Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,460
By This is the grave of John Davis.
Born in 1787 in Northborough, Massachusetts, Davis grew up well off but not totally rich. He attended the common schools around his home, then attended Leicester Academy, and then Yale. Massachusetts boy at Yale? A traitor to grand old Harvard or whatever! He graduated in 1812 (the relatively late graduation date for that period suggesting a period of work in there to earn money for more education but I can’t confirm that) and then he went to Worcester to study law. He passed the bar in 1815, worked as a lawyer for a bit in the town of Spencer, and then came back to Worcester.
As was common at this time, becoming a lawyer was for an ambitious young man a quick springboard into politics. It’s interesting in this series how often I’ve covered some random politician who was only a lawyer for a couple of years before getting elected to a pretty major position. In this case, Davis ran for Congress in 1824 and won. This was the weird time before the Second Party System fully formed, but Davis was typical of a Massachusetts guy in that he supported John Quincy Adams in 1824 and would find himself very comfortable in the Whig Party as it formed a few years later. He became close to Henry Clay and in strong opposition to Andrew Jackson. He wasn’t especially exceptional in Congress or anything, but then the vast majority of congressmen are completely forgettable. I mean, how many of these less than illustrious 435 people can you name today? And you all are political junkies!
By 1833, Davis and Adams were no longer close. Adams had chosen to run for governor of Massachusetts on the Anti-Masonic ticket. So the National Republicans (basically the Whigs before that had fully solidified) recruited Davis to run against him and the Democrat. Backed by the big textile interests increasingly dominating state politics, Davis managed to come out ahead in a plurality, which threw it to the state legislature. Adams withdrew at this time and the legislature selected Davis as governor. He was pretty forgettable as governor. He was really just a hack for the textile firms. He let the legislature do the governing and was known for having no initiatives at all in his two terms. He was reelected in 1834 (these were 1-year terms, my god can you imagine the horrors of this today) because the state hated Jackson’s attacks on the banks.
As his second term ended, a Senate seat came open. Daniel Webster, wanting to cut John Quincy Adams’ attempt to get the seat off at the knees, convinced Davis to run instead. The legislature chose him, though it took many ballots and the seat was open for two months. The reason he finally won out over Adams is that the former president gave a speech praising Jackson’s foreign policy (Adams was such a horrible politician; the man had zero sense of what would alienate or appeal to people) and this alarmed enough of his supporters that they threw their votes to Davis.
Once again, Davis was a backbencher. The only issue he really cared about was the border between Maine and Canada. He wanted a hard line on this, which led to a near war between the U.S. and Britain that was eventually compromised since a war over an obscure boundary was dumb. Davis was unhappy. He wanted every inch of that territory. He was also on the committee to figure out how to handle antislavery petitions to Congress. He was the only person on that committee who opposed the southern move to use the mail to band the sending of these things, which the Postal Service eventually did. He was also the lawyer for the defense in the Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge case, which was the 1837 case that broke the monopoly of the former over bridges between Boston and Charlestown and which became an important but controversial case that fell around arguments over contracts versus states rights and which made a lot of Whigs worry about what Roger Taney would do going forward, and for good reason. Ironically, the Democrats were thrilled with the case and Davis was the winning lawyer in that case.
Davis decided to become governor again in 1840. He once again did nothing in his two terms except steam that his old ally and now enemy Daniel Webster was settling the Maine boundary with that compromise. In the aftermath of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842 that did so, they stopped speaking to each other. This helped lead Webster’s allies to stop a third term for Davis in 1842. When Davis was considered for the VP slot in the 1844 Whig Convention, Webster pulled out all the stops to make sure that didn’t happen. This was real bitterness between these guys. But he ended up back in the Senate in 1845 after another senator died. He then won a full term in 1847. Here he was basically a moderate on slavery, opposing its expansion but voting for most of the Compromise of 1850. His softness on slavery began to cost him as abolitionists grew in popularity in Massachusetts. He couldn’t get himself to support Webster’s endless attempts to become president and so used his influence to support Winfield Scott for the 1852 Whig nomination again.
Realizing he had no real future by this time, he decided not to run for another term in the Senate. He went home to Worcester and died there in 1854, at the age of 67.
John Davis is buried in Worcester Rural Cemetery, Worcester, Massachusetts.
If you would like this series to visit other people sent to the Senate in 1834-35, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. The donations this week have really helped me continue this series and my appreciation is intense. As I am extending a conference trip to Los Angeles next week to work on this series, any help will be super great. John M. Robinson is in Carmi, Illinois and Nehemiah Knight is in Providence, Rhode Island. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.