A Short History of the Confederate States of America A Short History of the Confederate States of America A Short History of the Confederate States of America is a memoir written by Jefferson Davis, completed shortly before his death in 1889. Davis wrote most of this book while staying at Beauvoir along the Mississippi Gulf Coast near Biloxi, Mississippi. The book is much less a Davis memoir than an articulation of the secession argument. In Davis' earlier work, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government", he had written what is probably the most thorough exegesis of the compact theory of the United States Constitution in existence, devoting the
Confederate States of America enthusiastic in 1861–62, seem to have lost faith in the future of the Confederacy by 1864, and instead looked to protect their homes and communities. As Rable explains, "This contraction of civic vision was more than a crabbed libertarianism; it represented an increasingly widespread disillusionment with the Confederate experiment." The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with a Confederate victory at the Battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston. In January, President James Buchanan had attempted to resupply the garrison with the steamship, "Star of the West", but Confederate artillery drove it away. In March, President Lincoln notified South