Review - "Henry Eustace McCulloch: Texas Ranger, Legislator, Civil War General" by David Paul Smith

[Henry Eustace McCulloch: Texas Ranger, Legislator, Civil War General by David Paul Smith (Louisiana State University Press, 2026). Hardcover, 6 maps, photos, appendix section, endnotes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xiv,216/297. ISBN:978-0-8071-8599-5. $49.95]

Brothers Henry E. McCulloch and Benjamin McCulloch inhabited closely connected frontier lives. Though both were born and raised in Tennessee, their most enduring association with place was with the Republic and later state of Texas. The pair made a living as land surveyors and were notable Indian fighters, legislators, lawmen, famed Texas Rangers, and Mexican War veterans. Enthusiastic Confederates, Ben and Henry served as brigadier generals in the Trans-Mississippi theater. Ben achieved greater heights, commanding the small army that was victorious at Wilson's Creek in August 1861 and leading the Confederate contingent of Earl Van Dorn's combined army the following March at Pea Ridge (where he was killed in action very early on in the battle), but Henry served much longer, mostly in district-level administrative posts. Far exceeding his brother in the realm of historical memory, the elder McCulloch received full biographical treatment in 1993 with the publication of Thomas Cutrer's well-received book Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition. It is only now, through David Paul Smith's excellent Henry Eustace McCulloch: Texas Ranger, Legislator, Civil War General, that Henry's life has been accorded the same level of comprehensive scholarly attention.

Perhaps due to source limitations, Henry's childhood and early life are summarized over only a handful of pages, and McCulloch is already well into his Texas period in the volume's opening chapter. Henry missed the pivotal Battle of San Jacinto but joined a Ranger company in 1838 to oppose Waco and Comanche raids. As Rangers, the McCulloch brothers distinguished themselves during the Great Comanche Raid of 1840, and Henry was wounded at the Battle of Plum Creek. Henry also opposed a major Mexican incursion into Texas in 1842. During the 1846-48 war with Mexico, Henry's volunteer Ranger service was with the U.S. Army. His unwanted diversion to Indian frontier patrol duty instead of riding into Mexico meant that he missed the glory and notoriety that other Texas Rangers achieved during the war's decisive campaigning. In Smith's view, this was the primary reason behind Henry not achieving the lasting fame that was attached to other Texas Rangers such as brother Ben.

During the 1850s, Henry McCulloch also swerved toward politics, serving in the legislature where he strongly advocated for state spending on frontier defense. The federal government was ostensibly responsible for protecting Texas settlements from Indian attacks, but the assignment of mostly infantry to the frontier produced an ineffective static defense that only improved when the new 2nd U.S. Cavalry regiment arrived. McCulloch also briefly flirted with the Know-Nothing Party before abandoning it in 1856 in favor of supporting James Buchanan in that year's presidential election.

A keen supporter of the new Confederacy, McCulloch played a major part in securing the surrender of U.S. troops and supplies in Texas during the 1860-61 secession crisis. He later was elected colonel of the twelve-month First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, which was tasked with protecting the sparsely populated western counties while other Texas troops headed to those parts of the state, the coastline and eastern border, where it was presumed they might encounter invading Union land and naval forces. One of the reasons why Smith is particularly well suited to be Henry McCulloch's biographer is that he literally wrote the book (1992's Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas' Rangers and Rebels) on the complicated military and political facets of Texas frontier defense during the 1861-65 period. Given logistical constraints, the vastness of the western frontier border, and the mobility and stealth of the raiders, it was impossible to stop all Indian incursions into Texas, but McCulloch, drawing upon past experience, developed a reasonably effective system of defense that achieved notable successes.

Upon conclusion of his regiment's term of enlistment, McCulloch was assigned a district command in NE Texas. The Confederate defeat at Pea Ridge sparked a major reorientation of Texas forces in the region. That flood of Texas regiments going to the aid of Arkansas and points beyond passed through McCulloch's district, where he diligently applied his headquarters and staff toward organizing and supplying the ragged arrivals for active service in the field. McCulloch himself briefly led a division before being superseded by John G. Walker. As a brigade commander in Walker's Texas Division, McCulloch directed the June 7, 1863 Battle of Milliken's Bend. Hamstrung by poor decision-making from those up the chain of command, McCulloch and his men nevertheless fought well against a determined foe, inflicting heavy casualties upon the Union defenders of the post (who were saved by the timely arrival of Union naval support). It would be the only major action against Union forces that Henry would lead in person during the entire war, a circumstance that undoubtedly contributed much to his remaining a relatively obscure Civil War general.

McCulloch would serve out the rest of the war occupying major administrative positions in his home state. His Northern Sub-District was the size of South Carolina, and in leading it he was tasked with strict enforcement of conscription law and suppression of armed bands of "brush men." This great abundance of army deserters, anti-Confederate draft dodgers, and general criminal types infesting the district outnumbered McCulloch's own forces (some unreliable themselves) by some margin. Determined to be fair-minded toward his fellow Texans, McCulloch tried both conciliatory measures and harsh approaches (though, in the latter case, Smith credits him for earnest attempts at stamping out the excesses perpetrated by subordinates such as James Bourland), but the task of reining in all of the anti-government violence in the region was an impossible one. In addition to that, McCulloch had to manage his district's significant supply, manufacturing, and munitions depots while at the same time dividing his attention among Indian raids from the west and the possibility of Union invasion from the north (via Indian Territory) and east (through occupied parts of Arkansas). Smith's overall assessment of McCulloch as a district commander from 1863-65 is one of an energetic and diligent military administrator who did the best he could under extreme hardships and circumstances.

