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Jefferson Davis was never loved by his fellow Confederates. He presided over the defeat, humiliation, and destruction of the Southern Confederacy, and he finally bore most of the blame from his countrymen. Davis does not fare much better in William C. Davis’ new book, but author Davis is not so much concerned with rendering a verdict on President Davis as he is with comparing Davis to the younger, more dashing, and more capable John C. Breckinridge. Breckinridge was appointed Secretary of War in the conflict’s final days after serving most of the war as a general in the Shenandoah Valley. By the time he was appointed, Breckinridge was already convinced that the war was lost, and thus William C. Davis’ tale of a struggle between two strong and able men begins.
Central to the book is the belief held by many Southerners in the waning days of the war that independence was a lost cause and that an armistice brought about while the Southern armies could still fight would be preferable to total surrender. Breckenridge was one who believed this, but Davis was not. Davis’ almost fanatical commitment to fight on fills the book with a feeling of tragic inevitability as events hurtle toward the annihilation of Lee’s and Johnston’s armies ending in unconditional surrender.
Jefferson Davis refused to consider an armistice and would not allow his generals to negotiate on the basis of reunification with the Union. Author Davis contends that this was a fatal mistake. With independence already a thing of the past, President Davis was giving up valuable time and leverage by insisting on independence. If he had been willing to sacrifice independence, Davis may have been able to preserve the State governments and even secure reparations for the abolition of slavery.
It was precisely these terms that Breckinridge had worked tirelessly for, but was never able to convince Davis to give up on independence. As the Confederacy continued to unravel, Lee’s army surrendered to Grant and North Carolina began to secretly work to rejoin the Union under special terms. Breckenridge’s last hope was to secure terms that would allow the Southern Armies to surrender their arms to the state civil authorities rather than to the Northern armies. Breckinridge knew this was a key provision since it would have allowed the formation of Southern state militias avoiding a situation of military occupation of the South, and preserving most Southern property.
Surprisingly, Breckinridge managed to negotiate such terms with General Sherman, but his hopes were dashed when the Radical Republicans, newly in power after Lincoln’s assassination, refused the terms. Interestingly, Lincoln is just a far off figure in this book, but author Davis goes out of his way to illustrate that for all of Lincoln’s dictatorial abuses, his colleagues in the Republican Congress were far worse. While Lincoln had dangled reparations or even rescinding the emancipation proclamation in front of Davis in return for surrender, the Republicans in Congress were bent on complete abolition and occupation of the Confederacy. In the end, the most extreme extremism won out.
William C. Davis leaves the reader playing numerous scenarios over and over in his head. What if the South had settled earlier? Would state governments have remained in power? Could military occupation have been avoided? Certainly, had Sherman’s offer to Breckinridge been allowed to stand, American civilization would look quite different today.
It is always pleasant to discover a new and respectable historical figure. William C. Davis presents John C. Breckinridge as just such a figure. While President Davis dreamed of starting up a new rebellion in Texas, Breckinridge sought desperately to salvage some remnants of local sovereignty in the South. Although a moderate on slavery and the secession question, Breckinridge fled his home in Kentucky to avoid arrest by Union soldiers and committed himself to the Confederacy where he was an able general, administrator, and negotiator. Restrained by the single-minded Davis, Breckinridge would ultimately fail in his efforts to preserve the rights of his fellow Southerners. It was a tragic end to a tragic episode in American history.
Robert N. Rosen was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. Three of his grandparents were emigrants from the "Pale of Settlement"—Russia, Poland, and Belorus. The other grandparent was born in this country just after her parents arrived from Austria in the 1890s. Rosen attended public schools in Charleston, where his high school history teacher was the Charleston historian Solomon Breibart. He studied at the University of Virginia and at Harvard University, where he received an M.A. in history, as well as at the University of South Carolina Law School. The author of A Short History of Charleston and Confederate Charleston: An Illustrated History of the Place and the People During the Civil War, he has practiced law for twenty-six years in Charleston and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America. Rosen has served on the boards of the South Carolina Historical Society and Historic Charleston Foundation, and he chairs the Arts and History Commission of the City of Charleston.
"An eye-opening, myth-shattering, stereotype-breaking work of originality, elegance, and wisdom. A must-read for Civil War buffs, Jewish history fans, and all Americans interested in learning—and you will learn much—about Jewish southerners who placed loyalty to their adopted states above the moral teachings of their tradition (at least as we now interpret them). You may not agree with these Jewish Confederates, but you will surely understand them better."—Alan M. Dershowitz
"Apart from a few prominent individuals such as Judah P. Benjamin and Phoebe Yates Pember, Jewish Confederates have been virtually invisible in the massive body of published work on the Civil War. Robert N. Rosen's impressive study illuminates the world of southern Jews and their role in the Confederacy's bid for independence. It is a major contribution to Confederate studies, and to the broader literature on the Civil War."—Gary W. Gallagher
"Perhaps no identifiable group of Southerners represented a greater paradox than the Jewish community spread all the way from Richmond to New Orleans. In The Jewish Confederates Robert N. Rosen opens a window on the unlikely story of a people apart, with their own religion and cultural customs, functioning within a Southern community that regarded itself as separate and distinct from other Americans. Through the lives of people as diverse as the Confederate statesman Judah Benjamin and the Louisiana teenager Clara Solomon, Rosen reveals the surprising tolerance in the South for this one minority, and the sacrifices they made to prove themselves full citizens of the supposedly xenophobic Southern republic."—William C. Davis
"In this fascinating book Robert N. Rosen illuminates a long-neglected dimension of Confederate history, and, in so doing, makes an important contribution to the debate over the depth of southern white unity and Confederate loyalty. Meticulously researched, The Jewish Confederates makes clear that across the social and economic spectrum Jewish southerners overwhelmingly supported the Confederacy. With fascinating detail about well-known and little-known men and women, Rosen demonstrates that on both the battlefield and the homefront Jewish Confederates proved their loyalty, a loyalty they maintained after 1865 in their embrace of the Lost Cause. All who want to understand the nineteenth-century South should read this book."—William J. Cooper, Jr.
"The Jewish Confederates is the story of a people defining themselves. Robert Rosen has a wonderful capacity to describe people and their character in capsule. He's given us an important book on a very significant topic—felicitously written and festooned with photographs."—Emory M. Thomas
"Robert Rosen's exceptional coverage of southern Jewry during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras stand as a testament to depth, breadth, and length. Jews are actors in the drama unfolding before them as well as the victims of forces beyond their control. Rosen weaves a captivating tale of allegiance, sacrifice, and Jews' ethnic identity and minority status in the South."—Mark I. Greenberg
"Robert N. Rosen has continued in an admirable way his work on assembling information that is necessary to developing a realistic view of the lives of Jews in the South. Thanks to him, we can now take another step in answering the basic questions of why did Jews feel comfortable in the nineteenth-century South, and why was the South so accepting of Jews?"—Elliott Ashkenazi
"This exhaustive study sheds light on a little-remarked curiosity of the Civil War's history: The Lost Cause claimed a great many Jewish partisans, and a regime dedicated to the defense of human slavery proved remarkably resistant to antisemitism."—The Washington Post
"This groundbreaking study is liberally illustrated with photographs and maps, and is written clearly and energetically as a trade book, despite its academic stamp and thoroughness."—Publishers Weekly
"Comprehensive and readerly"—New York Times Book Review
"Larger public and academic libraries should consider this readable book, as should all libraries with strong Judaic or military collections."—Library Journal
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A Short History of Charleston
Confederate Charleston
7 x 10, 543 pages, 179 illus.
cloth, ISBN 1-57003-363-3,
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