Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief

Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief By James M. McPherson New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2014. 320 pages $32.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nobody was better trained as a mid-nineteenth-century commander in chief than Jefferson Davis. There were more important American military leaders and more successful Washington hands prior to the Civil War, but Davis was almost unique in the way he navigated both worlds. A graduate of West Point, combat veteran and war hero (from his role as a regimental officer in the Mexican War), Davis was also a long-serving US senator from Mississippi, who had chaired the Committee on Military Affairs and held the post of Secretary of War during the Pierce Administration. If anybody was prepared for the challenges of an American civil war, it was Davis. Yet both contemporaries and historians have always appeared underwhelmed by the man whom James McPherson now sympathetically labels, "The Embattled Rebel." Part of the problem was too much expertise. Davis knew better than his generals how to fight the war, and with a few exceptions (such as in his relationship with Robert E. Lee), he meddled and micromanaged incessantly. McPherson goes so far as to claim, "No other chief executive in American history exercised such hands-on influence in the shaping of military strategy." (11) That's a bold statement in light of Abraham Lincoln's equally assertive leadership style, but the noted Civil War historian demonstrates time and again how obsessive Davis was about exercising his duties as commander in chief. The signs were apparent from the beginning, when on Sunday morning, July 21, 1861, the Confederate president "could stand it no longer" and "commandeered a special train" to take him out to the first great battlefield of the war near Manassas Junction. (41) There, Davis even acted briefly as a field commander, "rallying" straggling troops by proclaiming, on horseback, "I am Jefferson Davis ... Follow me back to the field." (41) Lincoln, too, saw a little bit of combat in 1864 at Fort Stevens near Washington, but the former Illinois militia captain never ventured anything quite as bold as this. Nor was Lincoln as aggressive as Davis in demanding face-to-face conferences with his generals in the field, though both civilian leaders were surprisingly eager throughout the conflict to travel out to the frontlines to see for themselves what was happening. Of course, Lincoln usually gets praised for being attentive to such details while Davis often gets vilified for nitpicking. McPherson warns against allowing these sorts of comparisons to cloud a more objective evaluation of the losing side of this equation. Instead, the author tries to understand Davis on his own terms and that's exactly what makes this particular Rebel leader seem so embattled. Even the most devoted Civil War buff will be surprised by how early and often Davis found himself criticized and undermined by his own contemporaries. At his First Inaugural address as an elected president, delivered on February 22, 1862, Davis felt compelled to acknowledge, "we have recently met with serious disasters," (66) even though the war was not yet a year old. …