As explained in the book's final chapter covering McCulloch's post-Civil War life, Henry worked to quickly restore his family's financial and social footing, building up extensive ranch properties and holding state postings such as superintendent of Texas's Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and employment with the State Land Board. He also returned to politics. In addition to being involved in the general brouhaha surrounding the Coke-Davis gubernatorial contest that ended Radical Republican leadership in the state, McCulloch became a leading figure in the new People's Party before declining health forced his retirement from public service.

David Paul Smith's fine biography firmly and persuasively reestablishes Henry E. McCulloch as a major figure in the nineteenth-century political and military history of Texas. Along with its groundbreaking biographical features, Smith's study contributes mightily to our knowledge and understanding of Texas's western frontier border defense before and during the Civil War. The book's detailed account of McCulloch's leadership of Confederate Texas district commands from the war's middle period onward also significantly illuminates the many challenges involved with sustaining the war effort along key parts of the state's northern frontier while also attempting to manage the growing dissent that erupted across the region. Highly recommended.

Review - "The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals" edited by Timothy Johnson

[The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals edited by Timothy D. Johnson (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). Hardcover, 3 maps, chapter notes, index. Pages main/total:xvii,233/267. ISBN:978-0-8071-8238-3.]

Over the decades following the conclusion of the War of 1812, elements of the United States Army operated primarily as coastal defense garrisons and frontier constabulary, thus the outbreak of war with Mexico offered a unique opportunity for West Point graduates to test themselves against a foe organized on roughly similar European-style lines. Historians have most commonly examined those experiences, and what roles they might have played in professional development, within the process of writing general officer biographies. The result, in terms of providing both descriptive detail and analysis, has always been a mixed bag. While some coverages point toward useful insights and possible connections between Mexican-American War service and Civil War generalship, the rest come across as being mostly box-checking exercises completed along the way toward toward presenting the main event of their subject's military career, the American Civil War. What sets apart the 2024 anthology The Mexican-American War Experiences of Twelve Civil War Generals is its laser focus on drawing out those connections. Timothy Johnson, Winfield Scott biographer and author of a number of scholarly Mexican-American War titles, serves as this volume's editor, and he successfully presses his essay contributors to both recount the military participation in Mexico of West Point-trained officers who would later become high-ranking Civil War generals and cite specific examples of how those experiences might have shaped later command performances under vastly increased levels of responsibility.

Johnson's assemblage of writers is noteworthy for having a number of major biographers in it as well as others who have authored important works on topics directly related to their essay subject's Civil War military career. The essays, twelve in total, are evenly divided between Union and Confederate generals, ten of whom rose to army command (the other two were high-profile corps commanders entrusted with major independent operations). For the Union side, the author-subject pairings are Timothy Smith on U.S. Grant, Stephen Engle on Don Carlos Buell, Ethan Rafuse on Joseph Hooker, Thomas Cutrer on George McClellan, Jennifer Murray on George Meade, and Brian Steel Wills on George Thomas. On the Confederate side, we get Joseph Glatthaar on Robert E. Lee, Sean Michael Chick on P.G.T. Beauregard, Cecily Zander on Braxton Bragg, Christian Keller on Stonewall Jackson, Craig Symonds on Joe Johnston, and Alexander Mendoza on James Longstreet.

Drawing connections between Mexican-American War and Civil War experiences is most often framed around positive and negative "lessons" learned from youthful experiences in the former which were then later applied to leadership in the latter. As several contributors to this volume prominently note, these links must in the main be inferred. Many of their subjects wrote little to nothing about their experiences in Mexico, while those that did only rarely linked (at least in direct fashion) their own Civil War decision-making and conduct of military affairs to what they either did or observed during the Taylor and Scott campaigns in north and central Mexico. Johnson's contributors collectively navigate that tricky path with caution and judiciousness.

In Mexico, junior officers, particularly staff officers, keenly observed a wide range of matters related to civil-military affairs. According to Glatthaar, Lee, through direct awareness of the troubling military-political divide that developed between his mentor General Scott and the Polk administration, likely learned important lessons about personal and professional relationships between superiors and principal subordinates that helped him later foster a cordial and effective military partnership with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Closely working with the highly touchy Scott in Mexico also taught Lee the value of showing proper (even strategic) deference to superiors and knowing when to gracefully quit pressing when it came to losing disagreements (ex. Lee's strong disapproval of, but quiet acquiescence with, the Davis administration's decision to reorganize brigades with regiments from the same state). On the less productive side was how Joseph Hooker responded to what he witnessed during the conflict. Unlike many of his fellow West Point graduates who observed with disdain naked political interference in military matters in Mexico, Hooker, as insightfully examined by Rafuse, embraced "playing games" with that system. That relish for games of intrigue pervaded Hooker's entire Civil War career, contributing mightily to his downfall. At any rate, with the war in Mexico came more direct reinforcement of the reality that politics and war were inextricably linked and cooperating with politician-officers was an inescapable part of the professional war fighting experience.

While the scale and distances involved in the war with Mexico helped quartermaster officers like Grant to refine their logistical managements skills, the experiences of living off the land through foraging and occupation without at the same time inciting a general uprising also proved instructive. Many West Point-trained professionals freely expressed their disdain for volunteer soldiers, and highlights from Murray's Meade chapter draw correlations between the Pennsylvanian's Mexican War experiences, where he witnessed widespread pillaging and other abuses of the local population, and his clear support for a conciliatory manner of conducting warfare during the early years of the American Civil War. Everyone recognized that volunteers needed strong subordination and discipline in order to be transformed into effective soldiers.

