Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink: Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs from the Red River Campaigns, 1863–1864, and: Confederate Guerrilla: The Civil War Memoir of Joseph Bailey (review)

Far from Richmond, the Confederate states west of the Mississippi River proved difficult for President Jefferson Davis to defend successfully; Richmond consumed the headlines in the popular press and drained available military resources and manpower. Following the war, the Trans-Mississippi remained in relative obscurity, as most of the books written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries retained the focus on Robert E. Lee and Virginia or to a lesser extent the western theater. The problem stemmed not only from the lack of significant battles in the department, which included Arkansas, Texas, most of Louisiana, and the Indian Territory, but it also came from a more fundamental problem: the shortage of historical accounts as compared with the other regions. Troops fighting in the Trans-Mississippi often served as cavalry, and mounted Confederates, who moved frequently, often failed to carry diaries or save letters. In addition, the settled states east of the Mississippi had larger populations than the predominantly rural areas west of the river. As a result there has always been a smaller historical pool for researchers to tap, and the publication of new sources is predictably met with appreciation.

In Little to Eat and Thin Mud to Drink, general editor Gary D. Joiner has compiled in one volume a variety of significant primary accounts that describe the fighting in Louisiana. Joiner, who has written extensively on the war in this state, has brought together documents that will aid researchers who want to examine the largest combined naval and army military operation in the Trans-Mississippi. This volume will serve as an introduction to the primary sources available for writing about the Red River campaign.

Joiner has drawn on the knowledge of a number of other scholars. The chapter that includes Confederate letters enlisted the work of eleven editors; the one on Union correspondence has four (Union accounts have added much to our knowledge of Confederates in the Trans-Mississippi in recent decades). Joiner also provides ten maps, along with appendixes with an order of battle, a list of the Union’s Mississippi Squadron vessels, a timeline, and two additional diary entries.

Although it may seem that this book is not intended for the casual reader, that is not the case. Joiner’s introduction, is a summation of his years of research on these operations and a discussion of the importance of first-person narratives. The endnotes that accompany each chapter provide a wealth of additional information.

Although reminiscences and memoirs are some of the most suspect of primary resources, they are nonetheless valuable. While it is true that time softens (and alters) memory, it is also true that when these provide the only glimpse the historian has of an event, their value increases. It is then the job of the historian to separate fact from imagination and to recognize a writer’s selective memory. T. Lindsay Baker took on this daunting task in Confederate Guerrilla. Bailey, who served in the Confederate army from Arkansas, did not write his recollections of the war until 1920; a second set of typescripts emerged in 1927, and selections appeared in both Arkansas and Texas newspapers (the latter state where Bailey later relocated). In subsequent years, other versions appeared, including a paperback in the 1990s. Baker worked from the 1920 original but has indicated when there are discrepancies among the various versions.

The title of the book may mislead the reader, for this is far more than just the story of a Confederate guerrilla. Bailey joined the 16th Arkansas Infantry in 1861 and fought at Wilson Creek in Missouri; Pea Ridge in Arkansas...