Colonel Charles E. Hooker, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 12.2, Mississippi
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

Brigadier-General Joseph R. Davis, a native of Mississippi and nephew of Jefferson Davis, entered the service as a captain and at the organization of the Tenth Mississippi, April 12, 1861, was elected lieutenant-colonel. The regiment was sent to Pensacola and formed a part of the army under Gen. Braxton Bragg. A detachment of this regiment was engaged in the combat on Santa Rosa Island on the night of October 8th and the morning of the 9th, 1861, in which the camp of Wilson's Zouaves was captured and destroyed. During the fall and winter of 1861-62, Colonel Davis (for he had been so commissioned on August 21, 1861) acted as aide to President Davis, visiting the troops from New Orleans to Richmond and reporting thereon in Richmond. He was then appointed a brigadier-general, under the command of Gen. G. W. Smith, of the department of Richmond. His brigade was composed at first of the Second, Eleventh and Forty-second regiments of Mississippi infantry, to which were added the Twenty-sixth Mississippi and the Fifty-fifth North Carolina infantry. It was on duty in southeast Virginia in the winter of 1862-63 and the spring of 1863; was forwarded to Lee in time to take part in the Gettysburg campaign, and formed part of the Confederate advance under Heth on the 1st day of July, 1863. There was desperate fighting in which the Confederates, at first repulsed, finally swept everything before them. In the grand charge of July 3d Gen. Joe Davis' Mississippi brigade, that fought so stoutly the first day, crossing bayonets with the Iron brigade, bore a prominent part in the work of Heth's division under Pettigrew. The Second Mississippi, of that brigade, lost half its men that day, but was still ready to fight. Its battleflag was