The importance of awarding credit where credit was due in official writings, regardless of personal animosities, was also realized by most as being in the best interest of the service. When it was not done as expected, officers such as Beauregard became embittered by the experience. A part of that self-aggrandizement at the expense of others stemmed from officers forging cynical alliances with the press corps. For Meade, who is known by all Civil War students for the special hell he wanted to reserve for newspaper reporters, the origins of that attitude developed during the Mexican War. There he traced through the press the making of undeserved reputations as well as the silent treatment given to distinguished officers who opposed, on principle, cultivating self-promotional relationships with ambitious reporters. Meade also carefully noted the internal dissension, jealousy, and unseemly competition for attention that playing those games engendered in the officer corps. 

On a tactical basis, the war taught the value of combined arms, and many young officers appreciated the battle-winning outcomes that resulted from closely coordinated infantry and artillery attacks both in the open and against fortified positions. The Thomas and Beauregard chapters from Wills and Chick are particularly strong on detail in regard to tracing artillery exploits in Mexico. Both chapters demonstrate how that war raised the prestige and reputation of the field artillery service in the U.S. Army. When it came to the process of neutralizing Mexican strongpoints, many staff and line officers also witnessed the value of using turning movements in conjunction with frontal masking demonstrations and artillery fire. The actions of engineer officers such as Lee and Beauregard also clearly revealed the value to be derived from, and the dangers attended with, personal reconnaissance. Just in general ways, junior officers acting on the staffs of general officers in Mexico gained professional knowledge about how armies (or at least higher formations) actually worked in the field, an eye-opening experience for those accustomed to company-level frontier service or static fort postings.

In the area of personal relationships, the shared experiences of the war with Mexico forged lifelong bonds among many fellow officers (a close attachment exemplified by the formation and endurance of the Aztec Club). Knowing that true measurements of character and military ability emerge from the testing ground of war, Mexico also allowed those officers who served together to take stock of colleagues who would later become either comrade or foe during the Civil War.

When the Mexican-American War experiences of Civil War generals are discussed in the literature, it is primarily through the themes of the war with Mexico either being a proving ground for what was learned at West Point or the conflict being an education in and of itself. On a collective basis, there are certainly noteworthy elements of both of those themes inside this strong set of essays. While there is a degree of repetition entailed with compiling twelve independent essays involving basically only two major campaigns, and a few chapters lean most strongly into the descriptive realm of presentation, there is certainly more than enough analytical heft across the volume to make this anthology a heartily recommended read for even the most broadly informed students of both wars.

Review - "The Old Army in Texas: A Research Guide to the U.S. Army in Nineteenth Century Texas, 2nd Edition" by Thomas Smith

[The Old Army in Texas: A Research Guide to the U.S. Army in Nineteenth Century Texas, 2nd Edition by Thomas T. Smith (Texas State Historical Association, 2020). Softcover, 6 maps, 8 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages:xi,294. ISBN:978-1-62511-060-2. $30]

Published back in 2000, Thomas Smith's The Old Army in Texas quickly became regarded as the best single-volume reference guide to the organization, deployment, and military activities of the U.S. Army in Texas during the 1800s. Taking advantage of new source discoveries as well as wider availability of known sources through digitization, Smith's important work has now been revised and reissued by the publisher (the Texas State Historical Association) as The Old Army in Texas: A Research Guide to the U.S. Army in Nineteenth Century Texas, 2nd Edition. As the volume is focused almost entirely on Regular Army units (and those were rapidly expelled or withdrawn during the opening moments of the Civil War), the conflict in Texas between Union and Confederate volunteer forces is not substantively addressed in either edition.

Smith's now classic Southwest Historical Quarterly journal article U.S. Army Combat Operations in the Indian Wars of Texas, 1849-1881 (1996), a salient feature of the first edition, is again reproduced here. It remains a tremendously useful statistical examination of the 219 best-documented military actions that occurred over those three eventful decades of state history. The article's quantitative analysis supports a multitude of conclusions regarding the nature of the fighting between army forces and native groups in Texas. Many preconceptions are challenged, but the picture that emerges of a typical military action of the period [a running fight of indecisive result between a junior officer-led army patrol of less than company size and an even smaller raiding party (most frequently Comanche)] fits most reader expectations.

The map series included in the book charts the establishment of U.S. Army camps and forts in Texas. Among other things, these six visual aids help readers follow when and where conflict hotspots and other army priorities geographically shifted over time. Additionally, the volume's photo collection highlights a small selection of notable officers and soldiers.

Part II lists the various departmental organizations that were set up by the U.S. Army in Texas over the period covered in the book. In addition to headquarters locations, names of commanders and their dates of appointment are also included. At over fifty pages in length, Part III ("U.S. Army Sites in Texas, 1836-1900") is one of the largest sections. Its compilation of Texas military camps, towns, forts, posts, stations, etc. is an updated listing that denotes dates of establishment, period(s) of operation, and officer/unit affiliations while also offering brief historical summaries. This section has been significantly expanded between editions from 230 locations to 300. Part IV ("Post Garrisons") contains a year by year accounting of total troop strength in the department as well as unit assignments to major posts. Obviously unit postings were frequently in flux during any given year, so the listed assignments represent a snapshot in time based on the official fall returns filed with the army adjutant general. Part V is a register of 1849-1881 combat actions fought in Texas, with descriptions mostly limited to just a sentence or two. As was the case with other parts of the book, further research has expanded Part V by more than a dozen engagements to now number 240.

