Jefferson Davis

Résumé du livre

In February 1861, Jefferson Davis told his wife that he had been elected president of the Confederacy. He expressed this news, his wife recalled, "as a man might speak of a sentence of death." Davis feared what might lie ahead: a horrific civil war. Davis was a controversial, enigmatic figure. Despite his desire for peace, he brazenly ordered the attack on Fort Sumter, which triggered the war. Yet, while Southerners were dying and starving, he urged them to make even greater sacrifices-to fight to the finish. All the while, he suffered personal tragedies: the deaths of his first wife and his four sons. Heroic and tragic, despised and beloved, Davis remains one of the most compelling figures in American history.