Jefferson Davis

Imprisonment and retirement

On May 19 1865, he was imprisoned in a casemate at Fortress Monroe, on the coast of Virginia. The casemate was wet, unheated, and open to the weather, leading many to believe that his captors intended him to die in prison. He was placed in irons on the 23rd, but released from irons on the 26th at the recommendation of a physician. Davis was not indicted for treason until a year later (May 1866) due to the constitutional concerns of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase.

Related Topics:
May 19 - 1865 - Fortress Monroe - Casemate - Physician - Indicted - Treason - 1866 - U.S. Supreme Court - Salmon P. Chase

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While in prison Davis arranged to sell his Mississippi estate to one of his former slaves, Ben Montgomery. Montgomery was a talented business manager, mechanic, and even inventor who had become wealthy in part from running his own general store.

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The next year, after imprisonment of two years, he was released on bail which was posted by prominent citizens of both northern and southern states, including Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt who had become convinced he was being treated unfairly. He visited Canada, and sailed for New Orleans, Louisiana, via Havana, Cuba. In 1868, he traveled to Europe. That December, the court rejected a motion to nullify the indictment, but the prosecution dropped the case in February of 1869.

Related Topics:
Bail - Horace Greeley - Cornelius Vanderbilt - Canada - New Orleans, Louisiana - Havana - Cuba - 1868 - Europe - Prosecution - 1869

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That same year, Davis became president of the Carolina Life Insurance Company in Memphis, Tennessee. Upon Robert E. Lee's death in 1870, Davis presided over the memorial meeting in Richmond. Elected to the U.S. Senate again, he refused the office in 1875, having been barred from federal office by law.

Related Topics:
Carolina Life Insurance Company - Memphis, Tennessee - 1870 - 1875

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In 1876, he promoted a society for the stimulation of U.S. trade with South America. Davis visited England the next year, returning in 1878 to Beauvoir near Biloxi, Mississippi. Over the next three years there, Davis wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Having completed that book, he visited Europe again, and traveled to Alabama and Georgia the following year.

Related Topics:
1876 - 1878 - Beauvoir - Biloxi, Mississippi - The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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He completed A Short History of the Confederate States of America in October of 1889. Jefferson Davis died in New Orleans on December 6, 1889, at the age of 81. His funeral was one of the largest ever staged in the south. He is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

Related Topics:
A Short History of the Confederate States of America - 1889 - New Orleans - December 6 - Hollywood Cemetery - Richmond, Virginia

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Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution barred from office anyone who had violated their oath to protect the Constitution by serving in the Confederacy. That prohibition included Davis. In 1978, pursuant to authority granted to Congress under the same section of the Amendment, Congress posthumously removed the ban on Davis with a two-thirds vote of each house. Congress had previously taken similar action on behalf of Robert E. Lee.

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