Civil War Leaders

Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis would seem to have little in common; one a self-made man if there ever was one, the other a son of privilege, one a staunch supporter of slavery, the other a vocal opponent of slavery.

Yet Lincoln and Davis had similarities and commonalities, some insignificant, some notable, and some ultimately doomed.
Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to the Presidency was not only surprising, but remarkable as well. Born in Kentucky of a poor farming family, Lincoln was largely self-educated, moved often, from Kentucky to Indiana to Illinois. He was an unsuccessful store keeper, a failed political candidate, and eventually a self-taught country lawyer. His first fiancee, whom many considered to be the love of his life, died young, sending him into a deep depression – not his last depressive episode – that lasted for some time; the woman he married, Mary Todd, was the outspoken, well-educated, and often flighty daughter of a slaveholding Kentucky family.
Jefferson Davis’ eventual leadership of the nascent Confederacy was no less remarkable. Born in Kentucky to a prosperous family whom moved about the South before settling in Mississippi, Davis was sent as a boy to a Kentucky boarding school, then to Jefferson College, Transylvania University, and ultimately West Point. A career military man, a failed political candidate, and eventually a planter, Davis married his first wife – considered to be his true love – against the wishes of her family, only to have her die shortly thereafter, sending him into an eight-year long reclusive state. His second wife, Varina Howell, was an educated, outspoken woman who authored several books.

The similarities in Lincoln and Davis’ lives before they became the leaders of the Union and Confederacy are both noteworthy and interesting; these similarities, as much as their fundamental differences, were to shape their actions during the most monumental event of either man’s life, the American Civil War.

Neither man wanted to see the Union dissolved, yet neither could agree on the issue that split the country, slavery. While Lincoln opposed slavery for many reasons, it is possible that part of his resentment of slavery was due to the fact that it had been instrumental in his family’s relocation from slaveholding Kentucky to free Indiana; his father, who’d bought a farm in an area in Kentucky that was highly-populated by slaveholders, lost his farm in a land dispute.

Davis, on the other hand, as a child of slaveowners and a plantation owner himself, supported a slave system that allowed the large cotton plantations of his home state of Mississippi to prosper. Without slave labor, his and his family’s plantations could not have operated.

Lincoln led the Union to victory, only to die by assassination before he could bring about the reconciliation between the North and South that he ardently desired. Davis, who spent time in prison for treason after the war was over, lived out his life a bitter and unrepentant confederate.

The differences between Lincoln and Davis would ultimately divide them, but the commonalities the men shared are also worth noting.