Review - "Richmond Views the West: Politics and Perceptions in the Confederate Capital" by Larry Daniel

[Richmond Views the West: Politics and Perceptions in the Confederate Capital by Larry Daniel (University Press of Kansas, 2025). Hardcover, 3 maps, photos, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xviii,267/359. ISBN:978-0-7006-4010-2. $49.99]

Over the past four decades or so, a flood of western-themed Civil War books authored by professional and avocational historians alike has strongly challenged the eastern theater focus of previous generations and progressively redressed imbalances in content and interpretation. At this point in time, even many obscure corners of the Trans-Mississippi Theater have received strong attention in the literature. While military history book sales and publishing still reveals widest reader interest in the epic contest between the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, it can no longer be maintained that the war's western theater is still neglected or un(der)appreciated. But how did contemporary Civil War Richmonders, whose attention was naturally absorbed to a great degree by the war fought on their own doorstep but who nevertheless closely followed the many military events and disasters occurring elsewhere, see the West as events there were unfolding? That is the overarching theme of Larry Daniel's Richmond Views the West: Politics and Perceptions in the Confederate Capital, which revisits a well-studied chain of decisions and events spanning the entire war but does so from a freshly targeted point of view.

For the purposes of his study, Daniel defines the Confederate "West" as the Trans-Mississippi (Arkansas, Texas, and most of Louisiana) and Heartland (Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, most of Georgia, and the cis-Mississippi slice of Louisiana) regions together. That vast West also takes into account the Missouri and Kentucky state governments in exile (each officially recognized by the CSA with political representatives integrated into both houses of the Confederate Congress).

An inescapable factor that greatly affected Richmond's knowledge and perceptions of the war in the West was the extreme distances involved. In discussing state of the art mid-nineteenth century communications, it is commonly expressed in the Civil War literature how far the telegraph and railroad went in tempering the twin tyrannies of time and distance. However, Daniel's study amply demonstrates how persistent that challenge was for the Richmond government when it came to not only the very distant and isolated Trans-Mississippi Department but the far better connected western theater as well. Communications were slow and unfounded rumor rife, with the fastest and most accurate (at least in the near term) news coming from northern newspapers. It could take many weeks for accurate information about the progress and results of a major western campaign or battle to reach the capital. For example, as Daniel explains, for more than a month after Fort Donelson the Davis government and the country at large did not know with any degree of truth how many soldiers surrendered there. These vast gaps in transmitting critical information played a major part in hindering the central government's ability to react in reasonable and timely fashion to rapidly evolving strategic situations, be they opportunities for successful countermoves or responses to disaster. Fragmented and outright false information that reached Richmond from the West also affected how Davis's high-level military appointments were perceived, be they ones drawing mixed opinion such as Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard or near universally despised ones such as John C. Pemberton and Theophilus Holmes. A particularly interesting surprise was how highly, and for how long, Richmond elites championed Missouri's Sterling Price for bigger and better command roles in the war.

On the other hand, when information from distant western military operations did arrive swiftly it was often wildly inaccurate, proclaiming great victories that were in fact either abject defeats from beginning to end or battles ultimately lost after promising initial tactical success (the latter including key battles such as Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Stones River). Inevitably, crushing confirmation of western defeats arrived at Richmond in due time, leaving one has to wonder whether the repeated emotional rollercoaster was far more damaging to popular morale than if the bad news was accurately (or even semi-accurately) conveyed from the outset.

Cultural factors also figure into Daniel's discussion. In some ways similar to how the French historically drew heightened cultural distinctions between Paris society and life in the surrounding regions, easterners (as represented by Richmond social and political society) viewed the West at large as the frontier when it came to cultural attainment. This affected how westerners, including President Davis and his wife, were received in the capital, at least when it came to social interaction. Less clearly outlined for the reader are what effects alleged eastern cultural chauvinism had on the perception and direction of the war in the West from Richmond. One does wonder, though, how much of the persistent high regard Richmonders held for Missouri's Sterling Price, a general no modern historian rates higher than mediocre, was based on his Virginia roots and upbringing.

In creating his narrative detailing how the faraway western war was seen and interpreted from Richmond, Daniel samples widely. In addition to the words and actions of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, his cabinet, and the West's elected representatives, Richmond newspapermen, government workers, and civilians add their own perspectives. Some very well-known individuals figure prominently throughout the book as representative opinions and attitudes for or against the Davis administration's handling of the western theater. These include senior War Department clerk John B. Jones for his government insider knowledge and Judith Maguire and Edmund Ruffin for their keen-eyed observations from the civilian sphere. Freshest voices are found in the words of a great many Trans-Mississippi and Heartland elected officials from both houses of the Confederate Congress who are centered in this narrative but not featured much at all in other general histories of the war. The discordant personal and political behavior of too many of those individuals hindered Richmond's response to Union inroads in the West. Davis's revolving door series of War Department cabinet secretaries largely enter into Daniel's discussion in the context of their personally frustrating lack of autonomy when it came to the decision-making process. However, it is also claimed that George Randolph, who briefly occupied the position from March to November 1862, packed the War Department with fellow Virginians, many of whom were relations, creating a bureaucratic bloc that continued to exert Virginia-centric influence long after the secretary himself resigned from office.

In a rare moment of critical self-reflection, Jefferson Davis came to realize that his initial national cordon defense strategy was unrealistic for defending the vast West, but by late 1862 the damage was already done and it was disastrous (perhaps fatal). That and the focus on defending fixed strategic points against combined Union army and naval might, a risky practice culminating in the twin catastrophes of Vicksburg and Port Hudson in July 1863, was allowed to persist for far too long. In Daniel's view, western politics and politicians played a large part in this. Petty jealousies, internecine squabbling, and fervent opposition to presidential policy was a part of both sides during the Civil War, but Daniel contends that the Confederacy's western gubernatorial, House, and Senate demagoguery and parochial political culture contributed to a highly damaging hamstringing of Davis when it came to strategic freedom in allocating limited military resources where they could do the most good for the war effort at large. Fierce divisions within the Richmond capitol press over the direction of the war in the West, often expressed with rhetoric profoundly antagonistic toward the administration, also contributed much in the way of making it more difficult for Davis to make strategic and personnel-related decisions divorced enough from political considerations to remain militarily sound.

In tracing the path to Confederate defeat in the Civil War's western and trans-Mississippi theaters, Larry Daniel's Richmond Views the West follows a familiar pattern and narrative of events, but, in framing its view of those circumstances and decisions involved with them exclusively through a distant lens situated at the seat of power, this study offers a unique perspective deserving of standalone treatment. That the Richmond government based its distant direction of the war in the West on a partial and all too often warped understanding of personalities, places, and events there adds another persuasive element to the litany of other factors that together drove a progressive western collapse that ultimately doomed the Confederate national experiment.