Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War

Last week we read about Abraham Lincoln. And because I try and get more than one side of a story, I decided to read about the other president in that conflict, making this week’s book of the week Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War by James M. McPherson.

Now, I was looking more for a complete biography of Davis, and this was more a biography of the years of the confederacy, so I’m going to fill in some basic background information using that old standby, Google. But I’ll keep this to bare bones so I can get to the book quickly.

Jefferson Finis Davis was born on June 3, 1808, in Fairview, Kentucky to Jane and Samuel Davis, he was the youngest of ten children, and like a lot of younger sons, joined the army as a way to get ahead. His older brother arranged for him to join the military academy at West Point and as a result, Davis would favor West Point graduates all his life.

Now, as we learned during the review of Zachary Taylor’s presidency, Davis was briefly Taylor’s son-in-law, but that marriage lasted less than a year before Sarah Knox Taylor died. However, in order to marry her, Taylor had to resign his military commission, as Taylor denied his request for Sarah’s hand based on not wanting her to live the life of a military wife. So, Davis resigns, gets a plantation, marries Sarah, then Sarah dies, and Davis was a bit reclusive for a bit after that, remaining a bachelor for 9 years until he married his second spouse, Varina Howell, in 1845, when she was 18. For those keeping track, he was 37 years old, so 19 years older than her. This was not at all unusual for the time, and not even the largest age gap for second spouses…remember John Tyler’s second wife was 30 years younger than him.

Back to Davis. If you recall from Franklin Pierce, Davis was his Secretary of War, which is not an unusual pick as Davis had served in both the US House of Representatives from Mississippi and as a Senator from Mississippi. And that’s the short, short version of Davis’s life up to this point.

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln is elected president and South Carolina immediately secedes. And here is where the book starts.

So, at the start of the Civil War, Davis was once again serving as Senator from Mississippi to the US Senate. Mississippi did not secede until January 9, 1861. Davis was expecting this but waited until official notification to resign from the US Senate. About a month later, the convention that had been called to form the Confederate States sent word that they had unanimously voted Davis to be the provisional president of the Confederacy. Which he did not want. It’s one thing to stick with your state and resign from the US Senate. It’s a whole different kettle of fish to become president of a rebelling nation. Just ask George Washington…hell, ask any of the founding fathers, who all found themselves on a “to be hung if caught” list issued by the Crown. But Davis accepted the position, pretty much because everyone knew this was not going to be a peaceful sayonara and we wish you well. The Confederacy would need a commander in chief with military experience. And while his military experience was 25 years prior, it was still experience that was needed. And so he accepted.

And from the get-go, the plan was sort of a best defense is a good offense strategy. And it is referred to as an offensive defensive strategy throughout this book. The South’s plan was to take the fight to the North so that the fight never landed on the South’s doorstep. Not a bad plan overall, but still problematic from the perspective of the North didn’t want this shit on their doorstep anymore than the South did.

Now…I am still unclear if either side WANTED the war. I know I like to think not. But holy hell. It was like a big game of chicken to start. Fort Sumter in South Carolina became a standoff. Davis was very worried that if he fired the first shot, he’d lose the moral high ground. But fire the first shots he did, on April 12, 1861, when Lincoln attempted to resupply the fort.

Shortly after this, Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion, which led to four more states, including Virginia, joining the Confederacy. And not long after this, Richmond, Virginia was named the capital of the Confederacy. Located 109 miles south of DC, the stage was now set for the two nations to try to capture the flag.

So, Davis, given that he HAD military experience, was particularly frustrated by his generals. Also…ok, we HAVE congressional oversight today, and if some serious military fuckery goes down, then of course the generals today can be called before congress to explain themselves. Back then, on both sides of the divide, the military personnel felt like they had a right to express disagreement with orders and to voice their opinion. And if the final order that came down went against their opinion, the Generals, on both sides, were adept at sidestepping orders and finding valid reasons not to obey them. Except for Grant. There are many reasons Lincoln Loved Grant. But where Lincoln was, at least according to last week’s book, left more or less alone to fight the war as best he was able, in the Confederacy, EVERYONE was a critic. One of the sources the author pulled from was a diary of a woman who was hyper-critical of Davis.

Additionally, the key difference between United States, and Confederacy of States is this. The Union referred back to a powerful central government. Confederate states were basically individual fiefdoms that referred to the central power of the confederacy rarely. That was the initial plan. But to ensure that the individual states remained individual fiefdoms, required the confederates to pull together. Which they had a hell of a time doing.

See, each state believed their state was the most important, and that Davis should order all troops to protect their states. Or that Davis should at least release the troops from their state to their state to protect their state. Lincoln had no such problems with the Union. He had problems, don’t get me wrong. But individual states bitching that he wasn’t protecting them was not one of them.