The bibliography contained in Part VI should prove to be one of the volume's most broadly useful features. Even in select form, the expanded Second Edition bibliography lists around 900 sources and spans over eighty densely packed pages of book, article, dissertation, public and private archive, and government records listings. These primary and secondary source classifications are also helpfully organized further into numerous sub-levels by category and conflict. General audience readers will perhaps find the volume's comprehensive list of fort and camp histories most useful. The volume is also fully indexed.

For lay readers, avocational researchers, and experts alike, Thomas Smith's The Old Army in Texas remains an essential first-line reference tool. Additionally, for owners of the original 2000 edition, the new volume's significant level of augmentation throughout makes it a highly recommended upgrade.

Review - "Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail" by Miller, Skowronek, & Bacha-Garza

[BLUE AND GRAY ON THE BORDER: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail by Christopher L. Miller, Russell K. Skowronek, and Roseann Bacha-Garza (Texas A&M University Press, 2018). Flexbound, maps, photos, drawings, tables, source lists, index. Pages main/total:xxv,191/200. ISBN:978-1-62349-682-1. $28]

Taking their cue from the educational and economic success stories of similar trail projects created in other parts of the country possessing rich collections of Civil War era historical sites, a small group of individuals at University of Texas-Pan American in 2012 planted the seeds of what would eventually become the Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail. Between that time and the present a number of educators, government agencies, historical societies, museums, and other groups joined the effort. Their collective work resulted in a jointly funded, bilingual Lower Rio Grande historical trail spanning five Texas border counties (Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Webb, and Zapata). An illustrated history and travel guide designed to directly engage readers and travelers with this ambitious project, which begins at the Gulf Coast's Point Isabel Lighthouse and ends approximately 200 miles upriver at Laredo, has just been published under the title Blue and Gray on the Border: The Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail.

The long settled history of the valley of the Lower Rio Grande is a complicated one with prominent international elements, and co-authors Christopher Miller, Russell Skowronek, and Roseann Bacha-Garza appropriately begin their book with a brief but helpful contextual refresher course on the border region's history from the Spanish colonial period through Mexican Independence, the U.S.-Mexican War, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction. The guide's collection of Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail historical sites are organized into five chapters, one for each county. With African-American connections to the border an additional topic of emphasis in the book, discussion includes settlers who took advantage of the border region's comparatively higher tolerance for biracial families. In addition, a standalone chapter is devoted to the black military experience during and after the Civil War. Especially during the Reconstruction period, black troops formed a large part of the U.S. army contingent tasked with border security, cross-border trade regulation, and protection of Texas Unionists and freedpeople from violence.

Among the great diversity of historical locations featured on the virtual trail are ranches, cities, towns, homes, hospitals, cemeteries, memorials, museums, battle sites, and forts. More site register than complete tour guide, the book does not provide detailed driving directions for following the entire length of the trail. However, street addresses, access information, GPS coordinates, and other applicable location information are included for each site on a standalone basis. Each trail stop also has its own extension number for visitors wishing to take advantage of the "mobile web" experience through their cell phones. Supplementing the guide's text is a profusion of photos (B&W and color), maps (period and original), and tables.

Several paragraphs of informative historical background narrative accompany each trail stop sub-section, as do full text transcriptions (where relevant) of Texas Historical Commission markers. It might seem out of place that the trail has so many places associated with the Mexican War, but these entries offer useful context for many Civil War events like the bloody cross-border rivalry that developed between Union ally Juan Cortina and Confederate officer Santos Benavides. Sites are suitably selected in support of common themes that convey the local, national, and international importance of the Texas borderland during the Civil War period and beyond. For example, a great many trail stops represent key geographical points and events related to the border trade economy (southern cotton in exchange for otherwise unobtainable supplies, medicines, consumer goods, and war materials) that were critical to the maintenance and survival of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. Union authorities attempted to choke off this regional trade outlet that was immune to naval blockade at various times during the war and many trail locations are associated with their military interventions.

Readers are, of course, encouraged to visit the trail's official website (here) for more information. The guide should also be regarded as an introductory companion to Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846-1876. Edited by Miller, Skowronek, and Bacha-Garza, that recently released volume from the same publisher contains a series of scholarly essays addressing at greater depth many of the same events and themes introduced in Blue and Gray on the Border. Hopefully, books, website, and trail will collectively inspire wider popular interest in the social, political, military, and economic history of the Lower Rio Grande River Valley during the Civil War era.

Review - "Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands" by William Kiser

[Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands by William S. Kiser (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Hardcover, maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xi,184/284. ISBN:978-0-8061-6026-9. $32.95]

Though many nineteenth-century Americans viewed the Desert Southwest as a danger-filled wasteland unworthy of national possession and development, William Kiser's Coast-to-Coast Empire: Manifest Destiny and the New Mexico Borderlands argues strongly that New Mexico eventually proved to be a vital cog in the process of westward expansion, one that the U.S. government invested a tremendous amount of manpower and national treasure in managing. While it's stating the obvious that incorporating all territory lying between California and Texas would be an essential step in the United States becoming a truly continental nation, Kiser's study, which is heavily informed by his previous book-length examinations of Mesilla Valley territorial history, regional Apache resistance, and the Southwest's peonage and captive-taking traditions, richly illustrates a host of unique factors that together demonstrate the exceptional nature of New Mexico's place in Manifest Destiny.

