Steven Woodworth's previous book, the critically acclaimed
"Jefferson Davis and His Generals," won the prestigious Fletcher
Pratt Award and was a main selection of the History Book Club. In
that book he showed how the failures of Davis and his military
leaders in the west paved the way for Confederate defeat. In Davis
and Lee at War, he concludes his study of Davis as rebel
commander-in-chief and shows how the lack of a unified purpose and
strategy in the east sealed the Confederacy's fate.
Woodworth argues that Davis and Robert E. Lee, the South's
greatest military leader, had sharply conflicting views over the
proper conduct of the war. Davis was convinced that the South
should fight a defensive war, to simply outlast the North's
political and popular support for the war. By contrast, Lee and the
other eastern generals-notably P.G.T. Beauregard, Gustavus Smith,
and Stonewall Jackson-were eager for the offensive. They were
convinced that only quick and decisive battlefield victories would
prevent the North from eventually defeating them with its
overwhelming advantage in men and materials.
Davis and Lee, Woodworth shows, shared a mutual respect for each
other for most of the war. But it was respect mixed with a stubborn
resistance to the other's influence. The result of this tense
tug-of-war was Davis's misguided pursuit of a middle ground that
gave neither strategy its best chance for success. The war finally
ground to a bloody conclusion with Davis as indecisive as ever and
virtually blind to how little confidence his generals had in his
leadership.
Drawing extensively upon the papers of Jefferson Davis and the
works of leading Civil War historians, Woodworth places the eastern
military campaigns in an entirely new light and expands our
understanding of Davis as leader of the Confederacy.
General
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