Caffery was born in
Franklin,
Louisiana, the seat of
St. Mary Parish. His great-grandfather, Colonel
John Donelson, co-founder of the city of
Nashville, was the father-in-law of
President of the United States Andrew Jackson. During the
American Civil War, Caffery served in the
Confederate army as a
lieutenant in the
13th Louisiana Infantry Regiment. After the war, he became a
lawyer and owned a
sugar plantation. He was elected to the
Louisiana State Senate, he was a Democrat, and in 1892, he was appointed to the
United States Senate from Louisiana to fill the unexpired term of
Randall L. Gibson who died in office. Caffery began a full six-year term in 1894, on election by the
Louisiana State Legislature, and he served in the Senate until 1901. He was a strong anti-imperialist and anti-expansionist, a position driven by his concern that new American possessions in tropical climates(like
Puerto Rico,
Hawaii, and the
Philippines) would harm his fellow Louisiana sugar planters by flooding the market with cheaper (and now tariff-free) sugar. He was the first nominee for President of the United States of the "Democratic National Party" at its
Indianapolis Convention in 1900 but declined the nomination of this group. He declined to seek a second full term in 1900. The
a group of anti-imperialists, meeting in
New York on 5 September 1900, also nominated Caffery for President and
Boston attorney and historian
Archibald M. Howe for Vice President. Caffery, a staunch
Democrat, likewise refused this nomination, and Howe quickly withdrew as well. Caffery served as chairman of the Senate Committee on enrolled bills from 1893 to 1894 and as chairman of the Senate Committee on corporations organized in the
District of Columbia from 1899 to 1901. After he left the Senate, Caffery resumed practicing law. He died in 1906 on December 30 in
New Orleans Louisiana, and is interred at Franklin Cemetery in his native Franklin. Caffery's son,
Donelson Caffery, Jr., was the gubernatorial nominee of the "Lily-White" faction of the Republican Party in the
1900 Louisiana gubernatorial election. He lost badly to
W. W. Heard. Caffery's grandson,
Patrick T. Caffery, served one term in the Louisiana House of Representatives and two terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1969–73. == References ==