Dixie Betrayed: How the South Really Lost the Civil War

The book describes in considerable detail some of the political issues of concern to President Davis, members of the Confederate Congress, and the governors of various Confederate states while the Civil War was being fought. The interest to this reader was in seeing how irrelevant most of these issues were to the survival of the Confederacy, and yet how important they were to its leaders. In addition, while we frequently read of Lincoln's interactions with his cabinet and with members of the United States Congress, we less often have the chance to view the other side. The prospective reader should be warned, however, that the book's title and subtitle wildly misrepresent its contents. The book describes neither a betrayal nor a new explanation for the South's defeat. (Had president and congress worked together in total harmony, a situation that has never existed in human history, they would not have saved the Confederacy.) A more accurate title would be: "Confederate Politics - How the Leaders of the South Attempted to Govern in the Middle of the War they had Made," but this title would doubtless have reduced sales.

DIXIE BETRAYED: HOW THE SOUTH REALLY LOST THE CIVIL WAR analyzes the Confederate government and how its decisions caused it to lose the war. The Confederate politicians have long been applauded as fighters but in fact were divided by conspiracy and dysfunction. Previously unexplored sources are used to document in-house battles that even evolved to threats and physical violence. With military decisions coming more from political influence than skill and years of unresolved debates evolving over government setup, the South was doomed to lose. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

David Eicher has a difficult premise to prove but makes a good logical case for it. The short form is that the Southern mentality contained the seeds of the South's defeat. In saying this, he upsets all the Lost cause Mythology types, the new crop of Political Correctness types, in addition to all those that will disagree with his premise. This is a very heavy load for one book to bear and with all the naysayer's, I'm not sure a fair review is possible. One problem is the to lurid title, promising more than the premise can possibly deliver. However, with 120+ books on the American Civil War being released in 2006, I can understand wanting a "grabber" tile. What this book contains is an intelligent description of CSA politics during the war. Detailing the waste of time, petty feuds and nastiness that the President, Congress and the state governors engaged in opens a window into a world that most histories ignore. Jefferson Davis often bears this alone. The book shows how much help he had from Stephens, Wigfall, Cobb, Brown and a legion of others. Their preference for obstructing, debating and endless obsession with "State's Rights" ended whatever small chance the South had for victory. The war plays out in the background as Richmond and the states fight it out on center stage. The "CSA government" often is the President vs. the Vice-president with congress back stabbing both. The other option is the CSA congress unable to produce anything but endless debate. The sovereign state governors, see little reason for a central government and bicker with it over everything, until a Union Army appears on their borders. This leads to endless agreement over state regiments, where they are stationed and who commands them. At the heart of the problem is the life experience of these men. They are the "opposition", a role that they can not abandon when they become the nation. All of them had spent their political life fighting the United States of America, if their party was in power or not. Proud to a fault, ready to argue the smallest point of order and used to obstructing legislation they carry these traits to Richmond, damaging their cause and reducing any chance of winning the war. The chapter "Peace Proposals" and the Epilogue are worth the price of the book. The Epilogue contains as good a short history of the development of and Northern response to the "Lost Cause" as I've found. "Peace Proposals", shows how the years of silliness finally cause an almost total breakdown of the Confederacy. David Eicher is a very good writer but this is not an easy nor quick read. If you stay with it, you will gain a valuable insight into why the CSA government didn't work and the impact this has on the war effort.

I've just started reading this book. I was curious to see the reviews that had already been posted. My impression on reading them is that they are the epitome of "Lost Cause" romanticism (the idea that "Johnnie Reb" and his peerless leaders were only beaten by sheer weight of Yankee numbers). If you read the "one star" reviews, you'd get the impression that the author's thesis is that the South lost because of incompetent leadership and that its materiel disadvantage did not matter at all. While I haven't finished this book, I have gone through the prologue and epilogue, and I can safely say that this is not the case. Rather, he seeks to debunk the notion that the Confederate military and political leaders' mistakes did not play a role in the Confederacy's defeat. I don't think anyone who has read about the Civil War and is objective about it, can dismiss the fact that sometimes Confederates made grotesque mistakes. What about Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg? What about the inept Confederate leadership that led to the fall of Vicksburg? So I'd advise people to give this book a chance to make its case. Don't let "partisans of the Lost Cause" distort perceptions of what really happened.