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more than a century, since the end of the Civil War, the conventional
wisdom has been that the South lost because of overwhelming
Union strength and bad luck. The politicians and generals
on the Confederate side have been lionized as noble warriors
who bravely fought for an honorable cause that had little
chance of succeeding. But in Dixie Betrayed, historian
David J. Eicher reveals for the first time the real story,
a calamity of political conspiracy, discord, and dysfunction
that cost the South the Civil War.
Drawing on a wide
variety of previously unexplored sources, Eicher shows how
President Jefferson Davis viciously fought with the Confederate
House and Senate, state governors, and his own cabinet. Confederate
senators threatened each other with physical violence; some
were brutal drunks, others, hopeless idealists who would not
bend even when flexibility was the difference between victory
and defeat. Military commanders were assigned not by skill
but because of personal connections. Debates over such issues
as whether the Confederacy needed a Supreme Court stretched
out for years, squandering time that would have been better
spent on making certain that troops were well fed. Davis frequently
interfered with his generals in the field, micromanaging their
campaigns and playing favorites, ignoring the chain of command.
He trusted a number of men who were utterly incompetent.
And Secession didn't
end with the breakaway of the Confederacy and Davis's election
as president; some states, led by their governors, wanted
to set themselves up as separate nations, further undermining
efforts to conduct a unified war effort. Tensions were so
extreme that the vice president of the Confederacy refused
to live in the same state as Davis — and this while
they were trying to win a war.
One of the most
provocative and controversial books about the Civil War to
be published in decades, Dixie Betrayed blasts away
previous myths with the force of a cannonball and the grace
of a gentleman. For Civil War buffs as well anyone interested
in how governments of any age can self-destruct during wartime,
it is essential reading.
David J. Eicher is the author of numerous
books about the Civil War, including, most recently, The
Longest Night, the authoritative modern, single-volume
battle history of the Civil War. He lives with his family
in a suburb of Milwaukee.
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