America's most brilliant young Civil War historian offers a radical new way of understanding the South's defeat: that the Confederacy was defeated by self-inflicted wounds.
In DIXIE BETRAYED, David Eicher reveals for the first time the story of the political conspiracy, discord and dysfunction in Richmond that cost the South the Civil War. Drawing on a wide variety of previously unexploited sources, Eicher shows how President Jefferson Davis fought not only with the Confederate House and Senate and with State Governers but also with his own vice-president and secretary of state. He interfered with his generals in the field, micro-managing their campaigns and playing favourites, ignoring the chain of command. He trusted a number of men who were utterly incompetent. Secession didn't end with the breakaway of the Confederacy and Davis' election as president; some states, led by their governors, debated setting themselves up as separate nations, further undermining efforts to conduct a unified war effort.
Sure to be one of the most provocative and controversial books about the Civil War to be published in decades, DIXIE BETRAYED blasts away previous theories with the force of a cannonball and the grace of a gentleman.
David J. Eicher is one of the most widely recognized astronomy enthusiasts in the world. He is editor in chief of Astronomy magazine and of the international Asteroid Day project. He has also written shows for the Adler Planetarium and for NASA, and is the coauthor, with Brian May, of Mission Moon 3-D and the author of The New Cosmos. In addition to appearances on CNN, Fox News, and NPR, Dave regularly lectures on science and astronomy at Harvard University, the Starmus Festival, and the American Museum of Natural History.