NPG historian David C. Ward discusses Jefferson Davis. While traveling in the United States in 1849, English-born artist George L. Saunders painted this miniature of the future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. At the time, Davis was a senator representing Mississippi. A few years afterward, a contemporary recorded this impression of Davis: "His slender, tall and erect figure, his spare face, keen eyes and fine forehead . . . presented the well-known strong American type. There was in his bearing a dignity which seemed entirely natural and unaffected, that kind of dignity which does not invite familiar approach but will not render one uneasy by lofty assumptions." Recorded at NPG, April 24, 2013