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 first fifteen chapters of the book to that topic. Fearful that his readers might not understand, or might forget, he repeated the explanation every second or third chapter after that. Still concerned that people might not understand the compact theory of the Constitution, he wrote A Short History of the Confederate States of America shortly before his death. Jefferson Finis Davis (1808 – 1889) was an American politician who served as the President of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He was a member of the Democratic Party who represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives prior to becoming president of the Confederacy. He was the 23rd United States Secretary of War, serving under U.S. President Franklin Pierce from 1853 to 1857.