While the Union had General McClellan, the Confederacy had General Joseph Johnston. But while it took Lincoln a while to develop disdain and dislike for McClellan, Davis seems to have had a mutual dislike for General Joseph Johnston from the beginning. There were two general Johnston’s, General Albert Sidney Johnston, who was one of Davis’s favorite’s, was killed at the battle of Shiloh. General Joseph Johnston lasted throughout the war and was a thorn in Davis’s side pretty much throughout. I think of all the civil war general’s Davis had, the only ones he liked were Bragg, Lee, and Albert Johnston. The rest were basically forced on him by other political players.

And here I’m running in to a bit of a conundrum. The book I’m reading for the next two weeks is Battle Cry of Freedom, also by James McPherson, and it is all about the civil war, from all angles. So, I’m trying to not get too much into the individual battles because they’ll be covered again shortly. I imagine the switches in generals will also be covered.

So, let’s look at some similarities. Both presidents suspended habeus corpus, meaning the requirement to provide the body, and allowing arrests on suspicion, rather than for actual commission of a crime, although Lincoln was more generous with that suspension than Davis was, meaning Lincoln was far more likely to enforce the arrests than Davis was. Especially in border states like Tennessee, where the secession was not as cut and dried as it was in Mississippi or Georgia.

And whereas Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus, on his own authority as president, Davis did not suspend this right without the authority of the Confederate congress.

Remember during my Pierce review when I talked about Secretary of State Seward questioning former President Pierce about his loyalty to the Union during the War? Such never really happened under Davis. There were several former Yankees who had pledged loyalty to the Confederacy, usually as a result of marriage to a southern belle. And Davis included them as confidantes, which did not go over well with the Confederate congress and other critics.

But for all that, Davis was hard to usurp. In November 1861, the Confederacy held an election and almost everyone who had started this brujaja was elected to a full term. Davis was no different, and in November 1861 he ran unopposed and was elected to a full 6-year term as president of the Confederacy with running mate Alexander H Stephens. The Confederates had borrowed heavily from the US Constitution, but made some definite changes. 6-year term for president was one of them.

Davis truly was beset on all sides. The generals gave him no end of grief, each assuming they knew the best tactic, while Davis, who also had experience, believed he knew the best tactic. Congress and all the civilians felt qualified to criticize the man. Like, the word henpecked, comes to mind and seems to truly fit. And Davis seems to have been a micromanager, often calling for hour’s long cabinet meetings every day, trying to plan for all contingencies.

And also this: Davis and the South truly believed they were fighting for their freedom to live their lives as they saw fit. And that included the right to own slaves, unquestionably. But the biggest problem the Confederacy seemed to have in securing their freedom is simply manpower. Unquestionably, the Union was bigger both in landmass and in population, helped along by the emancipation proclamation, which allowed for blacks to fight in the Union army, and the highly effective blockade the Union had in place on Southern ports, so that no immigrants could ship to the South. But they could land in the north and were often conscripted right off the boat as a condition of citizenship. This automatic conscription led the race riots in New York during the Civil War. Which is not in this book, but I know from reading Gangs of New York…the actual book based on history, not the Hollywood glamorization. I read this YEARS ago, not for this channel. I may revisit it later.

As the Union troops started making advances and slowly encircling the South, supplies ran low, and between inflation and lack of supplies, the women started rioting. Like, literal bread riots. And finally, much like Germany during WWII, the south started conscripting the young and the old. There just weren’t enough bodies. Davis even considered offering slaves’ freedom in exchange for camp duties…he would never have dreamed of arming them and included the need for fighting men to be freed from camp duties as part of his reasoning for wanting slave labor for camp duties. But this was a bridge the south never crossed as a result of political pressure from those who did not see blacks as equal and equally deserving of freedom. Whose to say if that decision cost them the war?

Ultimately, General Robert E Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, and the war was effectively over. Richmond had fallen to Grant’s army and Davis spent two months fleeing ever south to evade capture, lest he be tried for treason. He was captured on May 10, 1865, near Irwinville, GA. Davis spent two years in a Union prison before being released without trial. I think the most likely reason he was released without trial is that a trial would have necessitated giving him a platform to explain the South’s reasons for seceding. By denying him that platform, the Union maintained the victor’s version of events: The war was fought to protect the Union, with slavery being an ancillary cause.

After his release on $100,000 bond in 1867, Davis tried several career opportunities, none of which worked out, as he refused to accept a position that was beneath a former Senator and President. His marriage was now strained, and they frequently lived apart. Ultimately, he did return to live in Mississippi, at a cottage that was gifted to him by an admirer, and he lived there until his death on December 6, 1889.

This book was a concise run down of Jefferson Davis’s Civil War years. It is NOT a complete biography, and that’s my fault…I mean, the description pretty much specifies this is strictly his civil war years, and If I had checked that and not just the page count, I would have known it was not exactly what I was looking for. But it was good. It provides some context for what Davis was like and what his goals were with the Confederacy. It humanizes him. Which is not a bad thing. It’s all too easy to caricature the south as the evil, slave owning villains who tried to destroy the American dream. And he was more than that. And while he was unquestionably on the wrong side of history, his reasons for him were entirely sound. He thought he was right. And so did the rest of the south. Which is probably why the Civil War is still referred to as the War of Northern Aggression, in some gentile southern locales.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on August 7, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.