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

Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Thomas E. Schott have produced a third and final volume in their excellent series on Confederate generalship in the trans-Mississippi theater. The first two volumes—published in 2013 and 2015 and spearheaded by the late Arthur W. Bergeron—explore the lives of a host of Confederate generals who have collectively attracted as much criticism from some modern historians as they did from their contemporaries. Some of this critique was quite warranted indeed, but at the heart of these volumes lies a more nuanced and careful appraisal. Among the greatest strengths of all three volumes of Confederate Generals in the Trans-Mississippi is how rebel commanders on the western edge of the Confederate South are carefully placed in proper situational and political contexts. This latest installment reflects the strengths of the first two volumes splendidly by bringing eight fine essays about both well-known and obscure generals who plied their trade west of the Mississippi River. Taken as a whole, these volumes serve as yet more evidence that underscores the reality that the trans-Mississippi West, though on the geographical edge of the Confederacy, fits squarely and deservedly in the center of Civil War historiography.

The volume’s first contributions examine the motivations and careers of two examples of inept Confederate leadership west of the Mississippi River. First, General Earl Van Dorn was among the most maligned commanders of the war, especially in the trans-Mississippi theater. His wartime career path from capable administrator and effective cavalry commander in 1861 to dismal performer as army commander in 1862 reflects the complexity inherent in even the most troubled commands. Ultimately, however, Joseph G. Dawson III shows that Van Dorn’s loss at the battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, coupled by other failures, relegates the commander into the “lower one-quarter” of Confederate generals in the Confederate South (p. 25). Much like Van Dorn, General Hamilton Prioleau Bee earned an exceedingly poor reputation due to command ineptitude, albeit on a less publicized stage. As Richard H. Holloway makes clear, Bee’s poor performance in the Red River campaign—namely, his panic and retreat at Monett’s Ferry—stained his wartime career and sentenced him to years of postwar fighting to mend his status.

In sharp contrast to Van Dorn and Bee, General James Fleming Fagan, as Stuart W. Sanders contends, was among the finest Confederate generals in the trans-Mississippi. Sanders’s essay helps clarify and revive Fagan’s leadership ability. Sanders places Fagan’s missteps at Pilot Knob, Missouri, and Marks’ Mills, Arkansas, during the war—and his Republican scalawagery after it—in context of his otherwise solid leadership. Jeffery S. Prushankin similarly gives General Edmund Kirby Smith his proper due. Prushankin illuminates the corrosive nature of command politics in the trans-Mississippi by the second half of the war by examining the high hopes and ultimate despondency of one of the more promising Confederate generals. Kirby Smith’s Trans-Mississippi Department was falling to pieces by 1863. Indeed, Prushankin makes clear, the “constant demands of politicians and the carping of his subordinates,” atop gloomy prospects against the enemy, proved too much for Kirby Smith to handle and reflected the complications inherent in the Confederate command structure west of the Mississippi (p. 116).

Holloway’s second essay provides a look into the stymied career of William Robertson Boggs and his actions in Louisiana. Boggs had a great deal of potential and an impressive resume before 1861, but, as Holloway shows, the general was attached to Kirby Smith’s staff and never saw significant direct leadership until the very end of the war in Louisiana. Thomas Green had a quite different career. Curtis Milbourn...