A history of the Confederate States of America and an apologia for the causes that the author believed led to and justified the American Civil War.

A history of the Confederate States of America and an apologia for the causes that the author believed led to and justified the American Civil War.

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.

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 U.S. 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.

Jefferson Finis Davis (1808-1889) was an American politician who served as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. During his presidency, Davis was never able to find a strategy that would defeat the larger, more industrially developed Union. Davis's insistence on independence, even in the face of crushing defeat, prolonged the war, and while not exactly disgraced, he was displaced in Southern affection after the war by the leading general, Robert E. Lee. After Davis was captured in 1865, he was charged with treason (although never convicted) and was stripped of his eligibility to run for public office. A West Point graduate, Davis prided himself on the military skills he gained in the Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and as U. S. Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce. As Davis explained in his memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) he believed that each State was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.

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