Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War

First of all, this is my first history of the Civil War so I'm no expert. But although McPherson's book appears to be chock full of facts, names, and events many of the characters and their motivations are given scant examination. Perhaps the "blame" for my underappreciation of "Embattled Rebel" is an unwarranted expectation that it would contain a decent helping of character study regarding Davis and the decisions he and his field operatives made.For me the strength of the book is exemplified in the "Last Resort" chapter wherein McPherson examines the social/period context of Davis' hesitance to embrace the slaves-as-soldiers idea. It is here where the stark differences between the Union and Confederacy are laid bare, and provides- in current parlance- a #SMH moment.So while this is an admittedly excellent book, I was expecting a more biographical treatment of Jefferson Davis and not a blow-by-blow recitation of every notable skirmish. For this I deduct one star, and that's probably "on me" and not the author.

Written with clarity and insight, EMBATTLED REBEL is a fascinating look at the overwhelming challenges of Jefferson Davis's presidency of the Confederate States during the American Civil War. In Davis's story, we see the desperate challenges, hubris, and ultimate futility of determinedly being on the wrong side of history.It was very interesting to me that Davis came to realize that if the beleaguered Confederacy had any hope of survival, hundreds of men being held as slaves would need to be become Confederate soldiers. The big leap here was his realization that if a man could be a soldier, he could no longer be seen as some lesser species who was fit only to be a slave. It was a remarkable evolution of thought for a Southern leader at that time, but it came far too late and far too fleetingly.Davis had every bit as much difficulty as Abraham Lincoln, if not more, in finding and managing competent generals. Political squabbling, pride, incompetence, and pomposity were often the order of the day among the generals. Though chronically ill and often working from his sickbed, Davis was a more experienced soldier and commander than many of his generals, and he was an extraordinarily hands-on military strategist, occasionally even placing himself in danger on battlefields.Author James M. McPherson has written an eminently readable book, well researched and thorough without being bogged down in minute detail. I appreciated the occasionally grim humor in the book as well, such as a quote by military analyst Richard McMurry observing that had General Joe Johnston been allowed to retreat any farther in the face of Sherman's advance in 1864, the Battle of Atlanta would likely have been fought at Key West.I do wish this account of Davis's life had continued past his capture by Federal troops in Georgia when the Confederacy collapsed. The book ends abruptly at that point, and left me wanting more. Perhaps that will be the next book, which I will definitely read.

Are you kidding me? This is a book of 252 pages of text. But it is actually an essay-length study. The publisher has used every possible means to make it book-length. There are a total of 39 photos and maps in the book. They are useful. But they each take up a numbered page, reducing the text to 213 pages. Each chapter has a title page, the back of which is blank. There are eight chapters and an introduction, so this uses up 18 more numbered pages, reducing the text to 195 pages. The first page of text for each chapter begins halfway down the page, reducing the number of pages to 191. The margins of each page of text are expanded on the left and right, and at the top and bottom. The space between each line is wider than the average book. This means that two pages of text in this book would fit on one page in a normal book. This reduces the book to about 86 pages.This might not be so bad if these 86 pages contained some meat, but they do not. They ARE well written. James McPherson is an excellent writer. This is one of his great strengths as a historian. But the book offers very little analysis, and McPherson refuses to compare Davis to Abraham Lincoln, his counterpart. It taught me absolutely nothing that I didn't already know. It is mostly just a narrative of some of the problems Davis faced as president of the Confederate States of America. The book is a blatant effort to cash in on McPherson's good reputation. The retail price of $32.95 for this book borders on the obscene.Check out my other reviews and you will see I am a very liberal reviewer. But this is ridiculous.

Given McPherson's expertise, I was a bit disappointed with this book. The main flaw is that there's surprisingly little coverage of the major strategies Davis adopted during the war: he's presented as mainly reacting to events, and what he hoped to achieve in key periods of the war is often unclear. The book also doesn't really provide a good assessment of his overall performance in guiding the CSA's war effort – instead the focus is on Davis' role in a fairly generic account of the Civil War. Given that McPherson states that Davis micro-managed the war effort and worked incredibly long days in doing so, I was left a bit confused about what it was Davis actually did.That said, Embattled Rebel does have some real strengths. McPherson clearly sets out how outmatched the CSA was, and provides good analysis of why its bid for independence failed. He also provides a refreshingly frank assessment of the CSA's generals, presenting pretty much all of them as mediocre at best and noting that Davis repeatedly failed to make the best of the generals who were available to him (which wasn't helped by his habit of being drawn into their disputes). As a result, the book ends up being more useful as a short general history of the Confederate war effort than it is as a biography of Davis' role in it.