Missouri is popularly known as the stepping off point for the famous continental emigrant trails that tens of thousands of Americans used to cross the vast central plains and mountains of the West to the Pacific, but the book effectively reminds us that Missouri and its own enterprising citizens also played an equally important role in the commercial development of New Mexico. With the town of Independence marking the beginning of the Santa Fe trail, Missourians took advantage of this hugely profitable economic pipeline to become prominent New Mexican businessmen and land owners, aided along the way by newly independent Mexico's desires to cast aside the draconian Imperial Spanish trade restrictions that retarded progress and then attract American entrepreneurs to the area with promises of easy citizenship, generous land grants, and low taxes. Even when corrupt Mexican governors levied exorbitant (and illegal) import fees on American merchants, the foreign goods were in such high demand locally that profits were high. New Mexico was thus transformed into a significant center of regional trade. As was the case with Texas and other borderlands characterized by elastic allegiances and hybridized citizenship, it was hoped that these measures would bind the newcomers to Mexico, but it quickly came to be more the case that they inadvertently accelerated the Americanization of the Desert Southwest. When tensions between the U.S. and Mexico boiled over into war in 1846, previously respected and highly successful American immigrants (even those who had married into local families and had to some degree assimilated into local culture) became targeted, often violently, as unwanted outsiders.

From the late Imperial Spanish period onward, military conflict and occupation were mainstays of the New Mexican experience, and this is one of the chief themes of the book. Early in the nineteenth century, army-sponsored exploration teams such as those led by Zebulon Pike mapped and marked southwestern trails. In 1846, New Mexico was conquered by General Stephen W. Kearny's small American army. In an example of the military's tendency to involve itself in civilian affairs in New Mexico, often without official approval, Kearny's proclamations regarding citizenship for the inhabitants got him into hot water with government authorities back home. As the book shows, naive U.S. expectations that New Mexicans would readily embrace the nationality change and its promises of newfound freedom, prosperity, and protection from hostile Indians were quickly dashed, particularly after the shocking brutality of the Taos Rebellion (the story of which, along with its suppression, is recounted well in the volume). Even so, by the end of the U.S. war with Mexico a growing number of residents became reconciled to becoming Americans, especially if the U.S. Army could physically protect them better than the neglectful Imperial Spanish and Mexican militaries.

However, shielding residents from hostile Ute, Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and Comanche raiders would require a huge proportion of the U.S. Army's manpower and budget, and the book covers in some detail the country's efforts, at exorbitant cost, to overcome this huge obstacle to New Mexican settlement and development. Kiser ably traces how conflicts over civilian vs. military oversight of the "Indian problem," an often wasteful army strategy on the ground that swung inconsistently between limited and total warfare, and the failed assumptions of the reservation system together meant that promises of protection could not be met during the decade following the conclusion of the U.S.-Mexican War. An early understanding was achieved with the Utes, but the Navajos were not broken as a regional power until the end of the Civil War and the Comanche and Apache conflicts would endure for far longer (into the 1870s and 1880s respectively). Stabilizing New Mexico and assimilating its population would prove to be a much longer and far more difficult and expensive process than most had anticipated.

In the 1850s, New Mexico also became a key component of national debates over slavery and popular sovereignty. While there were never more than a few dozen blacks (free or slave) residing in the territory during the decade and neither section believed the Desert Southwest conducive to any kind of large-scale slave labor economy, the book shows how the issue of a proslavery New Mexico was largely an ideological and political one (with two future Senate votes as a prize) rather than a practical consideration. Most interestingly, and perhaps uniquely, Kiser meaningfully integrates the centuries-old New Mexican traditions of debt peonage and captive labor into the national slavery debates, and he clearly demonstrates that New Mexico weighed heavily on the minds of faraway northern politicians and abolitionists throughout this period. The most conspiracy-minded among them feared that proslavery advocates would use those long-standing examples of enforced servitude as stepping stones for the introduction and acceptance of racial slavery, a form of bondage that held little to no favor among the locals. As the book demonstrates, there was some justification for these fears, as proponents of black slavery often justified the institution's placement in New Mexico as simply a reasonable extension of the established labor culture of the region. Indeed, Kiser's book performs an important service in highlighting popular action against Southwest peonage (which was finally formally abolished in 1868 but lasted even longer in extralegal form) as an underappreciated corollary to the abolitionist movement.

Like it did with the national slavery debates, New Mexico also figured prominently in the sectional contest over the building of a transcontinental railroad. Kiser offers a good short summary of the various northern, central, and southern surveys conducted, and shows that a pair of routes through New Mexico were objectively advantageous for railroad construction. However, the radical nature of sectional politics made it a certainty that no consensus agreement on a transcontinental route could be reached during the late antebellum period. Though contemporary commentators viewed the railroad almost entirely in economic terms, Kiser sees as equally important the ideological victory (in terms of the spread of people and ideas) that would be gained by whichever section won the transcontinental railroad race. While this is a valid point to some degree, and the author also concedes the oddness of the assumption at the time that there might be only one railroad spanning the vast American West, Kiser perhaps overestimates the material and ideological threat of southern expansion given that proslavery forces couldn't even succeed in next-door Kansas.

The final section of the book covers the Civil War years in New Mexico, when both sides determined that the territory was vital to their competing continental aspirations and worthy of significant military investment. The early-war Confederate invasion of New Mexico, and the Union Army's success in repelling it, have already been expansively documented in numerous fine works, and Kiser offers readers a sound summary of those events and synthesis of the existing scholarship. Solid overviews of the wartime campaigns against remaining Indian threats and Union measures aimed at thwarting any possible Confederate offensive renewal are also included. Along the way, Kiser cites Hispano recruitment of New Mexico volunteer units and pro-Union militias in large numbers [for a truly exhaustive examination of this topic see Jerry Thompson's A Civil War History of the New Mexico Volunteers and Militia (2015)] as evidence of an increasing success in Americanization, but it's also very likely that hatred of Texans was a motivating factor at least as important.

