Theater of a Separate War: The Civil War West of the Mississippi River, 1861–1865 by Thomas W. Cutrer (review)

Veteran Civil War historian Thomas W. Cutrer has written an important study of the trans-Mississippi theater that will take its rightful place alongside Robert L. Kerby’s Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (1972) as the standard monographs on the conflict west of the Mississippi River. Theater of a Separate War is primarily, though not exclusively, a military history that covers the entire war and both Union and Confederate perspectives. Arguably the strength of the book is the author’s compelling case for the significance of the trans-Mississippi region in general and of the wartime events that took place there. Cutrer musters substantial evidence to demonstrate the productivity of the region in terms of cotton, sugar, food crops, and livestock, and argues forcefully for the significance of certain battles and campaigns. The states and territories of the theater provided considerable numbers of recruits to Union and Confederate armies on both sides of the river. The Texas border with Mexico presented diplomatic opportunities for the Confederacy and challenges for the Union, while the goldfields of Colorado and the lure of the Pacific Ocean raised at least the possibility of Confederate westward expansion. Although Cutrer does not emphasize this, his book documents the extensive service of Native American soldiers in the region and reminds readers that the trans-Mississippi theater witnessed some of the earliest combat service of black troops. Moreover, the ferocity of the war west of the river, the scale of guerrilla violence, and Federal attempts to suppress their actions make the war in the trans-Mississippi an important avenue of scholarship for historians interested in the intersection of home front and battlefield.

As the book’s title suggests, Cutrer considers the important wartime events in the trans-Mississippi theater essentially a separate war. On this point he echoes earlier historians and even most wartime observers. The vast theater was isolated by Confederate administrative decisions as much as by the Federal capture of the great river. Union and Confederate officials employed vastly different command structures for the region, with Federal armies divided between northern and southern forces able to coordinate their efforts to open the Mississippi River, while the river itself strictly divided Confederate commands. Although certain Federal leaders recognized the potential importance of the trans-Mississippi theater with regard to military strategy and political implications for Reconstruction, Cutrer argues that Confederate leadership in Richmond generally failed to appreciate the value of the area and regarded it as a distinct region from the earliest days of the war. Cutrer points to numerous other factors that distinguished the theater as the site of a separate conflict. These include the lack of a strategic focal point, smaller armies with less-than-glamorous service, and self-conscious soldiers, officers, and government officials who were aware of their second-class status in the public imagination.

Several of the book’s twenty-three chapters traverse familiar but important ground, including Pea Ridge, Prairie Grove, Arkansas Post, Milliken’s Bend, and the Red River campaign. Other chapters add depth of coverage and make insightful scholarly contributions through extensive examination of events in Indian Territory at different stages of the war, various Federal attempts to invade Texas, and developments in Kansas and Missouri beyond the typical summary of the war’s earliest days. Throughout the military narrative, despite the notion of a separate war west of the river, Cutrer demonstrates that trans-Mississippi soldiers on both sides frequently fought with skill and determination equal to that of their comrades to the east. Moreover, Cutrer shows that soldiers in the eastern and western theaters varied in their perceptions of trans-Mississippi troops and their service. Those who served in more famous battles and campaigns did not necessarily dismiss the contributions of their comrades in the Far West.

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