1-272-981 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Jefferson Davis, statesman and advocate for American slavery, 1862-1867. After announcing the secession of Mississippi from the Union (the second state to do so after South Carolina) in January 1861, Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) resigned from the US Senate. He was named provisional President of the Confederate States of America by a constitutional convention, and was inaugurated at the Alabama State Capitol in Mongtomery on 18 February 1861. Davis was captured by the Union (northern) cavalry in 1865 and imprisoned for two years. An engraving from volume I of The War with the South : a History of the Late Rebellion, by Robert Tomes, Benjamin G Smith, New York, Virtue & Yorston, 3 Volumes, 1862-1867.