Governor Edmund Jackson Davis

Davis came to Galveston with his family in 1848, clerked in the post office and read law, and was admitted to the bar at Corpus Christi in 1849. He was a customs inspector and deputy collector at Laredo, district attorney at Brownsville from 1853, and from about 1856 a district judge. He opposed secession, refused the Confederate oath and lost his judgeship. On March 15, 1863, Confederates seized him in Matamoros, where he had come to recruit and to take his family out, an incident that strained Confederate relations with Mexico until Gen. Hamilton P. Bee released him.

What the plaque says

Governor Edmund Jackson Davis (October 2, 1827 - February 7, 1883) Born in Florida, E.J. Davis became a lawyer and judge after moving to Texas. During the Civil War (1861-65), he commanded a regiment of Texas Unionists and rose to the rank of Brigadier General. During the Reconstruction era, Davis led the Radical wing of the Texas Republican Party. In Nov. 1869 he narrowly defeated moderate Republican A.J. Hamilton for the governorship in an election marred by charges of fraud. Davis took office in Jan. 1870, and Texas was readmitted to the Union the following March. Davis' four-year term was marked by controversy over the formation of a state police force and alleged financial corruption. His administration drew praise, however, for its support of free public education. Davis was defeated for re-election in Dec. 1873 by Democrat Richard Coke, but he refused to leave office. From Jan. 13 to Jan. 17, 1874, Davis occupied the first floor of the State Capitol, while Coke and members of the 14th Legislature held the second floor. Armed conflict was prevented when President U.S. Grant declined to intervene in the dispute, and Davis left the building peacefully. Davis married Anne Elizabeth Britton (b. 1838) and had two sons. His grave is in the State Cemetery in Austin. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Capitol — steps away
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 0.6 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Harry Ransom Center — 0.8 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.

More markers nearby

• Henry Smith — steps away
• Governor James Edward Ferguson, Governor Miriam A. Ferguson — steps away
• Governor Andrew Jackson Hamilton — steps away
• Governor Elisha Marshall Pease — steps away