| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Union That Shaped the Confederacy: Robert Toombs & Alexander H. Stephens. By William C. Davis. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. xii, 284 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-7006-1088-X.)

One of the most gifted and prolific historians of the Civil War era, William C. Davis deservedly earned praise for his recent study of Jefferson Davis. Now, in this "biography of a friendship," he examines two of President Davis's most severe critics. These powerful Georgians and close friends for over forty years helped create the Confederacy in Montgomery. But they quickly lost faith in Davis and, like many others, turned against his administration, perhaps fatally weakening the Southern war effort. Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens resented their marginal roles in the war effort and peevishly sulked when Davis ignored them. "The weakness of their disappointed ambition and hurt pride," the author concludes, "primarily turned them into deadly enemies of Davis." Sharply critical of both men for "their pettiness, self-indulgence, short-sightedness, and frequent hypocrisy," the author ascribes to Toombs a "near-megalomania over his own surpassing wisdom" and to "Little Aleck" an "ego ever in inverse proportion to his size." Each man demanded constant recognition of his self-proclaimed superiority. . . .

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