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Davis was a romantic loser, now viewed as a symbol of the Lost Cause - a dream of the Old South as a place of chivalry and honour, a popular strand of mythology that survives to this day.

He did not actually start the Civil War, but he was elected President of the Confederacy because he looked the part, as a benevolent aristocrat (who treated his slaves so well, they didn't want their freedom) who had been a Colonel in the Mexican War and seemed to possess military credibility. All of this fell away under the test of national conflict, for which his talents were simply inadequate.

A well-educated man who lived on to an old age, he might have written some stirring memoirs to keep the flame alive, but all he gave us was a dry-as-dust legal argument in defence of the right of secession.

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14y ago

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