Jefferson Finis Davis, American politician who was eventually the only President of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865, was a veteran of the Mexican-American War and President Franklin Pierce's Secretary of War before he was elected Senator from the state of Mississippi. Although he argued against the secession of the South, he believed that every state was sovereign and had the right to secede from the Union. He resigned from the Senate in January 1861, after he was advised that Mississippi had indeed seceded from the Union. In February, he was appointed Confederate President, and thereafter was elected to a six-year term. He was captured in 1865, charged with treason, and was never tried, though he was stripped of the right to run for public office. A full 89 years after he died, that right was returned to him by President Carter in 1978.