The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow

Foreword to the Paperback Edition

Foreword to the Paperback Edition Contradictions in the lives of public figures make for fascinating biographical studies. Many famous individuals have overcome personal imperfections and lapses of judgment to be praised and honored in history books because of the counterweight of their positive accomplishments. Gideon Johnson Pillow was both talented and accomplished. By the mid-nineteenth century he was a wealthy planter with enough acres and slaves to rank him among the wealthiest Tennesseans. He was well positioned for success too. His work as an attorney gave him access to powerful friends that included governors , senators, and presidents. He was also a part-time soldier, serving in the state militia and as a general officer in the Mexican War and Civil War, and it was in those two conflicts that Pillow made a lasting mark. Unfortunately, it was a bad mark, and as a result he had the label “incompetent” draped around his neck like a millstone. Pillow’s arrogance and inexperience brought about errors in judgment that his accomplishments were never able to overcome. Because he was such a prominent citizen, his foibles foisted him into the limelight in a way that he never intended, publicly disgracing him. His contemporaries caricatured him. William T. Sherman thought Pillow “a mass of vanity, conceit, [and] ignorance.” At Fort Donelson in 1862, Ulysses S. Grant said that, based on his knowledge of the Tennessean from the Mexican War, he expected to be able to “march up to within gunshot” of entrenchments that Pillow defended. Historians have treated Pillow no better. In his book on the Mexican War, K. Jack Bauer wrote that to discuss Pillow’s association with President James K. Polk “was to sum up his military talents.” In his assessment of Confederate generals from Tennessee, Thomas L. Connelly put Pillow in the category of incompetent troublemaker. John C. Waugh wrote simply that Pillow had “no discernible military talents.” AndsoitwasthatNathanielCheairsHughesJr.andRoyP.Stonesifer Jr. set out to provide a truly objective study of the controversial and maligned man. They hoped that, by writing a balanced account that gave equal attention to Pillow’s successes as well as his failures, they might provide a corrective to the one-sided criticisms typically xii : Foreword to the Paperback Edition leveled against him. Their efforts bore fruit with the publication of The Life and Wars of Gideon J. Pillow in 1993. Historians who reviewed the first edition for scholarly journals generally praised the authors for their work while continuing the condemnation of their subject. “The book is exhaustively researched and engagingly written,” wrote Brian Wills in The Journal of American History. He recognized the authors’ ambitious attempt to rehabilitate Pillow’s reputation, but in the end Wills concluded that Pillow’s reputation “defies” rehabilitation. Lynda Lasswell Crist used the following terms in her review for The Journal of Southern History: “fine biography,” “excellent study of Tennessee politics,” and “thought-provoking,” before reminding the reader that Pillow was his own worst enemy. The American Historical Review published James A. Ramage’s review, in which he acknowledged that Hughes and Stonesifer had written a “balanced study of Pillow that supersedes the traditional caricature of him as a buffoon.” James Lee McDonough started his review for The Arkansas Historical Quarterly sympathetically—“This must have been a difficult biography to write”—then went on to commend the authors “for their willingness to wrestle with such a complex and frustrating subject.” In each case, reviewers acknowledged the value of the book and its contributions to our understanding of Pillow and his times even as they lamented the man’s defective character and flawed career. Lost in the controversy surrounding Gideon Pillow is the truth that he was a man of tremendous energy, rare talent, and great organizational skills. He was a gifted attorney, a first-rate farmer, an innovator , and a man of considerable political influence. It is this lost Pillow that Hughes and Stonesifer sought to uncover, and to accomplish their goal they conducted extensive and painstaking research. Rarely do historical accounts benefit from the level of research evidenced in this book. The authors examined almost three hundred unpublished manuscript collections in twenty-six states plus the District of Columbia as well as 144 published primary sources and 393 secondary sources. In addition, they consulted dozens of government document collections, forty-four newspapers, and conducted several interviews. By casting a broad net, the authors uncovered virtually every piece of information bearing on their subject, and the results allowed the reader...