1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent if Overly Long Look at the Prince of Fire-eaters, March 30, 2009
This review is from: Rhett: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Fire-Eater (Hardcover)
William C. Davis does not like Robert B. Rhett. In "A Government of Our Own", his look at the founding of the Confederacy, Davis goes out of his way to paint all of Rhett's failings. While it is true that Rhett had many bad qualities, I went into reading "Rhettt" thinking Davis was going to spend hundreds of pages kicking Rhett around. And after reading the book, I still think Davis does not like Rhett. Despite that, Davis offers an excellent biography on Rhett. Davis guides the reader through the often byzantine politics of ante-bellum South Carolina where Rhett and a host of other political worthies (James Henry Hammond, Hugh Legare, George McDuffie, Jimmy Hamilton, Robert Hayne) all tried to find a little bit of room to escape the shadow of John C. Calhoun. Davis shows the bizarre relationship between Rhett and Calhoun; now allies, now enemies, now Rhett is Calhoun's campaign manager. Davis offers an interesting account of the political battles during the 1840s from war with Mexico to the patronage of the Polk administration. Davis shows Rhett to be an uncompromising politician who had a large ego and aggressive political style. But Davis also shows us Rhett the family man. Davis is not as good as Rhett as journalist and editor and one has to conceded that Davis simply fails in trying to show Rhett the slaveholder and political theorist. Davis is back at the top of his game as he shows how Rhett and the fire-eaters prevailed in South Carolina and reveals how Rhett shaped the Confederacy during his time in the Confederate Congress despite his animosity towards Jefferson Davis. Davis closes with a sketch on Rhett during Reconstruction and his posthumous reputation. I can't say that Rhett is anymore likable after finishing the book but Davis does an excellent job in showing the public life of one of the most important politicians of the old South, warts and all.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Portrait of an extremist, September 11, 2008
This review is from: Rhett: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Fire-Eater (Hardcover)
William Davis's Rhett is an exhaustive treatment of the leading fire-eater of the Civil War era. From the Nullification crisis during the presidency of Andrew Johnson until the firing on Fort Sumter, Barnwell Rhett worked earnestly to separate South Carolina from the Union and formulate a southern nation. Rhett was earnest in his devotion to states' rights, free-trade and slavery, but he also embodied the worst of southern passions in his extremism and petty disdain for all those who did not exactly adhere to his positions. Rhett's hatred of moderates and his fear that his vision of a southern nation would be undermined by "reconstructionists" drove his hatred of President Jefferson Davis, and assured that his legacy to the Confederacy would be largely negative. Rhett held onto his bitter feelings for both northern society and his southern enemies until his dieing day, convinced that his vision if carried out would have triumphed. Rhett's extremism and disappointment becomes redundant at times through this 600 page narrative; his only great triumph, the secession of South Carolina, is soon overshadowed by his disgust with the new Confederate constitution and president. Although a devoted family man, it is notable that Rhett was unable to control himself in the bedroom, putting his first wife through 12 pregnancies that eventually led to her death. He would have done the same to his second wife if she didn't deny him the chance. Many important southerners of the Civil War era had similar intemperate and combative personalities, undoubtedly contributing in some way to the defeat of the Confederacy.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
truth is in want with both this book and it's reviews, March 28, 2009
This review is from: Rhett: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Fire-Eater (Hardcover)
Question for Reed Business Information's review where the term northern abolitionists was used as the opposite of fire-eaters. Was it an intentional stab towards every historian that disagrees with the victor's myths? Or is it just another "ignorance is bliss" defense?
Why is it that any popular Southern speaking for his people and their rights are viewed as fire-eaters? And even those (like W.D) that write books about these characters use the term in a derogatory manner. Extremist, absurd, self-righteous. If they were uncompromising, they were so because they believed that the constitution and the will of the people should be uncompromising for their rights. You'll find in all the language of the Southern secessionists the constitution and "rights" and "sovereignty" brought up again and again. These were not personal agendas for power. The so-called fire-eaters were the time's loudest advocates for the people!
What do we call those that were on the other side of the Potomac filled with more ambition yet with equal passion as the Southern "fire eaters"? The writers of history books that are most celebrated by the liberal decedents of puritans give these Northern "gentlemen" the term that their ancestors used to disguise their real motives. Abolitionists. To the "ignorance is bliss" movement that began right on the heels of Lee's surrender, abolition was taught as a free state movement, martyred by Saint John Brown and "Beecher's Bibles." We forget that New England churches raised money for cannon and ammunition to follow their Yellow Leg invasion of Kansas. For some reason I don't understand how cannon could be considered as anything like the Bible I know. Then again, before the mid 17th century, Stowe's own ancestors burned innocent men and women on stakes in the name of the Bible, using these beliefs to also destroy any surrounding Native American culture. The Civil War becomes much more clear when you study the true history of each side before the climax.
