Jacob Cunningham Davis

Jacob Cunningham Davis (September 16, 1820 – December 25, 1883) was an American lawyer, state legislator, and one-term U.S. Representative from Illinois. A Democrat, he served in the Illinois Senate for more than a decade and later in the Thirty-fourth Congress. He was also one of five men tried and acquitted in Illinois in 1844 of the murder of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.

Davis was born near Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia, on September 16, 1820. He attended local common schools and pursued further studies at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, receiving a classical education that prepared him for a career in law and public life. In 1838, as a young man in his late teens, he left Virginia and moved west to Warsaw, Hancock County, Illinois, a river town on the Mississippi that was then experiencing rapid growth.

After settling in Warsaw, Davis studied law and was admitted to the bar, commencing legal practice in that community. He quickly became involved in local public affairs. He served as clerk of Hancock County, Illinois, and in 1841 was appointed circuit clerk, positions that placed him at the administrative center of the county’s judicial and governmental activities. During this period, tensions between local residents and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, headquartered in nearby Nauvoo, were escalating, and Davis’s public roles brought him into the midst of these conflicts.

In 1844, Davis was indicted and tried for the murders of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith. The Smiths had been imprisoned in Carthage Jail in Hancock County when the jail was stormed on June 27, 1844, by an armed mob that shot and killed them. At the time, Davis was a captain in command of the Warsaw Rifle Company of the Illinois militia and was accused of having ordered his men to storm the prison. He and four other defendants were brought to trial on charges related to the killings. After a jury trial, Davis and the other defendants were found not guilty of the murders, and he resumed his political and legal career in Illinois.

Davis’s formal political career advanced rapidly in the 1840s. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected to the Illinois Senate, in which he served from 1842 to 1848. After a brief interval out of office, he returned to the state senate in 1850 and continued to serve until his resignation in 1856, when he left to take a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. During his years in the Illinois Senate, he participated in legislative debates and policymaking at a time when the state was grappling with issues of internal improvements, party realignments, and the growing national controversy over slavery and sectionalism.

Davis entered national office when he was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fourth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Representative William A. Richardson of Illinois. He was elected in a special election and served as a U.S. Representative from November 4, 1856, to March 3, 1857. His single term in Congress coincided with a significant period in American history, marked by intensifying sectional tensions in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. As a member of the Democratic Party representing Illinois, Davis contributed to the legislative process during his one term in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents. He was not a candidate for re-election to the succeeding Congress.

After leaving Congress in March 1857, Davis did not seek further federal office. He moved across the Mississippi River to Missouri and resumed the practice of law in Clark County, Missouri. He continued his legal work there for the remainder of his life, maintaining his standing as a regional attorney and former public official. Davis died in Alexandria, Clark County, Missouri, on December 25, 1883. He was interred in Mitchell Cemetery, near Alexandria, Missouri, closing a career that had spanned local, state, and national public service during a formative era in Illinois and American history.