Confederate General William Dorsey Pender: The Hope of Glory by Brian Steel Wills (review)

In his latest work, Brian Steel Wills, who has previously authored biographies on Nathan Bedford Forrest and George Thomas, masterfully returns to biography and does not disappoint in this new exploration of William Dorsey Pender. Pender graduated from West Point in 1854, nineteenth out of forty-six in a class that included J. E. B. Stuart, Custis Lee, Oliver O. Howard, and Stephen D. Lee. Following graduation, Pender was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned to the Second Artillery Regiment in Florida. Finding that assignment boring, he transferred to the dragoons and subsequently saw service on the frontier in California and Washington.

In 1861, Pender resigned his United States Army commission and offered his services to the Confederacy, which commissioned him as a captain of artillery. His first assignments included covertly expediting recruits to Confederate forces from Baltimore. Eventually made lieutenant colonel of North Carolina troops, Pender trained new recruits. Accepting command of the 13th North Carolina, he subsequently commanded the 6th North Carolina. His regiment first saw combat during the 1862 Peninsula campaign, including engagements at Seven Pines, Mechanicsville, and Gaines Mill. Shortly afterward, he commanded a brigade in Gen. A. P. Hill’s Light Division and fought at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

In the Army of Northern Virginia reorganization following the death of Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, A. P. Hill received command of a corps, and Pender assumed command of the Light Division, though he only led this unit for a short time. On July 2, 1863, at Gettysburg, Pender received his fifth wound of the war when a shell fragment badly damaged his thigh. Repairs to the artery in his leg proved futile and necessitated its amputation. Despite these efforts, Pender died in Staunton, Virginia, on July 18, 1863.

Wills extensively uses a large collection of surviving letters from Pender to his wife to construct his narrative. In doing so, he successfully provides a perspective of Pender otherwise unseen. For example, Wills successfully demonstrates Pender’s ambitious nature and need for approval in the eyes of others, especially his wife. Frequently telling her of compliments he received from senior officers and sending her clippings of newspaper articles that mentioned his men, Pender took delight in showing her that he maintained the esteem of others. He continually recounted his manly virtues as he looked to his next promotion. He saw the appearance and discipline of his men during drill and its performance in battle as a reflection upon himself. This attitude also manifested itself in the way Pender carried himself in battle: leading from the front, he maintained a cool and calm demeanor in combat, which others observed.

The author also portrays Pender as a man of his time. He shows that Pender maintained attitudes of slavery not necessarily inconsistent with his white southern male contemporaries. He exhibited a paternalistic attitude toward the institution, in which slaves were viewed as childlike and constantly in need of guidance, and sometimes punishment, from their masters. Moreover, Wills effectively conveys that Pender’s paternalism also extended to his own wife and family. He assumed that she constantly needed his advice on financial matters and lectured her on the wants of their children and servants. Sometimes inconsiderate of his wife, he bragged to her of flirtations with other women and often expressed his hope that she was not pregnant, and once he even shared his relief at her miscarriage.

Nevertheless, Wills successfully depicts Pender as a devoted husband and father. He particularly demonstrates this trait with discussion of Pender’s embrace of religion. Just as he sought the approval of others in life, he worried about the same in his afterlife too. Heavily influenced by his wife, Pender received baptism in the Episcopal Church in front of his assembled men and demonstrated a strong religious faith until his death.

Throughout the volume, Wills falls into the trap that many biographers do...