JEFFERSON DAVIS, AMERICAN(ISBN=) 英文原版

　　William J. Cooper lives in Baton Rouge.

　　”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

　　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…