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24 - Davis and the War

from Part IV - Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
John M. Sacher
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

On Monday, February 18, 1861, on a cold, cloudy day in Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Davis recognized the difficult task ahead of him. The South was building a new country, and while he hoped for peace, he acknowledged that the Confederacy could be embarking on this experiment while fighting a war for its existence. As he concluded his address, the 52-year-old Davis offered a prophetic self-analysis. Speaking directly to an audience that numbered in the thousands – and indirectly to the entire Confederacy – he admitted that “you will see [in me] many errors to forgive [and] many deficiencies to tolerate.” At the same time, however, “you shall not see in me either a want of zeal or fidelity [to] the cause.” Three weeks earlier, in a private letter, he had conceded the enormity of the challenge facing whoever held the office.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 501 - 520
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

Cooper, William J. Jr Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).Google Scholar
Cooper, William J. Jr. (ed.). Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings (New York: Modern Library, 2003).Google Scholar
Crist, Lynda Lasswell, Dix, Mary Seaton, and Williams, Kenneth H. (eds.). The Papers of Jefferson Davis, 14 vols. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1979–2015).Google Scholar
Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).Google Scholar
Escott, Paul D. After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
Hattaway, Herman and Beringer, Richard E.. Jefferson Davis, Confederate President (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002).Google Scholar
McPherson, James M. Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War (New York: Penguin), 2014.Google Scholar
Rable, George E. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Rowland, Dunbar (ed.). Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, 10 vols. (Jackson, MS: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923).Google Scholar

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