Chapter 3

SeeThe Speeches of Henry Winter Davis(New York, 1867), to which is prefixed an oration on his life and character delivered in the House of Representatives by Senator J. A. J. Creswell of Maryland.

DAVIS, JEFFERSON(1808-1889), American soldier and statesman, president of the Confederate states in the American Civil War, was born on the 3rd of June 1808 at what is now the village of Fairview, in that part of Christian county, Kentucky, which was later organized as Todd county. His father, Samuel Davis (1756-1824), who served in the War of Independence, was of Welsh, and his mother, Jane Cook, of Scotch-Irish descent; during his infancy the family moved to Wilkinson county, Mississippi. Jefferson Davis was educated at Transylvania University (Lexington, Kentucky) and at the United States Military Academy at West Point. From the latter he graduated in July 1828, and became by brevet a second lieutenant of infantry. He was assigned for duty to Jefferson Barracks at St Louis, and on reaching this post was ordered to Fort Crawford, near Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. In 1833 he took part in the closing scenes of the Black Hawk War, was present at the capture of Black Hawk, and was sent to Dixon, Illinois, to muster into service some volunteers from that state. Their captain was Abraham Lincoln, and Lieutenant Davis is said to have administered to him his first oath of allegiance. In June 1835 he resigned from the army, married Miss Knox Taylor, daughter of Colonel (later General) Zachary Taylor, and became a cotton planter in Warren county, Miss. In September of the same year, while visiting in Louisiana to escape the fever, his wife died of it and Davis himself was dangerously ill. For the next few months he travelled to regain his health; and in the spring of 1836 returned to his cotton plantation, where for several years he devoted his time largely to reading political philosophy, political economy, public law and the English classics, and by careful management of his estate he acquired considerable wealth. In 1843 Davis entered the field of politics as a Democrat, and exhibited great power as a public speaker. In 1844 he was chosen as a presidential elector on the Polk and Dallas ticket; in February 1845 he married Miss Varina Howell (1826-1906) of Mississippi (a granddaughter of Governor Richard Howell of New Jersey), and in the same year became a Democratic representative in Congress. From the beginning of his political career he advocated a strict construction of the Federal constitution. He was an ardent admirer of John C. Calhoun, and eventually became his successor as the leader of the South. In his rare speeches in the House of Representatives he clearly defined his position in regard to states rights, which he consistently held ever afterwards. During his first session, war with Mexico was declared, and he resigned his seat in June 1846 to take command of the first regiment raised in his state—the Mississippi Rifles. He served in the Northern Campaign under his father-in-law, General Taylor, and was greatly distinguished for gallantry and soldierly conduct at Monterey and particularly at Buena Vista, where he was severely wounded early in the engagement, but continued in command of his regiment until victory crowned the American arms. While still in the field he was appointed (May 1847) by President Polk to be brigadier-general of volunteers; but this appointment Davis declined, on the ground, as he afterwards said, “that volunteers are militia and the Constitution reserves to the state the appointment of all militia officers.” Afterwards, Davis himself, as president of the Confederate States, was to appoint many volunteer officers.

Upon his return to his home late in 1847 he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate, and in 1850 he was elected for a full term of six years. He resigned in 1851, but was again elected in 1857, and continued as a member from that year until the secession of his State in 1861. As a senator he stood in the front rank in a body distinguished for ability; his purity of character and courteous manner, together with his intellectual gifts, won him the esteem of all parties; and he became more and more the leader of the Southern Democrats. He was, however, possessed of a logical rather than an intuitive mind. In his famous speech in the Senate on the 12th of July 1848, on the question of establishing a government for Oregon Territory, he held that a slave should be treated by the Federal government on the same basis as any other property, and therefore that it was the duty of Congress to protect the owner’s right to his slave in whatever state or territory of the Union that slave might be. In the debates on the Compromise Measures of 1850 he took an active part, strongly opposing these measures, while Henry Stuart Foote (1800-1880), the other Mississippi senator, was one of their leading advocates. But although still holding to the theory expounded in his July speech of 1848, he was now ready with the proposal that slavery might be prohibited north of latitude 36° 30′ N. provided it should not be interfered with in any territory south of that line. He resigned from the Senate in 1851 to become a candidate of the Democratic States-Rights party for the governorship of his state against Foote, the candidate of the Union Democrats. In the campaign he held, in opposition to the wishes of the more radical members of his party, that although secession might be resorted to as a last alternative the circumstances were not yet such as to justify it. A temporary loss of eyesight interfered with his canvass, and he was defeated by a small majority (1009), the campaign having been watched with the greatest interest throughout the country. In 1853 he accepted the position of secretary of war in the cabinet of President Pierce, and for four years performed the duties of the office with great distinction and with lasting benefit to the nation. He organized the engineer companies which explored and reported on the several proposed routes for a railway connecting the Mississippi valley with the Pacific Ocean; he effected the enlargement of the army, and made material changes in its equipment of arms and ammunition, utilizing the latest improvements; he made his appointments of subordinates on their merits, regardless of party considerations; he revised the system of tactics, perfected the signal corps service, and enlarged the coast and frontier defences of the country. During all this time he was on terms of intimate friendship with the president, over whom he undoubtedly exerted a powerful, but probably not, as is often said, a dominating influence; for instance he is generally supposed to have won the president’s support for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. After the passage of this bill, Davis, who as secretary of war had control of the United States troops in Kansas, sympathized strongly with the pro-slavery party there. At the end of his service in the cabinet, he was returned to the Senate. To his insistence in 1860 that the Democratic party should support his claim to the protection of slavery in the territories by the Federal government, the disruption of that party was in large measure due. At the same time he practically told the Senate that the South would secede in the event of the election of a radical Republican to the presidency; and on the 10th of January 1861, not long after the election of Lincoln, he argued before that body the constitutional right of secession and declared that the treatment of the South had become such that it could no longer remain in the Union without being degraded. When his state had passed the ordinance of secession he resigned his seat, and his speech on the 21st of January was a clear and able statement of the position taken by his state, and a most pathetic farewell to his associates.

