Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis, created by Henry Augustus Lukeman, is a bronze sculpture of Jefferson Davis – a U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of War, plantation owner and the only President of the Confederate States of America – commissioned by the U.S. State of Mississippi for inclusion in National Statuary Hall Collection at the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall, in Washington, D.C. The statue was controversial at the time of its unveiling and there have been multiple efforts to remove it from the Capitol since 2015. Background and unveiling ceremony In 1864, Congress passed legislation that invited each state to contribute two statues of prominent citizens for permanent display in the former meeting hall of the U.S. House of Representatives, which was renamed National Statuary Hall. The State of Mississippi commissioned Henry Augustus Lukeman to sculpt statues of Jefferson Davis and James Z. George to be presented as Mississippi's first contributions to the National Statuary Hall's collection. Neither Davis nor George were born in Mississippi but both had moved to the state as children. Lukeman had previously contributed to the construction of Confederate memorial Stone Mountain in Georgia. Lukeman's statues of Davis and George were presented and unveiled on June 2, 1931 in a ceremony held in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. Adele Hayes-Davis, Jefferson Davis's great-granddaughter, officially unveiled the statue of Jefferson Davis. The United States Marine Band performed music including "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Dixie." Arthur Cook, a member of the office of the Architect of the Capitol who was in charge of the arrangements for the unveiling ceremony, claimed that the unveiling ceremony had the largest crowd ever gathered in Statuary Hall. Journalist Edgar S. Wilson and U.S. Senator Pat Harrison each delivered commemorative addresses honoring Jefferson Davis. Wilson favorably compared Davis to Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States during the American Civil War between the United States of America and the Southern Confederacy. Wilson also read a March 10, 1884 speech that Davis gave to the Mississippi Legislature in its entirety, as well as a passage from Davis's book, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. In both the 1884 speech and the passage from his book, Davis was unrepentant for Secession and promoted the Confederacy as a heroic and justified Lost Cause.