Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register (review)

Book Reviews Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register. By Bruce S. Allardice. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. x, 436 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-8262-1809-4. Civil War studies are replete with reference works of varying quality, some redundant and repetitive, some hyperspecialized and consequently of interest to only a few. Others are gems that deliver unexpected insights , revealing facts, and enticing details. Bruce Allardice has written a biographical register of Confederate colonels that fortunately has more of the latter virtues than the former vices. Allardice’s register includes a highly informative introduction that explains the process by which an individual became a colonel in the Confederate army. The Confederate government accepted volunteer regiments organized according to state law that generally provided for the election of officers, including colonels—a practice much criticized then and later. Colonels could also be appointed by governors, if state law permitted it, or by the president of the Confederacy. If a colonel was killed or otherwise incapacitated, strict seniority dictated his replacement , a policy that was later modified with the creation of boards of examination that scrutinized officers to determine if they were really capable of taking command of a full regiment. Some were appointed by dubious or questionable authorities, and Allardice has helpfully provided separate appendixes to deal with such anomalies. The profile that emerges of the men who led Confederate regiments in the vicious fighting that typified the war belies at least one longstanding assumption regarding officers. Allardice found that about 1,900 men reached the rank of colonel in the Confederate army. They tended to be young (the average age about thirty-two) and, remarkably for the era, they had some education at the college level. Before the war, men who later served as colonels were farmers, lawyers, and politicians, or some mix of those professions; the majority of them lived in older southern states. Casualties among colonels were heavy, with 252, or 16 percent, killed or mortally wounded in action. Most interestingly, Allardice argues that it is a myth that Confederate regiments were led by inexperienced military amateurs prone to blunders . His review of the extensive biographical material suggests that in fact many of the colonels had some previous military experience, and T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 298 regiments led by colonels without military training often had subordinate officers with military know-how. The specific nature of that experience varied a great deal: more attended private military academies other than West Point; state militia and Mexican War veterans outnumbered those with regular army experience; and a number of colonels had been naval officers who transferred to the army. Allardice also found colonels who had attended West Point and not graduated, which nonetheless gave them a degree of familiarity with military tactics and manners. The biographical entries are pithy yet informative, replete with the usual birth and death dates as well as important events in the lives of the colonels before, during, and after the war. For example, the postwar accomplishments of William C. Oates, commander of the Fifteenth Alabama and later a congressman and governor, are noted in his biography . Fascinating details emerge on the life of John F. Marshall, before the war chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, who may have used his friendship with Jefferson Davis to secure his appointment as colonel of the Fourth Texas regiment. The hardscrabble men of the Fourth resented the appointment and tried to force Marshall out. Perhaps in an effort to win their loyalty and affection, Marshall led from the front and was killed leading a charge at Gaines’ Mill, Virginia. The entries lack source citations, which would have been immensely helpful to scholars, but space restrictions most likely prevented Allardice from including that material. Bruce Allardice has written a reference work that is useful, informative, and challenges at least one misconception regarding southern officers in the war. DAN MONROE Millikin University Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation. By Michael Bieze. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. viii, 285 pp. $32.95. ISBN 978-1-4331-0010...