Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Essays on America's Civil War, Volume 3 ed. by Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott (review)

Neglected by Confederate officials in Richmond, unknown by the public at large, and considered a backwater by historians, the Trans-Mississippi Theater generally gets scant treatment in examinations of the Civil War. Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi: Essays on America's Civil War highlights the region's importance not only to the war but also to the Confederate defeat. This volume, the third and final in a series, follows the same template as the previous two by highlighting prominent Rebel generals in the theater. Some of them, such as Earl Van Dorn, Edmund Kirby Smith, and Richard Taylor, should be familiar even to novice students of the war. Others, such as William Boggs, James Fagan, and John Wharton are largely unknown. Hamilton Bee, if not altogether forgotten, tends to be mistaken for his more prominent brother. Most of these men lacked meaningful talent or were unable to overcome political and military circumstances beyond their control. Yet, as the work shows, the familiar problems that plagued the Confederacy—paucity of talent at the highest levels, lack of infrastructure, and infighting—were certainly present in the Trans-Mississippi.

With one exception, each of the essays examines the Civil War experience of its subject in one of three ways: a short, yet useful biography, an examination of generalship, or a combination of the two. The first, second, and third essays are biography; the fourth and fifth fall into the second category; the sixth and seventh combine the two approaches. In the final, unique, essay, Richard H. Holloway, who penned three of the eight essays, examines Richard Taylor's famous post-war memoir, Destruction and Reconstruction (D. Appleton, 1879). Holloway highlights the "subtle inconsistencies" in Taylor's post-war version of war-time events, noting the omission of his "Herculean effort" (262) to get Confederate troops secretly across the Mississippi River to continue the fight.

The manuscript begins with quite possibly the most chronicled of all the region's generals, Earl Van Dorn. Historian Joseph G. Dawson III, while parroting past conclusions of Van Dorn as "out of his depth as an army commander" (24), still makes a deeper point about the Confederate war effort: President Jefferson Davis "too often chose or re-appointed high-ranking officers from a limited pool of generals unsuited or unfit for their assignment" (24). Further highlighting a deficiency of the Confederacy as a whole is Stuart W. Sanders's essay on James Fagan. Born in Kentucky but calling Arkansas home, Fagan was an infantryman turned cavalryman. More than capable, especially when compared to many Trans-Mississippi contemporaries, Fagan struggled to get out from under the pall of his incompetent superior. Sanders notes that this "over-shadowing" during the war and obscurity afterwards was in part due to his post-war politics (he supported Reconstruction and converted to the Republican party) and to his superior, Sterling Price. All combined to cast "a shadow of questionable repute that continues to obscure Fagan's true capabilities." (81). Similar to Fagan in obscurity and ability is John Wharton. Paul R. Scott, currently researching a much-needed update on Terry's Texas Rangers, examines this "citizen soldier." Wharton quickly rose through the cavalry ranks in the Western Theater. Personality conflicts with his superior, Joseph Wheeler, however, caused his transfer west of the Mississippi, where he was killed in April 1865 by John R. Baylor in "an affair of honor." Scott argues that Wharton "remains one of the least known Confederate cavalry generals," in part because he lacked the cavalryman's "dash and flair" and in part because he lacked acolytes to protect his memory (218).

This work is a fitting end to an already superb series. Well-written and researched, and including a very helpful appendix detailing the often confusing and convoluted Confederate command structure in the...