The Commanders: Civil War Generals Who Shaped the American West by Robert M. Utley (review)

George A. Custer is not here, nor are Phil Sheridan and William T. Sherman. Custer was not a general; Sherman and Sheridan held high-level desk jobs in the East. Robert Utley’s western commanders, all major generals in the Civil War, now brigadier generals, held department positions in the Divisions of the Missouri and the Pacific. They are, in alphabetical order, Christopher C. Auger, George Crook, Oliver O. Howard, Nelson A. Miles, Edward O. C. Ord, John Pope, and Alfred H. Terry.

Robert Utley remains the foremost authority on the military history of the nineteenth-century West. He’s been at it for more than fifty years. He has written sixteen books on the subject, including biographies of Custer, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo. Much of the western combat detail in The Commanders is reprised from his earlier works, especially Frontiersmen in Blue (1967) and Frontier Regulars (1973). Here he opens with the Civil War experiences of his seven subjects.

Utley’s task is to evaluate these seven generals on the basis of their abilities and accomplishments, and to rank them in order of their achievements. This is by no means a simple task; there seem to be more differences among them than operational similarities. Some (Auger, Crook, Ord) had served in the West before the Civil War; for the rest, fighting Indians was a strange new experience. Some had positive Civil War reputations; others had been dogged by poor performances. Some (Auger, Pope, Ord) devised strategy from departmental headquarters and let subordinates carry it out; others took the field to direct tactical operations. Four—Auger, Crook, Howard, and Ord—headed the Department of the Platte, headquartered in Omaha. Some enjoyed the support of their superiors Sheridan and Sherman, and even Ulysses S. Grant; others labored under scorn and criticism. Only two, Auger and Terry, lack solid biographies; only two others, Miles and Terry, lacked a West Point education. Only one, George Crook, “grasped the essentials of Indian warfare.” All balanced sympathy for the plight of Native Americans with their military duty to subdue them, which, en toto, after twenty-five years, they did.

Separate chapters on each of the seven generals cause some chronological jumbling. Several subordinate soldiers cry for more coverage: Major Eugene A. Carr, Lieutenant Charles P. Gatewood, and Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie among them. Utley succeeds in a judicious ranking of the effectiveness of the seven men. No spoiler alert here: the results are available only to the reader. For those who would argue instead of agree, let the debate begin. History will be advanced, and Robert Utley will approve.