Jefferson Davis (review)

180CIVIL WAR HISTORY Jefferson Davis. By Clement Eaton. (New York: The Free Press, 1977. Pp. xii, 334. $12.95.) Jefferson Davis has been peculiarly unfortunate in his biographers. His latest biographer, Clement Eaton, characterizes the works of earlier ones (p. 317) as "bitterly prejudiced" (Pollard), "adulatory" (Alfriend), "not deeply researched" and "dated" (Dodd), "superficial " (Cutting, Winston, Tate, Eckenrode, and McElroy), and "alladmiring and written in a political vacuum" (Strode). His own book comes with the enthusiastic endorsements of about as prestigious a panel of experts as could possibly be summoned: "the best modern biography of the President of the Confederacy"—David Herbert Donald; "splendid"—Thomas L. Connelly; "first-rate," "brilliant"— Bruce Catton; "the best yet"—Bell I. Wiley; a work of "deep learning, mature reflection, and appealing literary style"—Frank E. Vandiver. Eaton's is, in fact, a fairly readable, rather brief, conventional narrative biography. Within a basically chronological organization are a number of topical chapters on such subjects as "The Women in Davis's Life," "Slavery on the Davis Plantations," "The Aristocratic Type of Southern Politician," "The President's Role in Diplomacy," "Handling the Rebellious Governors," "Davis as War Leader," and "The Sphinx of the Confederacy." Davis is seen as a man whose extreme sense of "honor," including personal pride and sensitivity to slights, was both a strength and a weakness. The tone throughout is highly sympathetic, quite admiring if not all-admiring. At the end, the subject remains something of a "sphinx." The focus frequendy wanders from Davis himself. Names and opinions of secondary authorities obtrude. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, for example, appear in the discussion of slavery to give their views on the prevalence of black overseers, but there is no full and clear picture of Davis as a slaveholder. Charles W. Ramsdell enters the stage to accuse Abraham Lincoln of "forcing the Confederacy to fire the first shot" at Fort Sumter (p. 137). Though it is conceded that "such a Machiavellian strategy seems unlikely," nothing whatever is said about Davis's own strategy in regard to the fort. During the war the central character is offstage much of the time. Campaigns and battles are recounted at some length with only incidental allusions to the commander-in-chief. There are occasional lapses in respect to both substance and style. The Democracy is described as breaking in 1860 into three parties, the third of them being the Constitutional Union—which, of course, consisted mainly of Whigs and Know Nothings, not Democrats. The evils of slavery in the South are, by implication, equated with the "exploitation of the workingman" in the North. Errors of usage or syntax, which adequate copy editing would have caught, include the following: "Bull Run Creek" (p. 138); "the Confederate army BOOK REVIEWS181 was more disorganized by victory than was the defeated army" (pp. 138-139); "by leaving Richmond uncovered the enemy might march into the city" (p. 159); "The president's selection of the first commissioners . . . were singularly inappropriate" (p. 166). "My biography of Jefferson Davis," the author states (p. 315), "is based on manuscript sources to a much greater degree than any previous biography." The bibliography lists 59 manuscript collections in 17 different locations. Fewer than 80 of the more than 800 notes refer to manuscripts in those collections, and the citations provide little if any information that is both significant and new. The book is based primarily on Davis's published writings and on secondary works, including the author's own distinguished contributions to Southern history. This may well be the best of the Davis biographies, but there is still room for, and a need for, a much better one. Richard N. Current University of North Carolina, Greensboro A Right to the Land: Essays on the Freedmen's Community. By Edward Magdol. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. Pp. xiv, 290. $16.95.) This book is strong in details because it is based on solid research, but weak in its interpretive contribution because the author is given to schematic and tendentious argument. Magdol's central purpose is to refute Stanley Elkins's thesis of slave infantilization and lack of autonomy. Accordingly, in chapters dealing with the slave community , contraband camps...