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In the preface to his new book Look Away!, Davis states that “while paying heed to events on the
battlefields,” it is his objective “to present a comprehensive view of everything else that went into making the Confederate national experience.”
Central to his study is the challenge Southerners faced creating a “Confederate Democracy” that
could withstand internal divisions and the overwhelming might of the North. This “democracy”
revolved around a desire on the part of conservative Southern oligarchs to preserve their
entrenched wealth and political power against commoners who might challenge the established order.
Slavery was central to this “democracy”—much more so than state rights—as evidenced by the fact
that when the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy wrote their constitution, Davis writes, “on this
issue alone, they knowingly violated all the arguments about state rights that their section had
been making for genera-tions.” Indeed, among the themes that emerge early in the book are the impossi-bility of divorcing the Confederacy from slavery and the fact that Southerners were not as irreconcilably opposed to centralized power as some would like to believe.
Davis’s work will surely grate on the sensibilities of those who wish to think of the Confederacy
as a place where a unified and selfless people, led by men of virtue and character, fought for the
noble principle of limited government.
First, Davis demonstrates that men of selfless virtue such as Robert E. Lee were the exception
rather than the rule with the Confederate oligarchy. More prevalent, Davis argues, were men such
as Robert Toombs, Robert Branwell Rhett, Louis Wigfall and Joseph E. Johnston, who were unable to
set aside their frustrated ambition, selfish interests, and petty prejudices for the higher cause.
For those who wish to idealize the Confederate home front as a place of gentility and order, Davis
provides a vivid description of how dramatically law and order deteriorated in the South during
the war. Davis also, following the lead of Emory M. Thomas, convincingly describes how Southerners
radically expanded the power of government during their war for independence.
Not only did the wartime South see men conscripted and crops impressed, it also saw the emergence
of socialistic policies in just about every sector of the economy, from the procurement and
distribution of salt to the construction and management of railroads, as well as the establishment
of what Davis describes as “virtually a welfare state ahead of its time.”
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Willaim C. Davis
iIt is difficult to think of anyone currently writing on the Civil War who has been as prolific as
William C. Davis, whose works have ranged from multi-volume photographic histories of the war to
studies of the battles of New Market and Hampton Roads to biographies of John C. Breckinridge and
Jefferson Davis. This is by no means an exhaustive list of Davis’s writings, all of which have
generally been well-received by scholars and buffs alike. |
Although hardly the last word on its subject, Look Away! is a welcome contribution to scholarship.
Clearly written, insightful, persuasively argued, and exceptionally well-researched, it is a
worthy study that stands up quite well in comparison to previous histories of the Confederacy by
Thomas, Clement Eaton, Frank E. Vandiver, and others.
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