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The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 2
A decade after his release from Federal prison, the 67-year-old Jefferson Davis—ex-President of the Confederacy, the "Southern Lincoln," popularly regarded as a martyr to the Confederate cause—began work on his monumental Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.
Motivated partially by his deep-rooted antagonism toward his enemies (both the Northern victors and his Southern detractors), partially by his continuing obsession with the "cause," and partially by his desperate pecuniary and physical condition, Davis devoted three years and extensive research to the writing of what he termed "an historical sketch of the events which preceded and attended the struggle of the Southern states to maintain their existence and their rights as sovereign communities."
The result was a perceptive two-volume chronicle, covering the birth, life, and death of the Confederacy, from the Missouri Compromise in 1820, through the tumultuous events of the Civil War, to the readmission of the Southern States to the Congress in the late 1860s.
Supplemented with a new historical foreword by the Pulitzer Prize–winning James M. McPherson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, belongs in the library of anyone interested in the root causes, the personalities, and the events of America's greatest war.
Motivated partially by his deep-rooted antagonism toward his enemies (both the Northern victors and his Southern detractors), partially by his continuing obsession with the "cause," and partially by his desperate pecuniary and physical condition, Davis devoted three years and extensive research to the writing of what he termed "an historical sketch of the events which preceded and attended the struggle of the Southern states to maintain their existence and their rights as sovereign communities."
The result was a perceptive two-volume chronicle, covering the birth, life, and death of the Confederacy, from the Missouri Compromise in 1820, through the tumultuous events of the Civil War, to the readmission of the Southern States to the Congress in the late 1860s.
Supplemented with a new historical foreword by the Pulitzer Prize–winning James M. McPherson, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, belongs in the library of anyone interested in the root causes, the personalities, and the events of America's greatest war.
700 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1881
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About the author
Jefferson Davis
252 books20 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American military officer, statesman, and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as the President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, 1861 to 1865.
A West Point graduate, Davis fought in the Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and was the United States Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce Administration, he served as a U.S. Senator representing the state of Mississippi. As a senator he argued against secession but believed each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.
Davis resigned from the Senate in January 1861, after receiving word that Mississippi had seceded from the Union. The following month, he was provisionally appointed President of the Confederate States of America and was elected to a six-year term that November. During his presidency, Davis was not able to find a strategy to defeat the more industrially developed Union, even though the south only lost roughly one soldier for every two union soldiers on the battlefield.
After Davis was captured May 10, 1865, he was charged with treason, though not tried, and stripped of his eligibility to run for public office. This limitation was posthumously removed by order of Congress and President Jimmy Carter in 1978, 89 years after his death. While not disgraced, he was displaced in Southern affection after the war by its leading general, Robert E. Lee.
Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American military officer, statesman, and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as the President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, 1861 to 1865.
A West Point graduate, Davis fought in the Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and was the United States Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce Administration, he served as a U.S. Senator representing the state of Mississippi. As a senator he argued against secession but believed each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.
Davis resigned from the Senate in January 1861, after receiving word that Mississippi had seceded from the Union. The following month, he was provisionally appointed President of the Confederate States of America and was elected to a six-year term that November. During his presidency, Davis was not able to find a strategy to defeat the more industrially developed Union, even though the south only lost roughly one soldier for every two union soldiers on the battlefield.
After Davis was captured May 10, 1865, he was charged with treason, though not tried, and stripped of his eligibility to run for public office. This limitation was posthumously removed by order of Congress and President Jimmy Carter in 1978, 89 years after his death. While not disgraced, he was displaced in Southern affection after the war by its leading general, Robert E. Lee.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 25, 2014
This is a good book, Davis' military judgments are questionable as always but his account of events is pretty straightforward and in my opinion mostly honest, even if self-serving. I never realized the extent to which Johnston's failure to give battle allowed Sherman to make such rapid headway on his march.
One of the more interesting things that Davis presents--and I looked it up to see if it had been noted independently of Davis, which it sure had!--is that Sherman's troops preferred raping black women to white women, and how aggressive they were towards the loyal slaves. If anything confirmed my distrust of the moral standards of the war, and the way it is taught in high schools across the country, that was it. What a nightmare.
One of the more interesting things that Davis presents--and I looked it up to see if it had been noted independently of Davis, which it sure had!--is that Sherman's troops preferred raping black women to white women, and how aggressive they were towards the loyal slaves. If anything confirmed my distrust of the moral standards of the war, and the way it is taught in high schools across the country, that was it. What a nightmare.
