At the time, the South was ruled by an unofficial
one-party system, with Democratic hegemony,
white supremacy, and
black disfranchisement remaining intertwined after Reconstruction and well into the 20th century. Prominent landowning white men of the former planter class were returned to power by Democratic supporters and known as Redeemers in the waning years of Reconstruction. After 1877, they largely ruled statewide and national positions as well as an increasing number of local positions once the state passed disenfranchisement of blacks. They sought to reverse Republican gains made during
Reconstruction and to return to white supremacy of the
Antebellum South by disenfranchising most blacks and imposing
Jim Crow laws. An insurgent
paramilitary component, including groups such as the
Ku Klux Klan, also rose to prominence during the period. Together with common whites, they committed countless
lynchings and other acts of violence against Republicans, blacks, and other groups.
Style and contemporaries Davis is often classified with politicians such as
Benjamin Tillman,
Robert Love Taylor,
Thomas E. Watson,
James K. Vardaman,
Coleman Livingston Blease, and later
Huey Long, controversial figures who were Southern demagogues, populists, and
political bosses. Davis was one of many Southern demagogue politicians who rose to power on a populist message of agrarian frustration with big business and elites. His coarse language, insults, and theatrics were all crafted to enhance his "common man" credentials. Davis made a career of skewering the
business interests,
newspapers, and
urban dwellers to appeal to the poor
rural citizens, the majority of the population. He portrayed himself as “just another poor country boy” against the moneyed interests that held back the common man. Davis often used words such as "rednecks" or "hillbillies" but as terms of endearment rather than pejorative, a technique that Huey Long would learn from Davis and later use successfully in
Louisiana. He attacked 1904 gubernatorial opponent
Carroll D. Wood for appointing a black man as a jury commissioner and promised that "no man could be appointed to office under my administration unless he was a white man, a Democrat, and a Jeff Davis man." It was said that many of his supporters incorrectly believed Davis to be related to Confederate President
Jefferson Davis, which the politician did nothing to discourage and may have covertly encouraged.
Early career Davis served as prosecuting attorney of the Fifth Judicial District of Arkansas from 1892 to 1896.
Attorney General Davis was elected as
Arkansas Attorney General in 1898 and served a single term. He focused on one of the primary issues of the
Progressive Era: the creation of
antitrust law to regulate
trusts, meaning large companies or combinations abusing
market power or tending toward
monopoly. Despite passage of the
Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 at the federal level, the law was sufficiently broad to have little immediate impact, and was largely made ineffective by the
United States Supreme Court case
United States v. E. C. Knight Co., leaving state legislatures to address trusts. A new antitrust bill passed by the
32nd Arkansas General Assembly, focused on perceived
price fixing of
fire insurance rates in the cities of Arkansas, especially
Hot Springs, raised the issue's prominence in Arkansas politics by uniting city dwellers alongside rural Arkansans in anger against the trusts.
Governor Elected in 1900, Davis served as Governor of Arkansas from 1901 to 1907. In 1905, when
US President Theodore Roosevelt visited Arkansas, Davis greeted him with a speech that defended
lynching as a means of social control. Roosevelt responded with a calmer speech that defended the
rule of law.
US Senate Davis was elected to the US Senate by the state legislature, as was customary at the time, serving one term from March 4, 1907 until his death. He was chairman of the Committee on the Mississippi and its Tributaries. ==Death==