In reality John Brown was a terrorist and mass murderer obsessed with blood. Five of the families he murdered in Kansas did not own slaves. If his plan to invade the South had actually materialized, there would have been thousands more innocents killed in the process. Invasion, collapse, and control had always been the Northern "abolitionist" agenda. John Brown's terrorist attack inflamed their sentiment. It was only two years later when the true invasion and annihilation was born.
The only blood that John Brown spilled at Harpers Ferry was that of a free black citizen of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (not before he had already alerted the local militia).
William C. Davis is a very wealthy man just as James McPherson. Their wealth and reputation wholly depend on perpetuating the glamorizing of Lincoln and the majority controlled government that was put on the spot in the Civil War. For the majority of these writer's pay comes from the media and through the universities, the government itself. Your status as a significant historian depends how many pro-Union sources you use and how many years you have been groomed as a student and professor of certain schools.
It really isn't that complicated. The money comes from the controlling classes and without their blessing; a book about any history will fail to bring home the bacon. Davis' book is yet another modern day liberal distorted sculpture of a figure from a whole different world and time. His list of sources is deceiving. He carefully selected the information from his sources, the parts of them that conforms his pre-decided image of Rhett B. I noticed in this book the absence of a full circle of sources that included specific experiences and reviews of Rhett Barnwell. Avoiding very creditable sources, regardless of how authentic and detailed it might be, Davis suspiciously left these out. It would not fit with his one dimension study of the Rhett Barnwell. It is a writer's agenda vs. the true history.
I have spent the past sixteen years studying and researching The War of the Constitution. Every night since my passion began I have been reading one book or another, usually memoirs and autobiographies...unfiltered history. Defenders of both sides wrote these I've read.
In studying the different sentiments that lead to the invasion, the majority of the North favored the right for any state to secede from the Union. Even the common man, on either side of the Mason Dixon Line, knew their rights and constitution those days. Yet, its upper crust puritan club seemed reverent in their principal that their agenda was of more value than the defense of the constitution. The giant wealth of the Northern (shall I say antebellum) industry and political machines were the true aggressors. Between 1860 and 1880 produced the most radical and numerous set of amendments during a short period of time (since the original Bill of Rights). Every one of them, manufactured by Northern Republicans, created loop holes and exceptions of the rights of the people and states in the original constitution. The postwar revision of Southern state constitutions produced the same end. Namely secession, the right to leave if offended. The X amendment of the constitution is as basic a right to the states the rights people have in relationships, careers, and marriages: The right to leave if offended.
I cannot understand why people villainies the South's choice to practice a right that in 1776 was a revolution. Live and let live? Do others as you would do yourself?
Davis' usual distance from the heart and passion of the subjects of his work is arguably the biggest issue haunting named historians today. They make arguments about what the Southern or Northern lifestyle was about based on what was printed in high profile newspapers, speeches, and biographies. They pick and choose only the parts of sources that they can use to force their own conclusion. It would be like limiting the galaxy to a set of pre-selected stars. The ranking media and the words of politicians and rich people were as defected from the common people as it is now! Even still, we allow them to convince us that their history was also our own.
If you want to judge the past on today's lifestyles and views and ideas then there is no argument that Lincoln was more ways like George Bush than any other president. He put his personal principals above the will of the people. He suspended rights and force new taxes in the loyal states by force (suspending Habeas Corpus) and George Bush styled fear hording. Read the Gettysburg Address. It mentions in there that the men that died for the Union had fought so that "this nation may long endure." This is basically saying that the North was fighting to protect the United States. That if the South won the government behind Old Glory would vanquish. There is a huge problem with that argument though. How did England fair when the colonies seceded in 1776 and how did Mexico fair following the secession of Texas?
I just can't believe people do not consider these very obvious facts concerning what the constitution says is a right as opposed to the right to invade other states for any reason.
In your reviews you describe South Carolina's choice not to accept an un-willful tax as a "Crises." You only use this word because politicians and media that write their own history have echoed it mindlessly through the ages and into you. Calling nullification a crises or secession as an issue rather than a right is being woefully biased towards one side in history. Or is it is just your totally misleading understanding of that period's society and principals and values? Neither prejudice nor ignorance has a place in a complete history book or review.
History cannot be written from the outside or the distant looking in. History is made of the lives that lived it and whoever you are unwilling to identify with or study with an open mind, your work will become more a history of you than say Rhett B.
There are several historians in the world that have risen above the narrow minded hashing of the same myths with a more exciting style of William Davis. Douglass Freeman works or The Last Cavalier about JEB Stuart. I am astonished that the majority of Civil War libraries and required reading at our nation's universities do not include memoirs such as The War Between the Union and the Confederacy by Colonel Oates. They all deny The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government written by none other than Jefferson Davis, without argument the central figure of the whole period. Modern writers on the subject show mutual distain towards the works of men that lived their time. Is it because these writers feel they know the minds in history better than they knew themselves? Again, so much of modern studies on the Civil War period are limited to sensational new twists of the same old song. John Brown's Body.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
