Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart (review)

Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart. By Felicity Allen. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2000. Pp. xx. 809. $34.95.)

Jefferson Davis's legacy is a confusing one. He was doubtlessly a remarkable man, but his legend has often shouldered the blame of Confederate defeat. In recent years, several writers have examined Jefferson Davis and their results have been varied. In her contribution, Felicity Allen, an independent scholar from Auburn, Alabama, finds Davis to have been kind and gentle in private but skilled and assertive in his public life. This interpretive biography of the Confederate president offers a sympathetic view of an oft-misunderstood man.

Allen's thick work is the most comprehensive story of Jefferson Davis since William C. Davis's 1991 biography and the most interpretive since Michael B. Ballard's The Long Shadow (1986). Whereas these books offered objective looks at the man, Allen's is more partisan. The direction of the book is indicated by her dedication of it to her grandmother, "a Confederate to the last." Notable in her prose is the absence of any reference to Davis's flaw. If the reader is to believe Allen, Davis had none.

One fixture in Davis's world was the institution of slavery, but Allen avoids any use of the word "slave." Instead, she mentions "servants," "people," "friends," and "blacks," all terms indicating some degree of freedom. She blatantly attempts to soften the institution by writing, "The very pass one needed to go off the place was to show the road patrol (seldom in operation) that he or she belonged somewhere. The sense of belonging, of being needed, was strong"(91). Allen also tries to illustrate the amicable relationship between master and "servant" by noting that Davis's slave, James Pemberton, traveled with the future president to Michigan Territory during his military career. She notes that Pemberton nursed Davis back to health despite the opportunity to be free by simply walking away. On page 77, she quotes a letter in which Pemberton was informed that his "wife and son are in good health also Aunt Charity and all his friends." The author clearly does not realize that slaves had familial responsibilities that took precedence over their individual want of freedom.

Other weaknesses mar this book. Allen demonstrates no understanding of the code duello when addressing the Brooks-Sumner Affair. She blames Sumner for his own horrific beating. In her mind, Charles Sumner would have refused an invitation to duel; therefore, Preston Brooks had no alternative but to attack him with his cane. In fact, to the antebellum Southerner, dueling was a method of settling conflicts between gentlemen. By inferring that Sumner would have refused to duel, Allen has also inferred that Brooks considered Sumner a gentleman (227). The author's analysis of Varina Howell Davis is adequate, although it would have been strengthened by consulting the work of Carol Bleser on the Confederacy's first lady. The partisanship in Allen's work also appears when she notes that, on March 4, 1861, "Buchanan turned over the presidency of the North to Abraham Lincoln" (272).

This book is flawed. It neither treats Davis objectively nor contributes any new insights into the Confederacy's only chief executive. Readers must respect Felicity Allen's love for her subject and the devotion that sustained her for the more than twenty years it took to produce this book, but serious students of the American Civil War will be better served by looking to the previously mentioned titles for scholarly enlightenment.