From the collection of the Old State House Museum
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Born in the second year of the Civil War (May 6, 1862) and named for the president of the Confederacy, Jeff Davis grew up in Pope County, a hotbed of violence during Reconstruction. Lewis Davis, his father, was a prominent attorney, real estate agent, newspaper editor, and state legislator. Although Jeff Davis often boasted of his humble origins, his was actually one of the most prominent families in the newly created railroad town of Russellville.
In 1881 after completing Vanderbilt University's two-year law program in only one year, young Davis applied for admission to the Arkansas bar. At the age of nineteen he was technically too young to be admitted, his father managed to get the age requirement waived. In 1882 Davis married Ina MacKenzie. The union produced twelve children, eight of whom lived beyond infancy.
In 1890 he was elected district prosecutor on the pledge to get rid of liquor-law violators and to "fill the penitentiary so full of negroes that their feet will be sticking out the windows."
In 1898 Davis challenged the favored Judge Frank Goar, dean of the University of Arkansas law school, for the Democratic nomination for attorney general. As his campaign got underway Davis suffered a minor stroke, which temporarily paralyzed part of his left side, but pressed on and ran a distant second in a field of five. Then, virtually on the eve of the election, front-runner Goar suffered a fatal stroke, and Davis became the Democratic nominee. He easily defeated his Republican opponent in the general election.
The young attorney general immediately set out to make a name for himself. He filed suit to prevent the construction of a new capitol, charging it was a get-rich-quick scheme for Little Rock contractors. He made use of the state's largely unenforced antitrust law which by suing every fire insurance corporation in Arkansas, threatening to ban them from the state for price fixing. The insurance companies did not deny the allegations. Instead they petitioned to have Davis's suit thrown out on the grounds that the alleged collusion took place outside of Arkansas and therefore outside the jurisdiction of its courts. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the insurance companies.
Despite the opposition of conservatives of the Democratic Party, the state's business community, and the Arkansas Supreme Court, Attorney General Davis, rode his image as a trustbuster to a resounding victory in his race for governor in 1900.
Davis promised to "run Red River through Little Rock," but despite his rhetoric his unprecedented three terms as governor produced little significant reform. His strength lay not in securing legislation, but on the campaign battlefield. His charismatic populism laid waste to the conservative wing of the Arkansas Democratic Party. When Davis departed for the United States Senate, control passed into the hands of a new breed of reformers.
See also these articles from The Arkansas News:
Next: John Sebastian Little
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