On the 25th of January 1861 Davis was commissioned major-general of the forces Mississippi was raising in view of the threatened conflict. On the 9th of February he received the unanimous vote of the Provisional Congress of the seceded states as president of the “Confederate States of America.” He was inaugurated on the 18th of February, was subsequently, after the adoption of the permanent constitution, regularly elected by popular vote, for a term of six years, and on the 22nd of February 1862 was again inaugurated. He had not sought the office, preferring service in the field. His brilliant career, both asa civilian and as a soldier, drew all eyes to him as best fitted to guide the fortunes of the new Confederacy, and with a deep sense of the responsibility he obeyed the call. He heartily approved of the peace conference, which attempted to draw up a plan of reconciliation between the two sections, but whose failure made war inevitable. Montgomery, in Alabama, was the first Confederate capital, but after Virginia joined her sister states, the seat of government was removed to Richmond, on the 29th of May 1861. How Davis—of whom W. E. Gladstone, in the early days of English sympathy with the South, said that he had “made a nation”—bore himself in his most responsible position during the gigantic conflict which ensued, cannot here be related in detail. (SeeConfederate States; andAmerican Civil War.) In the shortest time he organized and put into the field one of the finest bodies of soldiers of which history has record. Factories sprang up in the South in a few months, supplying the army with arms and munitions of war, and the energy of the president was everywhere apparent. That he committed serious errors, his warmest admirers will hardly deny. Unfortunately his firmness developed into obstinacy, and exhibited itself in continued confidence in officers who had proved to be failures, and in dislike of some of his ablest generals. He committed the great mistake, too, of directing the movements of distant armies from the seat of government, though those armies were under able generals. This naturally caused great dissatisfaction, and more than once resulted in irreparable disaster. Moreover, he was not, like Lincoln, a great manager of men; he often acted without tact; he was charged with being domineering and autocratic, and at various times he was seriously hampered by the meddling of the Confederate Congress and the opposition of such men as the vice-president, A. H. Stephens, Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, and Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina.

During the winter of 1864-1865 the resources of the government showed such exhaustion that it was apparent that the end would come with the opening of the spring campaign. This was clearly stated in the reports of the heads of departments and of General Lee. President Davis, however, acted as if he was assured of ultimate success. He sent Duncan F. Kenner as special commissioner to the courts of England and France to obtain recognition of the Confederacy on condition of the abolition of slavery. When a conference was held in Hampton Roads on the 3rd of February 1865 between President Lincoln and Secretary Seward on the one side, and A. H. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, and Judge James A. Campbell, representing President Davis, on the other, he instructed his representatives to insist on the recognition of the Confederacy as a condition to any arrangement for the termination of the war. This defeated the object of the conference, and deprived the South of terms which would have been more beneficial than those imposed by the conqueror when the end came a few weeks later. The last days of the Confederate Congress were spent in recriminations between that body and President Davis, and the popularity with which he commenced his administration had almost entirely vanished. In January 1865 the Congress proposed to supersede the president and make General Lee dictator,—a suggestion, however, to which the Confederate commander refused to listen.

After the surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston in April 1865, President Davis attempted to make his way, through Georgia, across the Mississippi, in the vain hope of continuing the war with the forces of Generals Smith and Magruder. He was taken prisoner on the 10th of May by Federal troops near Irwinville, Irwin county, Georgia, and was brought back to Old Point, Virginia, in order to be confined in prison at Fortress Monroe. In prison he was chained and treated with great severity. He was indicted for treason by a Virginia grand jury, persistent efforts were made to connect him with the assassination of President Lincoln, he was unjustly charged with having deliberately and wilfully caused the sufferings and deaths of Union prisoners at Andersonville and for two years he was denied trial or bail. Such treatment aroused the sympathy of the Southern people, who regarded him as a martyr to their cause, and in a great measure restored him to that place in their esteem which by the close of the war he had lost. It also aroused a general feeling in the North, and when finally he was admitted to bail (in May 1867), Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith, and others in that section who had been his political opponents, became his sureties. Charles O’Conor, a leader of the New York bar, volunteered to act as his counsel. With him was associated Robert Ould of Richmond, a lawyer of great ability. They moved to quash the indictment on which he was brought to trial. Chief Justice Chase and Judge John C. Underwood constituted the United States circuit court sitting for Virginia before which the case was brought in December 1868; the court was divided, the chief justice voting to sustain the motion and Underwood to overrule it. The matter was thereupon certified to the Supreme Court of the United States, but as the general amnesty of the 25th of December 1868 included Davis, an order ofnolle prosequiwas entered in February 1869, and Davis and his bondsmen were thereupon released. After his release he visited Europe, and spent the last years of his life in retirement, during which he wrote hisRise and Fall of the Confederate Government(2 vols., 1881). In these volumes he attempted to vindicate his administration, and in so doing he attacked the records of those generals he disliked. He also wrote aShort History of the Confederate States of America(1890). He died on the 6th of December 1889, at New Orleans, leaving a widow and two daughters—Margaret, who married J. A. Hayes in 1877, and Varina Anne (1864-1898), better known as “Winnie” Davis, the “daughter of the Confederacy,” who was the author of several books, includingA Sketch of the Life of Robert Emmet(1888), a novel,The Veiled Doctor(1895), andA Romance of Summer Seas(1898). A monument to her, designed by George J. Zolnay, and erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy, was unveiled in Hollywood cemetery, Richmond, Va., on the 9th of November 1899. Mrs Davis, who exerted a marked influence over her husband, survived him many years, passed the last years of her life in New York City, and died there on the 16th of October 1906.

