Moses M. Davis Papers
1849-1883
- Davis, Moses M., 1820-1888
Wis Mss NK
0.2 c.f. (1 archives box)
Wisconsin Historical Society
(Map)
Letters of Moses M. Davis, a Wisconsin physician who was a member of the Assembly in 1856 and state senator from 1857 to 1860. Nearly half the collection consists of letters from Davis to Congressman John Fox Potter on the subjects of Wisconsin politics, the conduct of the Civil War, and problems of the Republican Party. Before 1856 Davis received letters regarding the slavery issue from prominent national figures such as Charles Sumner, John P. Hale, Joshua Giddings, and others. The correspondence, which is almost entirely of a political nature, also includes letters from state and other national Republican leaders, among them Salmon P. Chase, James R. Doolittle, Charles Durkee, William H. Seward, Carl Schurz, C. C. Washburn, and David Wilmot. Davis was appointed resident trustee of the property donated by Congress for the improvement of the Fox-Wisconsin Rivers in 1862. Numerous letters touch upon this development project.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-wis000nk ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Moses M. Davis was born at Sharon, Winsor County, Vermont on August 27, 1820 and died in Baraboo May 1, 1888. He received his education at Norwich University in Vermont and studied medicine at Dartmouth College and the Vermont Medical College, graduating from the latter in 1846. Many years later, when about fifty years of age, he attended “refresher” lectures at the Chicago Medical College.
Although Dr. Davis commenced the practice of medicine immediately after graduation and was active in the profession throughout his lifetime, his manuscripts deal predominantly with the subject of politics. Perhaps his first interest in political affairs came through his strong anti-slavery sentiments. In this collection of papers the earliest letters are from abolitionist leaders in the East, most of them members of Congress. Many of these letters are perfunctory ones dealing with arrangements for meetings and other routine matters, but such names as Charles Sumner, Joshua R. Giddings, John P. Hale, and Salmon P. Chase, are always worthy of note.
In 1854 Dr. Davis came to Wisconsin, settling at Portage. He was almost immediately elected to the state legislature and served as assemblyman and senator from 1855 to 1860. His Wisconsin correspondence begins in 1856, with a letter to John Fox Potter of East Troy. Potter was an attorney who had served as county judge in Walworth County and was a member of the Wisconsin Assembly with Davis in 1856. The same year he was elected to Congress on the Republican ticket and served for three terms, achieving notoriety in the “bowie knife” episode. From the beginning of their acquaintance to his death in 1888, Dr. Davis wrote truly and freely to Potter, not only as a close friend and political ally, but frequently as a legal adviser. These letters covering personal, political, and business matters were apparently returned to the Davis family in later years, and constitute fully half of this collection of papers.
State politics, the organization and growth of the Republican Party, the Civil War, the Kansas-Nebraska bill and other aspects of the slavery issue, elections, patronage, railroad legislation, investigations, party alignments and conflicts, and personalities are all discussed at some length in these papers. While in the legislature, Dr. Davis was chairman of a committee to investigate charges of corruption on the part of state officials, a position that gave him an insight into the manipulation of pressure groups and their methods of contracting legislation. For about a decade, beginning in 1856, there are letters from Wisconsin governors and members of both houses of Congress, those of C. C. Washburn being most numerous. After the Civil War Potter and Davis were less actively engaged in politics and to the end of his life Davis' letters are those of an intelligent and articulate commentator on state and national government.
President Lincoln's political reward to Davis for the latter's assistance was an appointment as Indian agent to the Menominee Indians, a position that lasted only through Lincoln's presidency. In his letters during these years Davis frequently speaks about trips to the reservation headquarters at Keshena, where he supervised annuity payments, and alludes to some Stockbridge claims in Massachusetts, but there is little direct information in the papers on Indian affairs. One letter from Senator Doolittle in 1864, writing as chairman of Indian Affairs Committee in the Senate, outlines the latter's plans and policies for certain western tribes of Indians.
In 1862 Davis was appointed resident trustee of the property donated by Congress for the improvement of the Fox-Wisconsin Rivers, thus necessitating his removal to Appleton. A number of letters in the collection, beginning soon after his arrival in Wisconsin, touch upon this development project; the writers include Governor Horatio Seymour of New York.
An allied interest, upon which the information in the papers is even more indefinite, is the Chippewa River Boom and Beef Slough development project. Early in January, 1871, Dr. Davis attended a meeting in Chicago where action was commenced by a group of powerful interests to unite for action on logging and rafting on this river, and later Potter seems to have been a legal advisor in cases involving the company.
There are mere references to other subjects in these papers, enough to show Davis' interests but too little to give any actual insight into the matters. He was appointed a regent of the University of Wisconsin in 1856 and reappointed in 1864, and also served as a trustee of Lawrence University, but he makes only casual mentions of these connections. A couple of letters from James Hall of Albany, New York in 1857 and 1858 speak of that scientist's proposed geological explorations in Wisconsin. Throughout the collection there are allusions to land selection and land investments in the state. Although there is no direct information on medical practices in the collection, a student on the subject might find something of value in Dr. Davis' frequent observations on details of family illnesses in his letters to Potter. In the closing years of his life Dr. Davis became an enthusiastic western traveler, and. his letters for this period contain a number of glowing descriptions of the attractions of life in the Red River Valley, around Winnipeg, and in other newly developed regions.