March 13, 2025
On what basis does one grant or withhold rating Stars? Is this a 5-star piece of writing? No. It’s crap. But as a window into the past, it’s priceless. Hence the 5 Stars.
Should Jefferson Davis have been hanged as a traitor? If anyone was to be hanged for Treason, it probably should have been him, though I understand that the Constitutional legal definition of Treason would seem to preclude that outcome. Still, JD should really be thankful he wasn’t hanged. Instead, he writes this 1000+ pages of unhelpful drivel. Had he been hanged, we’d have all been spared his whining, and the South would have had one less voice blowing smoke about southern chivalry, gentility, cultural superiority particularly in the social and economic (labor relations) spheres, and the “Lost Cause.” It’s hard to imagine anyone who made a larger contribution to the southern mindset that undermined a just Reconstruction and led to Jim Crow, among othe crimes. I’m sorry, Varina, but your husband was an ass.
And if, as the song says, “The South’s gonna do it again,” I can only marvel at whatever the songwriter may have in mind.
But I guess a lot of people agreed with JD’s whining rant.
Be that as it may, a much better book could have been written. One criticism I have is that about half of this Volume 2 deals with detailed accounts of specific battles, where so-and-so’s undermanned and outgunned brigade courageously defended (or seized) Point X fighting against at least two Corps of foreign-born good-for-nothing invaders. If I didn’t know the story already, by the time I finished JD’s accounts of battles, I’d have sworn that the South had won the Civil War. But, frankly, not much of this military hagiography even belongs in a memoire by the President of the Confederacy. As much as he’d rather have been a General commanding troops in the field, JD should have left most of the recounting of the military aspects of the conflict to the Generals. He had or chose to have little to add.
How about instead some discussion of Grand Strategy, or even just ‘strategy’. How, exactly, did the Confederacy intend to win a shooting war against the more numerous and more industrially advanced North, that actually had a Navy? Did they seriously think that threatening England and France with economic disruption (by the loss of their then-current major source of cotton) would endear those two countries to the South and reconcile them to slavery? What strategy discussions did JD have with his Cabinet? What did the Confederate Congress contribute to the war effort? The confederate courts? What were JD’s and the central government’s relations and interactions with the States and their Governors, legislators, courts? What sorts of problems, political as well as economic and military, did JD have to manage, and how did he do it?
Not very well, I guess. We certainly don’t learn much from him about his troubles.
The one quote from this book that maybe epitomizes JD’s mindset deals with the battle of Gettysburg, which can in no way be claimed as a southern victory. JD writes, “Thus closed the campaign in Pennsylvania. The wisdom of the strategy was justified by the result.”
What kind of vanity can lead an intelligent man to make such a statement? Wisdom? What wisdom? The result? Crippling losses and a miserable rainy retreat in the dark. Perhaps JD ought to have said, of the whole war in general as well as of Gettysburg specifically, ‘In retrospect, it was all a mistake and is best forgotten.’ (My suggestion.) Instead, he gives us an unnecessary unwinnable war wrapped in gauzy mythology that led to another 100+ years of misery.
And JD was intelligent. His repeated repeated repeated rants about the Constitutional legality and rightness and justice of Secession are impeccable exercises in legal logic. Ok. Secession was totally legitimate. But it was stupid and not productive. Not helpful, just like this book.
One observation I have…it would be humorous if it weren’t pathetic…is the frequency and sincerity with which JD quotes the Declaration of Independence to justify secession. But he NEVER quotes the line, “All men are created equal.” Slavery is never an issue with him. In JD’s mind, of COURSE it is right!
It’s really regrettable that he and Lincoln never debated.
In JD’s defense, there were many respected thinkers who agreed on that point about slavery and racial superiority. Thomas Carlyle and Charles Kingsley come to mind. Voltaire and de Gobineau. Others could be cited.
Twenty-some years after the war, JD is one of those people who has learned nothing, and apparently forgotten that which it is inconvenient to remember. There is not a glimmer of regret, much less self-awareness, on JD’s part that might make this memoire redemptive. Hanging him, and probably a few others, would have been good for the country.
Should Jefferson Davis have been hanged as a traitor? If anyone was to be hanged for Treason, it probably should have been him, though I understand that the Constitutional legal definition of Treason would seem to preclude that outcome. Still, JD should really be thankful he wasn’t hanged. Instead, he writes this 1000+ pages of unhelpful drivel. Had he been hanged, we’d have all been spared his whining, and the South would have had one less voice blowing smoke about southern chivalry, gentility, cultural superiority particularly in the social and economic (labor relations) spheres, and the “Lost Cause.” It’s hard to imagine anyone who made a larger contribution to the southern mindset that undermined a just Reconstruction and led to Jim Crow, among othe crimes. I’m sorry, Varina, but your husband was an ass.
And if, as the song says, “The South’s gonna do it again,” I can only marvel at whatever the songwriter may have in mind.
But I guess a lot of people agreed with JD’s whining rant.
Be that as it may, a much better book could have been written. One criticism I have is that about half of this Volume 2 deals with detailed accounts of specific battles, where so-and-so’s undermanned and outgunned brigade courageously defended (or seized) Point X fighting against at least two Corps of foreign-born good-for-nothing invaders. If I didn’t know the story already, by the time I finished JD’s accounts of battles, I’d have sworn that the South had won the Civil War. But, frankly, not much of this military hagiography even belongs in a memoire by the President of the Confederacy. As much as he’d rather have been a General commanding troops in the field, JD should have left most of the recounting of the military aspects of the conflict to the Generals. He had or chose to have little to add.
How about instead some discussion of Grand Strategy, or even just ‘strategy’. How, exactly, did the Confederacy intend to win a shooting war against the more numerous and more industrially advanced North, that actually had a Navy? Did they seriously think that threatening England and France with economic disruption (by the loss of their then-current major source of cotton) would endear those two countries to the South and reconcile them to slavery? What strategy discussions did JD have with his Cabinet? What did the Confederate Congress contribute to the war effort? The confederate courts? What were JD’s and the central government’s relations and interactions with the States and their Governors, legislators, courts? What sorts of problems, political as well as economic and military, did JD have to manage, and how did he do it?
Not very well, I guess. We certainly don’t learn much from him about his troubles.
The one quote from this book that maybe epitomizes JD’s mindset deals with the battle of Gettysburg, which can in no way be claimed as a southern victory. JD writes, “Thus closed the campaign in Pennsylvania. The wisdom of the strategy was justified by the result.”
What kind of vanity can lead an intelligent man to make such a statement? Wisdom? What wisdom? The result? Crippling losses and a miserable rainy retreat in the dark. Perhaps JD ought to have said, of the whole war in general as well as of Gettysburg specifically, ‘In retrospect, it was all a mistake and is best forgotten.’ (My suggestion.) Instead, he gives us an unnecessary unwinnable war wrapped in gauzy mythology that led to another 100+ years of misery.
And JD was intelligent. His repeated repeated repeated rants about the Constitutional legality and rightness and justice of Secession are impeccable exercises in legal logic. Ok. Secession was totally legitimate. But it was stupid and not productive. Not helpful, just like this book.
One observation I have…it would be humorous if it weren’t pathetic…is the frequency and sincerity with which JD quotes the Declaration of Independence to justify secession. But he NEVER quotes the line, “All men are created equal.” Slavery is never an issue with him. In JD’s mind, of COURSE it is right!
It’s really regrettable that he and Lincoln never debated.
In JD’s defense, there were many respected thinkers who agreed on that point about slavery and racial superiority. Thomas Carlyle and Charles Kingsley come to mind. Voltaire and de Gobineau. Others could be cited.
Twenty-some years after the war, JD is one of those people who has learned nothing, and apparently forgotten that which it is inconvenient to remember. There is not a glimmer of regret, much less self-awareness, on JD’s part that might make this memoire redemptive. Hanging him, and probably a few others, would have been good for the country.
October 29, 2018
This volume is as good as the first. The topics covered in this volume are different. This volume addresses some of the actual battles of the Civil War as well as atrocities committed by the US Forces against the south. The volume is well-written and provides a great deal of information I have not found anywhere else.
November 10, 2016
A very good historical book to attempt to understand it from the Southern point of view. But he's very long-winded and repetitious orator, and unsurprisingly, the book is written more as a legal argument than anything else.
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June 23, 2013Excellent Book from the Southern Perspective
September 21, 2018
As much as I enjoy Jefferson Davis' intelligence and focus on truth and details, he repeated himself a little much through several chapters. "Rise and Fall" would be a shorter book if it were originally edited for repetition. That being said, I encourag
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews