Civil War to the Bloody End: The Life and Times of Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman (review)

Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman, and the other headliners of the Civil War have for years received the majority of attention from historians. This commitment of ink and paper is both understandable and justified; nevertheless, the various armies' corps commanders, the rather anonymous men who had a more intimate hand in directing battles, deserve a larger if not more prominent place on the bookshelf. Jerry Thompson's account of Union general Samuel Heintzelman's life illuminates the experiences of just such a commander. Thoroughly grounded in archival and other primary sources, Civil War to the Bloody End recounts the aspirations of a competent, honorable man who nevertheless lacked the fortitude and determination to command successfully at the highest level.

Heintzelman, the product of pragmatic Pennsylvania Lutheran stock, began his career at West Point, graduating in the top half of the 1826 class. During the next three decades, he accumulated considerable military experience in Mexico, Texas, and the southwest territories. A fifty-five year old major when the Civil War began, Heintzelman was poised to play a leading role in the conflict between North and South.

Commanding the Third Division at the First Battle of Bull Run, Heintzelman survived both a battlefield wound and the subsequent criticisms surrounding the Union defeat. Thereafter, he assumed command of the Army of the Potomac's newly created III Corps, which he led throughout the Peninsula Campaign where his great personal courage was tempered by mediocre tactical skills. The senior officer on the field in the fight at Seven Pines, Heintzelman wanted to advance on Richmond. He even went over the head of George McClellan to appeal, without success, to Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. A combination of army politics and his own occasional indecisiveness led to his relief as corps commander in 1862 after Second Bull Run, but he remained in the army to command the defenses of Washington, supervise prison camps, ride herd on Copperheads in the Midwest, and administer postwar Reconstruction in Texas, where the population carried on decidedly unreconstructed. Forced to retire from the army in 1869, Heintzelman lived another eleven years fighting with veterans through published accounts over competing memories of past battles.

Thompson's portrait of Heintzelman shows us not only the general but a husband, father, theater lover, and speculator in silver mines. Approximately one third of the book recounts Heintzelman's life before and after the Civil War, but the greatest weight is given appropriately to the war years. Thompson might have expanded on his analysis to describe the significance of Heintzelman to the war's progress and outcome. How important was his contribution to the Federal war effort? Did he hinder or accelerate Union victory? Such questions aside, Thompson's work reminds us that despite their relative anonymity and spotty war records, if for no reason other than the number of troops they led, corps commanders such as Heintzelman were important if not the marquee leaders in fighting the Civil War.