Considering the greatness of his book "Battle Cry of Freedom," I was hugely disappointed by this one. It's quite short and lacks the detail of his masterpiece. While the book ostensibly was written to rehabilitate the reputation of Davis, I don't think it has achieved that purpose. Perhaps McPherson has shown that he wasn't as bad as history has portrayed him, he seems to have been a very good Commander in Chief. But it is clear from this book that he made some bad choices and relied on incompetent friends.There were some crucial moments in the war when it looked like the South had the upper hand and the North would be forced to sue for peace. Yet McPhereson just glosses over them and focuses on Davis's failures instead. For instance, Jubal Early's raid to the outskirts of Washington gets but a brief few word mention. The fact that the Confederate army reached all the way into Pennsylvania is hardly considered. What is considered is how these both ended in defeat. It's for this reason that McPhereson is unsuccessful in his attempt to re-portray Jefferson Davis. Had he narrowed in on his victories I think the effect would have been completely different. The war lasted four long years. The South must have put up a pretty good fight and Jeff Davis couldn't have done all that bad, yet you wouldn't know it from this book.Perhaps McPhereson wasn't really able to take a completely objective look at the Confetereate President. Perhaps if he had broadened the focus of the book beyond his military leadership we would have gotten a better look at his Presidency. Seems like this book was written in a hurry. I think a better book on Jeff Davis is definitely out there.

Have to agree with many of the critical reviews on Amazon.com. McPherson has been dining out for too long on the deserved plaudits for Battle Cry but has produced nothing substantial since, only over priced and under powered essays masquerading as books. Uncritical peer reviews don't help either.

In this book, author James McPherson offers an interesting perspective on the war that differs from that provided by most historians: the Confederate perspective. Whereas most Civil War histories look at the war from the Union point of view, and most often from the perspective of Abraham Lincoln, McPherson reminds the reader that there was another side in the conflict, and he examines the losing side of the conflict from the vantage of its chief executive.This book is not a biography of Jefferson Davis in the "cradle to grave" sense. It is precisely what its title promises, a look at Davis during his tenure as President of the Confederacy commencing with his election to the post and ending with his capture. Ever the professional, McPherson neither praises his subject, nor vilifies him, though he does acknowledge at the outset that, as an author, his sympathies are with the Union side. He expresses his fundamental disagreement with Davis on the issues of preservation of the institution of slavery, and destruction of the union, which McPherson properly describes as "tragically wrong." Beyond this obvious disclaimer however, McPherson conducts an objective analysis of Davis's conduct of the Confederate war effort and his relationship with his generals. He gives the reader sufficient detail and information to form his or her own opinion as to Davis's administrative abilities.Did the south lose the Civil War because of Jefferson Davis, or in spite of him? That is the central question which McPherson considers in this book. McPherson presents the relevant facts surrounding this issue, but leaves it to the reader to make his or her own assessment. There are some aspects of the question for which the evidence is considerable. Davis had a very strong work ethic, despite significant health issues. He was also very either a hands-on manager or an annoying micro-manager, depending on one's point of view. McPherson also notes that Davis, himself a West Point graduate, had a preference for generals of similar pedigree, and this bias may have adversely colored his judgement. Perhaps the most interesting facet of this book is the relationship Davis had with his generals, and how he sometimes adopted inflexible opinions as to their abilities, rightly or wrongly. McPherson's description of the relationship between Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee is especially fascinating.Critics of the book have noted its paucity, and this is a fair comment. This is not a lengthy read, it is a concise cursory study of its subject. McPherson is very pointed in his analysis, and the book is an executive summary of its subject rather than an detailed and in-depth analysis. The reader looking for mountains of detail will be disappointed.James McPherson is clearly in the uppermost echelon of Civil War historians. In addressing the subject of the abilities of Jefferson Davis as commander in chief, he tackles a very controversial subject. Even a century and a half after the end of the conflict, Davis continues to evoke strong visceral and emotional responses from people. It takes a historian of McPherson's stature and gravitas to examine such a sensitive subject, and in this book he does so with all the professionalism and academic integrity that readers and students of history have come to expect from him.

An excellent book, which paints Davis as he was "warts and all". Without being an attempt to glorify Davis, it shows a man who, to the best of his ability fought for a cause he believed in. He failed - as probably anyone would have - and part of that failure was due to the inherent weakness of a slave society (slavery is not just immoral and evil; it us economically stupid too!). What is amazing is how close he came to success.