On the 25th of January 1861 Davis was commissioned major-general of the forces Mississippi was raising in view of the threatened conflict. On the 9th of February he received the unanimous vote of the Provisional Congress of the seceded states as president of the "Confederate States of America." He was inaugurated on the 18th of February, was subsequently, after the adoption of the permanent constitution, regularly elected by popular vote, for a term of six years, and on the 22nd of February 1862 was again inaugurated. He had not sought the office, preferring service in the field. His brilliant career, both as a civilian and as a soldier, drew all eyes to him as best fitted to guide the fortunes of the new Confederacy, and with a deep sense of the responsibility he obeyed the call. He heartily approved of the peace conference, which attempted to draw up a plan of reconciliation between the two sections, but whose failure made war inevitable. Montgomery, in Alabama, was the first Confederate capital, but after Virginia joined her sister states, the seat of government was removed to Richmond, on the 29th of May 1861. How Davis--of whom W. E. Gladstone, in the early days of English sympathy with the South, said that he had "made a nation"--bore himself in his most responsible position during the gigantic conflict which ensued, cannot here be related in detail. (See CONFEDERATE STATES; and AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.) In the shortest time he organized and put into the field one of the finest bodies of soldiers of which history has record. Factories sprang up in the South in a few months, supplying the army with arms and munitions of war, and the energy of the president was everywhere apparent. That he committed serious errors, his warmest admirers will hardly deny. Unfortunately his firmness developed into obstinacy, and exhibited itself in continued confidence in officers who had proved to be failures, and in dislike of some of his ablest generals. He committed the great mistake, too, of directing the movements of distant armies from the seat of government, though those armies were under able generals. This naturally caused great dissatisfaction, and more than once resulted in irreparable disaster. Moreover, he was not, like Lincoln, a great manager of men; he often acted without tact; he was charged with being domineering and autocratic, and at various times he was seriously hampered by the meddling of the Confederate Congress and the opposition of such men as the vice-president, A. H. Stephens, Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, and Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina.