Alexander M. Davis (17 January 1833–26 September 1889), member of the House of Representatives, was born in Smyth County or possibly in his mother's native Wythe County. He grew up on the Washington County farm of his parents, Joseph W. Davis and Lucy Armstrong Davis, and attended the preparatory school of Emory and Henry College before graduating from the college in 1852. Davis was admitted to the bar in Wythe County in August 1855 and in Grayson County in February 1856, by which time he had probably moved to the town of Independence.

In May 1861 Davis became captain of Company C of the 45th Regiment Virginia Infantry. He spent much of the Civil War serving in western and southwestern Virginia. In October a general demanded the resignations of many of the regiment's officers, including Davis, but the Confederate Department of War refused to accept his. In the reorganization of May 1862, Davis was promoted to major and that summer was detached to serve as temporary commander of the 26th Battalion. Early in September, Davis led that unit into action during the first of three days of fighting as Confederate forces marched down the Kanawha River valley from Fayette County toward Charleston. He then returned to the 45th Regiment and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Davis performed admirably on 9 May 1864 at Cloyd's Mountain in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Union army from capturing and destroying the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad bridge over the New River. Captured early in June 1864, he was held as a prisoner of war until the summer of 1865.

On 25 October 1865 Davis married Mary, or Mollie, J. Dickenson, of Grayson County. They had at least four sons. In 1869 he won election as a Conservative to the Senate of Virginia representing Carroll, Grayson, and Wythe Counties. Davis served on the Committee on Banks during the first assembly session, and during the final session he also sat on the Committees on County, City, and Town Organizations, on General Laws, of Privileges and Elections, and on Federal Relations, which he chaired. The fifteen-day first session of the assembly ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States as a prelude to ending Congressional Reconstruction in Virginia. Davis voted for both amendments. The long second session revised many of the laws to make them conform to the new state constitution. One of the most important measures it passed was the Funding Act of 1871, which pledged the state to pay off the full principal of the antebellum public debt. He voted against that measure.

Davis did not seek reelection in 1871, but the next year the Conservative Party selected him as its candidate for the House of Representatives from the district consisting of the city of Danville and the counties of Carroll, Floyd, Franklin, Grayson, Halifax, Henry, Patrick, and Pittsylvania. He defeated the Republican nominee, Christopher Yancy Thomas, by a vote of 9,175 to 8,975, but Thomas contested the result. When Congress convened in December 1873, Davis was appointed to the Committee on Agriculture pending settlement of the challenge to his election. Unlike many other southern contested elections in the years following the Civil War, Thomas's challenge to Davis's victory was not based on charges of fraud or intimidation of voters at the ballot box but on accusations that officials had disqualified ballots legally cast at one polling place because of a technicality and at another because the election clerks had not properly signed and filed the returns. On 5 March 1874 the Republican majority in the House of Representatives voted in favor of seating Thomas, thus concluding Davis's inconsequential three-month service in Congress.

Davis returned to Independence and continued to conduct his general law practice, raise his family, and manage his farm. He built and handsomely furnished a house near the courthouse and by 1887 owned six tracts of land in Grayson County, a total of nearly 800 acres. Alexander M. Davis died, probably in Independence, on 26 September 1889 and was buried in a family graveyard adjacent to his residence.

Sources Consulted:
Birth and death dates from gravestone inscription; middle name Mitchel in Order of Exercises, Commencement, Emory & Henry College, Wednesday, June 9, 1852 (1852); middle name Mathews and variant death date of 25 Sept. 1889 in the 1950 and subsequent editions of the Biographical Directory of the American Congress; Alexander M. Davis Papers, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.; Marriage Register, Grayson Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers (1861–1865), War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880–1901), 1st ser., vol. 19, pt. 1, 1080–1090, with Davis's official report on Kanawha River valley engagements on 1086–1087; ibid., vol. 37, pt. 1, 52–53; J. L. Scott, 45th Virginia Infantry (1989), 65 (portrait); Virginia General Assembly, Senate, Journal of the Senate of Virginia (1776– ), Oct. 1869 sess., 26–30, 1870–1871 sess., 294–295; C. Y. Thomas vs. A. M. Davis, 43d Cong., 1st sess., 1873, House Misc. Doc. 24, serial 1617; 43d Congress of U.S., Contested Election Case, 5th Cong. Dist. of Virginia, Thomas vs. Davis. Note of Argument by Don P. Halsey, of Counsel for the Respondent [1874], in John Warwick Daniel Papers, Accession 23923, Library of Virginia; Journal of the House of Representatives, 43d Cong., 1st sess., 565; estate inventory and accounts in Grayson Co. Will Book, 7:141–146, 184–185, 200–202, 217–218, 8:197–198.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Brent Tarter.

How to cite this page:
Brent Tarter,"Alexander M. Davis (1833–1889)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Davis_Alexander_M., accessed [today's date]).

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