Authorities.—Several biographies and memoirs of Davis have been published, of which the best are:Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States(2 vols., New York, 1890), by his widow; F. H. Alfriend’sLife of Jefferson Davis(Cincinnati, 1868), which defended him from the charges of incompetence and despotism brought against him; E. A. Pollard’sLife of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret History of the Southern Confederacy(Philadelphia, 1869), a somewhat partisan arraignment by a prominent Southern journalist; and W. E. Dodd’sJefferson Davis(Philadelphia, 1907), which embodies the results of recent historical research.The Prison Life of Jefferson Davis(New York, 1866) by John J. Craven (d. 1893), a Federal army surgeon who was Davis’s physician at Fortress Monroe, was long popular; it gives a vivid and sympathetic picture of Mr Davis as a prisoner, but its authenticity and accuracy have been questioned.

(W. W. H.*; N. D. M.)

DAVIS(orDavys),JOHN(1550?-1605), one of the chief English navigators and explorers under Elizabeth, especially in Polar regions, was born at Sandridge near Dartmouth about 1550. From a boy he was a sailor, and early made several voyages with Adrian Gilbert; both the Gilbert and Raleigh families were Devonians of his own neighbourhood, and through life he seems to have profited by their friendship. In January 1583 he appears to have broached his design of a north-west passage to Walsingham and John Dee; various consultations followed; and in 1585 he started on his first north-western expedition. On this he began by striking the ice-bound east shore of Greenland, which he followed south to Cape Farewell; thence he turned north once more and coasted the west Greenland littoral some way, till, finding the sea free from ice, he shaped a “course for China” by the north-west. In 66° N., however, he fell in with Baffin Land, and though he pushed some way up Cumberland Sound, and professed to recognize in this the “hoped strait,” he now turned back (end of August). He tried again in 1586 and 1587; in the last voyage he pushed through the straits still named after him into Baffin’s Bay, coasting west Greenland to 73° N., almost to Upernavik, and thence making a last effort to find a passage westward along the north of America. Many points in Arctic latitudes (Cumberland Sound, Cape Walsingham, Exeter Sound, &c.) retain names given them by Davis, who ranks with Baffin and Hudson as the greatest of early Arctic explorers and, likeFrobisher, narrowly missed the discovery of Hudson’s Bay via Hudson’s Straits (the “Furious Overfall” of Davis). In 1588 he seems to have commanded the “Black Dog” against the Spanish Armada; in 1589 he joined the earl of Cumberland off the Azores; and in 1591 he accompanied Thomas Cavendish on his last voyage, with the special purpose, as he tells us, of searching “that north-west discovery upon the back parts of America.” After the rest of Cavendish’s expedition returned unsuccessful, he continued to attempt on his own account the passage of the Strait of Magellan; though defeated here by foul weather, he discovered the Falkland Islands. The passage home was extremely disastrous, and he brought back only fourteen of his seventy-six men. After his return in 1593 he published a valuable treatise on practical navigation inThe Seaman’s Secrets(1594), and a more theoretical work inThe World’s Hydrographical Description(1595). His invention of back-staff and double quadrant (called a “Davis Quadrant” after him) held the field among English seamen till long after Hadley’s reflecting quadrant had been introduced. In 1596-1597 Davis seems to have sailed with Raleigh (as master of Sir Walter’s own ship) to Cadiz and the Azores; and in 1598-1600 he accompanied a Dutch expedition to the East Indies as pilot, sailing from Flushing, returning to Middleburg, and narrowly escaping destruction from treachery at Achin in Sumatra. In 1601-1603 he accompanied Sir James Lancaster as first pilot on his voyage in the service of the East India Company; and in December 1604 he sailed again for the same destination as pilot to Sir Edward Michelborne (or Michelbourn). On this journey he was killed by Japanese pirates off Bintang near Sumatra.

A Traverse Book made by John Davis in 1587, anAccount of his Second Voyage in 1586, and aReport of Master John Davis of his three voyages made for the Discovery of the North West Passagewere printed in Hakluyt’s collection. Davis himself publishedThe Seaman’s Secrets, divided into two Parts(London, 1594),The World’s Hydrographical Description ... whereby appears that there is a short and speedy Passage into the South Seas, to China, Molucca, Philippina, and India, by Northerly Navigation(London, 1595). Various references to Davis are in theCalendars of State Papers, Domestic(1591-1594), andEast Indies(1513-1616). See alsoVoyages and Works of John Davis, edited by A. H. Markham (London, Hakluyt Society, 1880), and the article “John Davys” by Sir J. K. Laughton in theDictionary of National Biography.

(C. R. B.)

