As a career civil servant in the United States government during much of his adult life, Jefferson Davis was a natural choice to be elected President of the seceding Southern states in early 1861. Whether the Civil War would have ended any differently with someone else in charge of the Confederacy will never be known, but Davis had a tumultuous presidency.
History has accorded Abraham Lincoln a spot in the pantheon of American politics for the manner in which he steered the Union to victory and into the Reconstruction period after the war. In turn, Davis has been heavily criticized. Davis constantly clashed with Confederate generals like Joseph Johnston, the South’s diplomacy failed to obtain foreign intervention, and he was unable to keep the Southern states together cohesively as the Confederate economy began to collapse. Making matters worse, when Davis was captured by Union troops in May 1865, rumors spread that he was trying to escape in women’s clothing.
Davis was held prisoner for a few years before he was released, living out the rest of his years in the South. However, he aimed to set the record straight in his voluminous memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Davis explained political and military details in extremely exacting manner, and he was obviously one of the best authorities from the Southern standpoint.
Volume I of Davis’s memoirs is his comprehensive analysis of the antebellum period, including a discussion of the U.S. Constitution, justification for secession, and then coverage of the war from Davis’s controversial perspective. This edition of The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government: Volume I is specially formatted with pictures of Jefferson and other famous Civil War figures. It also includes a table of contents for easier navigation.
