John Wynn Davidson (d. 26 June 1881), army officer, was born early in the 1820s in Fairfax County and was the son of Elizabeth Chapman Hunter Davidson and her first husband William B. Davidson. His father was an 1814 graduate of the United States Military Academy and veteran of the Second Seminole War who died while serving as a captain of artillery in 1840. Davidson entered the United States Military Academy in July 1841 and graduated twenty-seventh of forty-one in the class of 1845. Commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons, he reported for duty at Fort Leavenworth.
Early Army Career
The war with Mexico began the following year. Davidson was promoted to second lieutenant on 21 April 1846 and served with Stephen W. Kearny in the Army of the West in New Mexico and California. He saw combat at the bitter San Pasqual fight on 6 December 1846 and early in January 1847 fought at the crossing of the San Gabriel River and on the plains of Mesa. While garrisoned at Los Angeles, he was promoted to first lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons on 8 January 1848. As a company commander Davidson participated in the 15 May 1850 attack on Pomo men, women, and children residing on an island in Clear Lake, California, and four days later again engaged another group of Pomo Indians on the Russian River in retaliation for the killing of two ranch owners.
In 1850 Davidson and his unit of the 1st Dragoons were redeployed to the Midwest. While at Saint Louis's Jefferson Barracks, where he served as regimental quartermaster and then adjutant, he courted and on 18 June 1851 married Clara B. McGunnegle. They had at least three daughters and at least three sons. In 1853 the 1st Dragoons were redeployed to New Mexico, and Davidson was assigned to Cantonment Burgwin. On 29 March 1854 his commander sent Davidson with sixty men to monitor the movements of the Jicarillo Apache Indians in the nearby Embudo Mountains. Instead, Davidson attacked the Jicarillo encampment, which was located in a narrow canyon, and suffered the loss of twenty-two men killed and twenty-three wounded (including Davidson) in the Battle of Cieneguilla. An officer later accused him of incompetence and Davidson demanded a court of inquiry to clear his name. When the military court met in March 1856 it declared that his skill and courage had prevented further losses. In June 1854 he again fought the Jicarillas at Fisher's Peak near Raton Pass. Davidson was promoted to captain on 20 January 1855. He served in New Mexico until ordered to California's Fort Tejon in 1858.
Civil War
Although a Virginian by birth and having been offered a commission in the Confederate States Army in 1861, Davidson chose to remain in the United States Army. His three brothers and an uncle all fought for the Confederacy. Transferred to Washington, D.C., and promoted to major in the 2d Cavalry on 14 November 1861, on the following 3 February Davidson was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers. He reported with the Army of the Potomac, assuming command of the 3d Brigade in William F. Smith's Fourth Corps division.
Davidson was an active participant in the Peninsula campaign between March and August 1862. His brigade bumped against the Confederates' formidable Warwick River–Yorktown Line on 5–7 April at Young's Mill, and six weeks later on 23–24 May Davidson's infantry spearheaded the thrust up the north bank of the Chickahominy River and occupied Mechanicsville. He and his brigade saw action at Garnett's Farm on 27 June, at Golding's Farm the following day, and Savage's Station the day after that. At Savage's Station, Davidson was felled by sunstroke, but he returned to duty the next day and covered the retreat of the Fourth Corps from White Oak Swamp to Harrison's Landing.
On 7 August 1862, relieved of duty with the Army of the Potomac, Davidson assumed command of the District of Saint Louis, part of the Department of the Missouri. He gave his subordinates in southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas the task of police actions against Confederate partisans. A reorganization created a separate Southeastern Missouri District, giving Davidson on 13 November the mission of pacifying this vital area. He more than met the challenge. Early in February 1863 his forces clashed with Confederate Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke's column near Batesville, Arkansas, that was returning from a raid deep into the Ozarks. In the second half of April troops reporting to Davidson turned back a formidable raid that Marmaduke led that threatened Pilot Knob and reached the outskirts of Cape Girardeau.
On 6 June 1863, Davidson took charge of a newly constituted cavalry division with 6,000 troopers. By late in July he was in eastern Arkansas and on 17 August at Clarendon reported to Major General Frederick Steele. When the long-delayed campaign to take Little Rock commenced, Davidson and his horsemen spearheaded the advance, clashing with the Confederates at Bayou Meto on 27 August, Shallow Ford on the 30th, Ashley's Mills on 7 September, and Bayou Fourche on 10 September. To Davidson and his cavalry went the honor of entering Little Rock first. In his report General Steele wrote, "Davidson and his cavalry division deserve the highest commendation."
Late in the autumn of 1863 Davidson and Steele had a conflict about politics, with the result that Davidson was relieved of his command effective 30 January 1864. Davidson appealed to the president and the War Department but without effect, and he found himself back in Saint Louis in charge of the cavalry department. Apprised that Major General Edward R. S. Canby, with whom he had soldiered in California, had assumed command of the newly constituted Military Division of West Mississippi, Davidson wrote him, "Will it be agreeable for me to serve with you?" It was, and on 24 June 1864 he entered duty as Canby's chief of cavalry in New Orleans.
