David Davis

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(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

• Born: Mar. 9, 1815, Sassafras Neck, Md.
• Education: Kenyon College, B.A., 1832; Yale Law School, 1835
• Previous government service: Illinois House of Representatives, 1845–47; Illinois Constitutional Convention, 1847; Illinois State circuit court judge, 1848–62
• Appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as a recess appointment Oct. 17, 1862; replaced John A. Campbell, who resigned; nominated by Lincoln Dec. 1, 1862
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Dec. 8, 1862, by a voice vote; resigned Mar. 4, 1877
• Died: June 26, 1886, Bloomington, Ill.

David Davis practiced law in Illinois, where he met Abraham Lincoln. Their friendship had a strong influence on Da-vis's career. He supported Lincoln's losing 1854 campaign for the U.S. Senate. Davis was Lincoln's campaign manager in 1860, when Lincoln won the Republican nomination for the Presidency and became the 16th President of the United States. In 1862, Lincoln appointed Davis to the Supreme Court.

Davis's outstanding contribution as an associate justice was his opinion for the Court in Ex parte Milligan (1866), a landmark decision. In the Milligan case, the Court decided that a military court in Indiana, created by order of the President, had illegally tried and convicted a man for the crime of aiding the Confederacy during the Civil War. Justice Davis argued that Indiana had not been a war zone and the civilian courts had remained open. Therefore, it was a denial of Milligan's constitutional rights to try him in a military court. Davis concluded that the Constitution could not be suspended in a national crisis, not even during a civil war, and that the Constitution was “a law for rulers and people, equally in time of war and peace.”

See also Ex parte Milligan