The Death and Resurrection of Jefferson Davis.

The Death and Resurrection of Jefferson Davis. By Donald E. Collins. The American Crisis Series. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., c. 2005. Pp. x, 173. $22.95, ISBN 0-7425-4304-8.)

In the waning days of the Civil War, Confederate president Jefferson Davis was perhaps one of the South's most unpopular public figures. By the time death found him in 1889, however, Davis had become the most celebrated living figure of the Confederate era. In this brief monograph, Donald E. Collins focuses on the years leading up to and just beyond Davis's death in order to illustrate how the nation and, in particular, the white South came to embrace a man whom many had once considered the country's most infamous traitor.

Collins has arranged this book around four main phases in the later life and death of Jefferson Davis. In great detail he chronicles Davis's 1886-1887 Southern Tour, his 1889 death and funeral in New Orleans, the relocation of Davis's body to Richmond in 1893, and the construction of the Jefferson Davis Monument dedicated in the Virginia capitol in 1907. In each section, Collins uses contemporary accounts to illustrate the fanatical zeal demonstrated by both former Confederates and a new generation of white southerners who found in Davis an enduring icon of the Lost Cause.

The author's main argument posits that the resurrection of Jefferson Davis's reputation coincided with a significant shift in the way southerners chose to remember not only the Lost Cause but also the Confederacy itself. While Davis's southern tour and funeral emphasized sectional reconciliation and his role as a statesman and American soldier in the Mexican War, the ceremonies that attended the relocation of Davis's body from New Orleans to Richmond three years later were replete with Confederate symbolism. Confederate battle flags replaced the Stars and Stripes, and the procession became a celebration not only of Davis but also of the grey-clad heroes who had once served under him. Seemingly, as the South entered the 1890s, most of the region's white citizens believed that they could express their devotion to Confederate memory without calling into question their loyalty to the American nation.

Though Collins delivers a well-researched and detailed narrative of the nation's reaction to Davis's passing, he, unfortunately, offers far less analysis as to the reasons that fueled such reaction. A surprisingly brief conclusion leaves many themes of Davis's death and memory unexplored and only begins to contextualize the subject in the ever-growing literature on memory and southern identity. This is a shame because this book might have made a much more profound contribution to the field with only a little more effort. Still, any scholar working in the field will find it worth a look, if for no other reason than to consider his or her own reflections upon Davis's legacy.

JUSTIN NYSTROM

Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University