JEFFERSON DAVIS, AMERICAN(ISBN=9780375725425) 英文原版 下载 pdf 2025 网盘 epub 在线 mobi 免费

　　From a distinguished historian of the America South comes

this thoroughly human portrait of the complex man at the center of

our nation's most epic struggle.

Jefferson Davis initially did not wish to leave the Union-as the

son of a veteran of the American Revolution and as a soldier and

senator, he considered himself a patriot. William J. Cooper shows

us how Davis' initial reluctance turned into absolute commitment to

the Confederacy. He provides a thorough account of Davis' life,

both as the Confederate President and in the years before and after

the war. Elegantly written and impeccably researched, Jefferson

Davis, American is the definitive examination of one of the

most enigmatic figures in our nation's history.

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　　William J. Cooper lives in Baton Rouge.

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　　Chapter 1

　　"There My Memories Begin"

　　Jefferson Davis was born on June 3, 1808, in Christian County,

Kentucky. Located in the west-central section of the state and

bordering Tennessee, Christian County at that time was a sparsely

settled part of the western frontier. The infant was named for his

father's political hero, the sitting president of the United

States, Thomas Jefferson. His parents also gave him a middle name,

which by early manhood he dropped completely; only the initial F.

survived. For Samuel Emory Davis in his early fifties and his

forty-eight-year-old wife, Jane Cook Davis, this boy, their tenth

child, would be their last.1

　　In searching for a home on the American frontier, Samuel Davis

followed literally in the steps of his father. Samuel's

grandfather, the first of this Davis family on this side of the

Atlantic Ocean, emigrated from Wales to Philadelphia, perhaps as

early as 1701, when a number of Welsh Baptists landed in the

Pennsylvania port, and surely before 1720. The place and date of

Evan Davis's birth are not known. All genealogical authorities

agree on his Welshness, and he was undoubtedly born sometime during

the final two decades of the seventeenth century. He had a wife,

but only her first name has survived. When and where he and Mary

Davis were married is also unknown.2

　　Evan Davis found Philadelphia and Pennsylvania hospitable to his

efforts to advance his station and to raise a family. He spent the

remainder of his life in the city. The colony's tolerant religious

policy permitted him to remain loyal to his Baptist faith. Even

though Evan Davis spent most of his working years as a carter, he

managed to accumulate enough money to buy property. A deed

conveying a city lot to him in 1734 carries the colony's first

official notice of him. Although he became a property owner, he

never learned to read or write. Neither did his wife. All of his

legal documents, including his will, he signed with his mark. Late

in life he changed occupations to become an innkeeper. When his

will was drawn up in 1743, he identified himself as a carter; but

the inventory of his estate prepared after his death in 1747 listed

him as an innkeeper. Mary survived him for eleven years, dying in

1758.

　　While Evan Davis was striving to improve his financial status, he

and Mary were caring for a large family. They had six children,

five sons and one daughter. At the time Evan Davis had his will

written, four of them had reached their maturity. He evidently

favored the two youngest, who were both still under twenty-one, for

he provided that Joseph and Evan Jr. should receive larger shares

of his estate than their brothers and sister. In addition to their

portions of the property, they were bequeathed cash payments-Joseph

?10 and Evan Jr. ?20, quite respectable sums, payable when each

became twenty-one. The four elder Davis siblings never left

Philadelphia, but the two youngest emulated their father in his

youth and struck out for new horizons.

　　Once both reached twenty-one and were in possession of the money

from their father's estate, Joseph and Evan Jr. headed southward,

probably around 1750. Initially they went to South Carolina. The

historical record does not indicate why they chose that

destination, nor does it designate how they traveled or where they

first located. In all likelihood they stopped either in Charleston

or the Welsh Neck, a settlement about 100 miles northeast of the

city, populated by Welsh Baptists. Joseph stayed in South Carolina,

ultimately settling near Broad River. Evan decided on a different

course.

　　Before departing from his brother, Evan found another partner. In

South Carolina he met and married Mary Emory Williams, a widow with

two sons. As in the case of his parents, neither the place nor the

date of the younger Evan's wedding is known. Additionally, no

evidence gives the date when Evan and Mary Davis moved on to Wilkes

County, Georgia. But both the marriage and the journey had to have

taken place by 1756, for in that year the Davises, living in

Georgia, had their first and only child. Named for a paternal uncle

and his mother's family, Samuel Emory Davis was also the only

grandchild of the senior Evan and Mary Davis.

　　Evan Davis, Jr., died soon after the birth of his son, though

exactly when is unknown. It had to be prior to 1762, for in that

year one of his older brothers, William, purchased the property in

his father's estate from his living siblings. The deed omitted

Evan's name along with that of another brother, both of whom were

deceased. After Evan's death his widow evidently lost touch with

his brothers, for her name is not mentioned in the 1762 deed. In

1767, when William Davis sold the Davis property to someone outside

the family, the deed contained the names of neither Mary Davis nor

Samuel Emory Davis. Although Samuel certainly possessed a

legitimate claim to his father's part of the property, his uncle

William left him out of the transaction. Whether William Davis

acted out of ignorance or malice cannot now be ascertained.

Clearly, however, young Samuel Davis was deprived of his

inheritance from his grandfather Davis's estate.

