Book Review: Jefferson Davis, American

Jefferson Davis, American

William J. Cooper Jr.

Jefferson Davis, American (2000) was published four years after William C. Davis’s Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (1996). In this reviewer’s opinion, American is a superior biography compared to The Man and His Hour. (More provocatively titled as well.) I judge biographies by if I feel I know the person afterward. After reading The Man and His Hour, I knew what Jefferson did, but after American, I felt I understood this complicated man.

Cooper is sympathetic toward Davis and sometimes comes across as an apologist. However, it’s this very sympathy that lifts the book from a dry biography, offering a glimpse of the man in his time.

Davis is a difficult subject for a biography. When the Confederacy fled Richmond, most of the records were burned. Consequently, there are far fewer primary sources available to a biographer of a Confederate figure than there are for a Unionist biographer. Thus, Confederate historians rely more on newspaper accounts and the words of Confederates in memoirs, letters, and speeches.

Jefferson Davis was prolific, with many speeches and two memoirs. A Short History of the Confederate States of America (1890) is 505 pages of core content, plus front matter and an index. In contrast, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) is a two-volume work totaling roughly 1,500 pages. Notably, this audacious title was modeled after Edward Gibbon’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire; Davis’s illusion of a grandiose empire is reflected throughout both books. Just imagine studying over 2,000 pages of self-congratulatory text before starting a biography.

Having read the “short” version, I recommend William J. Cooper, Jr.’s Jefferson Davis, American.

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