In all of the above-mentioned ways, Coast-to-Coast Empire very effectively situates New Mexico as key nineteenth-century battleground and conduit of American capitalism, culture, politics, and ideas. As the book argues, between Mexican independence in 1821 and the end of the American Civil War, New Mexico became a nexus to a host of issues related to the idea of Manifest Destiny, including domestic and international trade, military conquest and occupation, Indian wars, slavery debates, and the transcontinental railroad. William Kiser is rapidly becoming a leading authority on many aspects of Desert Southwest history, and this study represents another meaningful contribution on his part to that growing body of borderlands literature.  Recommended.

Review of Thompson - "TEJANO TIGER: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891"

[Tejano Tiger: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891 by Jerry D. Thompson (Texas Christian University Press, 2017). Cloth, map, photos, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:343/424. ISBN:9780875654072. $29.95]

Life in the Texas borderland sandwiched between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers often proved precarious during the nineteenth century. Tensions between rival local, state, and national governments were rife, and Indian raids and cross border banditry frequent and widespread. Laredo native Santos Benavides (1823-1891) was both witness and key participant to this decades-long period of domestic strife, open warfare, and transformative social and political change. Career Southwest history specialist Jerry Thompson's Tejano Tiger: Jose de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891 gives this important figure his proper historical due and is the first full biography of Benavides to appear in the scholarly literature.

Born into a prominent Laredo Tejano family in 1823, Santos Benavides greatly benefited, according to Thompson, from his uncle Basilio's guiding hand and long experience in local and state politics under three republics. In the period preceding the Civil War, Santos would become a very successful rancher and businessman, as well as a popular local political leader (among other posts, he would be elected mayor of Laredo in 1856). He also gained valuable para-military experience fighting bandits operating out of Mexico and, from the opposite direction, raiding bands of Comanche and Lipan Apache.

Santos was commissioned a captain of Texas volunteers in 1861, and he would eventually reach the rank of colonel (the highest ranking Tejano in the army of the CSA) even though he never led more than a few companies at a time. His entire Civil War service was spent along the Rio Grande front, a post which required both military and diplomatic skills. It is Thompson's view that Benavides excelled in both arenas. Through great affection for Mexico but loyalty to Texas, Benavides was able to promote friendly relations (for the most part) on both sides of the border. He also demonstrated his military skills on two great occasions. In 1861, he crushed invading forces led by Mexican marauder and would-be revolutionary Juan Cortina and in 1864 defeated advancing Union forces at the gates of Laredo.

However, as the book shows, pitched battles were few and far between, and Benavides's most significant contribution to the Confederate cause was in consistently keeping open a vital stretch of the Rio Grande for the all-important cotton trade with Mexico, the proceeds of which kept the isolated Trans-Mississippi Department afloat. This task became even more important when Union forces seized the mouth of the Rio Grande in 1863, and advanced inland. The victory at Laredo mentioned above was a critical event in keeping Union forces based on the coast from linking up with their brethren in southern New Mexico and choking off border trade entirely.

Thompson also explores at some length the unproductive feud between Benavides and his immediate superior, Colonel John S. "Rip" Ford. Ford was frequently frustrated with Benavides's insubordination, and Ford, in turn, was blamed by Santos for preventing the rank-ambitious Tejano from obtaining a much sought after brigadier general's star. Even though the two never reconciled, Ford (unlike Benavides) was able to look past personal animosities, and the famous Texan generously praised the Civil War contributions of Santos in his memoirs. Really, the Civil War section of the book is far richer than expected. Those chapters together comprise perhaps the literature's very best account of the Civil War along the Texas-Mexico border between Eagle Pass and Rio Grande City.

Benavides generally supported conservative Democrats and later aligned himself with their stances on social issues when he served in the state legislature after the Civil War. Some of his closest friends and allies, like Edmund J. Davis, declared themselves for the Union in 1860-61, but it appears that Santos himself had no reservations about joining the Confederate cause. In addition to having social views compatible with the Texas majority, perhaps he viewed his wealth as being best protected and served by remaining loyal to the Lone Star State. Thompson also very plausibly suggests ideological transference between Santos and Uncle Basilio's long standing opposition to strong central control from Mexico City and the States' Rights debates of their new country post-annexation.

Given how deeply intertwined the long life of Santos Benavides was with his beloved hometown of Laredo, the book also serves as an excellent social, economic, and political history of the town itself. One of the study's most striking features was its in-depth discussion of party machine politics in Laredo, which proved just as cutthroat as those found in the great cities of the North and culminated in the shockingly bloody election riot of 1886. Thompson also details how Santos and other local leaders during the post-Civil War period built between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo a literal and figurative bridge between Texas and Mexico. Benavides was influential in bringing the railroad to Laredo from the Texas interior, as well. At the same time, he used his deep personal connections south of the border to assuage the security concerns of Mexican officials, who feared that railroad links in the northern Mexican states might entice another invasion from the United States. The effort was a success, and Benavides helped modernize trade and communications between both countries.

As he did both before and during the Civil War, Benavides consistently sought closer ties between Texas and Mexico during his three terms as a state legislator in Austin. The Civil War ruined many others, but Benavides was fortunate enough to have retained his considerable wealth and (as mentioned above) was often sought out as a facilitator of border business interests. According to Thompson, Benavides's extremely poor command of the English language (which he apparently made little effort to improve throughout his life) was a significant limiting factor to political advancement. Perhaps his greatest political disappointment was in fellow Democrat Grover Cleveland's dismissive rejection of Benavides as candidate for U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

In researching this book, Thompson mined an impressive array of archives and newspapers from both sides of the border. Complaints are few, and none are serious. Cosmetic errors pop up here and there, and, at one point, a photo caption inaccurately claims that John B. Magruder lost an arm in Mexico.

