David Davis

David Davis lived from March 9, 1815 to June 26, 1886 and was an American politician and jurist who served as a United States senator from Illinois and as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, also serving as Abraham Lincolns campaign manager at the 1860 Republican National Convention, where he engineered Lincolns nomination for president. Born to wealthy Maryland parents, he was educated at Kenyon College and Yale before settling in Bloomington, Illinois in the 1830s to practice law, later serving in the Illinois legislature, as a delegate to the state constitutional convention, and as a state judge from 1848. Lincoln appointed the independent minded Davis to the Supreme Court shortly after winning the presidency, and Davis served until 1877, writing the majority opinion in Ex parte Milligan, which limited the militarys power to try civilians. After receiving a presidential nomination from the Labor Reform party in 1872 and one electoral vote in that years election, he became a pivotal figure in the 1876 electoral crisis: expected to be the deciding vote on the Electoral Commission resolving the disputed Hayes v. Tilden election, he instead excused himself after the Illinois legislature elected him to the Senate, and a Republican appointed in his place handed the election to Rutherford B. Hayes. He served as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1881 to 1883, the only one never affiliated with any political party, before retiring from public life.