man of scholarly tastes, an orator of unusual ability and great eloquence, tireless and fearless in fighting political battles, but impulsive to the verge of rashness, impractical, tactless and autocratic. He wrote an elaborate political work entitled The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century (1853), in which he described the American Republic and the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
as the ultimate opponents in the struggles of humanity; it also dismissed the Southern contention that slavery was a divine institution.
Career in Congress
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
views, though by inheritance he was himself a slave holder, he began political life as a Whig
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...
. After the Whig Party disintegrated, he became a Know Nothing
Know Nothing
The Know Nothing was a movement by the nativist American political faction of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon Protestant values and controlled by...
, and served as a member of the Know Nothing-influenced American Party in the House of Representatives from 1855 to 1861. By his independent course in Congress he won the respect and esteem of all political groups.
In the contest over the speakership at the opening of the 36th United States Congress
36th United States Congress
The Thirty-sixth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1859 to March 4, 1861, during the third and fourth...
in 1859 he voted with the Republicans
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
, incurring a vote of censure
Censure
A censure is an expression of strong disapproval or harsh criticism. Among the forms that it can take are a stern rebuke by a legislature, a spiritual penalty imposed by a church, and a negative judgment pronounced on a theological proposition.-Politics:...
from the Maryland Legislature, which called upon him to resign.
In the 1860 presidential election
United States presidential election, 1860
The United States presidential election of 1860 was a quadrennial election, held on November 6, 1860, for the office of President of the United States and the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout the 1850s on questions surrounding the...
, not yet ready to become a Republican, he declined to be a candidate for the Republican nomination for Vice President of the United States
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
, instead supported the Constitutional Union
Constitutional Union Party (United States)
The Constitutional Union Party was a political party in the United States created in 1860. It was made up of conservative former Whigs who wanted to avoid disunion over the slavery issue...
ticket of John Bell
John Bell (Tennessee politician)
John Bell was a U.S. politician, attorney, and plantation owner. A wealthy slaveholder from Tennessee, Bell served in the United States Congress in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He began his career as a Democrat, he eventually fell out with Andrew Jackson and became a Whig...
and Edward Everett
Edward Everett
Edward Everett was an American politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett, a Whig, served as U.S. Representative, and U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State...
. Defeated that year for reelection to Congress, in the winter of 1860 and 1861 - between the secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
of some Southern states and the beginning of the Civil War with the assault on Fort Sumner
Fort Sumner
Fort Sumner was a military fort in De Baca County in southeastern New Mexico charged with the internment of Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863-1868 at nearby Bosque Redondo.-History:...
- Davis was involved in compromise measures.
After Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
was elected and the Civil War began, Davis became a Republican. He was re-elected in 1862 to the U.S. House of Representatives and quickly became an aggressive Radical Republican, which was viewed as particularly surprising given that Maryland was a slaveholding
Slave state
In the United States of America prior to the American Civil War, a slave state was a U.S. state in which slavery was legal, whereas a free state was one in which slavery was either prohibited from its entry into the Union or eliminated over time...
border state.
From December 1863 to March 1865 Davis served as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In 1864, unwilling to leave the delicate questions concerning the French occupation of Mexico entirely in the hands of President Lincoln and Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
William H. Seward
William H. Seward
William Henry Seward, Sr. was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson...
, and brought in a report very hostile to France, which was adopted by the House but not by the Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
.
With other Radical Republicans, Davis was a bitter opponent of Lincoln's plan for the Reconstruction of the Southern states, which he thought too lenient.
On February 15, 1864, he reported from committee a bill placing the process of Reconstruction under the control of Congress, and stipulating that the Confederate states, as a condition of being re-admitted to the Union would disfranchise
Disfranchisement
Disfranchisement is the revocation of the right of suffrage of a person or group of people, or rendering a person's vote less effective, or ineffective...
all important civil and military officers of the Confederacy, abolish slavery, and repudiate all debts incurred by or with the sanction of the Confederate government. In his speech supporting this measure, Davis declared that until Congress should recognize a government established under its auspices, there is no government in the rebel states save the authority of Congress. The bill, the first formal expression by Congress with regard to Reconstruction, did not pass both Houses until the closing hours of the session.
President Lincoln disapproved and on July 8 issued a proclamation defining his position. Soon afterward, on August 5, 1864, Davis joined Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, who had piloted the bill through the Senate, in issuing the so-called Wade-Davis Bill, which violently denounced President Lincoln for encroaching on the domain of Congress and insinuated that the presidential policy would leave slavery unimpaired in the reconstructed states.
In a debate in Congress some months later he declared, "When I came into Congress ten years ago this was a government of law. I have lived to see it a government of personal will." He was one of the radical leaders who preferred John C. Fremont
John C. Frémont
John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...
to Lincoln in the 1864 election
United States presidential election, 1864
In the United States Presidential election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected as president. The election was held during the Civil War. Lincoln ran under the National Union ticket against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, his former top general. McClellan ran as the "peace candidate",...
, but subsequently withdrew his opposition and supported the President for re-election. Joining the Unconditional Union Party
Unconditional Union Party
The Unconditional Union Party was a loosely organized political entity during the American Civil War and the early days of Reconstruction. First established in 1861 in Missouri, where secession talk was strong, the party fully supported the preservation of the Union at all costs...
, he early favored the enlistment of negroes, and in July 1865 publicly advocated the extension of the suffrage to them. He was not a candidate for re-election to Congress in 1864, and died in Baltimore at the very end of 1865. His remains were interred in Greenmount Cemetery
Greenmount Cemetery
Green Mount Cemetery is a historic cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Established on March 15, 1838, and dedicated on July 13, 1839, it is noted for the large number of historical figures interred in its grounds as well as a large number of prominent Baltimore-area families...
.
Henry W. Davis was a cousin of David Davis, a U.S. Senator from Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
and later an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are the members of the Supreme Court of the United States other than the Chief Justice of the United States...
.
See also
- The Speeches of Henry Winter Davis (New York, 1867), to which is prefixed an oration on his life and character delivered in the House of Representatives by Senator John A. J. CreswellJohn A. J. CreswellJohn Angel James Creswell was an American politician from Maryland. He served as Postmaster General of the United States during the Grant administration.- Biography :...
of Maryland. - Tracy Matthew Melton, Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854-1860 (2005). Details political activities in Davis' district during his tenure as an American Party congressman. A great deal of information on Davis is included in the narrative.