You know how Mom and I love history, write? (That’s not a typo.)  So when we saw William C. Davis’ An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government at a library book sale recently, we snapped it up right quick. Thought we’d chew on it awhile. After all, it smelled like a good idea!

Here’s the 4-1-1:

February 1865: The end is clearly in sight for the Confederate government…

An Honorable Defeat is the story of the surrender of the South and the assassination of Lincoln by Southern partisans. It is also the story of two men: Jefferson Davis, autocratic president of the Confederate States, who vowed never to surrender whatever the cost; and Gen. John Breckinridge, Secretary of War, who hoped pragmatism would save his shattered land.

Noted historian William Davis traces the astounding flight of these men, and the entire Confederate cabinet from Richmond, Virginia, to a dingy room in a Havana hotel…

No Walk in the Park

Make no mistake. An Honorable Defeat is no walk in the park. Meticulously detailed and thoroughly researched, it’s a comprehensive historical account of the final days of the U.S. Civil War, General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and the frantic flurry of activity of President Jefferson Davis’s government as it wrestled with potential consequences and repercussions regarding surrender or defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia and the end of the confederacy.

We didn’t fully realize just how different or immense the repercussions of Southern defeat vs. Southern surrender were until we read this book. The terms may seem synonymous. But they aren’t. Not even close.

For example:

• How to turn disunion to union?
• What about restoring and preserving the civic rights of Southern citizens during reconstruction?
• How to restore government under the Constitution to the whole Union and to recognize and protect the rights of all citizens?
• Given the financial devastation of the South after four years of war, could restitution at pennies on the dollar save the South from “prostration that might last for decades”? 
• If no requirement to admit the end of slavery were a part of the South’s surrender, “and the Southern states were free to reassume their full sovereignty merely by taking oaths of Allegiance,” then would their state legislatures also be free to vote on the 13th Amendment as they saw fit, possibly annulling it? Then what?
• Would Confederate armies be allowed to disband and return home with their arms and hand them over to their state authorities?
• If not, how would those states be able to field the necessary militia order to maintain civil order during the transition period?
• Who would be governing, and how?
• Would Southerners be seen as rebels ready to return to the Union, or as a conquered state to be invaded and punished?
• Would Confederate soldiers be pardoned, prosecuted, or something in between?

Prodigious, Probing

Weighing in at 496 pages, An Honorable Defeat is a prodigious read. We love history, like we said. And we’re pretty well read on the Civil War. But we learned a lot from this book. It’s scholarly and it’s thorough. It’s a probing look at this terrible, bloody war from a perspective that’s often overlooked or ignored altogether.

Raise Your Hand

Like, raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of Gen. John Breckinridge? We have. But we had no idea how hard he tried to save the South from being treated like a conquered foe. Or how hard he tried to get Jefferson Davis to see reason and reality. Or that Breckinridge served as vice president under Buchanan. 

That being said, the writing style makes the Sahara Desert look soggy by comparison. It’s slow. Think horse and buggy. Without the horse. Still, An Honorable Defeat is definitely eye-opening and illuminating if you have the time. 

Our Rating: 3.0

Incidentally – in case you’re wondering and even if you’re not – this is the trailer from one of our favorite Civil War-ish movies. We watch it every July cuz that’s when this battle took place. It’s a cinematic masterpiece, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (and yes, we’ve read it.) 

What’s your top Civil War title?