Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour [Paperback]

William C. Davis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This portrait puts the emphasis on Davis's private warmth, public coolness, personal insecurity and indecisiveness during the Civil War. Relying mostly on contemporary sources, the author ( Image of the War ) explores how Davis's attitudes and values were developed at West Point and during his Mexican War service and how they were put to the test in his years as U.S. senator, as secretary of war under Franklin Pierce and as president of the Southern Confederacy. The author defends Davis (1808-1889) against the charge that he interfered with his generals, partly by showing how well he and Robert E. Lee worked together. The book also makes clear that Davis lacked managerial skill, was inflexible, could not admit making a mistake and had great difficulty delegating authority. Nevertheless, as the author points out, Davis built the systems that kept the Confederacy afloat from his inauguration in 1862 until he was captured by Union troops in 1865. This is a pragmatic but sympathetic biography that explains why Davis was respected but never loved by the citizens of the Confederate states. Illustrated.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Noted Civil War author Davis now tries his hand at Jefferson Davis, long an enigma to historians. He approaches his subject sympathetically, grounding his book in the quaint notion that the Confederacy was doomed to fail (something neither Jefferson Davis in his day nor most historians today would accept) and viewing events largely through Davis's eyes. The author gives us the public man. He distills the private Davis into a few remarkably perceptive pages (the best in the book), preferring to measure his subject solely by the Civil War standard. Davis comes off as dogged and courageous, but also politically inept and narrowminded. Davis lost the West and his political bearings, though never his conviction for the cause. This new biography supersedes Clement Eaton's Jefferson Davis ( LJ 10/1/77) in verve and detail, but it offers no striking new profile of either the man or his hour. Recommended for university and major public libraries.
- Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 816 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press; Louisiana Pbk. Ed edition (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807120790
• ISBN-13: 978-0807120798
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,319,804 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Davis on Davis., June 22, 2004

By 

Dennis Phillips "The Book Friar" (Bulls Gap, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (Hardcover)

William Davis has written many has written many wonderful books about the Civil War and quite frankly he has come a long way as a writer since he wrote this book. In this book all too often his sentence structure is poor and I had to read some sentences two or three times to see what he meant. There are also a few typos in this edition but that is hardly Davis' fault. On the other hand there is a reference in the book about Bedford Forrest being from Alabama which is hard to explain. Overall though this book is well written and will certainly hold the reader's attention.

All in all, this is an excellent biography of Jefferson Davis. I would suggest that anyone who reads this book also read William Cooper's biography of Davis because the two authors take different approaches to their subject and together they offer a great insight into the life of President Davis.

This biography tends to delve more into the personality quirks that made Davis who he was and is sometimes very critical of these quirks. In fact, this book is sometimes much more critical of Davis than is Cooper but on the other hand there is plenty of praise for the subject also. The author tends to focus on Davis as commander in chief and generally on his relationship with his generals, especially Joe Johnston, Beauregard and Bragg. These three relationships Davis argues were devastating to the Confederacy and were examples of Jefferson Davis at his worst. Full credit is given to Davis however for realizing what he had in Robert E. Lee and for doing all he could to support his best general through good times and bad.

After all is said and done the author reaches what seems like a sound conclusion. Jefferson Davis probably did as well or better than any of the other possible choices the South could have picked as their leader. He made mistakes but it was he who set up the structure that kept the armies in the field for four years. Davis was the one who persuaded Congress to pass the laws that sent the armies men and food, Davis chose Lee for command when "Granny Lee" was not at all popular, and Davis dealt with the obstinate Governors who tried to keep men and arms to themselves when they were desperately needed elsewhere. In short, Davis held the new nation together longer than most any other Southern leader could have.

Finally, the author deals quite well with the process that brought Davis to near sainthood in the South after the war. It was a process that started with his imprisonment in Fort Monroe and ended with one of the largest funerals in Southern history. Together, Cooper and Davis cover most every aspect of the life of Jefferson Davis and the two books compliment each other quite well. What Davis misses, Cooper takes care of and what Cooper only touches upon, Davis completes. These two books will serve as the most complete biographies of Jefferson Davis for years to come, and they may never be surpassed.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best biography on Davis, February 6, 2004

By 

lordhoot "lordhoot" (Anchorage, Alaska USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (Hardcover)

Once more, William C. Davis have provided us Civil War readers with another pure winner. Of all the biographies I have read on Jefferson Davis, this book definitely proves to be the best. It highly readable, interesting as well as entertaining and after you finished with the last page, you actually feel like you know something about Jefferson Davis, his talents which was outweighted by his weaknesses. The biography paint a rather tragic figure of man who was so devoted to his cause but yet, did so much to defeat it. The irony will proves to be unforgettable to anyone who read the book. I would considered this book to be one of these so called "must read" book by anyone who have a slightest interest in the Civil War.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First rate biography of an important American figure, June 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (Paperback)

Wlliam Davis has written a well researched and skillful biography of a major player in American history. He was not only the first and last President of the ill-fated Confederate States of America but, as well detailed in the book, he was the south's leading defender in Congress in the mid-1800s' of "states-rights" and the rightfulness of slavery (He was a major slave "owner" himself). His was not a minor role in the events that that resulted in secession nor in the terrible bloodbath that followed. An excellent book.