Henry Winter Davis, an American politician, born in Annapolis, Md., in 1817, died in Baltimore, Dec. 30, 1865. He graduated at Kenyon college in 1837, studied law at the university of Virginia, and settled in practice at Alexandria, Va., but in 1850 removed to Baltimore. He was elected to congress from Maryland as a democrat in 1855, and was reelected the two following terms. In 1859 he ended a long contest for the speakership resulting from a tie by voting for Mr. Pennington, the republican candidate for speaker; whereupon the legislature of Maryland passed a resolution that he had misrepresented the state and forfeited the confidence of her people. After the opening of the civil war, when Maryland seemed about to join the seceding states, he opposed this purpose, and its prevention was due in no small measure to his efforts. In 1863 he was reelected to congress, and was made chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. Being a southerner and representing a slave state, his advocacy of emancipation and suffrage for the blacks made him one of the most conspicuous civilians during the war.

In 1852 he published " The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century." A volune of his speeches was published in 1867.