Charles Porter's Account of the Confederate Attempt to Seize Arizona and New Mexico, and: Polignac's Texas Brigade, and: Camp Ford, C.S.A.: The Story of Union Prisoners in Texas (review)

BOOK REVIEWS303 Iish sources, and also visited the Archives Nationales in France, the municipal library in Bordeaux; and in Denmark the Royal Naval Museum and the-Society for Naval History. One can quarrel with some things about the book, such as the occasionally kaleidoscopic organization: the author shakes the glass too quickly, Japan to France to England to Austria. It is possible to see here and there a flipping of note cards, material coining off the cards right onto the pages. Once in a while one senses casual writing, a willingness of this Old Civil War Hand to shove the cards aside and let 'er roll, trusting to memory for event and explanation. Stern plays with some of the old bones rattled by a dozen writers since Ephraim Adams dug them out of the British depositories. The book's virtue is to put together its massive material in readable form, and offer the speculations and judgments of a well-read and reliable student of the war. Stern has been into this material for years, has read deeply in the literature. To arrange the pieces of his narrative is for him almost second nature, like a traveler taking a fourteenth trip to Paris. He can judge easily, without having to fear he had better step with care because of some unexamined batch of papers possibly bearing on the subject. This book may not be definitive, as every year the sources of the Civil War seem to widen, but it ought to last a good long time. Robert H. Ferrell Indiana University Charles Porter's Account of the Confederate Attempt to Seize Arizona and New Mexico. Edited by Arwyn Barr. (Austin: Pemberton Press, 1964. Pp. vi, 33. $7.50.) Polignac's Texas Brigade. By Arwyn Barr. (Houston: Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association, 1964. Pp. 72. $3.00.) Camp Ford, CSA.: The Story of Union Prisoners in Texas. By F. Lee Lawrence and Robert W. Glover. (Austin: Texas Civil War Centennial Advisory Committee, 1964. Pp. xi, 99. $7.50.) No event in history has been so well recorded as the American Civil War, and still the works accumulate. In recent years the peripheral aspects of the war have been under scrutiny. Texas is such a peripheral subject. The best-known Texas military contribution was made by Hood's brigade, which salved Texas pride in Virginia. The smallest unit was Terry's Rangers, which added a splotch of frontier color in the eastern theaters. Less-known were two Texas brigades which operated west of the Mississippi. Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley's brigade of "buffalo hunters" threatened the Union cause in the Far West and Polignac's Texas Brigade campaigned in Louisiana and Arkansas. Quartermaster Sergeant Charles Porter of the 5th United States Infantry 304CI VIL WAR HISTO R Y wrote a memoir in the 1880's concerning the invasion of New Mexico Territory by Sibley's brigade. The account was not published until 1964. The editor, Ahvyn Barr, notes that Porter's memoir "does not provide much new information on the campaign." He describes it as honest but vitriolic. Porter disliked the country and its people. He was contemptuous of volunteers and certain officers. He also discounted the raw courage of the Texans, many of whom were armed only with bowie knives, squirrel guns, and lances. The campaign provides one of the many "ifs" of the war. If Sibley had been supported by the Confederate government with adequate resources for the project he might have flanked the Union and forced it to make a major commitment in the Far West Porter recognized the irony when he noted "that whilst the winning Army was tactically defeated in every engagement of any importance, its enemy was finally driven from the invaded territory utterly defeated, disheartened , and decimated." In some ways his statement could apply to the Confederate effort during the entire war. Porter's account was essentially a comment on the official reports, colored by his aging point of view. As such, it has less historical value than the original reports. Ahvyn Barr seems to specialize in obscure topics on the Civil War. Polignac's Texas Brigade is a study of one aspect of the...