Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour Book

The recent controversies about Confederate monuments and various tributes paid to Confederate leaders make this book a worthwhile read. I will say, however, that you have to be prepared for a very long and detailed read. This is a long book - over 700 pages. It's interesting, but long. I knew a fair bit about Jefferson Davis's time as President of the Confederacy, and a little bit about his political career before that - as a US Senator from Mississippi and as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce - so a lot of what author William C. Davis offered about those periods of Jefferson Davis's life I already knew. I did appreciate the look at Davis's early life, and at his post-Civil War life, neither of which I knew a great deal about.

I came out of this not really certain what the author's take on Davis's life was. Certainly he provided a good look at both Davis's strengths and weaknesses, which in many ways were the same. On the positive side, he was completely committed to the cause of southern independence which he claimed and ultimately led. On the other hand he was so committed to his ideas that he couldn't even think about alternatives, turning people into enemies just because they disagreed with him and surrounding himself with friends who agreed with him and wouldn't challenge him. However, in the end, as another biographer I once read wrote about Davis - he led the cause as well as anyone could have and better than most would have. The author is clear about his belief that ultimately the south could not have prevailed, no matter who its leader was, and while Davis came in for much criticism during the war, the author notes his rehabilitation after the war, as he came to be fondly regarded by the people of the vanquished south. (I was quite taken with the author's take on Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston. Most of what I have read about Johnston has portrayed him as a highly regarded general; suffice to say that the author was not a fan of Johnston or his abilities as a general.)

Davis's personal life is looked at in great detail. His search for a father figure after the death of his own father when he was young is an ongoing theme of the book, as is his dependence on his older brother Joseph. There's a lot of interesting information about his marriage to Varina and their relationship. There's also a lot of information about his poor health, of which I wasn't especially familiar. There's really not a great deal about his views about slavery or African Americans. Suffice to say that he shared the general southern feeling that blacks were morally and intellectually inferior, although at least as slave owners go he seems to have been among the less offensive. One thing I learned is that Davis and Varina spent a lot of time in Canada after the Civil War. Having lived in the region, I knew that they had a connection to Niagara (the Canadian side) but I wasn't aware of how much time they spent in Quebec (mostly Montreal and Lennoxville) although I believe I have read that there's a plaque or something (or was) on a building in Montreal where Davis had lived.

Anyone with an interest in either Jefferson Davis personally, or the Civil War or the history of the Confederacy will find this a worthwhile book to read.