Tejano Tiger convincingly positions Jose de los Santos Benavides as one of South Texas's most important social, political, and military figures of the nineteenth century. In addition to providing an exhaustive record of the Civil War military career of Santos Benavides, Thompson's book also recounts the full life of a man whose unusually steadfast commitment to binational harmony and prosperity deserves to be more widely remembered.

Jennings: "RIDING FOR THE LONE STAR: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822-1865"

[Riding for the Lone Star: Frontier Cavalry and the Texas Way of War, 1822-1865 by Nathan A. Jennings (University of North Texas Press, 2016). Cloth, 6 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:346/407. ISBN:978-1-57441-635-0. $32.95]

Riding for the Lone Star examines the forty year development of a distinctively Texan way of war beginning in 1822 with Anglo-American colonial militia in Spanish Tejas dealing with various native threats and ending with the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865. In this study, author Nathan Jennings argues that Texas frontier society, in dealing with evolving conflicts with both domestic and cross-border enemies, created an adaptive mode of warfare that operated simultaneously in both regular and irregular spheres and was defined by a polity militarized by constant fighting and that employed short-term volunteer mobilization of well-armed mounted forces to deal with those threats.

The colonial period between 1822 and 1835 witnessed the early creation of a localized Texas militia system that borrowed from the American ranger lineage and the mounted traditions of heavy Spanish cavalry and light Indian raiders. It was a binary system of relatively static militia home defense for scattered communities supplemented by small but hard hitting and proactive mounted ranging operations. Animal husbandry and horsemanship adapted to the environment were parts of the cattle ranching and cowboy culture of Spanish Texas that Texan fighters adopted for their benefit. Tactically, the early rangers would fight as dragoons, dismounting for precision firing using American rifles. With the administrative and protective neglect of Imperial Spanish and later Mexican government authority, the Anglo-American colonies in Tejas were entirely left to their own devices in terms of defense and largely allowed to self-govern. This fostered the development of a Texas nationalism, one heightened by having to collectively deal with constant internal and external threats to hearth and home.

For the Texas Revolution of 1835-36, the nascent nationalism mentioned above would allow the scattered militias to combine into a cohesive army of infantry, cavalry, and artillery that would win the San Jacinto Campaign and gain independence. The effectiveness of the mounted forces in a variety of roles, with light cavalry directly engaging Mexican forces and rangers scouting for the army and protecting settlements against opportunistic tribal raids, firmly established them as the present and future of Texas state security.

During the early years of the Texas Republic, a standing army was found to be both unpopular and ruinously expensive, but a compromise was found in the more formalized organization of Texas Ranger companies to meet the needs of the new nation. During the republic's middle period (1839-41), the population sharply increased through immigration and Rangers were the spear point of rapid territorial expansion in all directions at the expense of the Apache, Comanche, Cherokee, and others. With all sides targeting population centers, the conflicts were often brutal to combatant and non-combatant alike. Technological advancements in weaponry during the Republic period also proved critically useful, as the proliferation of Colt revolvers allowed the Rangers to remain on horseback during fighting and break their enemies with powerful mounted charges that poured great volumes of fire at close range into the disrupted foe. This brand of shock combat would characterize the Texan mode of fighting for decades to come. They would also create a hybrid breed of horse especially suited to their purposes and environment. A series of back and forth invasions between Texas and Mexico (culminating in the Woll Invasion of 1842, that briefly occupied San Antonio) further cemented the Rangers as the elite military arm of the state. However, the Woll Invasion in particular, which led many Tejano former rangers to switch sides, shattered the tenuous acceptability of a multi-ethnic Texas Rangers and led to increased suspicion of the loyalty of the Tejano population at large. In describing the Rangers's actions, Jennings also highlights instrumental leaders like Edward Burleson, John Coffee Hays, John S. Ford, Ben McCulloch, and others who became household names in Texas and famous beyond its borders. With Texas achieving statehood in 1845, the Rangers would defend Texas in cooperation with the U.S. Army and play a key role in the successful war against their frequent foe to the south.

True to their tradition, the Texas Rangers operated as light cavalry (supplementing the badly overstretched Regular Army dragoons) and irregular fighters in both the northern and central campaigns of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-48. They would be so effective at suppressing bandits and guerrillas and clearing lines of communication between Winfield Scott's main army and its base at far away Vera Cruz, that they earned the grudging respect of the usually volunteer-disdaining Regular Army. The effectiveness did have a dark component, too, with the kind of civilian and combatant abuses and killings committed in Mexico typical of the consequences of any large scale guerrilla insurgency but with Texas passions inflamed further by the preceding decade of off and on warfare with invading Mexican forces in Texas and lingering anger from the mass killing of surrendered Texians at Goliad and other places. The Rangers in Central Mexico became justifiably famous for their well-honed skills in counter-guerrilla operations and Jennings persuasively argues in the book that they deserve a great deal of credit for solidifying the occupation and allowing U.S. authorities to negotiate an end to the conflict from a position of great strength. After the war, the Rangers would again shift to combating omnipresent tribal raiders on the home front, cooperating with the Regular Army in establishing and manning a chain of frontier posts. It was a difficult relationship, though. While the federal government spent large sums representing a hefty proportion of the nation's limited military budget for their protection, Texans generally chafed under the inadequacy of the system and this resentment went some way toward making secession easier to accept.

