Jefferson Davis

Destined to become the Confederacy’s only president, Jefferson Davis entered politics in 1845 when Mississippians elected him to Congress. After relinquishing his seat to fight in the Mexican-American War, Davis resumed his public career with service in the U.S. Senate (1847–51; 1857–61) and as Franklin Pierce’s secretary of war (1853–57). A champion of southern rights and an outspoken protector of slavery, Davis nonetheless wished to avoid the breakup of the Union. He supported attempts to forestall secession after Lincoln’s election but abandoned the effort when Mississippi seceded. He reluctantly accepted the Confederate presidency, having hoped for a command in the rebel army instead.
In this portrait, believed to date from his tenure as U.S. secretary of war, Jefferson Davis appears far more at ease before the camera than he had a decade earlier. Davis’s confident demeanor may be attributed to his rising status as a nationally prominent politician, but it also reflected advances in the practice of daguerreotype portraiture. These included experienced practitioners, technical improvements to the process that resulted in shorter exposure times, and the evolution of pleasing poses, which stood in marked contrast to the rigid postures commonly found in daguerreotypes from the mid-1840s.