Early in May, 1846, Taylor had won his first victories. On the 29th Davis, supporting joint resolutions of thanks to the general and his army, made reply to what he deemed were unwarranted reflections upon West Point. He emphasized Taylor's operations as proving the high value of military education. He asked Sawyer of Ohio, who had disparaged the Academy, if the latter believed that a blacksmith or tailor could have done such good work. Thus, without knowing it, he trod upon the toes of two members of the house; for Sawyer had been a blacksmith, and Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, a tailor. Sawyer took it good-humoredly, but Johnson, the next day, passionately defended tailors, and used language very offensive to Davis, implying that the latter belonged to "an illegitimate, swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy." To this the latter, justly indignant, rejoined with cutting severity. There was never any love lost between the two afterwards. When President Lincoln was murdered Johnson, succeeding him, committed the unspeakable folly of offering by proclamation $100,000 reward for the arrest of Davis as accessory. When Davis, having been captured, was told of the proclamation he said to General Wilson--hoping his words would be reported to Johnson--that there was one man in the United States who knew the charge was false; this was the man who had signed the proclamation; "for," said Davis, "he at least knew that I preferred Lincoln to himself." Of course had Davis possessed the chief qualifications of popular leadership he would have made a fast friend instead of a bitter enemy of this man, whose rise from low estate to greatness proves that he had in him elements of manhood and virtue that ought to have homage from the highest and proudest. It was by his course in the Mexican war that Davis commenced life in the eye of the nation. Without canvassing for the place--he never did canvass for a place--he was elected colonel of the First Mississippi volunteers, and "he eagerly and gladly accepted." The president, authorized by a new law, offered to make him a brigadier general. Mrs. Davis says: "My husband expressed his preference for an elective office; when pressed, he said that he thought volunteer troops raised in a State should be officered by men of their own selection, and that after the elective right of the volunteers ceased, the appointing power should be the governor of the State whose troops were to be commanded by the general. This was his first sacrifice to State rights, and it was a great effort to him."[128] General Scott doubted if the percussion lock was as well suited to field use as the flint lock, but Davis knew better. He had his men furnished with the percussion-lock rifle, a very superior arm to the old smooth-bore. He drilled his regiment well. And he kept its members from pillaging.