without much to cheer him; but he was not the man to abandon a pursuit
for lack of courage. His ability and industry attracted attention, and
before long he had acquired a respectable practice, which thenceforth
protected him from all annoyances of a pecuniary nature. He toiled with
unwearied assiduity, never appearing in the trial of a cause without the
most elaborate and exhaustive preparation, and soon became known to his
professional brethren as a valuable ally and a formidable foe. His
natural aptitude for public affairs made itself manifest in due time,
and some articles which he prepared on municipal and State politics gave
him great reputation. He also published a series of newspaper essays,
wherein he dared to question the divinity of slavery; and these, though
at the time thought to be not beyond the limits of free discussion, were
cited against him long after as evidence that he was a heretic in
pro-slavery Virginia and Maryland.

On the 30th of October, 1845, he married Miss Constance T. Gardiner,
daughter of William C. Gardiner, Esq., a most accomplished and charming
young lady, as beautiful and as fragile as a flower. She lived to
gladden his heart for but a few years, and then,

"Like a lily drooping,
She bowed her head and died."

In 1850 he came to Baltimore, and immediately a high position,
professional, social, and political, was awarded him. His forensic
efforts at once commanded attention and enforced respect. The young men
of most ability and promise gathered about him, and made him the centre
of their chosen circle. He became a prominent member of the whig party,
and was everywhere known as the brilliant orator and successful
controvertist of the Scott campaign of 1852. The whig party, worn out by
its many gallant but unsuccessful battles, was ultimately gathered to
its fathers, and Mr. DAVIS led off in the American movement. He was
elected successively to the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and
thirty-sixth Congresses by the American party from the fourth district
of Maryland. He supported with great ability and zeal Mr. Fillmore for
the Presidency in 1856, and in 1860 accepted John Bell as the candidate
of his party, though he clearly divined and plainly announced that the
great battle was really between Abraham Lincoln, as the representative
of the national sentiment on the one hand, and secession and disunion,
in all their shades and phases, on the other. To his seat in the
thirty-ei