DAVIS, THOMAS OSBORNE(1814-1845), Irish poet and journalist, was born at Mallow, Co. Cork, on the 14th of October 1814. His father, James Thomas Davis, a surgeon in the royal artillery, who died in the month of his son’s birth, belonged to an English family of Welsh extraction, and his mother, Mary Atkins, belonged to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. Davis graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1836, and was called to the bar two years later. Brought up in an English and Tory circle, he was led to adopt nationalist views by the study of Irish history, a complicated subject in which text-books and the ordinary guides to knowledge were then lacking. In 1840 he made a speech appealing to Irish sentiment before the college historical society, which had been reorganized in 1839. With a view to indoctrinating the Irish people with the idea of nationality he joined John Blake Dillon in editing theDublin Morning Register. The proprietor very soon dismissed him, and Davis saw that his propaganda would be ineffective if he continued to stand outside the national organization. He therefore announced himself a follower of Daniel O’Connell, and became an energetic worker (1841) on the committee of the repeal association. He helped Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy to found the weekly newspaper,The Nation, the first number of which appeared on the 15th of October 1842. The paper was chiefly written by these three promoters, and its concentrated purpose and vigorous writing soon attracted attention. Davis, who had never written verse, was induced to attempt it for the new undertaking. The “Lament of Owen Roe O’Neill” was printed in the sixth number, and was followed by a series of lyrics that take a high place in Irish national poetry—“The Battle of Fontenoy,” “The Geraldines,” “Máire Bhán a Stoír” and many others. Davis contemplated a history of Ireland, an edition of the speeches of Irish orators, one volume of which appeared, and a life of Wolfe Tone. These projects remained incomplete, but Davis’s determination and continuous zeal made their mark on his party. Differences arose between O’Connell and the young writers ofThe Nation, and as time went on became more pronounced. Davis was accused of being anti-Catholic, and was systematically attacked by O’Connell’s followers. But he differed, said Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, from earlier and later Irish tribunes, “by a perfectly genuine desire to remain unknown, and reap neither recognition nor reward for his work.” His early death from scarlet fever (September 15th, 1845) deprived “Young Ireland” of its most striking personality.

HisPoemsand hisLiterary and Historical Essayswere collected in 1846. There is an edition of his prose writings (1889) in theCamelot Classics. See the monograph onThomas Davisby Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (1890, abridged ed. 1896), and the same writer’sYoung Ireland(revised edition, 1896).

DAVISON, WILLIAM(c.1541-1608), secretary to Queen Elizabeth, was of Scottish descent, and in 1566 acted as secretary to Henry Killigrew (d. 1603), when he was sent into Scotland by Elizabeth on a mission to Mary, queen of Scots. Remaining in that country for about ten years, Davison then went twice to the Netherlands on diplomatic business, returning to England in 1586 to defend the hasty conduct of his friend, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. In the same year he became member of parliament for Knaresborough, a privy councillor, and assistant to Elizabeth’s secretary, Thomas Walsingham; but he soon appears to have acted rather as the colleague than the subordinate of Walsingham. He was a member of the commission appointed to try Mary, queen of Scots, although he took no part in its proceedings. When sentence was passed upon Mary the warrant for her execution was entrusted to Davison, who, after some delay, obtained the queen’s signature. On this occasion, and also in subsequent interviews with her secretary, Elizabeth suggested that Mary should be executed in some more secret fashion, and her conversation afforded ample proof that she disliked to take upon herself any responsibility for the death of her rival. Meanwhile, the privy council having been summoned by Lord Burghley, it was decided to carry out the sentence at once, and Mary was beheaded on the 8th of February 1587. When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth she was extremely indignant, and her wrath was chiefly directed against Davison, who, she asserted, had disobeyed her instructions not to part with the warrant. The secretary was arrested and thrown into prison, but, although he defended himself vigorously, he did not say anything about the queen’s wish to get rid of Mary by assassination. Charged before the Star Chamber with misprision and contempt, he was acquitted of evil intention, but was sentenced to pay a fine of 10,000 marks, and to imprisonment during the queen’s pleasure; but owing to the exertions of several influential men he was released in 1589. The queen, however, refused to employ him again in her service, and he retired to Stepney, where he died in December 1608. Davison appears to have been an industrious and outspoken man, and was undoubtedly made the scapegoat for the queen’s pusillanimous conduct. By his wife, Catherine Spelman, he had a family of four sons and two daughters. Two of his sons, Francis and Walter, obtained some celebrity as poets.

Many state papers written by him, and many of his letters, are extant in various collections of manuscripts. See Sir N. H. Nicolas,Life of W. Davison(London, 1823); J. A. Froude,History of England(London, 1881 fol.);Calendar of State Papers 1580-1609; andCorrespondence of Leicester during his Government of the Low Countries, edited by J. Bruce (London, 1844).

DAVIS STRAIT,the broad strait which separates Greenland from North America, and connects Baffin Bay with the open Atlantic. At its narrowest point, which occurs just where the Arctic Circle crosses it, it is nearly 200 m. wide. This part is also the shallowest, a sounding of 112 fathoms being found in the centre, whereas the depth increases rapidly both to north and to south. Along the western shore (Baffin Land) a cold current passes southward; but along the east there is a warm northward stream, and there are a few Danish settlements on the Greenland coast. The strait takes its name from the explorer John Davis.

