Dead water

COLONEL DAVIS

In the summer of 1836, when Dead Water takes place, Jefferson Davis was twenty-eight years old and just embarking on a career as a planter at Brierfield on Davis's Bend of the Mississippi. He had been widowed less than a year before by the death of his young bride of three months, Sarah Knox Taylor (called Knox), the daughter of his former commanding officer—and future President—Zachary Taylor. Davis had already commanded troops in the Black Hawk War, though as far as anyone has ever been able to prove, he never encountered militia Captain Abraham Lincoln during that conflict.

In the mid-1840s Davis entered politics and re-married, to a young lady named Varina Howell. When the Mexican War broke out in 1846, he accepted a commission as Colonel and went on to become a war hero, a Senator, and Secretary of War to President Franklin Pierce, a career that culminated in his five-year term as the only President of the Confederate States of America.

James Pemberton became the overseer at Brierfield in Davis's absence, a position he held until his death in 1850.

Davis is universally described as a fair and kind master to his slaves.