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Jefferson Davis (1808)close

Jefferson Davis was born in southwestern Kentucky. His family moved to Mississippi during his infancy but Davis returned to Kentucky for his education. He attended a Dominican School near present day Springfield and Transylvania College in Lexington for three years before securing an appointment to West Point. In 1835 he married the daughter of Zachary Taylor, but she died shortly thereafter. Davis became the only President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, but near the end of the War, with the South in ruins and Grant's Army near, he fled Richmond. After his capture in Georgia at the end of the war the former president spent two years in jail for treason but was released before trial. A private businessman and author after his release, Jefferson Davis died in 1889 at the age of 81.

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