The Lost Cause: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (review)

BOOK REVIEWS247 The Lost Cause: Myths and Realities ofthe Confederacy. By William C. Davis. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Pp. xi, 224. $24.95.) William C. Davis has written more Civil War history than some historians have read, so the twelve essays published here, all but one apparently for the first time, should attract many readers. The command ofthe history ofthe Confederacy Davis developed in his earlier books is on display here as well. The volume's subtitle suggests he has expanded that expertise into the myths that developed after the war. The book includes an interesting essay on the CivilWar in films and on television, but the other pieces do not contribute to the burgeoning literature on the memory of the Civil War. Davis understands the nature and function of myth, but it does not interest him much. He believes his task as a historian is to attack myth with "truth" (190), for it is from truth that "we have the most to learn" (178). In these essays, Davis primarily attacks "Confederate myths" (178). He tries to correct the excessive attention devoted to battles in Virginia by providing an intriguing essay on the "siege" of Charleston and two on the war in the West. One of the latter makes a case for the "unmitigated ruthlessness and senseless brutality" (91) of the war there, which, Davis argues, distinguished it from that in the East. Readers convinced by Charles Royster's The Destructive War will question the second part of that argument. Davis also offers a devastating critique of the South's belief in the superiority of Confederate leadership and its celebration of Confederate loyalty and unity. He describes Jefferson Davis as a man driven by insecurities and suffering from an "imposter complex" (13). He writes admiringly of Lee and Jackson but dismisses other Confederate generals as men of limited ability. In perhaps the best essay of the collection, Davis presents a compelling case for the loss ofConfederate will during 1863 and the emergence of significant internal dissent. He wisely attributes both to events on the battlefield. And then Davis successfully storms the very center of the neoConfederate myth: he demonstrates that the war was a civil war, that the South seceded because of slavery, that secession was not legal, and that in the end the South lost. Those who still question Southern defeat, alas, will probably not be conquered by the force of Davis's argument on any of these crucial points. Many readers who share Davis's conclusions on them, however, will question other of his arguments, perhaps even perceive the lingering influence of Lost Cause myths. They will not agree with Davis that, though the South seceded to preserve slavery, its soldiers did not fight for it. That a soldier did not own slaves does not in itself demonstrate that he did not seek to preserve the institution; moreover, even if he opposed slavery but went to war on behalf of the creation of a nation safe for slavery, consciously or not, he fought for slavery . These same readers will certainly object to Davis's observation that the idea that "slaves were willfully and systematically mistreated" is a "myth" (1 84) and to his speculation that, though "probably ... a majority" of slaves "entertained feelings ranging from a faint interest to a passionate desire for freedom," "perhaps" most did not wish to "see the Confederacy fail" (185). 248CIVIL WAR HISTORY That Davis could find himself in a cross-fire between two sides testifies to the continuing hold of the Civil War on the American imagination and to the persistent importance of the issues over which it was fought. But it also shows the difficulty in establishing "truth," even on questions such as the cause of the war or the nature of slavery where "truth" seems clear to many. Other questions Davis addresses, the abilities of certain generals or the existence of turning points in the war, are matters of interpretation, given to endless debate, where "truth" may not even be at issue. Despite the problems inherent in the approach he champions and some questionable interpretations of his own, Davis's essays engage serious students of the war and...