Query: Jefferson Davis grew up on cotton plantations.

Relevant passages:
Jefferson Davis <=SEP=> Jefferson Finis Davis ( June 3 , 1808 -- December 6 , 1889 ) was an American politician who was a Democratic U.S. Representative and Senator from Mississippi , the 23rd U.S. Secretary of War , and the President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War . He took personal charge of the Confederate war plans but was unable to find a strategy to defeat the more populous and industrialized Union . His diplomatic efforts failed to gain recognition from any foreign country , and at home , the collapsing Confederate economy forced his government to print more and more paper money to cover the war 's expenses , leading to runaway inflation and devaluation of the Confederate dollar .   Davis was born in Kentucky to a moderately prosperous farmer , and grew up on his older brother Joseph 's large cotton plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana . Joseph Davis also secured his appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point . After graduating , Jefferson Davis served six years as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army . He fought in the Mexican -- American War ( 1846 -- 1848 ) , as the colonel of a volunteer regiment . He served as the U.S. Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857 under President Franklin Pierce , and as a Democratic U.S. senator from Mississippi . Before the war , he operated a large cotton plantation in Mississippi but never owned more than 74 slaves . After the war had ended , he remained a proud apologist for the cause of slavery for which he and the Confederacy had fought . Although Davis argued against secession in 1858 , he believed that each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union .   Davis 's first wife , Sarah Knox Taylor , died of malaria after three months of marriage , and he also struggled with recurring bouts of the disease . He was unhealthy for much of his life . At the age of 36 , Davis married again , to 18-year-old Varina Howell , a native of Natchez who had been educated in Philadelphia and had some family ties in the North . They had six children . Only two survived him , and only one married and had children .   Many historians attribute the Confederacy 's weaknesses to the poor leadership of President Davis . His preoccupation with detail , reluctance to delegate responsibility , lack of popular appeal , feuds with powerful state governors and generals , favoritism toward old friends , inability to get along with people who disagreed with him , neglect of civil matters in favor of military ones , and resistance to public opinion all worked against him . Historians agree he was a much less effective war leader than his Union counterpart Abraham Lincoln . After Davis was captured in 1865 , he was accused of treason and imprisoned at Fort Monroe . He was never tried and was released after two years . While not disgraced , Davis had been displaced in ex-Confederate affection after the war by his leading general , Robert E. Lee . Davis wrote a memoir entitled The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government , which he completed in 1881 . By the late 1880s , he began to encourage reconciliation , telling Southerners to be loyal to the Union . Ex-Confederates came to appreciate his role in the war , seeing him as a Southern patriot , and he became a hero of the Lost Cause in the post-Reconstruction South .