Henry Winter Davis

Henry Winter Davis (August 16, 1817 – December 30, 1865) was a United States representative from the 4th and 3rd congressional districts of Maryland, well known as one of the Radical Republicans during the Civil War. He was the driving force behind the abolition of slavery in Maryland in 1864, and it was largely because of him that Maryland did not secede. He was an author and primary sponsor of the failed Wade–Davis Bill of 1864, which President Abraham Lincoln vetoed for going beyond his plans for Reconstruction.

Early life and career

Henry Winter Davis was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on August 16, 1817. His father, the Reverend Henry Lyon Davis (1775–1836), was a prominent Maryland Episcopal clergyman, and was for some years president of St John's College at Annapolis. The son graduated at Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio in 1837, and from the law department of the University of Virginia in 1841, and began the practice of law in Alexandria, Virginia, but in 1850 removed to Baltimore, Maryland, where he won a high position at the bar.

He wrote an elaborate political work entitled The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century (1853), in which he described the American Republic and the Russian Empire as the ultimate opponents in the struggles of humanity; it also dismissed the Southern contention that slavery was a divine institution.

Career in Congress

Early becoming imbued with strong anti-slavery views, though by inheritance he was himself a slaveholder. He began political life as a Whig. After the Whig Party disintegrated, he became a Know Nothing, and served as a member of the Know Nothing–influenced American Party in the House of Representatives from 1855 to 1861.