Henry Winter Davis, visionary Republican Congressman
Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I praise Henry Winter Davis, born in Annapolis, August 16th 1817. Law studies were at University of Virginia. After nine years in Alexandria, he relocated to Baltimore. In 1854, Davis first won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Though not yet having joined the GOP, opposition to slavery led him to cast a crucial vote for a Republican as Speaker of the House. Even so, in the 1860 presidential election he backed the Constitutional Union Party. Appalled by the Confederacy, Davis became a Republican. "Smite fearlessly the Democratic Party," he thundered, "The union will survive its fragments." The war drawing to a close, he and Republican Senator Ben Wade secured passage of a bill to place Reconstruction firmly under control of Congress, until the slave system was totally eradicated. Page 82 of Back to Basics for the Republican Party explains: ...