Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was the president of the Confederacy
during the American Civil War, served in the House of
Representatives and the Senate, and was secretary of war under
Franklin Pierce.
William J. Cooper, Jr., is Boyd Professor of History at Louisiana
State University. His most recent book is Jefferson Davis,
American, winner of the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in
Biography and the Jefferson Davis Award. He lives in Baton Rouge.
“Eclipsed in our memory of the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln, Robert
E. Lee, and other military heroes, Jefferson Davis was arguably one
of the most important figures in the antebellum and wartime eras.
Davis’s biographer William J. Cooper, Jr., has sifted through the
huge number of Davis letters and speeches to select those that best
tell the story of his life and provide insight on his character in
this invaluable volume.” —James M. McPherson, Pulitzer
Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War
Era
“To have the most important letters, speeches, and public documents
of Jefferson Davis gathered into a single volume is invaluable. To
have Jefferson Davis’s leading modern biographer making the
selection and placing the documents in context was inspired.”
—George C. Rable, Charles G. Summersell Professor of Southern
History, University of Alabama, and author of Fredericksburg!
Fredericksburg!, winner of the 2003 Lincoln Prize
“This volume, full of well-chosen words from Jefferson Davis, must
be on every Civil War buff’s bookshelf.” —William W. Freehling,
Singletary Chair in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky
and author of The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate
Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War
“William J. Cooper, Jr., is exactly the right person to prepare a
useful and accessible single-volume edition of Davis’s most
important writings, and he has performed that task superbly.
Historians, students, and the general public alike will all find
this to be a fascinating volume.” —Michael F. Holt, Langbourne M.
Williams Professor of American History, University of Virginia, and
co-author of The Civil War and Reconstruction
“He had the pride, the spirit of initiative, the capacity in
business which qualify men for leadership, and lacked nothing of
the indomitable will and imperious purpose to make his leadership
effective.” —Woodrow Wilson
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