A Very Young Jefferson Davis, Serving in the 1st U.S. Dragoons, Who Later Presided Over a Divided Country with Seceding States, is Interested in Michigan Statehood and Organization of the Territory of Wisconsin

Davis, 26 years old, also seeks an appointment in the U.S. Dragoons for a colleague

 

“It would I hope be superfluous to assure you of my desire to be associated thus with you. Should this however not be the case and should Michigan pass into a state government, I will look with interest to the organization of the Territory of Wisconsin in which you must appear conspicuously.”

At the start of his career, Jefferson Davis was assigned to the 1st U.S. Infantry and stationed at Fort Crawford, Wisconsin. In 1829 he was reassigned to Fort Winnebago, Wisconsin. In 1831 he contracted pneumonia and returned to Fort Crawford. His first combat assignment was during the Black Hawk War of 1832, after which he was assigned by Colonel (and future U.S. president) Zachary Taylor to escort Black Hawk himself to prison at Jefferson Barracks. In 1833, Davis was promoted to First Lieutenant of the 1st U.S. Dragoons and made a regimental adjutant. That year he was transferred to Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Fort Gibson served as a starting point for several military expeditions that explored the West, and Davis remained there until 1835. The fort was occupied through most of the Indian removal period, but then abandoned in 1857.

In 1835, Davis resigned from the army in order to marry Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of his old commanding officer, Zachary Taylor. Taylor was not impressed with Davis and discouraged the union, so the young couple eloped. Davis and his new bride moved to his family’s plantation in Mississippi. Shortly after they arrived, however, they both contracted malaria. Davis recovered, but his wife died just a few months after their wedding.

Autograph letter signed, Fort Gibson, January 17, 1834, to George W. Stephenson in Galena, Illinois, about opportunities for service in the west. “Before leaving Saint Louis, Mo. I authorized Mr. Hempstead of that place to call on you for whatever money you owed me, and to hold it subject to my order, intending to inform you immediately of what I had done, which of course I wished you to understand as merely an arrangement by which when it was convenient for you to pay it, I could receive the amount without incurring the hazard of transportation. I pursued the same course towards Mr. Bennett for whatever he might have received for the horse I had left with him, and also omitted to inform him of it. Please explain to him, and give him assurances of my friendly regard for him.

“I understood some time since that you agreed that your friends should name you for an appointment in the regiment of Dragoons and it would I hope be superfluous to assure you of my desire to be associated thus with you. Should this however not be the case and should Michigan pass into a state government, I will look with interest to the organization of the Territory of Wisconsin in which you must appear conspicuously. How is our friend Redding? Does he talk of ’Tish’, by the way I wish he would get married and become settled, otherwise for he has equally the head and the heart to be distinguished, and his welfare will always be to me a matter of solicitude.” Davis obviously had his own potential marriage in mind as he wrote these words.

He continued, “Write to me and tell me all about yourself and our friends near you. When we have anything interesting, it will give me pleasure to communicate it to you, should you choose a correspondence. Remember me to Mrs. Bennett and Redding to Judge Smoker and Lady, to George Jones and Lady, etc.” Michigan became a state in 1837 and Wisconsin was organized as a territory in 1836, affording young Stephenson ample opportunities for service.

One of the earliest letters of Jefferson Davis ever to reach the market and the earliest we have ever seen. Only a handful of letters from before 1845 have come up publicly.