Wilmingtonian, Senator, Attorney, Christian, Patriot.”
March 1st, 1820-February 23rd, 1896
“You
shall bring your sons to this spot, tell them the story of his life, of
his patriotism of his loyalty to high thinking and noble living, of his
moderation in speech, his patience under defeat, of his devotion to
your City and State as a perpetual illustration and an enduring example
of the dignity, the worth of a high souled, pure hearted Christian
gentleman.” As you shall look on this statue, it shall be both a
memorial and a lesson of the value of a citizenship which will preserve
all that is good in the past, and inspire to patriotism and service in
the future.”
--Judge H.G. Conner, at George Davis Statue Unveiling Ceremony, 20 April 1911
George
Davis was born on his father’s plantation, Porter’s Neck, in New
Hanover County on 1 March, 1820. He entered the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill at age 14 and graduated valedictorian in 1838 at
age 18. He studied law in Wilmington and was admitted to the Bar
Association at age 20, receiving his license to practice law the
following year. Mr. Davis married Mary Polk of Mecklenburg County in
1842 and their marriage was blessed with 4 children. He was known as a
most thorough, painstaking and laborious lawyer, and in 1848 he became
general counsel of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, a position
he held for the remainder of his life. A staunch Unionist until
Lincoln's decision to violently coerce States, the North Carolina
Legislature in early 1861 named George Davis as a delegate to the
Washington Peace Conference which attempted to avert the
coming fratricidal war.
After
three weeks and a lack of compromise between the sections, Davis
returned to Wilmington convinced that the secession of the South was
inevitable. North Carolina seceded from the United States on 20 May
1861 and Davis found himself elected to a two-year term as a North
Carolina Senator to the Provisional Confederate Congress. During his
term, Senator Davis was considered a strong supporter of the Jefferson
Davis administration and advocate for North Carolina, though tragedy
struck his home as his beloved wife Mary passed away.
President
Davis appointed him Attorney General on 31 December 1863 (succeeding
Thomas H. Watts) and he served in that Cabinet post until the end of the
War Between the States and the dissolution of the Confederate
government. The defeat of the Confederacy brought his imprisonment at
Fort Hamilton, New York until his parole in January, 1866.
Returning
to Wilmington, he married Monimia Fairfax of Richmond to whom he had
become engaged while Attorney General and from this union two children
were born. Davis resumed his law practice and became a popular and
influential citizen who successfully pressed for State constitutional
reforms in 1875. He was also the only citizen of North Carolina ever to
decline the Chief Judgeship of the State Supreme Court offered to him
by Governor Zebulon B. Vance in 1878. Davis continued to exercise great
influence in North Carolina’s political life and enjoyed the affection
and admiration of her citizens.
His
last public address was a memorial of his former chief, President
Jefferson Davis in December 1889, on which occasion he spoke without
notes in Wilmington's famous Thalian Hall Opera House. Already in feeble
health, George Davis spoke of his fallen President being a
"high-souled, true-hearted Christian gentleman, and if our poor humanity
has any higher form than that, I know not what it is." Davis ended his
last oration with:
"My
public life was long since over; my ambition went down with the banner
of the South, and, like it, never rose again. I have had abundant time
in all these quiet years, and it has been my favorite occupation to
review the occurrences of that time, and recall over the history of that
tremendous struggle; to remember with love and admiration the great men
who bore their parts in its events.
I
have often thought what was it that the Southern people had to be most
proud of in all the proud things of their record? Not the achievement
of our arms! No man is more proud of them than I, no man rejoices more
in Manassas, Chancellorsville and in Richmond; but all the nations have
had their victories. There is something, I think, better than that, and
it was this, that through all the bitterness of that time, and
throughout all the heat of that fierce contest, Jefferson Davis and
Robert E. Lee never spoke a word, never wrote a line that the whole
neutral world did not accept as the very indisputable truth. Aye, truth
was the guiding star of both of them, and that is the grand thing to
remember; upon that my memory rests more proudly than upon anything
else. It is a monument better than marble, more durable than brass.
Teach it to your children, that they may be proud to remember Jefferson
Davis."
George
Davis passed quietly from this life at the age of 76 and was laid to
rest in Wilmington's Oakdale Cemetery. Attesting to the depth of
feeling toward him is the bronze statue erected by the Cape Fear Chapter
Number 3, United Daughters of the Confederacy on April 20th, 1911,
located at the intersection of Market and 3rd Streets. During World War
II the Liberty ship SS George Davis, was named in his honor.
In
his "Memoirs of An Octogenarian," John D. Bellamy noted that Davis "had
no toleration for new ideas. He did not believe in popular
education---it was a heresy with him. He was a Cavalier, not a Puritan.
On one occasion he said to me:
"This
thing you boys are advocating, called progress, and the introduction of
new notions is wrong; it is but a synonym for graft and rascality."
He
despised hypocrisy and hated demagoguery. He was a great stickler for
decorum. On one occasion, seeing a young lawyer with his feet elevated
and resting on a table in the presence of the court and jury, Mr. Davis
came by and tapping the young man gently on the shoulder, said to him:
"Young man, no gentleman will put his feet on the table in the presence
of the court and jury."
When
informed of the death of George Davis, Mrs. Varina Davis (wife of the
President) wrote that George Davis was "one of the most exquisitely
proportioned of men. His mind dominated his body, but his heart drew him
near to all that was honorable and tender, as well as patriotic and
faithful, in mankind. He was never dismayed by defeat, but never
protested. When the enemy was at the gates of Richmond he was fully
sensible of our peril, but calm in the hope of repelling them, and if
this failed, certain of the power and will to endure whatever ills had
been reserved for him.
His
literary tastes were diverse and catholic, and his anxious mind found
relaxation studying the literary confidences of others in a greater
degree than I have ever known in any other public man except Mr.
Benjamin. My husband felt for him the most sincere friendship as well as
confidence and esteem, and I think there was never a shadow intervened
between them. I mourn with you over our loss, which none who knew him
can doubt was his gain."
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