The first appearance of Jefferson Davis in politics would be hardly worthy of mention, if it were not for the fact that the event was used in after years to lend color to a baseless calumny. The Democratic party of Warren County nominated Mr. Davis for the Legislature in 1843, and although the normal Whig majority was a large one, he was defeated only by a few votes. Some years previous to that time the state had repudiated certain bank bonds which it had guaranteed, and in that canvass this question was an issue. Mr. Davis assumed the position that as the Constitution provided that the state might be sued in such cases, the question as to whether the bonds constituted a valid debt was one primarily for the courts rather than for the Legislature to decide. Referring to this controversy, General Scott in his autobiography says, “These bonds were repudiated mainly by Mr. Jefferson Davis;” and during the Civil War the same propaganda was urged in England by Robert J. Walker. The well-known imperfection of General Scott’s knowledge on most matters political serves, in some measure, to palliate his error; but as General Walker was, at that time, a senator in Congress from Mississippi, it is difficult to believe that he erred through lack of information or that he was ignorant of the fact that when the Legislature finally refused to heed the mandate of the courts and provide for the payment of those obligations, Mr. Davis, as a private citizen, advocated a subscription to satisfy the debt, and that this very act was later used by the repudiators as their chief argument against his election to Congress.

Mr. Davis took a conspicuous part in the presidential campaign of 1844, and was chosen one of the Polk electors. Before this campaign he was but slightly known beyond his own county; but at its conclusion his popularity had become so great that there was a general demand in the ranks of his party that he should become a candidate for Congress in the following year.

The Room in the Briars in Which Jefferson Davis Was Married

On February 26, 1845, he was united in marriage to Miss Anna Varina Howell, of Natchez, and in the following month entered upon the canvass which resulted in his election by a large majority. He took his seat in the Twenty-Ninth Congress, December 8, 1845.

In that body were many men whose lives were destined to exert an influence upon his own fate in no small degree. Among them was that ungainly captain of volunteers to whom we have seen him administering the oath of allegiance at Fort Snelling, and a strong rugged, wilful man, who, in his youth, had been the town tailor of the little village of Greenville, in Tennessee.

Practically the only question involved in the campaign of 1844 was the admission of the Republic of Texas as a state of the Union. Mexico had declared that she would regard that act as tantamount to a declaration of war, and all parties in the Twenty-Ninth Congress now recognized the conflict as inevitable. Nor was it long delayed. One of President Polk’s first official acts was to order General Taylor to proceed to the Rio Grande and defend it as the western boundary of the United States. Proceeding to a point opposite Matamoras, he was there attacked by the Mexicans, whom he defeated, drove back across the river and shelled them out of their works on the opposite side.

In the war legislation that was now brought forward in Congress, Mr. Davis’ military education enabled him to take a conspicuous part. His first speech seems to have left no doubt in the minds of the best judges that henceforward he was a power to be reckoned with. John Quincy Adams, it is said, paid the closest attention to this maiden effort, and at its conclusion shouted into the ear trumpet of old Joshua Giddings: “Mark my words, sir; we shall hear more of that young man!” But this speech, which was a reply to an attack made by Mr. Sawyer, of Ohio, on West Point, did something more than win the admiration of Mr. Adams. Contending for the necessity of a military education for those who conduct the operations of war, and ignorant that any member of either avocation was present, he asked Mr. Sawyer if he thought the results at Matamoras could have been achieved by a tailor or a blacksmith. Mr. Sawyer good-naturedly replied that, while he would not admit that some members of his craft might not have rivaled the exploits of General Taylor, that when it came to reducing things he himself preferred a horse shoe to a fort any day. Andrew Johnson, however, took the matter as a personal insult, and as long as he lived cherished the bitterest hatred for Mr. Davis.