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“The New Year . . . comes in auspiciously for us,” Jefferson Davis proclaimed in January, 1863, and indeed there were grounds for optimism within the Confederacy. By September, however, various hopes for ending the conflict with the North had given way to the harsh realities of a prolonged war, increasingly confined to southern soil. Although Davis suffered poor health during much of the nine-month period, he remained an active and vital leader. Volume 9 of The Papers of Jefferson Davis gives a vivid picture of the tasks he faced. Over 2,000 documents, many never before published, are included in Volume 9. Eighty-one are printed with annotation, 242 more in full text, and about 1,750 others are calendared in summary form. They show Davis fighting to maintain morale and military cohesion during one of the Confederacy’s most difficult periods.
Publication of The Papers of Jefferson Davis is sponsored by William Marsh Rice University and the Jefferson Davis Association, and is supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
Lynda Lasswell Crist and Mary Seaton Dix have
edited The Papers of Jefferson Davis since 1979.
Kenneth H. Williams, formerly assistant editor of
The Papers of Henry Clay, joined the staff in 1991.
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