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Compare and contrast lincoln and davis inagueral address
Compare and contrast lincoln and davis inagueral address
American civil war jefferson davis
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JEFFERSON DAVIS
By Nikhilesh Kumar
On June 8, 1861, the last state joined the Confederate States of America. These 8 states were now a new nation, formed after Abraham Lincoln was elected. Their leader- Jefferson Davis, an American soldier and statesman. This man was Union’s bitter enemy. He was the figurehead for the rebellious Confederacy and was hated in the North. His life and actions forever changed the history of this nation. This man was one of the most influential people of the Civil War.
Davis was born on June 3, 1808. He was the tenth child of Samuel Davis and Jane Cook Davis. His full name was Jefferson Finis Davis, finis means final in Latin, as his parents did not want any more children after Davis. Davis was born in Kentucky, and grew up in Louisiana. After becoming 16, he decided to enter the US Military Academy at West Point. Davis was in the same class as Robert E. Lee, a future general for the Confederate army in the Civil War. He was not nearly as brilliant as Robert E. Lee, who finished close to the top of the class. He finished 23rd in a class of 34, an average performance. He then promptly enlisted in the United States army.
Jefferson Davis’s first war was the Black Hawk War in 1832. He was serving under Colonel Zachary Taylor, who would later become president. He met the colonel’s daughter and married her against her father’s wishes. She caught malaria 3 months after marriage and died. In 3 years he resigned from the army, and returned to his plantation in Mississippi. He lived a quiet life for 8 years, constantly reading and thinking. He soon convinced himself that slavery was essential. In 1845, he married again, this time to Varina Howell, an 18 year old girl. They would go on to have 6 children...
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...aught and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe, where his health steadily declined. Two years later, Davis was freed. Davis wrote a book, A Short History of the Confederate States of America, and finished it in October 1889. He caught acute bronchitis and malaria on a trip to South America. He slowly got sicker and sicker, and on the evening of December 5, 1889, he died, his hand in his wife’s. His funeral was gigantic, people all over the South attended to bury this man.
Now, over 100 years later, we see the importance of Jefferson Davis. He changed the fate of all of us, without him we would not be a unified nation. He was the single most influential man of the South in the Civil War, and his bad leadership was what helped us eventually win the war and progress on to a new nation. We should all be indebted to this man, because without him, we wouldn’t be here today.