author: James L. Swanson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2011/01/13
date added: 2011/01/18
shelves: biography, ebook, history, non-fiction
review:
Fascinating coverage of a part of the Civil War that I’d never really thought about: the immediate aftermath of Lee’s surrender and Lincoln’s assassination. In particular, I was intrigued by the slow unwinding of the end of the Confederacy: Davis’s hopes to keep going, the surrenders of the various armies, the insistence of his associates that Davis either flee the country or try to keep the Confederacy going in Texas. (!!!)
What bugged me, ultimately, was the entirely sympathetic treatment of Davis and the Confederacy, which just made me madder and madder in the last portion of the book. Davis lived to be a VERY old man, ultimately receiving the adulation of Southerners as the exemplar of the Lost Cause. And good grief…in a lot of ways (IMHO) the Lost Cause is one of the root causes of the mess of modern American politics. So cue gnashing of teeth trying to read the last chapter in particular.