DAVITT, MICHAEL(1846-1906), Irish Nationalist politician, son of a peasant farmer in Co. Mayo, was born on the 25th of March 1846. His father was evicted for non-payment of rent in 1851, and migrated to Lancashire, where at the age of ten the boy began work in a cotton mill at Haslingden. In 1857 he lost his right arm by a machinery accident, and he had to get employment as a newsboy and printer’s “devil.” He drifted into the ranks of the Fenian brotherhood in 1865, and in 1870 he was arrested for treason-felony in arranging for sending fire-arms into Ireland, and was sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude. After seven years he was released on ticket of leave. He at once rejoined the “Irish Republican Brotherhood,” and went to the United States, where his mother, herself of American birth, had settled with the rest of the family, in order to concert plans with the Fenian leaders there. Returning to Ireland he helped C. S. Parnell to start the Land League in 1879, and his violent speeches resulted in his re-arrest and consignment to Portland by Sir William Harcourt, then home secretary. He was released in 1882, but was again prosecuted for seditious speeches in 1883, and suffered three months’ imprisonment. He had been elected to parliament for Meath as a Nationalist in 1882, but being a convict was disqualified to sit. He was included as one of the respondents before the Parnell Commission (1888-1890) and spoke for five days in his own defence, but his prominent association with the revolutionary Irish schemes was fully established. (SeeParnell.) He took the anti-Parnellite side in 1890, and in 1892 was elected to parliament for North Meath, but was unseated on petition. He was then returned for North-East Cork, but had to vacate his seat through bankruptcy, caused by the costs in the North Meath petition. In 1895 he was elected for West Mayo, but retired before the dissolution in 1900. He died on the 31st of May 1906, in Dublin. A sincere but embittered Nationalist, anti-English to the backbone, anti-clerical, and sceptical as to the value of the purely parliamentary agitation for Home Rule, Davitt was a notable representative of the survival of the Irish “physical force” party, and a strong link with the extremists in America. In later years his Socialistic Radicalism connected him closely with the Labour party. He wrote constantly in American and colonial journals, and published some books, always with the strongest bias against English methods; but his force of character earned him at least the respect of those who could make calm allowance for an open enemy of the established order, and a higher meed of admiration from those who sympathized with his objects or were not in a position to be threatened by them.

DAVOS(RomonschTavau, a name variously explained as meaning a sheep pasture or simply “behind”), a mountain valley in the Swiss canton of the Grisons, lying east of Coire (whence it is 40 m. distant by rail), and north-west of the Lower Engadine (accessible at Süs in 18 m. by road). It contains two main villages, 2 m. from each other, Dörfli and Platz (the chief hamlet), which are 5015 ft. above the sea-level, and had a population in 1900 of 8089, a figure exceeded in the Grisons only by the capital Coire. Of the population 5391 were Protestants, 2564 Romanists, and 81 Jews; while 6048 were German-speaking and 486 Romonsch-speaking. In 1860 the population was only 1705, rising to 2002 in 1870, to 2865 in 1880, to 3891 in 1888, and to 8089 in 1890. This steady increase is due to the fact that the valley is now much frequented in winter by consumptive patients, as its position, sheltered from cold winds and exposed to brilliant sunshine in the daytime, has a most beneficial effect on invalids in the first stages of that terrible disease. A local doctor, by name Spengler, first noticed this fact about 1865, and the valley soon became famous. It is now provided with excellent hotels, sanatoria, &c., but as lately as 1860 there was only one inn there, housed in the 16th-centuryRathhaus(town hall), which is still adorned by the heads of wolves shot in the neighbourhood. At the north end of the valley is the fine lake of Davos, used for skating in the winter, while from Platz the splendidly engineeredLandwasserstrasseleads (20 m.) down to the Alvaneubad station on the Albula railway from Coire to the Engadine.

We first hear of Tavaus or Tavauns in 1160 and 1213, as a mountain pasture or “alp.” It was then in the hands of a Romonsch-speaking population, as is shown by many surviving field names. But, some time between 1260 and 1282, a colony of German-speaking persons from the Upper Valais (first mentioned in 1289) was planted there by its lord, Walter von Vaz, so that it has long been a Teutonic island in the midst of a Romonsch-speaking population. Historically it is associated with the Prättigau or Landquart valley to the north, as it was the most important village of the region, and in 1436 became the capital of the League of the Ten Jurisdictions. (SeeGrisons.) It formerly contained many iron mines, and belonged from 1477 to 1649 to the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1779 Davos was visited and described by Archdeacon W. Coxe.

(W. A. B. C.)

