A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray (review)

Despite Joseph Wheeler's significance as a cavalry commander in the Civil War's western theater, he has not been the subject of a book-length biography since John P. Dyer's "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler appeared in 1941. Edward Longacre's new biography focuses on "Fighting Joe's" career in the Confederate army and the U.S. Army in the Spanish-American War. Longacre, the author of numerous books on cavalry operations in the eastern theater of the Civil War, offers a largely objective analysis of Wheeler's military service. Joseph Wheeler has been a controversial figure among historians who write about the Confederate army of Tennessee. Some, including Thomas Connelly and Peter Cozzens, have been harshly critical. Others, such as Albert Castel and David Evans, believe he was a capable and experienced officer.

Wheeler, a West Point graduate who saw service in the U.S. Dragoons and Mounted Rifles before the Civil War, experienced a meteoric rise in rank during his first eighteen months in the Confederate army. After serving as an artillery lieutenant and commanding an infantry regiment at Shiloh, Wheeler led a cavalry brigade in the 1862 Kentucky campaign. During the withdrawal of Gen. Braxton Bragg's troops from Kentucky in October 1862, Wheeler and his men successfully defended the rear of the retreating southern army. Bragg, who admired Wheeler's abilities and professional demeanor, promoted the twenty-six-year-old Georgian to command the cavalry corps of the Army of the Mississippi, later the Army of Tennessee.

Longacre rightfully argues that Wheeler was at his best when defending the rear of the Confederate army during its numerous withdrawals under Bragg and Johnston. Wheeler's offensive record, particularly while leading raids behind enemy lines, was mixed. (Longacre notes that Wheeler's last truly successful raid took place in April 1863.) In his introduction, Longacre claims that Wheeler did a "creditable job" keeping Bragg and his successors informed of enemy positions, movements, and intentions. The author subsequently contradicts himself by pointing out occasions during the Tullahoma, Chickamauga, and Atlanta campaigns when Wheeler's failures resulted in the Army of Tennessee being placed in dire situations.

Longacre makes little effort to gauge Wheeler's popular image during either the Civil War or much later in life, when he participated in the Lost Cause celebrations of the Confederacy. Wheeler clearly didn't instill the same level of devotion in his troops as did other Confederate cavalry generals, especially Nathan Bedford Forrest, but Longacre touches only briefly on this issue. He claims that Wheeler's service in the Spanish-American War "came to overshadow his accomplishments in gray, making him . . . a hero to the entire nation," but provides scant evidence to support this assertion (xiii).

While Longacre's footnotes and bibliography reflect the use of numerous manuscript collections and significant published primary and secondary sources, there are several glaring omissions. The author left untouched the antebellum U.S. Army records at the National Archives, which would have fleshed out the pre–Civil War phase of Wheeler's career and cleared up some of Longacre's questions and suppositions. Longacre also never cites Wheeler's Confederate compiled service records. He makes liberal use of the Official Records but rarely cites the printed General Orders of the Cavalry Corps or the Wheeler Papers at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. He apparently did not examine the holdings at Pond Spring, the Wheeler Home in Courtland, Alabama. These oversights and others suggest that while Longacre's A Soldier to the Last is a welcome addition to the literature on Joseph Wheeler, it is far from a definitive study of "Fighting Joe."