The Confederate States of America has long held an interest for this ‘son of Virginia,’ ever since my second-grade teacher took us on a field trip to Appomattox. It’s infused in every Virginian the history of his native state. William C. Davis’ book on the last four months of the Confederacy is a marvelous book in giving the grim realities of how ‘the Cause’ flickered out.
Now living in Kentucky, this book offered me my first glimpse at John C. Breckinridge. Against secession and against the notion of taking up arms against the Union, he did so nonetheless in defense of the South. He served as the only one who would stand up to Jefferson Davis’ stubbornness with some modicum of (as a previous reviewer noted) statesmanship. He knew when the Confederacy was over, unlike Davis who was willing to continue the cause in Texas, and he helped more than anyone in the South (along with Lee) to make sure the South wasn’t completely crushed in the aftermath of Lincoln’s death.
This book was meticulously researched–and imminently readable! I couldn’t put it down–especially at the part when Davis was captured by Yankee soldiers in Irwinville, GA, and how Breckinridge and Judah P. Benjamin escaped through Florida, survived over open water to Cuba, then the Bahamas. Benjamin went to England, Breckinridge returned to the North American continent, stayed with expatriate Confederates in Toronto until Andrew Johnson’ Universal Amnesty allowed him to return to his beloved Kentucky. Unlike Davis, Breckinridge did not continue the vitriol in who was to blame (unlike Davis), but remained quite, save a brief eulogy in 1870 for the death of Robert E. Lee.
Breckinridge was a noble man caught up in a bad cause. It’s because of him that the Confederacy contains any nobility at all. For some of you, that may not be a ringing endorsement for the man. But this book will help you see the warts and wrinkles of it all–and show that not everyone caught up in that cause was inherently evil. This book is worth your time.
For a more extended (and much better) review, check out Ryan McMaken’s review.
