1st Texas Cavalry - 14th Governor of Texas - NEW

Item CDV-12091

Description

1st Texas Cavalry - 14th Governor of Texas
Edmund J. Davis
Colonel & General
Backmark: Baton Rouge, LA

Edmund Jackson Davis (October 2, 1827 – February 7, 1883) was an American lawyer, soldier, and politician. Davis was a Southern Unionist and a general in the Union Army in the American Civil War. He also served as the 14th governor of Texas from 1870 to 1874, during the Reconstruction era. Davis supported civil rights and voting rights for African Americans. Reviled by many former Confederate Texans and white supremacists during and after the Civil War as a traitor for his open support for the North and his attempts to break up Texas into several Northern-controlled states, Davis leased prisoners to private corporations to alleviate state budget shortfalls. He was the only Republican to serve as governor between statehood and the election of Bill Clements in 1978.
 
In early 1861, Edmund Davis supported Governor Sam Houston in his 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 travelled from Texas and took refuge in Union-held 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 of volunteers. 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.
 
Edmund J. Davis died in 1883 and was given a war hero's burial at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. A large gravestone was placed in Davis's honor by a brother. Davis was survived by his wife, the former Anne Elizabeth Britton (whose father, Forbes Britton, had been chief of staff to Texas Governor Sam Houston), and two sons: Britton (a WestPoint graduate and military officer) and Waters (an attorney and merchant in El Paso).
 
 Source:  Wikipedia