Prints and Photographs Collection
Edmund J. Davis
This photograph shows Edmund J. Davis in uniform as a brigadier general in the federal army.
Davis first got involved in military affairs in 1859, when as a district judge in South Texas, he accompanied the ranger unit of Captain William G. Tobin during the Cortina wars in Brownsville. As the Civil War approached, he supported Sam Houston and opposed secession. After secession, he refused to take a loyalty oath to the Confederacy and was removed from his judgeship.
President Lincoln commissioned Davis a colonel in the Union army. Davis recruited and led the First Texas Cavalry (U.S.), and saw action in Galveston, Matamoros, and the Rio Grande Valley. Promoted to brigadier general in November 1864, he commanded the cavalry of General Joseph J. Reynolds in the Division of Western Mississippi. On June 2, 1865, he was among those who represented the Union at the surrender of Confederate forces in Texas.