"Besides his illustrious name, Jefferson Columbus Davis, who fought for the Union, is best known for two appalling actions: the September 1862 murder of General William "Bull" Nelson - his former commanding officer - and the abandonment of hundreds of African American refugees to the mercy of Confederate cavalry at Ebenezer Creek during Sherman's march through Georgia in 1864.

Historians have generally dismissed Davis (1828-1879) as a reckless assassin, a racist, a journeyman soldier at best, and an embarrassment to the Lincoln war effort. But as Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr., and Gordon D. Whitney demonstrate in the first biography of the unredeemed general, such smoke of notoriety obscures the real story of a complex military leader.".

"Hughes and Whitney bring order to the muddle of contradictions that was Davis's life and offer an impartial profile of the soldier and the man. They describe his distinctive service in the Mexican War at the age of eighteen, his role in the regular army's First Artillery attack on Fort Sumter, and his subsequent rapid advancement to general officer.

Although Davis's sensational killing of Nelson - for which he was never tried - undoubtedly damaged his career, he continued to command divisions in all the major engagements of the Army of Cumberland from Murfreesboro to Atlanta and quite capably led George Thomas's Fourteenth Corps during Sherman's March to the Sea and the Carolinas campaign. As the authors show, he was venerated by professional military men even as he was vilified by civilians."--BOOK JACKET.