BOOK REVIEW: Jefferson Davis: The Man & His Hour

It’s not always easy to write a compelling 700 page biography of a man who is viewed negatively by most people today and many in his own day.  But William C. Davis managed to do it in Jefferson Davis: The Man & His Hour.

            The author Davis, a longtime historian, takes up the subject of Confederate president Davis (no relation) in an extremely well-researched and readable narrative that covers Davis’ life from birth to death.  As the author points out, the main reason that Davis is known today was because of his role in the American Civil War, and therefore much of the book is dedicated to that enthralling four-year period from 1861-1865.  But Davis’s life involved much more than that period alone.

            The youngest child in a large family, Jefferson Finis Davis was born in 1808 to parents who aptly named their child, hoping (rightly so) that he would be their last child.  Born in Kentucky, Davis was ultimately raised in Mississippi.  After a brief stint at Transylvania University, he accepted an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point.  Always fiery and opinionated, Davis was a less than stellar, albeit popular student who made friends and enemies that would last a lifetime.  After graduating, he continued his military career and eventually became a war in hero in the brief Mexican War of 1846-1848. 

            As a young man, Davis married the daughter of Zachary Taylor, his commanding officer and future U.S. President.  Although Taylor initially did not want his daughter Sarah to marry a soldier, he eventually reluctantly consented when Davis resigned the service and moved back to his native Mississippi.  But early summer was not a good time for the newlyweds to move to the tropical climate and both soon came down with malaria.  Davis almost died.  Sarah did.  A mere two months into their marriage.  Young Jefferson Davis was utterly devastated.

            For the next ten years, Davis became a reclusive farmer.  His older brother Joseph, more than twenty years his senior, served as a father –figure to Jefferson and gave him a portion of his land to manage.  For the next decade he worked with his brother managing the plantation and he largely kept to himself.  But eventually he became involved in local politics, and he found romance once again.

            At the age of 35, Davis met the young Varina Howell and married the 17 year old girl who would eventually become the First Lady of the Confederacy.  Around this same time, Davis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.  At times, the marriage was strained as the firm and opinionated Jefferson learned to live with the much younger and equally opinionated Varina.  But eventually their union became a blissful one, producing several children.

            Davis never finished his term in Congress because of the outbreak of the Mexican War.  He resigned so he could serve as Colonel in the 1^st Mississippi volunteers.  After he came home a hero, he attempted a run for governor, but was defeated.  From 1853-1857, he served in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce as Secretary of War; ironically building up a United States military that he would one day fight against as Confederate President.

            After his stint in Pierce’s cabinet, Davis was elected U.S. Senator from Mississippi, this being the last office that Davis would hold in the Union.  In 1861, he resigned from the Senate and returned to Mississippi to await what would happen as the Southern states seceded, eventually forming the Confederate States of America.  He was appointed by the governor to serve as Brigadier General of Mississippi volunteers and desperately hoped to be a commanding general in the coming war, but fate had other plans.  He was unanimously selected to serve as President of the new nation and was summoned to Montgomery, Alabama the first capital of the C.S.A.  Davis claims to have never wanted the position, but rather accepted it out of a sense of duty.  His hope was that once the government was firmly established he would return to field service, but his election to a six-year term in 1862 ended such hopes.

            As President, Davis tried to establish a new government, while also serving as Commander-in-Chief to a fledgling nation fighting a war for independence.  A bureaucrat by nature, Davis at times struggled in his role as chief executive.  He idolized some generals, like Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston; while he loathed others, namely Joseph Johnston and Pierre Beauregard.  He was loyal to a fault to those he considered friends, while sometimes irrationally critical to those he deemed enemies. 

            William Davis, while writing honestly about the President’s many faults, also manages to bring out the tender human side of Davis.  He was a man intensely sensitive to the feelings of others; and a father who reveled in playing with his children.  Publicly considered cold and aloof, Davis could be quite warm and engaging when he visited with friends in private.  For most of his time as President, he carried a tremendous burden and it usually showed in his outer actions and demeanor.

            During the war, Davis was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church and seems to have been a committed Christian for the remainder of his life.  In fact, Davis was sitting in church on a Sunday morning when he received an urgent telegram from Robert E. Lee that he must evacuate Richmond at once.  Davis and his cabinet complied and began to flee south temporarily establishing capitals in Danville, Virginia and Greensboro, North Carolina.  Having already sent Varina and the children ahead several days earlier, he eventually caught up with them and they were reunited, though the reunion would prove to be brief.

            The assassination of Abraham Lincoln made Davis a wanted man.  In the hysteria following Lincoln’s murder, Davis and other high ranking Confederate were suspected as conspirators.  Some wanted him captured, tried, and hung for murder or treason.  He was eventually captured near Irwinville, Georgia in May of 1865.

            The next two years would be some of the most trying of Davis’ life as he sat imprisoned awaiting what charges might be filed against him.  As word leaked to the public of the persecution Davis was experiencing at the hands of his jailers an ironic sympathy began to grow for him, even in the North.  Some demanded he be released on bail and brought to a “speedy trial” but in truth the Federal government had no idea what to do with him.  They feared a public trial that might lead to his acquittal, so eventually, he was released.

            The next ten years of Davis’s life were difficult as he sought to somehow make a living and rebuild his life.  He spent time in Canada and England before eventually moving to Memphis where he served as President of the Carolina Life Insurance Company.  But the economy destroyed the company and Davis had to look for other work.  Ultimately he moved to Biloxi, Mississippi where he was given a rent-free house to work on his memoirs.  The Rise & Fall of the Confederate Government was a lengthy two volume work that Davis wrote with the help of others to give an accurate defense of his actions during the war.  The book did not sell well and Davis probably received nothing in royalties from the work.  But he did have a new home.  The rent-free estate Beauvoir was left to him in the will of the woman who owned it and Davis would spend the rest of his life there.

            Davis died in 1889 from complications from pneumonia.  Varina and two daughters survived him, though four sons and a daughter preceded him in death.  He was initially interred in New Orleans, but later moved to the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, the city that made him famous.

            William Davis’ book is an excellent account of the enigmatic Jefferson Davis.  Highly readable and interesting, William Davis manages to give an honest account of Davis’ shortcomings while also adequately telling of his positive traits.  Some authors manage to convey scads of facts, while others are short on facts but excel in compelling narrative.  William C. Davis does both. Not only did I come away with more knowledge of Davis, I also had a greater respect for the man and the many struggles he faced in life.  Any study of Jefferson Davis should include this book as a solid reference for the Confederacy’s only President.

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