Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries by Dennis L. Peterson (review)

Dennis L. Peterson's Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries explores a topic that has been largely unstudied in Civil War scholarship. As the author notes, of the tens of thousands of books devoted to various aspects of the Civil War, there are but three studies focused on the Confederate cabinet—the most recent of which was published in 1944. Even "people who otherwise 'know their history,'" Peterson explains, "know essentially nothing about this particular topic" (p. 2). The author's particular goal, which he outlines on the book's final page, is "to begin the process of correcting this long-neglected part of American history" so that "future scholars and history buffs will dig deeper and make these men once again household names by studying them, their beliefs, and their actions objectively" (p. 249).

Peterson divides his study into six parts—each devoted to one of the Confederacy's six cabinet posts—and twenty-five chapters. Within each part, Peterson offers a general overview of the department and a rundown of its bureaus or subdepartments, a biography of its department head, and an assessment of the department's efficacy. In terms of aggregating the various biographies and advances in scholarship since Rembert W. Patrick's Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet (Baton Rouge, 1944), Peterson has produced a useful book.

Ultimately, the challenge for Peterson is to reveal what other scholars have missed by not studying the Confederate cabinet in detail. In assessing Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, Peterson largely concurs with previous scholars from J. L. M. Curry to George C. Rable. Standing apart from recent studies of Davis, Peterson casts the Confederate president as a cold leader, a meddling manager, and someone prone to engaging in pointless deliberations. This is not the more nuanced portrait of Davis seen in William J. Cooper Jr.'s Jefferson Davis, American (New York, 2000). Indeed, Peterson's study seems to demonstrate the difficulty of arriving at new assessments of the cabinet owing to the scarcity of extant materials. Perhaps the most pressing issue remains what such a study can offer to help us understand Confederate statecraft, nationalism, or politics in a new light. Lastly, readers might recoil at Peterson's early description of the Civil War as "the War Between the States" and view any assessments with a more critical eye as a result (p. 1).