DAVOUT, LOUIS NICOLAS,duke of Auerstädt and prince of Eckmühl (1770-1823), marshal of France, was born at Annoux (Yonne) on the 10th of May 1770. His name is also, less correctly, spelt Davoût and Davoust. He entered the French army as a sub-lieutenant in 1788, and on the outbreak of the Revolution he embraced its principles. He waschef de bataillonin a volunteer corps in the campaign of 1792, and distinguished himself at Neerwinden in the following spring. He had just been promoted general of brigade when he was removed from the active list as being of noble birth. He served, however, in the campaigns of 1794-1797 on the Rhine, and accompanied Desaix in the Egyptian expedition of Bonaparte. On his return he took part in the campaign of Marengo under Napoleon, who placed the greatest confidence in his abilities, made him a general of division soon after Marengo, and in 1801 gave him a command in the consular guard. At the accession of Napoleon as emperor, Davout was one of the generals who were created marshals of France. As commander of the III. corps of theGrande ArméeDavout rendered the greatest services. At Austerlitz, after a forced march of forty-eight hours, the III. corps bore the brunt of the allies’ attack. In the Jena campaign Davout with a single corps fought and won the brilliant victory of Auerstädt against the main Prussian army. (SeeNapoleonic Campaigns.) He took part, and added to his renown, in the campaign of Eylau and Friedland. Napoleon left him as governor-general in the grand-duchy of Warsaw when the treaty of Tilsit put an end to the war (1807), and in 1808 created him duke of Auerstädt. In the war of 1809 Davout took a brilliant part in the actions which culminated in the victory of Eckmühl, and had an important share in the battle of Wagram (q.v.). He was created prince of Eckmühl about this time. It was Davout who was entrusted by Napoleon with the task of organizing the “corps of observation of the Elbe,” which was in reality the gigantic army with which the emperor invaded Russia in 1812. In this Davout commanded the I. corps, over 70,000 strong, and defeated the Russians at Mohilev before he joined the main army, with which he continued throughout the campaign and the retreat from Moscow. In 1813 he commanded the Hamburg military district, and defended Hamburg, a city ill fortified and provisioned, and full of disaffection, through a long siege, only surrendering the place on the direct order of Louis XVIII. after the fall of Napoleon in 1814.

Davout’s military character was on this, as on many other occasions, interpreted as cruel and rapacious, and he had to defend himself against many attacks upon his conduct at Hamburg. He was a stern disciplinarian, almost the only one of the marshals who exacted rigid and precise obedience from his troops, and consequently his corps was more trustworthy and exact in the performance of its duty than any other. Thus, in the earlier days of theGrande Armée, it was always the III. corps which was entrusted with the most difficult part of the work in hand. The same criterion is to be applied to his conduct of civil affairs. His rapacity was in reality Napoleon’s, for he gave the same undeviating obedience to superior orders which he enforced in his own subordinates. As for his military talents, he was admitted by his contemporaries and by later judgment to be one of the ablest, perhaps the ablest, of all Napoleon’s marshals. On the first restoration he retired into private life, openly displaying his hostility to the Bourbons, and when Napoleon returned from Elba; Davout at once joined him.Appointed minister of war, he reorganized the French army as far as the limited time available permitted, and he was so far indispensable to the war department that Napoleon kept him at Paris during the Waterloo campaign. To what degree his skill and bravery would have altered the fortunes of the campaign of 1815 can only be surmised, but it has been made a ground of criticism against Napoleon that he did not avail himself in the field of the services of the best general he then possessed. Davout directed the gallant, but hopeless, defence of Paris after Waterloo, and was deprived of his marshalate and his titles at the second restoration. When some of his subordinate generals were proscribed, he demanded to be held responsible for their acts, as executed under his orders, and he endeavoured to prevent the condemnation of Ney. After a time the hostility of the Bourbons towards Davout died away, and he was reconciled to the monarchy. In 1817 his rank and titles were restored, and in 1819 he became a member of the chamber of peers. He died at Paris on the 1st of June 1823.

See the marquise de Blocqueville,Le Maréchal Davout raconté par les siens et lui-même(Paris, 1870-1880, 1887); Chenier,Davout, duc d’Auerstädt(Paris, 1866).

DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY,Bart. (1778-1829), English chemist, was born on the 17th of December 1778 at or near Penzance in Cornwall. During his school days at the grammar schools of Penzance and Truro he showed few signs of a taste for scientific pursuits or indeed of any special zeal for knowledge or of ability beyond a certain skill in making verse translations from the classics and in story-telling. But when in 1794 his father, Robert Davy, died, leaving a widow and five children in embarrassed circumstances, he awoke to his responsibilities as the eldest son, and becoming apprentice to a surgeon-apothecary at Penzance set to work on a systematic and remarkably wide course of self-instruction which he mapped out for himself in preparation for a career in medicine. Beginning with metaphysics and ethics and passing on to mathematics, he turned to chemistry at the end of 1797, and within a few months of reading Nicholson’s and Lavoisier’s treatises on that science had produced a new theory of light and heat. About the same time he made the acquaintance of two men of scientific attainments—Gregory Watt (1777-1804), a son of James Watt, and Davies Giddy, afterwards Gilbert (1767-1839), who was president of the Royal Society from 1827 to 1831. By the latter he was recommended to Dr Thomas Beddoes, who was in 1798 establishing his Medical Pneumatic Institution at Bristol for investigating the medicinal properties of various gases. Here Davy, released from his indentures, was installed as superintendent towards the end of 1798. Early next year two papers from his pen were published in Beddoes’West Country Contributions—one “On Heat, Light and the Combinations of Light, with a new Theory of Respiration and Observations on the Chemistry of Life,” and the other “On the Generation of Phosoxygen (Oxygen gas) and the Causes of the Colours of Organic Beings.” These contain an account of the well-known experiment in which he sought to establish the immateriality of heat by showing its generation through the friction of two pieces of ice in an exhausted vessel, and further attempt to prove that light is “matter of a peculiar kind,” and that oxygen gas, being a compound of this matter with a simple substance, would more properly be termed phosoxygen. Founded on faulty experiments and reasoning, the views he expressed were either ignored or ridiculed; and it was long before he bitterly regretted the temerity with which he had published his hasty generalizations.

