Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode number 27 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast. This week will be part two of our

coverage of Jefferson Davis's life story. In this show, we'll go from his return

from the Mexican War in 1847 up to early 1861 and Davis's election as the

provisional president of the Confederate States of America. And the last thing

we'll look at in this episode is the formation of his cabinet. At the end of

the last show, Jefferson Davis had just returned from Mexico as a wounded war

hero. Not only was he immensely popular in his home state, but his leadership

of the Mississippi rifles during the recent conflict had earned him a national

reputation as a successful military commander. And so in 1847, Governor Brown

of Mississippi, a wig bowed to overwhelming pressure and appointed Jefferson

Davis, a Democrat, to fill that vacant U.S. Senate seat that we mentioned

previously. And then in short order in January 1848, the state legislature

voted and elected Davis to finish the two years left in the recently deceased

Jesse Spites unexpired term. Two years later, when that term did expire, Davis

was re-elected. And so he was a senator during the uproar surrounding the

Compromise of 1850. Davis gained wide recognition as a leading spokesman for

Southern rights when he took an active role in the volatile debates of 1850,

1851, when no less illuminated than Henry Clay accused Davis of lecturing the

Senate. Davis, like most Southern Democrats, opposed the Compromise of 1850,

particularly the admission of California as a free state. Davis's

...