Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America [Hardcover]

William C. Davis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 2002

William C. Davis, one of America's best Civil War historians, here offers a definitive portrait of the Confederacy unlike any that has come before. Drawing on decades of writing and research among an unprecedented number of archives, Look Away! tells the story of the Confederate States of America not simply as a military saga (although it is that), but rather as a full portrait of a society and incipient nation. The first history of the Confederacy in decades, the culmination of a great scholar's career, Look Away! combines politics, economics, and social history to set a new standard for its subject.

Previous histories have focused on familiar commanders such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, but Davis's canvas is much broader. From firebrand politicians like Robert Barnwell Rhett and William L. Yancey, who pushed for secession long before the public supported it; to Dr. Samuel Cartwright, who persuaded many Southerners of the natural inferiority of their slaves; to the women of Richmond, who rioted over bread shortages in 1863, Davis presents a rich new face of the Confederate nation. He recounts familiar stories of battles won and lost, but also little-known economic stories of a desperate government that socialized the salt industry, home-front stories of the rangers and marauders who preyed on their fellow Confederates, and an account of the steady breakdown of law, culminating in near anarchy in some states. Never has the Confederacy been so vividly brought to life as a full society, riven with political and economic conflicts beneath its more loudly publicized military battles.

Davis's astonishingly thorough primary research has ranged across the 800-odd newspapers that were in operation during the war, but also across the personal papers of over a hundred Southern leaders and ordinary citizens. He quotes from letters and diaries throughout the narrative, revealing the Confederacy through the words of the Confederates themselves. Like any society, especially in the early stages of nation-building and the devastating stages of warfare, the Confederacy was not one thing but many things to many people. One thing, however, was shared by all: the belief that the South offered a necessary evolution of American democracy. Look Away! offers a dramatic and definitive account of one of America's most searing episodes.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The military history of the Civil War is well known. The political history of the era, and especially of the South, is less documented, a gap that William Davis's Look Away! admirably addresses.

Although the rhetoric of secession was democratic, invoking the ideals of the American Revolution and its classical forebears, Southern politics was directed by members of a small, self-serving aristocracy. And though the Confederate government advanced what then and now might be thought to be radical proposals (for one, that the postal service had to be self-supporting within two years of its founding), it was intolerant of dissent; the South's leaders, Davis writes, even barred a constitutional provision "recognizing the right of a state to secede." The natural result, Davis shows, was widespread resistance, including the development of a peace movement and of political groups loyal to the old Union. At the end of the war, Davis writes, "Confederate democracy had gone and would not be seen again--but the oligarchies had survived." Davis's study affords a new view on the Civil War, and it makes a fine addition to the overflowing library devoted to that crisis. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal

The director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, Davis (Lincoln's Men) here offers a sweeping nonmilitary perspective of the Confederacy, examining the political turmoil that led to its creation and the social and economic devastation left after its defeat. Civilian life, civil law and justice, internal dissent, the opposition to Richmond's dictates, and the uneasy relationships between old-line Whigs and Democrats in the Rebel state legislatures and governors' mansions constitute the bulk of the work. With reference to the South's planter class and political base, the author concludes: "They had begun in 1861 as a movement dedicated to the professed belief that sovereignty lay with the states. For four years that democracy went through strains and wrenches testing its ability to resist centralization through one compromise of its ideology after another." Herein lies the kernel of Davis's penetrating analysis of the values and differences among the various factions of the Confederacy. This important contribution to Confederate historiography is recommended for all Civil War collections and major libraries. John Carver Edwards, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Cleveland
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (April 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684865858
• ISBN-13: 978-0684865850
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a different and needed perspective, June 20, 2004

By 

Scott A. Gold "scottagold" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (Hardcover)

In my opinion, this book deserves much praise for presenting an important, but almost completely ignored perspective on the Civil War. The military history is used only as a backdrop in this book. The focus instead is on the political history of the Confederacy. The book opens with the whirlwind in which the southern states seceded from the union and tells the story of the Confederate constitutional convention and of how Jefferson Davis became the Confederate President. The remainder focuses on the politics of the Confederate government. Among the many ironies is how a government that started focusing on "states rights" after suffering through much paralysis, saw the states cede more and more power to the Confederate government as the war went on. The title of this book may lead some to believe that this is some sort of apology for the South. In reality, it is quite critical of the Confederate cause. Those who hold the view that the Civil War was not about slavery but rather about states rights, will have that view challenged. The book is well written and is a must read for anyone interested in the Civil War.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Davis' best, but still good., September 28, 2002

By 

Dennis Phillips "The Book Friar" (Bulls Gap, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (Hardcover)

When one has read several books by the same writer there is a tendency to judge one book against another. That was a problem I had while reading this book. This book is not as well written or as well documented as Davis' other works although it is still much better than many books I have read.

The book begins with the secession of the States and their meeting in Montgomery to form a nation. The delegates met with the mind set that in this new country there would be none of the political fights that had been such a problem in the old Union. They would all, "be of one mind." From the beginning however the factions started to grow. What would become the anti-Davis faction started as a bunch of former fire-eaters who were left out of the new government and grew to include even the Vice President. These men, Rhett, Cobb, Toombs, Stephens, Foote, and Wigfall with egos the size of Texas did vast damage to the Confederacy all through the war. Again and again Davis brings these men up as he looks at different issues Jefferson Davis and the State governments had to face.

These issues were many but most involved how far could the Confederate or State governments go while taking more and more control in order to win the war. The army had to come first and the government began to simply take the things they needed and draft southern men to keep the ranks filled. The States themselves became directly involved in the economy not only telling farmers and industry who they could sell to but what they could produce, and the price they could sell it for. The Confederate and State governments actually began to run industry of their own. As strange as it sounds the southern nation for the most part became an experiment in socialism and a welfare state.

There is little attention to great battles and generals. This is a history of the Confederate people, not their army. The people who suffered and starved and who in the end gave up nearly all hope. Davis has indeed caught the mood of the south for in the end Robert E. Lee becomes a major figure in this book. By then neither Jefferson Davis and his government or the Rhetts and Wigfalls mattered. Robert E. Lee was the Confederacy to its people and what little hope they had, rested in him.

This is an important history of the Confederacy looking at areas that are seldom explored. To really understand the civil war this is a side of the south that has to considered. Thanks to Mr. Davis it will be.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, If Uneven, July 24, 2002

By 

Wayne A. Smith (Newark, DE) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (Hardcover)

This is more than a history of the Confederat States of America. It is broader. The book is a history of the polity known as the CSA.

The first few chapters give a strong recap of the different philosophical strains that led the delegates to Montgomery to craft the CSA's constitution. These chapters are well done. The reader has a good idea of the tensions that framed early issues of governance.

In other chapters, Davis writes about federal-state relations, the administration of justice in the Confederacy, the socialization of key industries (in an abortive republic founded on the sanctity of property rights!) and other interesting aspects of the slave nation.

Davis provides many interesting descriptions and some new information -- even for serious Civil War buffs. However, this is somewhat of an uneven book. In several chapters, Davis uses a few or even one anecdote to draw conclusions at a broad level -- the reader is unsure if these descriptions are generally true or extrapolations.

He spends a lot of time with the governors and on dissidents. This is not a drawback, but the book is weighted toward the mindset of the Confederacy as opposed to a description of how it worked and how the machinery of government functioned (or didn't). There are good sections on the frustrations and lives of regular folk. Military aspects are treated with seperate and short sections giving brief descriptions of broad aspects of the war. This is a positive, as it would have been easy to pad a book on the CSA with military recaps that are properly the subject of military histories.

Not bad, overall.