One of his first discoveries at the Pneumatic Institution on the 9th of April 1799 was that pure nitrous oxide (laughing gas) is perfectly respirable, and he narrates that on the next day he became “absolutely intoxicated” through breathing sixteen quarts of it for “near seven minutes.” This discovery brought both him and the Pneumatic Institution into prominence. The gas itself was inhaled by Southey and Coleridge among other distinguished people, and promised to become fashionable, while further research yielded Davy material for hisResearches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide, published in 1800, which secured his reputation as a chemist. Soon afterwards, Count Rumford, requiring a lecturer on chemistry for the recently established Royal Institution in London, opened negotiations with him, and on the 16th of February 1801 he was engaged as assistant lecturer in chemistry and director of the laboratory. Ten weeks later, having “given satisfactory proofs of his talents” in a course of lectures on galvanism, he was appointed lecturer, and his promotion to be professor followed on the 31st of May 1802. One of the first tasks imposed on him by the managers was the delivery of a course of lectures on the chemical principles of tanning, and he was given leave of absence for July, August and September 1801 in order to acquaint himself practically with the subject. The main facts he discovered from his experiments in this connexion were described before the Royal Society in 1803. In 1802 the board of agriculture requested him to direct his attention to agricultural subjects; and in 1803, with the acquiescence of the Royal Institution, he gave his first course of lectures on agricultural chemistry and continued them for ten successive years, ultimately publishing their substance asElements of Agricultural Chemistryin 1813. But his chief interest at the Royal Institution was with electro-chemistry. Galvanic phenomena had already engaged his attention before he left Bristol, but in London he had at his disposal a large battery which gave him much greater opportunities. His first communication to the Royal Society, read in June 1801, related to galvanic combinations formed with single metallic plates and fluids, and showed that an electric cell might be constructed with a single metal and two fluids, provided one of the fluids was capable of oxidizing one surface of the metal; previous piles had consisted of two different metals, or of one plate of metal and the other of charcoal, with an interposed fluid. Five years later he delivered before the Royal Society his first Bakerian lecture, “On some Chemical Agencies of Electricity,” which J. J. Berzelius described as one of the most remarkable memoirs in the history of chemical theory. He summed up his results in the general statement that “hydrogen, the alkaline substances, the metals and certain metallic oxides are attracted by negatively electrified metallic surfaces, and repelled by positively electrified metallic surfaces; and contrariwise, that oxygen and acid substances are attracted by positively electrified metallic surfaces and repelled by negatively electrified metallic surfaces; and these attractive and repulsive forces are sufficiently energetic to destroy or suspend the usual operation of elective affinity.” He also sketched a theory of chemical affinity on the facts he had discovered, and concluded by suggesting that the electric decomposition of neutral salts might in some cases admit of economical applications and lead to the isolation of the true elements of bodies. A year after this paper, which gained him from the French Institute the medal offered by Napoleon for the best experiment made each year on galvanism, he described in his second Bakerian lecture the electrolytic preparation of potassium and sodium, effected in October 1807 by the aid of his battery. According to his cousin, Edmund Davy,1then his laboratory assistant, he was so delighted with this achievement that he danced about the room in ecstasy. Four days after reading his lecture his health broke down, and severe illness kept him from his professional duties until March 1808. As soon as he was able to work again he attempted to obtain the metals of the alkaline earths by the same methods as he had used for those of the fixed alkalis, but they eluded his efforts and he only succeeded in preparing them as amalgams with mercury, by a process due to Berzelius. His attempts to decompose “alumine, silica, zircone and glucine” were still less fortunate. At the end of 1808 he read his third Bakerian lecture, one of the longest of his papers but not one of the best. In it he disproved the idea advanced by Gay Lussac that potassium was a compound of hydrogen, not an element; but on the other hand he cast doubts on the elementarycharacter of phosphorus, sulphur and carbon, though on this point he afterwards corrected himself. He also described the preparation of boron, for which at first he proposed the name boracium, on the impression that it was a metal. About this time a voluntary subscription among the members of the Royal Institution put him in possession of a new galvanic battery of 2000 double plates, with a surface equal to 128,000 sq. in., to replace the old one, which had become unserviceable. His fourth Bakerian lecture, in November 1809, gave further proofs of the elementary nature of potassium, and described the properties of telluretted hydrogen. Next year, in a paper read in July and in his fifth Bakerian lecture in November, he argued that oxymuriatic acid, contrary to his previous belief, was a simple body, and proposed for it the name “chlorine.”

