Confederate Generals in the Western Theater, Volume 3: Essays on America's Civil War ed. by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Arthur W. Bergeron Jr. (review)

The third volume in an ambitious project to bring greater attention to the American Civil War's campaigns in the West presents ten essays on ten Confederate generals who held commands in the South's western armies. Some of these were West Point-educated professional soldiers propelled to high positions as corps and army leaders. Others rose from relative obscurity in civilian occupations to command brigades and divisions. By examining the Civil War performances of these commanders, the editors of this prosopography aim to demonstrate why the Confederacy lost the war of rebellion. Briefly stated, they posit that the generals needed to fight and win battles in order to maintain public ardor for southern independence; but the Confederacy's western armies failed to win, and the rebellion collapsed as a result.

The useful mixture of prominent professional soldiers and obscure political appointees as subjects for the third volume suggests a subtheme. Several of the essays point to significant failures among the top professionals at the army and corps level. Timothy B. Smith and Wiley Sword blame Albert Sidney Johnston and Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, respectively, for the defeat at Shiloh. Simon Bolivar Buckner performed well in battle at Perryville in command of a large part of Braxton Bragg's army, but Stuart W. Sanders argues that Bragg erred and undermined the rebel cause by advocating the invasion of Kentucky and insisting that pro-Confederate sentiment in the commonwealth was stronger than it was. Buckner, a Kentuckian employed during the campaign to attract Kentucky recruits, grew to distrust Bragg, became his vocal critic within the army, and helped undermine Confederate unity among top commanders. Bruce S. Allardice examines West Pointer Stephen D. Lee's performance as a corps commander in battle at Ezra Church outside Atlanta and finds fault with his piecemeal attack but finds even more fault with army commander John Bell Hood for giving vague instructions to his subordinate. At the same time, several authors point to fine battlefield performances of brigade and division-level commanders like Daniel W. Adams, Joseph Finegan, William Preston, and Hiram Granbury, lesser-known officers who rose from civilian occupations. This suggests that the Confederate armies in the West featured many talented fighting commanders who marshalled their forces effectively and led decisively at critical moments in battle. Together, the essays point to a fractured and ineffectual high command providing poor leadership to the hard-fighting generals leading brigades and divisions in battle. Indeed, Allardice observes that "by 1864, once a corps commander ordered an attack, brigade and division commanders took over and about all a corps commander could then do was dispatch reserves where needed" (242). Could it be that the lack of effective command and control skills in the heat of battle among Confederate army and corps commanders in the West was a major cause of their failure? Unfortunately, there is no explicit statement of such a thesis by the editors or the essayists, but the reader comes away with the thought that the Confederate armies could have fared better were it not for their top leaders.

Also implicit in much of the analysis of battlefield and strategic actions of the Western Confederate generals is a collective jab at the leadership of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. He does not figure largely in the essays, but reading between the lines reveals a sense of neglect, bad choices, and mistaken priorities in the president's decision-making. Davis was a close friend of some of the generals under examination, while he had strained personal relations with others, which may have clouded his ability to judge their performances. The essayists and editors could be more explicit in their assessments of the critical relationship between the generals and the president. Robert I. Girardi's essay...