Davis initially was uncertain as to whether to accept the appointment. It was an honor, of course, but he was not at all sure that he was the right man for the post. “I have no confidence in my ability to meet its requirement,” he said. He could serve as a general, yes. He was, after all, a West Point graduate (though he graduated twentieth out of thirty-three students in his class) and a celebrated hero of the Mexican War, and had been Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce.
Jefferson Davis, appointed provisional president at the 1861 secession convention in Mobile, AL. He wasn’t there, he was home in Vicksburg, receiving a telegraph with the news.
