Booknotes: Wolford's Cavalry

New Arrival:
• Wolford's Cavalry: The Colonel, the War in the West, and the Emancipation Question in Kentucky by Dan Lee (Potomac Bks, 2016).

This is the second book (the first being Ronald Blair's Wild Wolf) to appear within a year that examines the life and Civil War career of Frank Wolford, the colonel of the First Kentucky Cavalry who forged a distinguished combat record with the Union Army but clashed with the administration over emancipation (an opposition that led to arrests and charges of disloyalty that eventually forced him out of the army). From the description: "Although his military record established him as one of the most vigorous, courageous, and original commanders in the cavalry, Wolford’s later reputation suffered. Dan Lee restores balance to the story of a crude, complicated, but talented man and the unconventional regiment he led in the fight to save the Union. Placing Wolford in the context of the political and cultural crosscurrents that tore at Kentucky during the war, Lee fills out the historical picture of 'Old Roman Nose.'"