Against the Grain: Colonel Henry M. Lazelle and the U.S. Army by James Carson (review)

In Against the Grain, James Carson crafts a detailed account of the nineteenth-century United States Army officer Col. Henry M. Lazelle. As the colonel’s great-grandson, Carson grew up fascinated with the tales of his ancestor, and he employs his skills as a former military officer and analyst to delve deeper into the story. In many respects Lazelle’s experiences were typical of the period as he served in far-flung western posts, completed the variety of tasks assigned to the regulars, and lamented the slow, seniority-based promotion system. However, Carson posits that Lazelle’s individualism and clashes with authority made him decidedly different. Civil society with its notions of democracy praised such characteristics, but in the hierarchical army Lazelle’s temperament caused him to overstep his bounds and occasionally embroiled him in public scandal.

Born in 1832 in Enfield, Massachusetts, Lazelle brought an independent streak with him to West Point, where his numerous demerits and poor grades delayed his education a year. Upon graduation in 1855, he arrived in Texas at Fort Bliss, where he scouted with Kit Carson and sustained a grievous chest wound fighting the Apaches. He then joined the other federal forces captured in Texas with the onset of secession. After being paroled to the North, he took command as colonel of a volunteer cavalry company that fought Mosby’s Rangers as it safeguarded Washington, D.C., before resuming his position in the regular army at the conflict’s close.

Carson’s strongest examples of Lazelle’s rebelliousness and tendency to court negative press center on his tenure at West Point and two years in charge of the compilation of the War of the Rebellion series. In 1879, Lazelle became the only five-year man to return to West Point as Commandant of Cadets. One morning, he discovered one of the academy’s first black cadets, Johnson Whittaker, bound and bloodied in his room. Lazelle questioned the white students and quickly concluded that Whittaker fabricated the attack. A formal court martial exonerated Whittaker, and public opinion turned against Lazelle, who then resisted the reform efforts of the new superintendent, periodically refused to follow orders, and shared disparaging comments about his superior. A year before his tour ended, the army transferred him to remote Fort Craig in New Mexico. Lazelle faced similar scorn, damage to his reputation, and transfer when he was wrongly accused of falsifying documents included in the official records of the Civil War.

When compared with the legendary bellicosity of officers like Winfield Scott or Nelson Miles, Carson’s assertions that Lazelle’s denigration of commanders and his battle with the academy superintendent were unusual in the army appear overstated. Nonetheless, Carson has produced a readable text punctuated with amusing anecdotes and insights that strengthen the larger historiography on the old army, including the first account of the Whittaker case from Lazelle’s point of view. Those interested in the Civil War or memory studies will also find his discussion of the creation of the conflict’s premier primary source an intriguing example of the politics surrounding remembrance.