Jefferson Davis Takes Philadelphia

The North won the Civil War, but it took a Jefferson Davis to reunite the nation. It's 1876, the last days of postwar Reconstruction in the South, when a nineteen-year-old artistic prodigy from Georgia, with a troublesome name, heads to Yankee Philadelphia and the country's first World's Fair since the Civil War. A call for artists to participate in the Fair's art exhibit, the largest in the nation, sends Thomas J. on his way. A hilarious coming-of-age story follows, with a cast of illustrious characters and more than a few mishaps and amusing encounters. Ultimately, Jefferson Davis takes Philadelphia in this madcap fictional romp, where anything can happen - and very nearly does - in this historical farce.

Drawing on many new sources, distinguished Civil War scholar William C. Davis here delves into the life of one of the most controversial public figures of the nineteenth century. He vividly details Davis' childhood in Mississippi, his military experience at West Point and on the western frontier, his brilliant record in the Mexican War, his stint as a hardworking secretary of war under Franklin Pierce, and his career as an impassioned defender of slavery in the Senate, closely examining the development and expression of Davis' values, attitudes, and personality throughout this time.

An excerpt from the CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD: Jefferson Davis was born in 1808. He died in 1889. During the intervening period of over fourscore years, by his stainless personal character; by his unflagging and unselfish devotion to the interests of the South; by his unsurpassed ability as an exponent and champion of her rights and principles, as well as by his distinguished public services in peace and war, and his high official station, he was universally regarded, both at home and abroad, as pre-eminently the representative of a great era, a great cause, and a great people. The era is closed, the cause sleeps, but the people survive, and revere the memory, and mourn him dead, whom, living, they delighted to honor. It is for them that I write this memoir and vindication of his political action. In vindicating him I also vindicate them; for he spent his long life in their service, and was rewarded with their love and confidence from his cradle to his grave. In the fulfilment of this sacred task I shall endeavor to be guided by the spirit that inspired him during his whole life-a spirit of unswerving devotion to truth and duty, of unyielding antagonism against all assailants of justice, without regard to their prejudices or their numbers, but-mindful of the fact that every opponent, even to the death, is not necessarily an enemy, and that sincerity of belief is entitled to respectful consideration even when found arrayed against us. I shall endeavor to do exact and equal justice to the antagonists of the South, as well as to her leaders; "naught to extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." If I fail, it will be because my love for the Southern people, and their lost cause and leader, may unconsciously influence my judgment of the men and beliefs that were arrayed in deadly conflict during the war between the States. As to the plan of the work, I shall endeavor, as far as possible, to make the book an autobiography-to tell the story of my husband's life in his own words; to complete the task he left unfinished. For, during the last year of his life, after having spent the summer in preparing "A Short History of the Confederate States," he yielded to the repeated requests, both of his personal friends and publishers, to write an autobiography. Shortly before his last journey to Briarfield he dictated to a friend, as an introductory chapter, this account of his ancestry and early boyhood. He was too weak to sit up long at a time, and lay in bed while his friend and I sat by and listened. No verbal or other change has been made in the dictation, which Mr. Davis did not read over: "Three brothers came to America from Wales in the early part of the eighteenth century. They settled at Philadelphia."....

From a distinguished historian of the American South comes this thoroughly human portrait of the complex man at the center of our nation's most epic struggle. Jefferson Davis initially did not wish to leave the Union—as the son of a veteran of the American Revolution and as a soldier and senator, he considered himself a patriot. William J. Cooper shows us how Davis' initial reluctance turned into absolute commitment to the Confederacy. He provides a thorough account of Davis' life, both as the Confederate President and in the years before and after the war. Elegantly written and impeccably researched, Jefferson Davis, American is the definitive examination of one of the most enigmatic figures in our nation's history.

West Point graduate, secretary of war under President Pierce, U.S. senator from Mississippi-- how was it that this statesman and patriot came to be president of the Confederacy, leading the struggle to destroy the United States? This is the question at the center of William Cooper's engrossing and authoritative biography of Jefferson Davis. Basing his account on the massive archival record left by Davis and his family and associates, Cooper delves not only into the events of Davis's public and personal life but also into the ideas that shaped and compelled him. We see Davis as a devoted American, yet also as a wealthy plantation owner who believed slavery to be a moral and social good that could coexist with free labor in an undivided Union. We see how his initially reluctant support of secession ended in his absolute commitment to the Confederacy and his identification of it with the legacy of liberty handed down by the Founding Fathers. We see the chaos that attended the formation of the Confederate government while the Civil War was being fought, and the ever-present tension between the commitment to states' rights and the need for centralized authority. We see Davis's increasingly autocratic behavior, his involvement in military decision-making, and his desperation to save the Confederacy even at the expense of slavery. And we see Davis in defeat: imprisoned for two years, then, for the rest of his life, unrepentant about the South's attempt to break away, yet ultimately professing his faith in the restored Union. This is the definitive life of one of the most complex and fascinating figures in our nation's history.

The story of the American statesman who was president of the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865.