Henry Winter Davis

Henry Winter Davis

Henry Winter Davis (born August 16, 1817 in Annapolis , Maryland , †  December 30, 1865 in Baltimore , Maryland) was an American politician . Between 1855 and 1865 he represented the state of Maryland twice in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Henry Davis was a cousin of US Senator David Davis (1815-1886) from Illinois . He grew up in Alexandria ( Virginia ) and Wilmington ( Delaware on) and received a private education. In 1827 he returned to Maryland with his father, where they settled in Anne Arundel County . In the meantime Davis attended Wilmington College and St. John's College in Annapolis as well as Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and Kenyon College in Gambier ( Ohio ). After studying law at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and being admitted to the bar in 1841, he began working in this profession in Alexandria. In 1850 he moved his residence and law firm to Baltimore. There he also dealt with literary and political matters. He was originally a member of the Whigs . He joined the American Party in the 1850s .

In the congressional elections of 1854 Davis was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the fourth constituency of Maryland , where he succeeded William Thomas Hamilton on March 4, 1855 . After two re-elections, he was able to complete three legislative terms in Congress by March 3, 1861 . These were shaped by the events leading up to the civil war . In 1860, Davis was not re-elected. He then became a member of the Republican Party . In 1862 he was re-elected to Congress as a unionist in the third district of his state, where he succeeded Cornelius Leary on March 4, 1863 .

He was an opponent of President Abraham Lincoln's plan to reintegrate the southern states after the war . In early 1864, he and Senator Benjamin Wade, in opposition to Lincoln's amnesty proclamation against the southern states of December 1863, introduced a bill with much more restrictive conditions. They called for a guarantee of civil rights for African Americans and an exclusion of Confederates from elections and office. As a condition for resumption as a state in the Reconstruction process, they required that a majority of all eligible voters swore their past and future allegiance to the American Union , and not just 10% as proposed by Lincoln. Congress passed the bill, but Lincoln vetoed it to prevent it .

Since he refused to run again in 1864, he could only spend one more term in Congress until March 3, 1865. This was determined by the events of the civil war. During this time, Davis was chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1864, Davis decided against re-election. He died in Baltimore on December 30, 1865.

Web links

Commons : Henry Winter Davis  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

• Henry Winter Davis in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Henry Winter Davis in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Remarks

1. ↑ Eric Tscheschlok: Wade-Bill. In Junius P. Rodriguez (Ed.): Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia. Volume 1. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara 2007, ISBN 978-1-85109-544-5 , p. 499.