Background
John Wesley Davis was born on April 16, 1799 at New Holland, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Reverend John Davis.
John Wesley Davis was born on April 16, 1799 at New Holland, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Reverend John Davis.
Davis studied medicine at the University of Maryland, graduating in 1821.
Two years later, with his wife, Aim Hoover, he moved to Carlisle, Indiana, traveling in a cart and arriving, as he afterward related, with three cents in his pocket.
He practised his profession for some years, but yielding to the lure of politics he ran for the state Senate in 1828 and was beaten.
His magnanimous opponent, however, aided him to secure the appointment as sergeant-at-arms of that body. In 1829 he was elected probate judge of Sullivan County and soon passed from that post into the state House of Representatives.
Elected in 1835 to the Twenty- fourth Congress, he subsequently served in the Twenty-sixth, Twenty-eighth, and Twenty- ninth.
Though not an orator, he wielded much influence and in 1845 was elevated to the speakership, presiding over the House during the first engaged in some of the most bitter battles of the Civil War, including the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg.
At the very beginning of the battle of Gettysburg, the brigade of Davis clashed with Buford’s dismounted cavalry, and was much engaged until the third day of the battle, when the entire brigade was in Pickett’s charge, conducting itself most gallantly.
After Davis had surrendered with Lee at Appomattox, he returned to Mississippi and resumed the practise of law, spending most of the remainder of his life at Biloxi.
In politics Davis was so ardent a Democrat that in a speech made near the close of his career he declared, in reply to a heckler: “I will say now that I endorse everything the Democratic party ever has done, and everything that it ever will do”.
According to Goodspeed’s Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi Davis was a logical reasoner, decisive in statement, and possessed of sufficient eloquence to render his declamation vigorous and of the most convincing order.
Davis was married twice: in 1848 to a Miss Peyton, and in 1879 to Margaret Cary Green, who was the mother of his two daughters and one son, Jefferson.