Description
A War of Words analyzes Jefferson Davis’s public discourse, arguing that all through his time as president of the Confederacy, Davis settled for short-term rhetorical successes at the expense of creating more substantive and meaningful messages for himself and his constituents.
A lot of biographies of Jefferson Davis have been penned; then again, until now, there had been no substantive analysis of his public discourse as president of the Confederacy. R. Jarrod Atchison’s A War of Words uses concepts from rhetorical theory and public address to help answer a question that has intrigued scholars from a number of disciplines since the collapse of the Confederacy: what role, if any, did Davis play in the collapse of Confederate nationalism?
Most discussions of Davis and nationalism focus on the military outcomes of his controversial wartime decisions. A War of Words focuses less on military outcomes and argues instead that, in the context of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis’s rhetorical leadership will have to have been responsible for articulating a vision for the nation—including the core tenets of its identity, the values the nation will have to hold dear, the principles it will have to never compromise, and the goals it will have to set for its future. Undoubtedly, Davis possessed the skills necessary to make a persuasive public argument. It is precisely because Davis’s oratory skills were so powerful that there’s room to pass judgement on how he used them. In short, being a great orator is not synonymous with successful rhetorical leadership.
Atchison posits that Davis’s initial successes constrained his rhetorical options later in the war. A War of Words concludes that, in any case, Davis’s rhetorical leadership used to be a failure because he used to be unable to articulate a coherent Confederate identity in light of the sacrifices endured by the populace in an effort to sustain the war effort.
A lot of biographies of Jefferson Davis have been penned; then again, until now, there had been no substantive analysis of his public discourse as president of the Confederacy. R. Jarrod Atchison’s A War of Words uses concepts from rhetorical theory and public address to help answer a question that has intrigued scholars from a number of disciplines since the collapse of the Confederacy: what role, if any, did Davis play in the collapse of Confederate nationalism?
Most discussions of Davis and nationalism focus on the military outcomes of his controversial wartime decisions. A War of Words focuses less on military outcomes and argues instead that, in the context of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis’s rhetorical leadership will have to have been responsible for articulating a vision for the nation—including the core tenets of its identity, the values the nation will have to hold dear, the principles it will have to never compromise, and the goals it will have to set for its future. Undoubtedly, Davis possessed the skills necessary to make a persuasive public argument. It is precisely because Davis’s oratory skills were so powerful that there’s room to pass judgement on how he used them. In short, being a great orator is not synonymous with successful rhetorical leadership.
Atchison posits that Davis’s initial successes constrained his rhetorical options later in the war. A War of Words concludes that, in any case, Davis’s rhetorical leadership used to be a failure because he used to be unable to articulate a coherent Confederate identity in light of the sacrifices endured by the populace in an effort to sustain the war effort.
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