Edmund J. Davis

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Edmund J. Davis bigraphy, stories - Union Army General

Edmund J. Davis : biography

October 2, 1827 – February 7, 1883

Davis as he appears at the [[Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas]]

Edmund Jackson Davis (October 2, 1827February 7, 1883) was an American lawyer, soldier, and politician. He was a Southern Unionist and a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War. He also served for one term from 1870 to 1874 as the 14th Governor of Texas.

Civil War years

In early 1861, Edmund Davis supported Governor Sam Houston in their mutual stand against secession. Davis also urged Robert E. Lee not to violate his oath of allegiance to the United States. Davis ran to become a delegate to the Secession Convention but was defeated. He thereafter refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederate States of America and was removed from his judgeship. He fled from Texas and took refuge in Union-occupied New Orleans, Louisiana. He next sailed to Washington, D.C., where President Abraham Lincoln issued him a colonel’s commission with the authority to recruit the 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment (Union).

Davis recruited his regiment from Union men who had fled from Texas to Louisiana. The regiment would see considerable action during the remainder of the war. On November 10, 1864, President Lincoln appointed Davis as a brigadier general.Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8047-3641-3. p. 720 Lincoln did not submit Davis’s nomination to this grade to the U.S. Senate until December 12, 1864. The U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on February 14, 1865. Davis was among those present when General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Confederate forces in Texas on June 2, 1865. Davis was mustered out of the volunteers on August 24, 1865.

Early years

Davis was born in St. Augustine, Florida, a son of William Godwin Davis and the former Mary Ann Channer. His father was a lawyer and land developer in St. Augustine, the oldest permanent settlement in the United States. In 1848, after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Davis moved with his parents to Galveston, Texas. The next year, Davis moved to Corpus Christi, where he was admitted to the bar. He was an inspector and deputy collector of customs from 1849 to 1853, when he was appointed district attorney of the 12th Judicial District, which included Webb County in south Texas. He then became a judge in that district.Texas State Handbook Online.

The 1850 census has Davis living on Grant Street in downtown Laredo, the seat of Webb County. Davis, three carpenters, and a laborer were residing, apparently in a boarding house, with Tomasa Benavides and her children when the census was taken that year.Odie Arambula, "Young lawyer Davis had big local role," Laredo Morning Times, May 6, 2012, p. 17A He subsequently maintained a ranch in Webb County and conducted his law practice in Laredo. For a time he was a judge of the state 29th Judicial District.Odie Arambula, Visiting the Past column, "Radical Republican Davis had support", Laredo Morning Times, May 20, 2012, p. 15A

Post war

Following the end of the war, Davis became a member of the 1866 Texas Constitutional Convention. He supported the rights of freed slaves and urged the division of Texas into several Republican-controlled states.

In 1869, he was narrowly elected governor against Andrew Jackson Hamilton, a Unionist Democrat. As a Radical Republican during Reconstruction, his term in office was controversial. His opponents accused him of institutionalizing his political opponents, suppressing newspapers in violation of the First Amendment, and denying enfranchisement to regular Republicans.

On July 22, 1870, the Texas State Police came into being to combat crime statewide in Texas. It worked against racially-based crimes, and included black police officers, which caused protest from former slaveowners (and future segregationists). Davis created the "State Guard of Texas" and the "Reserve Militia", which were forerunners of the Texas National Guard.Texas State Handbook Online.