Davy’s reputation was now at its zenith. As a lecturer he could command an audience of little less than 1000 in the theatre of the Royal Institution, and his fame had spread far outside London. In 1810, at the invitation of the Dublin Society, he gave a course of lectures on electro-chemical science, and in the following year he again lectured in Dublin, on chemistry and geology, receiving large fees at both visits. During his second visit Trinity College conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., the only university distinction he ever received. On the 8th of April 1812 he was knighted by the prince regent; on the 9th he gave his farewell lecture as professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution; and on the 11th he was married to Mrs Apreece, daughter and heiress of Charles Kerr of Kelso, and a distant connexion of Sir Walter Scott. A few months after his marriage he published the first and only volume of hisElements of Chemical Philosophy, with a dedication to his wife, and was also re-elected professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution, though he would not pledge himself to deliver lectures, explaining that he wished to be free from the routine of lecturing in order to have more time for original work. Towards the end of the year he began to investigate chloride of nitrogen, which had just been discovered by P. L. Dulong, but was obliged to suspend his inquiries during the winter on account of injury to his eye caused by an explosion of that substance. In the spring of 1813 he was engaged on the chemistry of fluorine, and though he failed to isolate the element, he reached accurate conclusions regarding its nature and properties. In October he started with his wife for a continental tour, and with them, as “assistant in experiments and writing,” went Michael Faraday, who in the previous March had been engaged as assistant in the Royal Institution laboratory. Having obtained permission from the French emperor to travel in France, he went first to Paris, where during his two months’ stay every honour was accorded him, including election as a corresponding member of the first class of the Institute. He does not, however, seem to have reciprocated the courtesy of his French hosts, but gave offence by the brusqueness of his manner, though his supercilious bearing, according to his biographer, Dr Paris, was to be ascribed less to any conscious superiority than to an “ungraceful timidity which he could never conquer.” Nor was his action in regard to iodine calculated to conciliate. That substance, recently discovered in Paris, was attracting the attention of French chemists when he stepped in and, after a short examination with his portable chemical laboratory, detected its resemblance to chlorine and pronounced it an “undecompounded body.” Towards the end of December he left for Italy. At Genoa he investigated the electricity of the torpedo-fish, and at Florence, by the aid of the great burning-glass in the Accademia del Cimento, he effected the combustion of the diamond in oxygen and decided that, beyond containing a little hydrogen, it consisted of pure carbon. Then he went to Rome and Naples and visited Vesuvius and Pompeii, called on Volta at Milan, spent the summer in Geneva, and returning to Rome occupied the winter with an inquiry into the composition of ancient colours.

A few months after his return, through Germany, to London in 1815, he was induced to take up the question of constructing a miner’s safety lamp. Experiments with samples of fire-damp sent from Newcastle soon taught him that “explosive mixtures of mine-damp will not pass through small apertures or tubes”; and in a paper read before the Royal Society on the 9th of November he showed that metallic tubes, being better conductors of heat, were superior to glass ones, and explained that the heat lost by contact with a large cooling surface brought the temperature of the first portions of gas exploded below that required for the firing of the other portions. Two further papers read in January 1816 explained the employment of wire gauze instead of narrow tubes, and later in the year the safety lamps were brought into use in the mines. A large collection of the different models made by Davy in the course of his inquiries is in the possession of the Royal Institution. He took out no patent for his invention, and in recognition of his disinterestedness the Newcastle coal-owners in September 1817 presented him with a dinner-service of silver plate.2

In 1818, when he was created a baronet, he was commissioned by the British government to examine the papyri of Herculaneum in the Neapolitan museum, and he did not arrive back in England till June 1820. In November of that year the Royal Society, of which he had become a fellow in 1803, and acted as secretary from 1807 to 1812, chose him as their president, but his personal qualities were not such as to make him very successful in that office, especially in comparison with the tact and firmness of his predecessor, Sir Joseph Banks. In 1821 he was busy with electrical experiments and in 1822 with investigations of the fluids contained in the cavities of crystals in rocks. In 1823, when Faraday liquefied chlorine, he read a paper which suggested the application of liquids formed by the condensation of gases as mechanical agents. In the same year the admiralty consulted the Royal Society as to a means of preserving the copper sheathing of ships from corrosion and keeping it smooth, and he suggested that the copper would be preserved if it were rendered negatively electrical, as would be done by fixing “protectors” of zinc to the sheeting. This method was tried on several ships, but it was found that the bottoms became extremely foul from accumulations of seaweed and shellfish. For this reason the admiralty decided against the plan, much to the inventor’s annoyance, especially as orders to remove the protectors already fitted were issued in June 1825, immediately after he had announced to the Royal Society the full success of his remedy.

In 1826 Davy’s health, which showed signs of failure in 1823, had so declined that he could with difficulty indulge in his favourite sports of fishing and shooting, and early in 1827, after a slight attack of paralysis, he was ordered abroad. After a short stay at Ravenna he removed to Salzburg, whence, his illness continuing, he sent in his resignation as president of the Royal Society. In the autumn he returned to England and spent his time in writing hisSalmonia or Days of Flyfishing, an imitation ofThe Compleat Angler. In the spring of 1828 he again left England for Illyria, and in the winter fixed his residence at Rome, whence he sent to the Royal Society his “Remarks on the Electricity of the Torpedo,” written at Trieste in October. This, with the exception of a posthumous work,Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher(1830), was the final production of his pen. On the 20th of February 1829 he suffered a second attack of paralysis which rendered his right side quite powerless, but under the care of his brother, Dr John Davy (1791-1868), he rallied sufficiently to be removed to Geneva, where he died on the 29th of May.

Of a sanguine, somewhat irritable temperament, Davy displayed characteristic enthusiasm and energy in all his pursuits. As is shown by his verses and sometimes by his prose, his mind was highly imaginative; the poet Coleridge declared that if he “had not been the first chemist, he would have been the first poetof his age,” and Southey said that “he had all the elements of a poet; he only wanted the art.” In spite of his ungainly exterior and peculiar manner, his happy gifts of exposition and illustration won him extraordinary popularity as a lecturer, his experiments were ingenious and rapidly performed, and Coleridge went to hear him “to increase his stock of metaphors.” The dominating ambition of his life was to achieve fame, but though that sometimes betrayed him into petty jealousy, it did not leave him insensible to the claims on his knowledge of the “cause of humanity,” to use a phrase often employed by him in connexion with his invention of the miners’ lamp. Of the smaller observances of etiquette he was careless, and his frankness of disposition sometimes exposed him to annoyances which he might have avoided by the exercise of ordinary tact.

Back to Index Next