The Rise of the Confederate Government (Barnes &
Noble Library of Essential Reading)
by Jefferson Davis
This book turned out to be easier to read and enjoy than I thought when I purchased it. It gave me a deeper
understanding of why the war was fought and a profound respect for President Davis, CSA.
The Southern states did not fight to gain control of the United States central government but fought to secede
from that central government.
Northerners fought a war to control the South and prevent Southerners from becoming independent. The war did
not abstractly wage. Rather, it was waged by the central government against the Southern people to prevent their
self-determination, which Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence referred to as an "unalienable"
right of all people.|I tried. I really did. But the book is such a blatant slavery-apologetic text that it made me sick.|A
good read, and a must for anyone interested in US history & culture.
'The victor writes the history' and in the case of the US Civil war, the Union/North is the winner and writes the
history books. This is natural, but unfortunately leads to our learning half truths about the reasons for the war. We
all know the North's side, because we are taught it in school. This book, written just after the war, attempts to tell
the tale from the side of the Confederate South.
You cannot know the truth of the American civil war, without reading both sides. You cannot. "The war was fought
to end slavery" is a lie, a half truth. This is a must read if you care to know what happened and why.|I dislike this
book so intensely that one star seems excessive. There are three reasons: the writing style is very difficult to
maintain the slightest interest in, Davis is one of those history writers who tends to list fact after fact (though
sometimes, as in his digression about the difficulties facing the Confederate ordnance service, this is in fact quite
interesting), and Davis himself is, for a man who prided himself on being clear-sighted about the necessities of the
maintain the slightest interest in, Davis is one of those history writers who tends to list fact after fact (though
sometimes, as in his digression about the difficulties facing the Confederate ordnance service, this is in fact quite
interesting), and Davis himself is, for a man who prided himself on being clear-sighted about the necessities of the
war, absolutely, dunderheadedly wrong on so many levels.
One of the classic arguments about the war was that it was not a war over slavery- it was a war over states' rights.
That this is absolutely, unequivocably false can be demonstrated quickly and easily. As part of the Compromise of
1850, the South demanded the passage of a rigorous fugitive slave law- further, they insisted on its enforcement
even in places where slavery was considered abhorrent and unnatural, thereby enforcing the will of a few states on
others by means of the Federal power. Was this states' rights in action? If the Federal power were formed by the
voluntary joining of the States, why did the seceding states make no effort to reimburse the other parties of that
joining upon their secession for the improvements to their waterways, their harbors, their defense? If the
sovereignty of property was so important, why, then, did the Confederacy make no effort to reimburse the state
governments of New York, Massachussetts, and so on for the Federal property seized at Harpers Ferry, at Sumter,
at Wilmington and New Orleans and Mobile?
Further, Davis himself is painted as incapable of error - this, from the man whose personal vendettas were
legendary in an honor-based culture. I do not mean to say the war would have been better if Beauregard had
been left in any of his offices, but certainly the revolving-door policies of the Confederate cabinet did not provide
any of the desperately needed stability a new government requires.
There are many excellent histories of the Civil War which have used Davis as a source, and his inclusion of
hundreds of pages of appendices make the book useful as a primary source as well as a history, but the man was a
second-rate author, a third-rate thinker, and, fittingly for a man whose sight was ruined by the war, totally blind to
the logic of his cause.|Every now and again I come across a hidden gem, a book that is not on the major lists of
classic works but that covers such a range of ideas and aspects of human existence that it winds up ranking on my
list of top fifty reads in my life. This is one of those cases, and I owe Barnes and Noble a huge thank you for their
publication of this work, the first half of Davis’ memoirs. I will warn that it is a tome, at 480 pages of text plus
another 180 of appendices and at least ten of endnotes, but it is well worth the time and effort to sort through it.
The Civil War was about business interests, and any discussion of slavery only clouds the issue–let’s start with that.
Jefferson Davis’ memoir provides a clear statement of the reasons behind the secession of the eleven “sovereign”
states which formed the Confederate States of America in 1861 (in theory thirteen states had Confederate armies,
but two were silenced by disarmament enforced by Union troops). I did not know many of the details about the
Southern position before reading this book, as they have been ignored or “discredited” (a word that is difficult to
use here but that some who do not know what it means use to state that they disagree with its premises and
facts), but now I must say that not only am I far more knowledgeable and less prone to making assumptions, I
believe I am a “Confederate sympathizer” to a certain degree.
Davis’ biggest concern is the abuse of the legislative and executive powers of the United States by sectional
interests. As he states early on, the South was penalized multiple times by tariffs which a) protected Northern
industry and b) were used to make improvements in the North that Southern congressmen would not ask to be
made in their territories. This was the basis of corruption and dishonesty, and was coupled with a refusal to
enforce fugitive slave laws and a failure to honor property rights in neutral territories prior to their having become
States- and when an entirely sectional government was elected in 1860, Southerners were forced to deliberate
upon whether the “general government” as an “agent” instituted for a purpose could still do what the South had
entered into agreement for its establishment to do.
Their answer was, of course, that it could not do this, and they seceded. Davis justifies this by reference to the
language of the Constitution, and shows how theories against the right of secession are based on
misconstructions of that brilliant document- all of his logic is very plain, and adds up quite clearly. (Ultimately the
debate really goes back to whether government fits Hobbes’ conception–where men give up their rights to the
government in exchange for protection of their lives but something goes wrong and they cannot get those rights
back and are forced to concede more and more–or Locke’s conception, where government is still the result of a
social contract but the people reserve the right to alter or abolish it if it no longer works for them.) But the
seceding states retained the hope for peace, and did not attempt to build their armies despite their
unpreparedness for any sort of major conflict- instead they sent commissioners to the United States government
social contract but the people reserve the right to alter or abolish it if it no longer works for them.) But the
seceding states retained the hope for peace, and did not attempt to build their armies despite their
unpreparedness for any sort of major conflict- instead they sent commissioners to the United States government
in the hopes of amicably settling certain potential sources of disagreement, such as the removal of United States
troops from Fort Sumter in South Carolina (where they were no longer wanted and needed as they were on the
territory of a foreign nation), which the Union government kept waiting with delays before finally dismissing them
ignominiously and sending reinforcements to the garrison at Fort Sumter. Davis exposes the hypocrisy of the
political leaders of the Republican party of the time and their broad construction of the language of the
Constitution to the point where they rendered the document nearly meaningless. The full implications of this early
abuse of the document continue to be displayed at the present, mind you.
Davis describes the organization of the Confederate government, the initiation of the Civil War and its early
battles, some military strategies pursued by his generals, the suppression of the border states by Union armies
(which truly disgusts me), the finances of the Confederacy and its manufacture of arms after the war had already
started in a game of catch-up- he discusses some of the conflicts that arose between himself and governors of the
respective states, and some of the more reckless behavior of his generals in disobeying his orders that led to
reverses in the fate of the Confederacy.
The book is ridiculously complete in its scope, covering all aspects of both the theoretical and the practical that
bear relevance to its subject matter, and compares favorably with many of the memoirs I have read by participants
in world affairs–notably Trotsky’s and Roosevelt’s. It should be considered by every student of U.S. History and I
would urge that it be taught in schools but for the fact that there are hundreds of other books that need also to
be read and only so much time in which to read them. I certainly have set out that time, but it is to some limited
degree understandable that others have not.