　　Samuel grew up with his mother and two stepbrothers on a farm in

Wilkes County. No details about his early years have survived. When

the American Revolution convulsed the Georgia and South Carolina

frontiers, Samuel Davis entered the conflict and the historical

record. With his stepbrothers, Samuel joined the patriot militia

and fought as a private soldier in both Georgia and South Carolina.

In 1779 he formed and led a company that participated in the sieges

of Savannah and Augusta.3

　　In mid-1782, when hostilities ended in Georgia, Samuel Davis

returned to Wilkes County. Although his mother had died before he

returned, Samuel did not long remain without a woman prominent in

his life. In South Carolina during the war he met Jane Cook, from a

Scots-Irish family, whom he married in 1783. He and his new bride

began clearing a farm on 200 acres beside Little River in Wilkes

County, land which the state of Georgia had given him for his

military service in the Revolution.

　　For the next several years Samuel and Jane Davis strove to

enhance their position. An ambitious young man, Samuel was able to

add substantially to his acreage from the abundant, inexpensive

land on the Georgia and South Carolina borderlands. By 1785 he

owned around 4,000 acres of predominantly uncleared land. A year

earlier Samuel and Jane had greeted their first child, Joseph

Emory. Holding to the Baptist faith of his forebears, Samuel joined

with fellow settlers to organize a local Baptist church and build a

log chapel, though Jane did not become a member. By 1787 Samuel had

acquired his first slave, a woman named Winnie. All the while his

and Jane's family grew. By early in the new decade four more

babies, three boys and a girl, had arrived.

　　Still, Samuel Davis was dissatisfied. Even in the 1780s white

fears and Indian depredations disrupted life on the Georgia

frontier, undermining the safety and value of many of Samuel's

acres. With or without Indians, the prosperity enjoyed by some of

his neighbors eluded him. In 1793 he turned away from Georgia

toward what he saw as a better opportunity. Disposing of his

property and joining South Carolina relatives of Jane, Samuel Davis

took his family north and west to the new state of Kentucky. They

journeyed along the trail taken by thousands of hopeful and

aspiring settlers across the Appalachian Mountains and through the

Cumberland Gap.

　　Once in Kentucky, Samuel Davis did not quickly find a location to

his liking. He had to pass through the rich Bluegrass region

because much of the land had already been occupied and because the

remainder was too expensive. Before the end of the 1790s he had

tried two different places, in Mercer and Warren Counties, where he

had worked hard to establish a farm in the wilderness. Initially he

rented land until he bought a 100-acre plot, but he remained

discontented. By 1800 he had moved his family farther west and

south to Christian County.

　　Christian County seemed to be a good choice for the wandering and

growing Samuel Davis clan. He cleared and plowed his 200-acre farm

with the help of his older children and his two slaves. When he

sold his Warren County land in 1801, he used the proceeds to buy

another slave and more horses. Raising tobacco, corn, and wheat as

well as cattle, hogs, and horses, Samuel Davis became a successful

pioneer farmer, and he added to his acres. At the same time his

family was expanding. In 1797 Jane Davis gave birth to a daughter,

their sixth child and first in Kentucky. During the next decade

four more-three girls and one boy-would become part of the large

family. Adding to their responsibilities, Samuel and Jane Davis

obtained a tavern license and became innkeepers.

　　As a sign of his increased prosperity Samuel Davis built a new

cabin on the site of present-day Fairview, then in Christian

County, now partly in Todd County. He put up a double log cabin

with two large rooms on either side of a covered passageway, the

classic dogtrot design. Each room had its own fireplace and a small

shed attached in the rear. The timbers were cut in nearby forests

and were hewed into shape by hand. Hand-wrought iron nails and

heavy wooden pins kept the logs in place. The cabin contained

puncheon floors and heavy wooden doors hung on leather hinges

fastened with wooden buttons. The glass panes, undoubtedly the most

expensive detail in the house, stood out in the small windows.

Sticks and mud, the stack construction, were used for the chimneys

at each end of the house. A well in the yard provided the water,

known throughout the neighborhood for its quality.4

　　In this cabin on June 3, 1808, Jefferson F. Davis became the

tenth and final child born to Samuel and Jane Davis. By then the

two oldest boys had moved out, but eight Davis children lived in

the cabin with their parents.

　　Despite his apparent success in Christian County, Samuel Davis

decided shortly after the birth of his newest son once again to

move west. Precisel...

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媒体评论

　　"Bill Cooper's marvelous book is unquestionably the finest

biography of Jefferson Davis ever published. Superbly researched,

elegantly written, exquisitely balancing the public and private

dimensions of Davis's life, it provides an incisive and compelling

analysis of his role as Confederate president, largely because it

presents a brilliantly coherent interpretation of his entire

career."

　　Michael F. Holt, author of

The Rise and Fall of the American

Whig Party

　　"Jefferson Davis at last has a sympathetic yet critical

biographer. William J. Cooper, Jr., has written a splendid life of

one of the most complicated and controversial figures in American

history. With consummate skill he narrates and analyzes the events

and individuals who shaped Davis's life. This book will stand as a

model for many other controversial figures in U.S. history."

　　Robert V. Remini, author of

Andrew Jackson