The Inevitable President

The intellectual, emotional, and moral distance between present day Americans and the early chief magistrates of the Republic is almost beyond measure. We can now make no sense of James Monroe or Franklin Pierce. Even heroes like Washington and Jackson leave us uncomfortable with ourselves. And the Madisons or Jeffersons whom we profess to admire are inventions of the scholars, with little relation to the Virginia statesmen who bore those names. We are put off by the antique, almost Roman republicanism of the first consuls before Lincoln. Yet, even for modern Southerners, not one of these remote and sculptured figures is so great a puzzle as that other American President, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.

It is to that distance that Professor Eaton (one of the most distinguished of Southern historians) has addressed himself. In emphasizing the proud austerity of Davis’ personality, the intellectual climate of his time and class, Eaton has made the Confederate chieftain a more intelligible structure of human emotion and conviction than he seemed before. But this biography (the first in 25 years) has not closed the gap altogether. Clement Eaton is an old-fashioned Southern liberal. Even for his genuine piety, and with all the available information on Davis’ career before him, the empathetic hurdle is too great. Eaton cannot enter into the role his subject chose for himself, or into the anguish which the playing of that role must have cost. Though he can describe how Davis was an anachronism even in his own world, he cannot account for the appeal of that anachronism to the South in 1860. Eaton tells us that the character of Jefferson Davis was a luxury that the embattled South could ill afford, especially while engaged in the kind of “total war” which Mr. Lincoln had in mind. He can imagine voting for Davis on prudential grounds, among the choices available, but he cannot explain why, given the peculiar dynamics of Southern history, someone like Davis had to be elected in Montgomery, even if a Southern Lincoln had been available.

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M. E. Bradford

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The intellectual, emotional, and moral distance between present day Americans and the early chief magistrates of the Republic is almost beyond measure. We can now make no sense of James Monroe or Franklin Pierce. Even heroes like Washington and Jackson leave us uncomfortable with ourselves. And the Madisons or Jeffersons whom we profess to admire are inventions of the scholars, with little relation to the Virginia statesmen who bore those names. We are put off by the antique, almost Roman republicanism of the first consuls before Lincoln. Yet, even for modern Southerners, not one of these remote and sculptured figures is so great a puzzle as that other American President, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.

It is to that distance that Professor Eaton (one of the most distinguished of Southern historians) has addressed himself. In emphasizing the proud austerity of Davis’ personality, the intellectual climate of his time and class, Eaton has made the Confederate chieftain a more intelligible structure of human emotion and conviction than he seemed before. But this biography (the first in 25 years) has not closed the gap altogether. Clement Eaton is an old-fashioned Southern liberal. Even for his genuine piety, and with all the available information on Davis’ career before him, the empathetic hurdle is too great. Eaton cannot enter into the role his subject chose for himself, or into the anguish which the playing of that role must have cost. Though he can describe how Davis was an anachronism even in his own world, he cannot account for the appeal of that anachronism to the South in 1860. Eaton tells us that the character of Jefferson Davis was a luxury that the embattled South could ill afford, especially while engaged in the kind of “total war” which Mr. Lincoln had in mind. He can imagine voting for Davis on prudential grounds, among the choices available, but he cannot explain why, given the peculiar dynamics of Southern history, someone like Davis had to be elected in Montgomery, even if a Southern Lincoln had been available.