The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government is a book written by Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Davis wrote the book as a straightforward history of the Confederate States of America and as an apologia for the causes that he believed led to and justified the American Civil War. Most of the book was written at Beauvoir, the Biloxi, Mississippi home where he lived as a guest of novelist Sarah Ellis Dorsey and which she later leased and eventually bequeathed to him. He was assisted by several people in its formulation, most notably his wife, Varina, his secretary Major W.T. Walthall, and Mrs. Dorsey, and corresponded voluminously with surviving Confederate statesmen and generals including Judah Benjamin and Jubal Early for fact checking and details on key issues, though it is believed that the writing of the book was done primarily by Davis himself.

- Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.