Statesmen of the Lost Cause
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by [Atlantic Monthly Press and Little, Brown, $3.75]
MR. HENDRICK breaks a considerable amount of new ground in his long, detailed, and exceptionally interesting study of the leaders of the Southern States during the four bitter years of the Civil War. His central thesis, that the Confederacy failed because of its essential nature, is one that is finding gradual acceptance among historians with open minds, and he supplies sufficient evidence to support his claims.
The title itself is ironical for the reason that, whatever Southern military leadership and valor might have been. Southern statesmanship was conspicuous by its absence. Jefferson Davis, who did the Southern cause irreparable harm because of his unshakable belief in his own skill as commander in chief of the armies, was never a statesman by any stretch of the imagination, and the men he surrounded himself with were, with few exceptions, wholly unequal to the tasks assigned them.
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Become a SubscriberMr. Hendrick also makes an excellent point in his insistence upon the lack of agreement among the members of President Davis’s cabinet. The breach between Davis and his Vice President, Alexander HI. Stephens, opened almost immediately after the Confederate Government had been formed, and grew wider until, during the last few months of the war, Stephens was the avowed enemy of Davis, and with his fellow Georgian, Toombs, undoubtedly played a large part in bringing the conflict to a close by his subversive speeches.
