Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America Paperback – April 15, 2003

Look Away is truth in advertising. The cover of the book advertises William C. Davis' work as A History of the Confederate States of America, which is exactly what this book is. In other words, this book is not a history of the Civil War with a few stray bits regarding Confederate politics thrown in. Instead of writing about the war, Davis clearly set out to examine the political roots of the CSA from its inception to its death as well as the social impact of the war on the homefront.Davis succeeds in this task to a fair degree. Although the book starts out slowly for the first 20 pages, it really picks up as it gets to the battles during the CSA's founding convention. The major characters are drawn with their flaws intact; Robert Barnwell Rhett, the South Carolina firebrand and free trader, emerges as a particular villain in this tragedy. Davis also provides some strong evidence that whatever their protestations about states' rights, the founders of the Confederacy were mostly interested in preserving slavery and were willing to sacrifice states' rights from the beginning in order to preserve slavery within the ranks.However, the central theme of the book is not the hypocracy at the beginning of the Confederacy but the difficulties of managing the project from beginning to end. The founders of the CSA may have talked a big game about liberty, but they were also quick to establish military tribunals and to deny habeus corpus to their citizenry. Davis portrays the CSA as being run by a cabal of rich land-owning farmers, which makes perfect sense when you think about why West Virginia seceded. At the end, the CSA was desperate to make any compromise of any principle to maintain power, right up to having the federal government attempt to negotiate an end to slavery to get British recognition. Needless to say, the government did not make this concession in consultation with the supposedly all-powerful states.A no less important strength of the book is its coverage of the day-to-day depredations suffered by the CSA's citizens. The countryside was depleted of men and law-enforcement by the needs of the war, leaving many on the Confederate homefront vulnerable to marauding deserters. Significantly, Davis covers both the eastern and western Confederacy, taking a swipe at Virginia-centered Civil War historians who believe that the war was winnable by pointing out the early and devastating defeats suffered west of the mountains. With the Union blockade, these same people suffered greatly from a lack of available rations. But in mining the letters Confederate citizens sent to their government, Davis spends precious little time describing the plight of the slaves, who had suffered far more greatly in bondage than their owners did because of the war.This is one of several areas William Davis does not investigate in the book. Jefferson Davis, for example, is mostly off-stage in the political dramas of the CSA; William Davis does little mining of the writings of Jefferson Davis and his close associates that would paint a more realistic picture of the man. This gives Davis the image of a relatively competent leader without delving into his own prickly personality or major mistakes. While Jefferson Davis is portrayed fairly positively, the positive values of his opponents are also glossed over in what essentially become right-versus-wrong contests on policy and military issues. Jeff Davis is almost never wrong, and the likes of Rhett are never right.Because this book is about a narrow slice of the history of the Civil War, it may be difficult for novices to fully understand. Someone who doesn't already have a passing familiarity with the battles and course of the war will have difficulty as the book is mostly not chronological. This is not the story of Lee and Grant but of Davis and Rhett. Because of the obscurity of some of the figures involved, a listing of the major figures in the CSA with their positions would have been a big help in figuring out the who's who of the governors and Congressmen.Overall, however, the book is well researched by an expert in the field and after the first 20 pages or so is a quick read. This is a superior work and anyone truly interested in Civil War history will emerge with a more profound understanding of the war after reading Look Away!

Look Away: by William C. DavisThis book provides a very informative and enlightening presentation of the formation, philosophy, and attitudes of the leadership and people of the Confederate States of America and provides a treasury trove of materials that can be used to refute the scurrilous attacks on the USA and its constitution in general, and on Lincoln in particular. I have been reading this book very slowly in order to more fully comprehend and appreciate the issues and to take hand written notes of important points. The pages and paragraphs are dense with details and information and there are a huge number of points well made and well tied together. I was particularly pleased that several of my own original thoughts and opinions were plausible and even considered by others before me.This book considers only the seceding states and, in the first third of the book, at least, hardly mentions Lincoln at all (no more than perhaps a dozen times.) Davis (William C., that is) considers several aspect of the confederacy but pays particular attention to the conception, debates, and purposes of the Confederate constitution and we can see how it was really driven by the property right of, and to, slavery. For those arguing that secession was legal, even though it is not mentioned in the US constitution, Davis points out that secession was also not condoned or mentioned in the Confederate constitution, even though it was vigorously debated. It is pointed out that even states rights are compromised in the CSA constitution in order to accommodate slavery. Davis does a great job in repeatedly pointing out southern hypocrisy with regard to individual and states rights. There is just too much important detail in this book to fit into a review.As good as I think "Look Away" is, I feel that there are also several problems with it. Clearly, the villain in the first third of the book is Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Caroline: as is South Carolina. With regard to the confederate constitution, Rhett is at the forefront defending, praising, and glorifying slavery and more slavery at all costs. In searching for more detail on Rhett (and son) I found that he was actually almost a minor character. As the book says, most of his ideas and demands were rejected by participants and leaders of the confederate constitutional convention. Blaming it almost all on Rhett works to undermine the power and integrity of this book.Also, viewpoints and positions on controversial issues, especially in the portion devoted to the constitution, are spread out in such a way that it is easy to mistakenly presume that a position was adopted rather than just discussed and disputed. For example, Rhett and others tried several times to allow for the constitutional expulsion of a state if it decided to not love slavery enough. For a while I thought it was in the confederate constitution (because of the debates) only to realize that it was not adopted.In all, this is a very insightful book and I'm glad I selected it when I originally searched for another book that was unavailable.

Most histories of the American Civil War are very heavily skewed towards the Northern point of view, particularly in terms of the behind-the-scenes political machinations and general governance of the war. That makes this book all the more interesting since a lot of the information about the politics and debates and discussions within the South about secession was completely new to me, and it was refreshing to see the alternative point-of-view from the usual Lincoln/Washington/North/abolition standpoint.One thing Davis is very clear on is his position on the reasons behind the war. It seems to be fashionable these days to downplay the role of slavery in the secession movement; to insist that whilst it may have been the catalyst, it wasn't the cause; to argue that slavery was simply the most visible of the arguments, but that the real reason was States' Rights. Davis really delves into a lot of the resolutions and conventions and paperwork and makes it clear that slavery was front and centre, so much so that it was hardwired into the new Confederate Constitution and not even the President or the individual States had the authority to abolish it, even if they wished to.This book also brings to the forefront just how much of a contradiction the Confederacy really was. He argues that the slavery/planting oligarchy was the driving force behind seccession and that the entire Confederacy was designed by these very same people to benefit them above all others; it was designed as a democracy that limited the power of the vast majority of the population in favour of a small minority. The war also meant that in its conduct of the war the national government proceeded to trample over many of the rights and privileges that had only just been enshrined in the Constitution, the same rights and privileges that impelled many of the States to leave the Union in the first place!It's a very well-written book, readable and engaging, and absolutely fascinating to read. I'd never before realised just how contradictory the Confederacy was and how doomed it really was from the start.