A Life of Albert Pike (review)

244CIVIL WAR HISTORY by numerous observations by contemporaries, assessments by historians, and the familiar secondary literature on the Army of Northern Virginia. Even thorough research and an admirable attempt to place their subjects in context, however , cannot make these books succeed either as popular or scholarly biographies. Neither Swisher's nor Woodward's prose ever breathes life into their subjects as men or soldiers, and their all-too-brief analyses are not convincing arguments for Jenkins's or Imboden's lasting significance. If these men do indeed deserve book-length biographies—and it might reasonably be argued that scholarship would be better served by tightly-focused articles instead—they remain to be written. J. Tracy Power South Carolina Department of Archives and History A Life ofAlbert Pike. By Walter Lee Brown. (Fayetteville: University ofArkansas Press, 1997. Pp. 610. $48.00.) Albert Pike (1 809-1 891) is one of the most important minor characters of the nineteenth century. First, there was his literary fame. This native New Englander gained prominence as the first American poet to be recognized abroad. Next he became a respected contributor to the South-West school of writers, a bucolic poet, and a Western humorist. After his poetic muse degenerated into Victorian platitudes, he became the great synthesizer of Masonic philosophy with the publication of Morals and Dogma ofthe Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. ... (188 1). But Pike was more. After teaching school for a short time in Arkansas, he became a Little Rock newspaper editor and leading figure in the Whig party, helped organize the Know-Nothing party, switched to the Democrats, became one of the richest lawyers in America, and had a curious career in the Civil War. It is his role as a Confederate general which has kept Pike's name alive. This once staunch Unionist came to embrace Southern sectionalism, and in 1861 he first negotiated treaties between the Confederacy and the tribes of Indian territory and then assumed command in theTerritory. When his Indian troops fought in the Battle of Pea Ridge (March 7-8, 1 862) and were accused of committing atrocities on the dead and wounded, Pike became the center of a long-lived controversy that clouded his national reputation. Confederate military historians did him no favors, either. Although Pike played only a minor role in the "Gettysburg ofthe West," he has long been a convenient scapegoat for the Confederate loss, smeared mostly, it would seem, because of his past role as a poet. Pike deserves to be better known in the annals of the Confederacy for his quarrels, first with General Thomas C. Hindman, who interfered in Pike's departmental affairs, and then with General Theopolis H. Holmes, which culminated in a full-blown civil liberties controversy that seriously weakened the Confederacy in the west. After the war Pike practiced law in Washington. Notable cases included Texas v. White (1869), where his extensive brief argued book reviews245 persuasively the theory that Texas had lost its statehood by its act of secession. His last years were spent working for the Masons. Walter L. Brown's dissertation, nearly fifty years old and hard to find, has long been the standard source for studying all of the angles of Pike's career. An old-fashioned, life and times study, it offers few psychological insights into the career of man much given to 1 80 degree shifts. An enthusiastic Confederate who was arrested for treason, a Know-Nothing who abandoned the party on the eve of the 1 856 election, and a Whig who left them at a critical time, Pike was a large, morose, brooding, and often unhappy person whose devoted friends were matched by those for whom his name was anathema. This volume will not settle the issue of who Albert Pike was, but it will, for the first time, detail what and where he was, which, because he happened to be on the main stage ofAmerican history at some very critical times, is an event of considerable importance. The book is illustrated by pictures of Pike and his contemporaries and contains a list of related publications that appeared in book or pamphlet form. Michael B. Dougan Arkansas...