Davis, Reuben, 1813-1890

Reuben Davis was a U.S. congressman from Mississippi and a Mississippi militia general during the Civil War. Born in Winchester, Tennessee, on January 18, 1813, Davis moved with his family to Alabama as a child and later to Mississippi as a young man. He initially studied medicine, but found his passion lay more in the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1834 in Aberdeen, Mississippi, and over the next several years became a prominent criminal attorney. He served as the prosecuting attorney for the sixth judicial district in the late 1830s and turned his interests to politics. He made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party in 1838.

Davis volunteered for military service during the Mexican-American War, receiving a commission as colonel of the Second Regiment of Mississippi Volunteers. He served in Mexico, but reportedly suffered from medical problems and eventually resigned his position, having not seen combat. Davis returned to Mississippi and during the next few years resumed his political aspirations. He won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1856. Serving during a period of growing tensions over slavery, especially in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened western territories to slavery, Davis was among the prominent southern voices in Congress defending the institution of slavery and easily won reelection in 1858. He adopted a strong secessionist sentiment, and advocated for southern unity against Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860. Davis resigned his congressional seat upon Mississippi’s secession and received an appointment as a general on the state’s military board.

In late 1861, Davis was placed in command of the Army of 10,000—a unit of Mississippi soldiers who had volunteered for sixty days—in a campaign to Kentucky. The militia force actually numbered fewer than 5,000 men, and its short-term enlistments left little time for formal training or organization. As a result, the Army of 10,000 was poorly prepared for field service, and the volunteers spent their entire time in Kentucky in camp, suffering from cold weather and disease, before returning home in January 1862. Davis’s reputation as a military commander suffered as a result of the event.

In 1862, Davis left the Mississippi militia and reentered politics. He won election to the Confederate House of Representatives and soon became a vocal critic of President Jefferson Davis (no relation), in particular over the Confederate government’s efforts to draft men into military service. Reuben Davis resigned his congressional seat in 1863 and unsuccessfully ran for governor of Mississippi.

After the war, Davis initially resumed his law practice. However, he became involved in efforts to undermine Republican Reconstruction, making speeches and rallying white Mississippians to oppose African American rights. Shortly after Reconstruction ended, Davis broke from the Democratics to join the Greenback Party—an independent, anti-monopoly political party that united many state-level politicians in the north and the south on economic matters. He ran for Congress as a Greenback candidate in 1878, but lost. That was Davis’s last bid for political office. He largely retired from public life and wrote his memoir, entitled Recollections of Mississippi and Mississippians,. Davis died on October 24, 1890. He had been married twice, first to Mary Theodosia Halbert who passed away in 1865, and then to Sarah Virginia Garber. He had three children. Davis is buried in Odd Fellows Rest Cemetery in Aberdeen, Mississippi. (Wikipedia; FindaGrave; Nancy Prince, “Reuben Davis,” Mississippi Encyclopedia)