Dixie Betrayed, How the South Really Lost The Civil War by Davis J. Eicher
The last words of Eicher’s book are “Jefferson Davis had
lost his power as Confederate president — but not before the whole cause of the
Confederacy was lost. Dixie was Betrayed.”
The title and these final words betray the worth of this
book. Nearly twenty thousand books have been written about Lincoln and almost a
hundred thousand about the Civil War. Less than an estimated twenty percent of
these were written from a Confederate perspective and many of those were Lost
Cause screeds. Since the Confederacy lost, official documents were often
destroyed which requires a historian to rely on sources like newspapers,
letters, and memoirs—and these are not nearly as well organized and indexed as
Union sources. This may partially account for why relatively few Confederate
histories have been published.
Dixie Betrayed is a solid history of the Confederacy
and does not attempt to propagate the Lost Cause myths. Eicher explains how the
South lost, but betrayal played no role in it. The absence of an industrial
base, limited manpower, naive political leadership, and a flawed constitution
were the culprits.
The betrayal theme likely originated from an editorial meeting aimed at boosting sales, and it may have been effective for the launch. However, now Eicher’s book wears the title like an albatross, and it is perhaps overlooked by those seeking an erudite history of the Confederate States of America.
To understand the Civil War period, it is necessary to study
the war from both sides. Dixie Betrayed by Davis J. Eicher provides the view from the Confederate side.
