A Short History of the Confederate States of America

 

After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis spent two years in prison without trial. He was released on bail and a year and a half later, the government finally dropped the treason charges against him. In 1877 he retired to Beauvoir, where he wrote, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. This was a two-volume tome of over 1,500 pages. I did not read this book. I tried, but I kept following asleep. Luckily, ten years later, Davis wrote A Short History of the Confederate States of America. Roughly one-third in length, “A Short History” covers the same ground and is more readable.

Davis writing style is clear for modern readers, but I would recommend a good understanding of the war to provide context for his narrative. That said, for a thorough understanding of a major historical event, it always best to get the story from the horse’s mouth. The Davis perspective may be biased, but those perspectives did not change between the war and the writing of his memoir. That consistency makes this book valuable for understanding the motivations for war.

Davis extols victories and offers strained excuses for errors and failures. In Davis’ mind, nothing was his fault, the Confederacy was always honorable, the Union always vile. For those not imbued with The Cause mythology, this heavy-handed prejudice can be off-putting, but I found it helps understand the ethos of the period.

Most history books are written by winners. If you don’t study the losers, then you have an incomplete picture. An example would be the hallowed Federalist Papers. There is a collection of opposition opinion pieces called the Anti-Federalist Papers. I suggest reading both and I highly recommend Jefferson Davis’ A Short History of the Confederate States of America.

(This is a research book for Maelstrom, a sequel to Tempest at Dawn.)