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Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart. By Felicity Allen. (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 2000. Pp. xx. 809. $34.95.)
Jefferson Davis's legacy is a confusing one. He was doubtlessly a remarkable man, but his legend has often shouldered the blame of Confederate defeat. In recent years, several writers have examined Jefferson Davis and their results have been varied. In her contribution, Felicity Allen, an independent scholar from Auburn, Alabama, finds Davis to have been kind and gentle in private but skilled and assertive in his public life. This interpretive biography of the Confederate president offers a sympathetic view of an oft-misunderstood man.
Allen's thick work is the most comprehensive story of Jefferson Davis since William C. Davis's 1991 biography and the most interpretive since Michael B. Ballard's The Long Shadow (1986). Whereas these books offered objective looks at the man, Allen's is more partisan. The...