Action Before Westport: 1864 (review)

310CIVIL WAR history usually after a long discussion of how McCrea was feeling at the time, what he was doing, or—even more dangerously—what thoughts "must have" been coursing through his mind. An adequate index accompanies the work, but one cannot help feeling that McCrea's recollections would have been more valuable for posterity had they appeared with less editorial manipulations. James I. Robertson, Jr. University of Montana Action Before Westport: 1864. By Howard N. Monnett. (Kansas City: Westport Historical Society, 1964. Pp. xxi, 190. $6.95.) The nation riveted its attention on Sherman's army at Atlanta and Grant's before Petersburg early in September, 1864. While it did so, plans were under way in Arkansas, on the periphery of the war, to launch the last major Confederate offensive in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. Leading twelve thousand men, one quarter of them unarmed but hoping to acquire weapons from the enemy, General Sterling Price was returning to Missouri after an absence of two and one-half years to "liberate" the state and restore to power its government-in-exile. Barring this, he, and more particularly the Confederate authorities who sent him, hoped by this cavalry raid to relieve some of the pressure against southern forces in the East The raid itself covered nearly fifteen hundred miles of Trans-Mississippi territory and encompassed forty-three separate engagements. It created panic in the Departments of Missouri and Kansas and diverted temporarily some 22,650 Federal troops from service east of the Mississippi where they were badly needed. The campaign opened with a demoralizing defeat for the Confederate force at Pilot Knob where proper planning might have brought easy victory. It reached its climax with five days of almost continuous fighting near the western border of Missouri a month later culminating in the action before Westport on October 23. Here a combined force of Kansas and Missouri militia and regular Federal troops delivered the final blow which sent Price's force reeling back down into Arkansas from whence it had come. Yet even in their success, the Union command revealed a lack of coordination between General Samuel R. Curtis and Generals Alfred Pleasonton and William S. Rosecrans that made Confederate escape possible when Price's raiders could have been completely destroyed. Tracing briefly the background of the raid and its early action in a not altogether satisfactory manner, Mr. Monnett concentrates most of his attention on the fighting from Lexington to Westport (October 19-23). This action he brings vividly to life. In so doing, he reveals a soldiery, Union and Confederate, just as courageous and as tragic as their counterparts on the much better known battlefields of the East. This study, published by the Westport Historical Society in connection with the centennial observance of the action, is the result of a lifetime of BOOK REVIEWS311 interest and study by the author. As a young man he talked with several of the surviving participants and tramped the fields of battle on many occasions. Yet his interest has gone beyond that of the local buff. A thorough researching of source materials in libraries across the country and some private collections makes this work a solid contribution to the understanding of an important peripheral action in that crucial year of 1864. The author would have greatly aided the reader not oriented to the geography of this region had he included maps showing Price's complete campaign and the immediate area of western Missouri where the final maneuvering and fighting took place. Wm. E. Parrish Westminster College The American Civil War: An English View. By Garnet Joseph Wolseley . Edited by James A. Rawley. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1964. Pp. xxxvii, 230. $5.00.) The Englishman whose view—whose many views—this book presents was the leading British soldier at the close of the nineteenth century, a chief architect of the modern British army who made military reform a byword throughout England. In a long career Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley never found a worthy foe; perhaps that was why he turned to military writing as an outlet for his energy and talents. The book is made up of three very different things. One is...