(b. June 3, 1808; d. December 5, 1889) U.S. representative and senator, Mexican War hero, and president of the Confederacy.

Jefferson Davis, best known as president of the Confederate States of America, is credited with shaping the Confederacy and leading it in the Civil War. In the years before the war, he served as Mississippi representative and senator, and was also a hero in the Mexican War. The defeat of Davis's Confederacy reshaped American society and government as well as the U.S. Constitution.

Born in Kentucky to a farmer of modest means, Jefferson Davis moved to Mississippi as a child and is most identified with that state, which was then on the frontier. He was educated at Transylvania College and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1828. Afterward, he was an army officer, serving in the infantry and the dragoons in the Northwest (now Wisconsin...