Biography

"DAVIS, Charles Augustus, merchant, born in New York in 1795; died there, 27 January 1867. For many years he was in the iron trade with Sidney Brooks, and in a letter to Halleck, written from Athens, he says:" I do not know how I can go back to business and pig iron in John Street." He was well versed in commercial and financial affairs, and wrote brilliantly and intelligently upon those subjects. The "Peter Scriber Letters" and "Major Jack Downing's Letters" (New York, 1834), first published in the "Commercial Advertiser," detail his interviews with President Jackson and the plans for overthrowing the U. S. bank. For many years his house in New York was the resort of the poet Halleck and other of the Knickerbocker writers."