Background
Edmund Jackson Davis was born on October 2, 1827 in St. Augustine, Florida, United States. But moved to Texas with his widowed mother in 1838, settling at Galveston.
Edmund Jackson Davis was born on October 2, 1827 in St. Augustine, Florida, United States. But moved to Texas with his widowed mother in 1838, settling at Galveston.
Davis studied law in Corpus Christi and practised his profession in Brownsville, Laredo, and Corpus Christi.
Davis was deputy collector of customs under the Fillmore administration, was elected district attorney for the Rio Grande Valley district in 1853, and became judge of that district in 1854, serving until 1861. Alienated from the Confederate cause by his defeat in the race for delegate to the Secession Convention, he organized a regiment of Texas Unionists in Mexico.
While recruiting near Matamoras he was captured by Confederates and narrowly escaped hanging.
Davis was made a brigadier-general after the battle of Mansfield. He declined General Sheridan’s appointment as chief justice of the Texas state supreme court in 1865.
As a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1866 and as president of the Reconstruction convention of 1868-69 he advocated disfranchisement of ex-Confederates, unrestricted negro suffrage, and other radical measures of his party; in the latter convention he advocated dividing Texas into three states.
In an election held by the military commander in 1869 he was elected governor of Texas over A. J. Hamilton, Democrat and Union army officer.
His majority was less than one thousand, but he was the state’s dictator for the next four years. The governor was empowered to appoint more than eight thousand state, county, and local officials, leaving a very small percentage of the state’s employees to be elected by the voters. The verdict of the people was that almost all of the Davis appointees were either incapable or dishonest. Although Richard Coke polled a majority of more than 40, 000 in the election for governor in 1873, Davis declared the election law unconstitutional and refused to give up his office. He appealed to President Grant to order troops to Austin to sustain him in his claim.
While Governor Coke and the Democratic legislature organized the new administration on the second floor of the Capitol, Davis and the old legislature continued to maintain their positions on the first floor, guarded by a company of negro troops. After several days of dual government, during which time an armed clash was constantly expected, President Grant wired Davis that he declined to intervene, and Davis retired from office.
He continued to make his home in Austin, practised law, and was the Republican leader in the state until his death.
Davis ran for governor against О. M. Roberts in 1880, but was defeated by a hundred thousand votes.
He was warmly supported by a strong faction for a place in the cabinet of President Arthur, and was defeated for Congress in the Austin district in 1882.
Even his most bitter opponents believed that Davis was personally honest. He was the “ablest and most influential” Texas Republican of the Reconstruction period, and had the power of a czar within his own party. His domestic and social life was above reproach, and he was a man of unusual culture and refinement.
At Corpus Christi in 1858 Davis married Anne Britton, daughter of Major Forbes Britton, Texas officer in the Mexican War. Although her twin brother and other relatives were Confederates and Democrats, Mrs. Davis remained loyal to her husband throughout the period of the war and Reconstruction.
