President of the Confederate States of America in the context of "Sarah Knox Taylor"

Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857.

Davis, the youngest of ten children, was born in Fairview, Kentucky, but spent most of his childhood in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. His eldest brother Joseph Emory Davis secured the younger Davis's appointment to the United States Military Academy. Upon graduating, he served six years as a lieutenant in the United States Army. After leaving the army in 1835, Davis married Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of future president Zachary Taylor. Sarah died from malaria three months after the wedding. Davis became a cotton planter, building Brierfield Plantation in Mississippi on his brother Joseph's land and eventually owning as many as 113 slaves.

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general whose early actions in the American Civil War led to his appointment as the overall commander of the Confederate States Army near the end of the war. He led the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most powerful army, from 1862 until its surrender in 1865, earning a reputation as one of the war's most skilled tacticians.

A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. He served across the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican–American War, and was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He married Mary Anna Custis, great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife Martha. He supported the legality of slavery and held hundreds of slaves. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. During the first year of the Civil War, he served in minor combat operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

Fairview is a small census-designated place on the boundary between Christian and Todd counties in the western part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258, down from the 2010 census total of 286, with 186 living in Christian County and 100 living in Todd County. It is chiefly notable as the birthplace of Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederate States of America, and as the location of the Jefferson Davis State Historic Site.

Joseph Emory Davis (10 December 1784 – 18 September 1870) was an American lawyer who became one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi in the antebellum era; he owned thousands of acres of land and was among the nine men in Mississippi who owned more than 300 slaves. He was the elder brother (by 23 years) of Jefferson Davis and acted as his surrogate father for several years. The younger Davis became a politician, U.S. Senator, and later President of the Confederacy.

In the 1820s, Joseph Davis developed the Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend, Mississippi.

The Second White House of the Confederacy is a historic house located in the Court End neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Built in 1818, it served as the main executive residence of the sole President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, from August 1861 until April 1865. It currently sits on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.

The Jefferson Davis Executive Mansion was owned by the Confederate Memorial Literary Society from 1894 until 2014, when the Museum of the Confederacy merged with the American Civil War Center. The merged entity is now the American Civil War Museum. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.

The general officers of the Confederate States Army (CSA) were the senior military leaders of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War of 1861–1865. They were often former officers from the United States Army (the regular army) before the Civil War, while others were given the rank based on merit or when necessity demanded. Most Confederate generals needed confirmation from the Confederate States Congress, much like prospective generals in the modern U.S. armed forces.

Like all of the Confederacy's military forces, these generals answered to their civilian leadership, in particular Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America and therefore commander-in-chief of the military forces of the Confederate States.