Jefferson davis brief biography of william hill

This initiative, produced by ministers in conjunction with leading educators and historians, will seek to promote inclusivity by emphasising Britain's place in the current global context, promoting to students the diverse and nuanced factors that have contributed to the society we live in today.

Jefferson davis political party

The desired outcome of the reform will be to broaden the scope of historical study, increasing student concepts of historical context and improving historiographical capability through the understanding of wider perspectives. The new curriculum will be a deliberate — and quite correct — departure from the tired and narrow 'Henrys and Hitler' model of historical study, widening the potential for interpretation and analysis of current society.

To what extent, however, will it help learners understand societies different from our own, particularly those whose cultural and moral outlook now appears alien and abhorrent? As Tom Holland has pointed out, our understanding of non-Western — often pre-Christian — morals can often be viewed from our perspective as though through a screen of static, not tuned to our sensibilities.

What was jefferson davis role in the civil war

There remains a case, therefore, for the study of the individual lives of those who grew up in — and in some cases came to embody — the regimes whose values our society has battled and rejected in the course of its development. An example of such an individual would be Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America; the non-canonical addendum to the list of American leaders, overshadowed in history both by his total loss of the Civil War and by the superior personal qualities of his opponent, Abraham Lincoln.

Stubborn and egotistical where Lincoln was tactful and good-humoured, the character of Davis would come to disadvantage the Confederacy's war effort to the same extent as the breakaway states' deficits in population, resources, and infrastructure. The stark contrast between both men was summed up by William J. To a mind such as Davis, there was no concept of his being anything other than right.

After a political career spent lobbying Congress for the proliferation of 'Southern values' — with a particular emphasis on slavery — in the USA's newly-acquired Western territories, he led the Confederacy with the unshakeable belief that his principles represented the continuing mission of the Founding Fathers. Cessation from the abolitionist North was, to Davis, the only logical conclusion to a political crisis stemming from 'perversion of the Northern mind'; what he viewed as the bigoted denial of Southern liberty.

It was a personality ill-befitting a commander-in-chief, which would lead Davis to a series of poor military appointments and strategic decisions that would contribute significantly to the Confederacy's complete defeat. In order to understand it fully, however — and, by extension, the very driving force of the South's war — we must examine the journey that brought Davis to his position and appreciate how wider cultural context can be understood through its effect on an individual.

Davis's total dedication to Southern culture and the institution of slavery was firmly rooted in his early life. Born into a plantation-owning family who had amassed considerable lands and wealth through the exploitation of subjugated labour — and patriotically named after sitting president and Declaration of Independence author, Thomas Jefferson — Davis's childhood was spent between the states of Mississippi and Kentucky, where human ownership was accepted as a central tenet of American life.