A Review of Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War by James M. McPherson

By Patrick Bray
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2016, All Rights Reserved

Editor’s note: This review was originally published in The Charger in January 2016.


James McPherson has done it yet again: published an insightful, fair, and very readable book on the Civil War. This time his subject is the wartime presidency of Jefferson Davis, a man whose reputation over the years has had more ups and downs then a stretch along the Appalachian Trail. In his introduction McPherson acknowledges the challenges of writing about a person who has occasionally been portrayed as a tragic hero, but more often has been a target for scathing criticism.

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The April 1861 Madness

By Patrick Bray
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
Copyright © 2014, All Rights Reserved

Sesquicentennial observations of the Civil War will end in April 2015. This past August marked the beginning of centennial observations of World War One (WWI), a conflict to which the Civil War has been compared.

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