Davis, David

1815 - Born on March 9th in Cecil County, Maryland. He was a American politician, a close associate of Abraham Lincoln.

1832 - He graduated from Kenyon College.

1835 - Davis earned a law degree from Yale and was admitted to the Illinois bar.

1836 - Established a practice in Bloomington.

1844 - Elected to the Illinois legislature on the Whig ticket.

1847 - Attended the state constitutional convention.

1848 - He began a 14-year career as a circuit judge. It was as a judge that Davis became a close friend of Abraham Lincoln.

1860 - Worked assiduously for Lincoln's nomination and election.

1861-1862 - Accompanied the president-elect to Washington, D.C., and served as an adviser until Lincoln appointed him to the Supreme Court.

1866 - He was never a supporter of the more extreme antislavery wing of the Republican Party, and he angered much of the party with his majority opinion in the Ex parte Milligan case.

1872 - Accepted the presidential nomination of the Labor Reform Convention as a stepping-stone to securing the nomination of the Liberal Republican Party.

1877 - He then drifted closer to the Democrats, who expected him to cast the decisive vote for Samuel J. Tilden on the Electoral Commission.

         - Disqualified him from the commission when he resigned from the Supreme Court to accept election by the Illinois legislature to the U.S. Senate.

1881 - Served one term in the Senate, the last two years as president pro tem.

1883 - Upon his retirement, Davis returned to Bloomington.

1886 - He died on June 26th in Bloomington, Illinois.