| History
Book Club Selection
Besides his illustrious name, Jefferson Columbus Davis, who
fought for the Union, is best known for two appalling actions:
the September 1862 murder of General William “Bull”
Nelson — his former commanding officer — and the
abandonment of hundreds of African American refugees to the
mercy of the Confederate cavalry at Ebenezer Creek during
Sherman’s march through Georgia in 1864. Not surprisingly,
historians have generally dismissed Davis (1828–1879)
as a reckless assassin, a racist, a journeyman soldier at
best, and an embarrassment to the Lincoln war effort. But
as Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., and Gordon D. Whitney demonstrate
in the first biography of the unredeemed general, such smoke
of notoriety obscures the real story of a complex military
leader.
Through careful
research and absorbing prose, Hughes and Whitney bring order
to the muddle of contradictions that was Davis’s life
and offer an impartial profile of the soldier and the man.
They describe his distinguished service in the Mexican War
and at Fort Sumter, and his rapid advancement to general officer.
Although Davis’s sensational killing of Nelson —
for which he was never tried — undoubtedly damaged his
career, the authors show that he was venerated by professional
military men even as he was vilified by civilians. They also
follow Davis into his postwar career, first as a commissioner
with the Freedmen’s Bureau and then as an influential
commander in territorial Alaska.
With this study,
Hughes and Whitney shatter the collective memory of “Jef”
Davis as a grim, destructive child of war and replace it with
a more rounded portrait of an energetic, faithful patriot
who must be remembered for his splendid contributions as well
as his startling failures.
“An excellent biography. . . . Of great value to historians
of the Civil War.”
— Journal of American History
“Hughes and
Whitney have told the whole story, warts and all, in a style
that is as engaging as it is well researched.”
— Military History of the West
“A definitive
study. . . . Balanced and judicious, the book gives a fair
hearing, and justice, to one of the Civil War’s most
controversial figures.”
— Indiana Magazine of History
“A superb
contribution to Civil War literature.”
— Journal of Southern History
Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., lives in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, and is the author or editor of numerous books on
the Civil War, including Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Confederate.
Gordon
D. Whitney is past president of the Chicago and Louisville
Civil War Round Tables. He lives in Madison, Indiana. |
