
Edmund Jackson Davis (2 October 1827-24 February 1883) was the Republican Governor of Texas from 8 January 1870 to 15 January 1874, succeeding Elisha M. Pease and preceding Richard Coke.
Biography[]
Edmund Jackson Davis was born in St. Augustine, Florida in 1827, and his family moved to Galveston, Texas in 1848. The next year, Davis moved to Corpus Christi and became a lawyer before serving as inspector and deputy collector of customs from 1849 to 1853, served as Webb County district attorney, became a judge from Laredo, and supported Sam Houston's stand against secession in 1861. He was removed from his judgeship for refusing to swear allegiance to the Confederacy; he went on to serve as a Union Army Brigadier-General during the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, he supported the rights of freed slaves and the division of Texas into several Republican-controlled states. He served as Texas' Radical Republican governor from 1870 to 1874, and he created a protege in Norris Wright Cuney. He was defeated for re-election in 1873; he was the last Republican governor of Texas until Bill Clements in 1978. He turned down the office of customs collector at Galveston because he opposed Rutherford B. Hayes; he unsuccessfully sought the vice-presidency in 1880 and lost an 1882 race for the US House of Representatives. He died in Austin in 1883 and was given a war hero's funeral.