The Union that Shaped the Confederacy: Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens

by William C. Davis

One was a robust charmer given to fits of passion, whose physical appeal could captivate women as easily as cajole colleagues. The other was a frail, melancholy man of quiet intellect, whose ailments drove him eventually to alcohol and drug addiction. Born into different social classes, they were as opposite as men could be. Yet these sons of Georgia, Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens, became fast friends and together changed the course of the South.

Writing with the style and authority that has made him one of our most popular historians of the Civil War, William C. Davis has written a biography of a friendship that captures the Confederacy in microcosm. He tells how Toombs and Stephens dominated the formation of the new nation and served as its vice president and secretary of state. After years of disillusionment, each abandoned participation in the government and left to its own fate a Confederacy that would not dance to their tune.

Davis traces this unlikely relationship from its early days in the Georgia legislature through the trials of secession and war, revealing how both men persevered during the war and developed a deep animosity for Jefferson Davis. He then chronicles their postwar lives up to the emotional moment when Toombs stood eulogizing his long-time friend at his funeral, just four months after Stephens was elected governor of the Georgia they had loved as much as one another.

Drawing extensively on primary sources, including Stephens's voluminous letters and Toombs' widely scattered papers, Davis tells how two men of different temperaments remained friends, out of step with all but a few and occasionally even with each other. He concentrates on their Confederate years, when the fraternity they shared had its greatest impact, to show how they embodied both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Confederacy.

While there are biographies of each man, none convey the significance--or the depth--of their friendship. Davis shows us how they loved the South as it once was, the Union as they thought it ought to have been, and the Confederacy of their dreams that never came to be. They lost all three, but through five decades of crisis, they never failed each other.

Genres: Civil War, Biography, History, American Civil War, Politics, American History

296 pages, Hardcover

First published April 24, 2001

About the author

Currently professor of history at Virginia Tech, William C. Davis has written over fifty books, most about the American Civil War. He has won the Jefferson Davis Prize for southern history three times, the Jules F. Landry Award for Southern history once, and has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

For several years, he was the editor of the magazine Civil War Times Illustrated. He has also served as a consultant on the A&E television series Civil War Journal.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Miles Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent dual biography but its not as snappy as Jack Davis' other works. The source material is so rich I was somewhat disappointed that the narrative wasnt more spritely. I also disagree with how Davis characterizes Stephens; he wrote this book after he wrote his massive Jefferson Davis biography and its clear that he takes Davis' side in most of the disagreements he had with Stephens; for a variety of reasons, I find Stephens the more compelling moral figure and certainly the wiser statesman.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Very helpful to someone like me who has spent most of my life studying and reading about the “war” side of the Civil War without giving much attention to the “civil.” And I certainly didn’t expect to get emotional at the end of a book about two politicians. If I have any complaint, it is purely structural—the first lengthy chapter brings us into Toombs and Stephens’s story in medias res when I think situating it chronologically would have made a lot more sense. Nevertheless, a very good window into antebellum politicking, the secession crisis, the dysfunction of the Confederate government, the horror and glory of the fighting, and the friendship of two remarkable and complicated men.