Reluctant Rebels: The Eleventh Texas Cavalry Regiment (review)

2007Book Reviews233 summary ofTexas's revolutionary circumstances, Powers presents in six chapters a bird's-eye understanding ofthe war at sea as he mingles commanders and missions ofall active vessels. Two chapters are devoted to the naval inquiries into Capt. Henry Thompson's loss of the Invincibleand Secretary Fisher's curious affair. Powers makes no exaggerated claims for the accomplishments of these brave men, yet one cannot dismiss his postscript assessment. Seaborne resupply, protection of coastal residents, recognition of Texas's belligerent status, and similar issues would have been more complicated without the presence of this abbreviated armada, whose total service enrollment at any one point would have numbered less than theAlamo roll call. Houston and Fisher may have collided over naval funding, but die SanJacinto victors had no misgivings about sharing battlefield spoils with their seafaring comrades. To a financially desperate navy, the army awarded $3,000 of Santa Anna's gold. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, in Texas's revolutionary struggle, so much is owed to these few. Such homage, however, must yield annually to the chants of the faithful amid renewed strife: Go Army, Beat Navy. Austin Community CollegeBob Cavendish Reluctant Rebels: TheEleventh Texas Cavalry Regiment. By Allen G. Hadey. (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill College Press, 2006. Pp. 191. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography , index. ISBN 0912172428. $31.95, cloth.) Allen Hadey's Reluctant Rebels faces the daunting challenge of finding new avenues of approach thatjustify yet another book on the American Civil War. Ostensibly , Hatley finds thatjustification by focusing on the motivations of soldiers who put aside their own misgivings about the cause ofsecession and fought valiandy for kin and country, enduring four years of hardship and struggle in pursuit of a goal for which they were not initially supportive. Hadey's subject, the Eleventh Texas Cavalry Regiment, was comprised of men from more than a dozen counties in northeastern Texas, who served with distinction from the initial border conflicts of 1861 to the last gasp of the Confederacy in the Carolinas in 1865. Hatley sets up his investigation with the fact that "about one-half of the men making up the Eleventh Texas and/or their fathers . . . voted against Texas leaving the Union and opposed the war" (p. vii) . The author proposes to inquire into how these men, who showed such dubious support for the war in its initial stages, came to serve with such enduring tenacity, engaging in numerous battles and conflicts up through die final days of the war. Unfortunately, the book's promising initial question does not match up with its content. Hadey's coverage of the Eleventh Texas, in which several of his ancestors served (as he repeatedly mentions), consists of a description of the unit's movements , the engagements it fought in, and the larger units ofwhich the regiment was a part. Utilizing official unit records and recent secondary sources, Hadey fails to provide the personal details and accounts that would illustrate how the individual soldiers reconciled their initial misgivings and trepidations and came to support the Confederate cause. He offers some evidence that the soldiers in the regiment 234Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober showed a continual concern for the protection of their homes, and that desertions often resulted when the men felt they were being mistreated by the Confederate leadership. However, this insight reveals litde that was not already known regarding soldiers serving on both sides of the war. Over the course of the work, Hadey becomes too easily distracted in describing circumstances and situations diat are irrelevant to the actions of the Eleventh Texas. What initially offered a unique view into the motivations ofa group ofConfederate soldiers becomes a standard narration of troop movements and personal feuds between senior Confederate leaders. Too often the main subject, the Eleventh Texas, drops out ofdie book's narrative, resurfacing occasionally as die author references it as taking part in movements or engagements that are covered in more effective detail by other authors. This lack ofattention reduces the main point ofinterest to such a degree that it limits the value of the entire work for both the casual reader and the professional scholar. Hadey's work shows diat there are still viable topics ofinvestigation from the Civil...