Kentucky's Other President: Jefferson Davis

Both Civil War presidents were born in Kentucky. Jefferson Davis, a soldier and statesman who went on to become the president of the Confederate States of America, was born just eight months earlier than Lincoln, on June 3, 1808, and only 100 miles away, in Fairview, here in Christian County. Historians James Klotter and James Ramage offer their views on the similarities and differences between Lincoln and Davis.

Like Lincoln's family, Davis's family left Kentucky during his youth. Davis's family moved first to Louisiana and then to Mississippi. Davis had years of formal schooling Lincoln never had. He returned to Kentucky for portions of his schooling. He was educated at a Catholic school in Springfield—where he was the only Protestant student—and at Transylvania University in Lexington, a training ground for many prominent politicians of the day.

Lincoln married a Kentucky native, Mary Todd of Lexington. Davis's first wife, Sarah, had Kentucky ties: She was Zachary Taylor's daughter. It was an ill-fated union. Taylor opposed the marriage; and Sarah died three months after the wedding of malaria, in 1835. It would be a decade before Davis married again.

In Illinois, Lincoln was defeated by Stephen Douglas in his run for the U.S. Senate. In Mississippi, Davis was twice elected U.S. senator: He was appointed to a vacant seat in 1847, then won election and held the seat until 1851. He returned to the Senate a second time, in 1857, resigning in 1861 when Mississippi seceded from the Union.

Later in his life, Davis always identified himself as a Kentuckian. He is remembered here with a 351-foot-tall concrete obelisk located at the Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in Fairview. Dedicated in 1924, it's the fifth tallest monument in America.