David Davis

David Davis 1815-86, American jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1862-77), b. Cecil co., Md., grad. Kenyon College, 1832; cousin of Henry Winter Davis. In 1836 he settled as a lawyer in Bloomington, Ill., his home thereafter. From 1848 to 1862 Davis presided over the eighth judicial circuit in Illinois, famous because Abraham Lincoln practiced in its courts. An intimate of Lincoln (the tall, spare Lincoln and the corpulent Davis often bunked together in traveling the circuit), he successfully managed his friend's campaign to secure the Republican nomination for the presidency at Chicago in 1860. Davis and Leonard Swett, another lawyer from the eighth circuit active in Lincoln's cause, gave several political assurances without Lincoln's knowledge (notably one to Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania), which Lincoln reluctantly honored. Lincoln appointed (1862) Davis to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not especially learned in the law, he nevertheless wrote one of the most important opinions in the history of the court in Ex parte Milligan (1866). The decision, denouncing arbitrary military power, became famous as one of the bulwarks of civil liberty in the United States. Davis, who did not allow his judicial position to interfere with his political ambitions, was nominated for President by the Labor Reform Convention at Columbus, Ohio, in 1872, but withdrew when he failed to win the nomination of the Liberal Republican party as well. In 1877 he resigned from the court to serve (1877-83) as U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Bibliography: See biography by W. L. King (1960).

Davis, David (b. Sassafras Neck, Md., 9 Mar. 1815; d. Bloomington, Ill., 26 Jun. 1886; interred Evergreen Cemetery, Bloomington), associate justice, 1862–1877. The son of a physician and plantation owner, Davis was born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in 1815. As a boy Davis attended New Ark Academy for two years, where he read Cicero and Horace in Latin. At thirteen Davis entered Kenyon College in Ohio. After graduation he studied law and clerked for two years in the office of Henry W. Bishop in Lenox, Massachusetts. It was here that he met his first wife, Sarah Woodruff Walker, whom he married in 1838. (Sarah died in 1879.) In an effort to advance his career, Davis in 1835 entered the New Haven Law School, which had a tenuous association with Yale Law School. Davis studied at New Haven for less than a year.

Davis then headed west and opened a law office in Pekin, Illinois, in 1835. He was soon induced by a friend, Jesse W. Fell, to purchase Fell's legal practice in Bloomington, Illinois, where he moved in the fall of 1836 and remained a resident for the rest of his life. It was during this period that Davis met another Illinois attorney, Abraham Lincoln, whose friendship and political association would profoundly impact his life and career.

Davis had an abiding interest in politics and ran unsuccessfully for the state senate in 1840. In 1844, running as a Whig, Davis won a seat in the Illinois house. Three years later Davis was elected to the Illinois constitutional convention, where he championed the cause of judicial reform. Elected circuit judge in 1848, Davis served on the Illinois bench until his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1862.

In Illinois Davis and Lincoln were members of an itinerant bar that held court in several counties in the central part of the state during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The association between the two grew closer when Davis actively supported Lincoln's 1854 bid to become a U.S. senator. When Lincoln secured the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, his tireless campaign manager was David Davis. In 1862 Lincoln appointed Davis to the Supreme Court.

Davis's tenure on the Supreme Court was made notable by his majority opinion in Ex parte Milligan (1866). In Milligan, the Court held that the military trial and conviction of a man found guilty of paramilitary activity in support of the Confederacy was illegal, in part because Indiana, the place of Milligan's activities, was not the site of war and civil courts were available to try the case. Davis took pride in the Court's decision not to acquiesce to the interests of the executive and legislative branches.

In 1877 Davis resigned from the Supreme Court and served one term in the U.S. Senate, where from 1881 to 1883 he served as president pro tem. A loyal friend and trusted adviser to Lincoln, Davis was an industrious, pragmatic, and independent lawyer and judge. His significance should be measured not only by his carefully drafted opinion in Milligan but perhaps more by his contribution to the election of President Lincoln.

Bibliography

Willard L. King , Lincoln's Manager David Davis (1960).

Gregory Leyh