Booknotes: Robert E. Lee’s Reluctant Warrior

New Arrival:

• Robert E. Lee’s Reluctant Warrior: The Life of Cavalry Commander and Railroad Businessman, Brigadier General Williams Carter Wickham by Sheridan R. Barringer (Fox Run Pub, 2024).

I'm not sure how close we are filling out the full roster of modern biographies associated with Lee's cavalry brigade commanders, but retired NASA engineer Sheridan Barringer has spent the past decade doing his part to fill in the remaining gaps. His prolific work commenced with 2016's Fighting for General Lee: Confederate General Rufus Barringer and the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade, and that was followed by Custer's Gray Rival: The Life of Confederate Major General Thomas Lafayette Rosser (2019) and Unhonored Service: The Life of Lee's Senior Cavalry Commander, Colonel Thomas Taylor Munford, CSA (2022). His latest contribution is Robert E. Lee’s Reluctant Warrior: The Life of Cavalry Commander and Railroad Businessman, Brigadier General Williams Carter Wickham.

Wickham's extensive public life embraced military service, politics, and postwar industry. From the description: "Williams Carter Wickham fought bravely for the south as a Confederate cavalry officer, finishing the war as a brigadier general. He also steadfastly opposed secession, believing that it was illegal. From a prominent Virginia family, he was a natural leader in the field and, late in the war, Confederate Congress. He rose from the rank of captain and after the war broke with his fellow generals by joining the Republican Party, urging compliance with Reconstruction. He became an organizer of railroad improvements and expansion, becoming leader of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and served in the Virginia State Senate."

In similar vein to the Munford book that preceded it, Barringer's Wickham study is a full biography. Though naturally the bulk of the book deals with Wickham's Civil War military career, additional chapters address his family history, early life, postwar activities, and death in 1888. The book has nine maps covering Wickham's battlefield exploits from First Bull Run through to his late-war entry into politics. During his active service he was elected to the Confederate Congress, and Wickham left the army (his resignation having been officially accepted in early November 1864) to take up his seat.