Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederate States of America. A graduate of West Point, he commanded Mississippi troops in the Mexican War in 1846. He was prominent in the Battle of Buena Vista, where he was wounded. After the war, he was appointed a U.S. senator from Mississippi, but he resigned in 1851 to make an unsuccessful campaign for governor of the state. Davis was secretary of war in the cabinet of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) and then returned to the U.S. Senate where he became a spokesman for the South.

A moderate, Davis favored Mississippi's secession and hoped to be made commander of the Southern army. Instead, he was elected president of the Confederacy and inaugurated February 18, 1861. For the next four years, he devoted his life to the Southern cause. Far from being an ideal chief executive, he was in ill health for much of the war. He sometimes insisted on keeping loyal friends in office despite overwhelming evidence of their incompetence.

Because of his limitations, Davis lacked popular appeal. He was unable to win wholehearted cooperation for such unpopular but necessary measures as conscription, the impressment of supplies, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. In April 1865, the Confederacy was collapsing. Davis fled from Richmond, Virginia, hoping to continue the war from the Deep South or from west of the Mississippi, or to organize a government in exile. He was captured May 10 by Union cavalrymen in southern Georgia. He was imprisoned for two years and threatened with trial for treason. His suffering during his imprisonment won him the affection of the Southern people, who came to regard him as a martyr to their lost cause.