Triggered by General John B. Hood's thrust deep into middle Tennessee, Davidson departed from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on 27 November 1864, at the head of more than 3,000 cavalry. His goal was to wreck the Mobile and Ohio Railroad south of Meridian, Alabama. Poor roads, heavy rain, Mississippi's Piney Woods, and a rapid Confederate response caused Davidson to abort the raid and head for the coast, reaching Pascagoula on 13 December. His last major Civil War action had misfired.
Post-War Career
Davidson was mustered out of the volunteer service on 15 January 1866, having been breveted through all grades from lieutenant colonel through major general in both the volunteer and regular establishments. He returned to duty with the 2d U.S. Cavalry with the rank of major stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. Following the 1866 reorganization of the army he was promoted and commissioned on 1 December 1866 as lieutenant colonel of the newly constituted 10th U.S. Cavalry, one of the nation's two black mounted regiments. During the next four years he served detached duty with the Inspector General's Department (1866–1867) and as professor of French, Spanish, and military science and tactics at Kansas State Agricultural College (later Kansas State University), in Manhattan. While there he requested but did not receive a medical leave because of the recurrent attacks of malaria he had suffered since his first sunstroke in 1862.
Davidson reported to duty with his regiment at Camp Supply, Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), in February 1871, and, as the enlisted men were called Buffalo Soldiers by the Indians, his nom de guerre became "Black Jack." Two years later Davidson was deployed to Fort Sill as both post and regimental commander. The Red River War between the army and southern Plains Indians exploded during the summer of 1874. On 22 August he and four companies of the 10th Cavalry attempted to secure the surrender of the Comanche at the Indian agent's office at Anadarko, but fighting broke out for two days. In the ensuing campaign Davidson departed Fort Sill on 10 September at the head of six companies of cavalry, three of infantry, and a section of mountain howitzers and returned to Fort Sill on 29 November. He had captured or subdued several war parties and received praise for the campaign.
Davidson relinquished command at Fort Sill in March 1875 and transferred to Fort Griffin, Texas. Poor health forced him to take a leave of absence, but he returned in December 1876 to take charge of Fort Richardson. He continued to oversee Fort Griffin and to patrol two cattle trails until the fort was closed in May 1878. Davidson then returned to Fort Sill before being ordered to Fort Elliott, in Texas, where on 20 March 1879 he was promoted to colonel of his old regiment, the 2d U.S. Cavalry. That summer he was ordered to Fort Custer, Montana Territory. There he wore three hats—colonel of the 2d Cavalry, commander of the post, and commander of the District of the Yellowstone. In October 1879 Davidson faced a court martial at Fort Riley, but one charge was dismissed and he was acquitted on all the others, which were all based on hearsay allegations of being drunk on duty, when in fact he had been ill from malaria and other afflictions incurred during many years of hard duty during the Civil War and in the West. Early in February 1881 while on an inspection tour in Montana, Davidson was seriously injured when his horse slipped and fell on him. John Wynn Davidson died at a hotel in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on 26 June 1881. He was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, in Saint Louis, but in 1911 his remains were reinterred in Arlington National Cemetery, where the body of his widow was buried after her death in 1914.
Sources Consulted:
Biography in Homer K. Davidson, Black Jack Davidson, A Cavalry Commander on the Western Frontier: The Life of General John W. Davidson (1974), with birth date of 14 Aug. 1825 and several portraits; F. B. Heitman, Historical Register of the United States Army, from Its Organization September 29, 1789, to September 29, 1889 (1890), 221; George W. Cullum, ed., Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N. Y., From its Establishment, in 1802, to 1890… , 3d ed. (1891), 2:230–232 (with age fifty-eight at death); Saint Louis Marriage Record, Missouri State Archives (MSA), Jefferson City, Mo.; numerous references and documents in United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880–1901), including first quotation in Additions and Corrections to Ser. 1, vol. 22 (1902), 477, and second quotation in Ser. 1, vol. 34, pt. 3 (1891), 537; Ronald K. Wetherington and Frances Levine, eds., Battles and Massacres on the Southwestern Frontier: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives (2014), 9–78; age fifty-seven in Register of Deaths Outside of the City of Saint Louis, Missouri Death Records, MSA; 1824 birth year on twentieth-century gravestone, Arlington National Cemetery; obituaries in Saint Paul (Minn.) Daily Globe, 27 June 1881, Army and Navy Journal, 2 July 1881, and 13th Annual Reunion of the Association of the Graduates of the United States Military Academy…June 12, 1882 (1882), 13–16 (with age fifty-nine at death).
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Edwin C. Bearss.
How to cite this page:
Edwin C. Bearss,"John Wynn Davidson (d. 1881)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Davidson_John_Wynn, accessed [today's date]).
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