Jeff Davis (Arkansas governor)

Early life

Davis was born near Rocky Comfort in Little River County in southwestern Arkansas. His parents were Lewis W. Davis, a Baptist preacher originally from Kentucky and his wife, Elizabeth Phillips, originally from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Lewis Davis did not join the Confederate army until drafted in 1864, but he named his only son after Jefferson Davis, then-President of the Confederate States of America. His service was largely a chaplain's commission, but he quit the ministry following the war and became a lawyer.

Civil War and Reconstruction

No Civil War battles were fought within Sevier County's bounds, but there were many opportunities for the war to make an impression on a young Jeff Davis. After the Union captured Little Rock in 1863, the state capitol was moved to Washington. Union General Nathaniel Banks later lead the Red River Campaign, an unsuccessful attempt to capture Shreveport, Louisiana via southwest Arkansas, through the county. Beginning in 1865, Laynesport became a Confederate garrison, not far from the Davis property. Perhaps equally indelible was the romanticism of "The Lost Cause" in the years following the war; as a majority of southwestern Arkansas residents remained staunch Confederate supporters.

Following the war, Lewis Davis was elected to serve as county and probate judge of Sevier County, and later Little River County following its creation in 1867. The following year, Radical Reconstruction swept Davis and most other Democrats from office. Confederate supporters did not accept this political overhaul, turning to vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Knights of the White Camelia to intimidate blacks and Republicans. The rough and tumble nature of Little River County was especially conductive for gangs, outlaws and violence. Eventually the situation devolved to such lawlessness that governor Powell Clayton declared martial law in Little River and nine other counties to restore order. Desperado Cullen Baker initially assembled a posse to oppose Clayton's militia, but after several skirmishes the militia gained control of the county. Local history tells of rape, torture, murder and pillaging by the militia in the ensuing months. The martial law months were later described by Jeff Davis as the "most bitter episode of his youth". The Davis family moved to Dover, Arkansas in the Arkansas River Valley in 1869.

Move to Pope County

Following a move to Pope County, Lewis Davis' former judgeship quickly elevated him within a very small legal community. However, the Davis family had moved into a similarly explosive post-war situation rooted deep in Pope County's past. Divided sharply into city-country and Union-Rebel factions, both sides held grudges long after the war was over. The Republican domination of local government lead to resentment from the ex-Confederate Democrats, and the situation exploded in 1872. Later known as the Pope County Militia War, the county fell into lawlessness for six months resulting in robbery, murder and pillaging. Pope County Democrats became heroes across the state for providing openly armed resistance to Powell Clayton's state militia. In a new town but witnessing a violent conflict, Reconstruction violence continued to make an impact on ten-year-old Jeff Davis.

Education and early career

Davis attended public schools in Russellville, Arkansas. After being rejected by West Point in 1878, Davis enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he studied until 1880. Davis transferred to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Completing the two-year law curriculum in one year, the Vanderbilt University Law School withheld his diploma for failure to satisfy their residency requirement. He returned to Russellville in the summer of 1881 and received bar admission despite being underaged with the help of his father's influence. In the fall of 1881, Davis enrolled at Cumberland University, which granted his law degree in May 1882.

Now twenty years old, Davis joined his father's law firm, L.W. Davis and Son, Attorneys, in Russellville as a junior law partner. Focusing on homestead cases, the law practice had become rather successful. The elder Davis, buoyed by a growing law practice while also working as a newspaper editor, real estate broker, and local booster, had become one of the county's most successful citizens. The elder Davis won election into the Arkansas General Assembly in 1877, and Jeff became heavily involved in political campaigns as early as 1884. After supporting Grover Cleveland in the 1888 presidential election, Davis decided to run for district prosecuting attorney in the Fifth Judicial District the following cycle.

Setting

At the time, the South was ruled by an unofficial one-party system, with Democratic hegemony, white supremacy, and black disfranchisement remaining intertwined between the Civil War well into the 20th century. Redeemers, usually prominent landowning white men, ruled politics in the South during much of Davis' adult life. This group sought to reverse Republican gains made during Reconstruction and a return to the white supremacy of the Antebellum South by establishing Jim Crow laws. An underground paramilitary component, including groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, also rose to prominence during this period, committing countless lynchings and other acts of violence against Republicans, blacks, and other groups.

Style and contemporaries

Davis is often put in the same class as Benjamin Tillman, Robert Love Taylor, Thomas E. Watson, James K. Vardaman, Coleman Livingston Blease, and later Huey Long, controversial figures known as part-Southern demagogues, part-populists and part-political bosses. Davis was one of many Southern demagogue politicians who rose to power on a populist message of agrarian frustration with big business and elites. His coarse language, insults, and theatrics were all crafted to enhance his "common man" credentials. Davis made a career of skewering the business interests, newspapers, and urban dwellers in order to appeal to the poor rural citizens of the state. He portrayed himself as 'just another poor country boy' against the moneyed interests that held back the common man. Davis often used words such as "rednecks" or "hillbillies", but as terms of endearment rather than pejorative, a technique Huey Long learned from Davis and later used with success in Louisiana.

As with many of his contemporaries, a strong segregationist component drove much of Davis' rhetoric. Although Davis did not succeed in implementing many of his racist promises on the stump, Davis supported disfranchisement of blacks, segregation of school taxes, and white supremacy. He attacked 1904 gubernatorial opponent Carroll D. Wood for appointing a black man as a jury commissioner, promising "no man could be appointed to office under my administration unless he was a white man, a Democrat, and a Jeff Davis man".

It was also said that many of his supporters incorrectly believed he was of familial relation to the Jefferson Davis, the former President of the Confederate States of America, a belief that Davis did nothing to discourage, and may have covertly encouraged.

Early career

Davis served as prosecuting attorney of the Fifth Judicial District of Arkansas from 1892 to 1896.

Attorney General

He was then elected Arkansas Attorney General and served from 1898 to 1901.

Governor

He served as Governor of Arkansas from 1901 to 1907.

In 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt visited Arkansas, Davis greeted him with a speech in defense of the practice of lynching. Roosevelt responded with a calmer speech in defense of the rule of law.

U.S. Senate

Davis was elected to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1907 until his death in Little Rock, Arkansas on 3 January 1913. He was chairman of the Committee on the Mississippi and its Tributaries.

Death

Davis served in the United States Senate until his death in 1913. He is buried at historic Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas.