Book Review: Dixie Betrayed by Davis J. Eicher

Dixie Betrayed, How the South Really Lost the Civil War

by Davis J. Eicher

To understand the Civil War period, it is necessary to study the war from both sides. Dixie Betrayed by Davis J. Eicher provides the view from the Confederate side.

Dixie Betrayed is a different book than the title implies. The last words of Eicher’s book are “Jefferson Davis had lost his power as Confederate president — but not before the whole cause of the Confederacy was lost. Dixie was Betrayed.” The title and these final words actually betray the worth of this book.

Nearly twenty thousand books have been written about Lincoln and almost a hundred thousand about the Civil War. Less than an estimated twenty percent of these were written from a Confederate perspective, and many of those were Lost Cause screeds. Since the Confederacy lost, official documents were often destroyed, requiring historians to rely on sources like newspapers, letters, and memoirs—and these are not nearly as well-organized or indexed as Union sources. This partially accounts for why relatively few Confederate histories have been published.

Dixie Betrayed is a solid history of the Confederacy that does not propagate Lost Cause myths. Eicher explains how the South lost, but betrayal played no role in it. The absence of an industrial base, limited manpower, naive political leadership, and a flawed constitution were the culprits.

The betrayal theme likely originated from an editorial meeting aimed at boosting sales, and it may have been effective for the launch. However, now Eicher’s book wears the title like an albatross, and it is perhaps overlooked by those seeking an erudite history of the Confederate States of America.

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