General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable (review)

76CIVIL WAR HISTORY It has to be added immediately that this is not the author's fault. The fault is in the subject, in Bates. Bates is not the material for a good biography. He was not an exciting or complex personality, and, worse, he was not a very significant figure in his only period of prominence, in the Civil War. Lincoln put him in the Cabinet and then seems to have ignored him. By Cain's own evidence, Bates was not close to Lincoln, did not influence important decisions, and did not always even control the disposition of legal matters. Still, Cain strives to invest Bates with meaning; Bates was a "transitional figure" between two Americas, the older, simpler America of the Jacksonian era, and the new, industrial age. But, as the author makes plain, Bates did not understand at all the new society that was coming into being and did not want to live in it. He would have done better to depict Bates as an example of the conservatism of the border states, a conservatism that could perceive little and hence could control nothing. T. Harry Williams Louisiana State University General William J. Hardee: Old Reliabh. By Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Pp. ix, 329. $8.50.) This is a sound and scholarly biography of one of the Confederacy's most illustrious military men, Lieutenant General William J. Hardee. Mr. Hughes concludes that Hardee was an outstanding corps commander, but that he fell short of greatness primarily because of two reasons. One of these was a failure of will, which caused him to shy away from large responsibilities. When at a critical point in his career he was being considered for the position of commander of the Army of Tennessee, he withdrew his name, saying: "I feel I can be more useful as a Corps Commander than [as] the Commander of the Army." Even as a corps commander, Hardee's usefulness was limited, believes Hughes, by an unyielding faith in conventional military doctrines which unsuited him to certain Civil War tactics. His career before the Civil War—particularly as a student at the French Royal Cavalry School at Saumur , France; as the author of the Army's manual on tactics; and as the Commandant of Cadets at West Point—had steeped him in the principles of maneuver and mobility. Though these principles would later prevail again in World War II, thus ironically making Hardee something of a modem soldier out of season, they would not solve the problems which he faced in opposing the Union armies in Tennessee and Georgia. He never became adept at trench warfare. Yet the author shows that within the limits of Hardee's own military concepts he was a superb trainer of troops and a combat leader of high competence and courage; that he deserved the tribute paid him by his men in the sobriquet "Old Reliable." He was a match for his opponents BOOKREVIEWS77 in many of the fiercest battles of the West, including Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, and Atlanta; he saved the Army of Tennessee from destruction after the disaster of Missionary Ridge; he skillfully extricated his meager forces from Savannah as Sherman closed in upon the city; and in North Carolina he waged a stubborn delaying action against Sherman that enabled Joseph E. Johnston to concentrate his troops for a last futile engagement at Bentonville. The lack of substantial quantities of Hardee's personal letters and papers has forced Hughes to rely principally upon official records, which he has employed with diligence and good judgment. His treatment of the more controversial aspects of Hardee's military career—such as his role in the removal of Bragg as commander of the Army of Tennessee after Missionary Ridge, and the accusations of failure brought against Hardee by General Hood after the Atlanta campaign—are sympathetic to Hardee, yet judicious and restrained. An abundance of official records has enabled Mr. Hughes to produce an excellent portrait of Hardee the general, but the shortage of personal papers has somewhat constricted the portrait of Hardee the man. Mr. Hughes is not to be blamed for this lack of personal...