The Civil War years contrasted sharply with earlier eras of limited, short-term mobilization. During 1861-65, Texas sent an astounding 61 cavalry regiments and 39 cavalry battalions into Confederate service, far more than any state on either side. By contrast, the state mobilized 28 infantry regiments and 13 infantry battalions. Oddly enough, it would be the infantry formations like Hood's Texas Brigade, not the cavalry, that would garner the widest fame. Unlike Hood's Texans in Virginia, most of the cavalry units (many of these later dismounted) would labor in comparative obscurity in the West and in the Trans-Mississippi theater. Rather than offering a general survey of this vast manpower contribution to the Confederate war effort, Jennings wisely chose in the book to select and focus upon only a handful of units representative of the continuance of Texas mounted martial traditions into the Civil War. Jennings uses the experiences of the 8th Texas Cavalry regiment (Terry's Texas Rangers) and Ross's Texas Cavalry Brigade to demonstrate the effectiveness of Texas-brand pistol and shotgun shock charges in the war's early stages, as well as the usefulness of their scouting and raiding skills. However, given the book's recurring theme of adaptation, the narrative misses an opportunity to substantially address what measures, if any, these Texas cavalry units took to cope with the middle and late war evolutions of the Civil War battlefield. In the Far West, the disastrous failure of the Sibley Brigade's campaign to seize New Mexico Territory and Arizona in 1861-62 showed the limitations of the Texas way of war, with mounted units unsuited to occupation and operating over great distances without robust logistical support. The Frontier Regiment had similarly mixed results during the Civil War, being ill supported and far too small to adequately protect Texas's vast Indian frontier stretching hundreds of miles along the northern and western borders of white settlement.

Riding for the Lone Star combines limited manuscript research with an able synthesis of the published literature to arrive at a remarkably well organized and convincing thematically-driven assessment of how militant Texas society managed the constant conflict marking the four decades of its existence preceding the end of the Civil War. Jennings perceptively traces this evolution through eight meaningful stages of development (Colonial, Revolutionary, Early Republic, Middle Republic, Late Republic, Mexican-American War, Antebellum conflict, and the Civil War) and skillfully matches discussion of the incremental changes described therein with numerous detailed examples supportive of his thesis. While acknowledging the more unsavory aspects of the Texas Rangers, Jennings also adopts a more measured tone and even-handed analysis than that found in some of the most aggressively corrective recent scholarship.


More CWBA reviews of UNTP titles:
* Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th U.S. Cavalry
* Antebellum Jefferson, Texas: Everyday Life in an East Texas Town
* Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners
* The Seventh Star of the Confederacy: Texas During the Civil War
* Texas Civil War Artifacts: A Photographic Guide to the Physical Culture of Texas Civil War Soldiers
* Spartan Band: Burnett’s 13th Texas Cavalry in the Civil War

Mesch: "TEACHER OF CIVIL WAR GENERALS: Major General Charles Ferguson Smith, Soldier and West Point Commandant"

[Teacher of Civil War Generals: Major General Charles Ferguson Smith, Soldier and West Point Commandant by Allen H. Mesch (McFarland 800-253-2187, 2015). Softcover, maps, photos, illustrations, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:282/341. ISBN:978-1-7864-9834-5 $39.95]

Though a widely recognized figure to serious students of the Civil War, Charles F. Smith was one of those unfortunate generals of high rank, ability and reputation who died too early in the conflict to make an indelible mark in the popular imagination. Though his Civil War service was one of unrealized potential, Smith's antebellum army career was a long, eventful and important one worthy of close examination. Allen Mesch's Teacher of Civil War Generals: Major General Charles Ferguson Smith, Soldier and West Point Commandant certainly does that and is the first full length military biography to appear in the literature.

Mesch's discussion of Smith's early life is even briefer than that typically found in books of this type, dispensing with Smith's upbringing in mere paragraphs before launching into future general's appointment to West Point at the age of 13 (his family lied about his age). Born in Philadelphia in 1807, Smith was the son of an army assistant surgeon who eagerly pressed his eldest son's case for a West Point education. Not a brilliant student, Smith was forced to repeat his first year but steadily improved his standing, graduating in 1825 ranked 18th in his class and earning a 2nd lieutenancy in the 2nd Artillery. After four years of garrison and arsenal duties, he returned to West Point as a tactics instructor and became so highly regarded there that he was elevated to the coveted post of Commandant of Cadets in 1838.

A strict but fair disciplinarian in his four years as Commandant of Cadets, Smith earned the respect of students and colleagues alike although he would run into occasional problems when attempting to punish some of the more politically connected cadets. Mesch credits Smith with sharpening and regularizing the initiatives pioneered by Sylvanus Thayer that were designed to improve all areas of soldierly conduct and discipline. As instructor of tactics at the academy, Smith would also positively influence many future Civil War generals (the list is a lengthy one). More than one of these men would describe him as the "ideal soldier."

At the outbreak of war between the United States and Mexico Smith was a captain leading Company K of the 2nd US Artillery regiment. Earning several brevets, he distinguished himself both with Taylor's army in northern Mexico and with the army of Winfield Scott operating from Vera Cruz into the Mexican interior. In the battles fought around Mexico City Smith would capably lead a light infantry battalion. After returning home, Smith continued to suffer from the chronic bowel maladies not uncommon to Mexican War veterans but he steadily climbed in rank and in between extended sick leaves was able to contribute to a new artillery manual. In 1855, he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the newly formed 10th Infantry Regiment and the following year led a military expedition up the Red River in Minnesota, his dual mission to warn off the large number of British subjects hunting and trapping illegally in the U.S. and to establish a new military post in the area. After that, Smith served as one of the highest ranking officers on the Utah Expedition. He was on leave from his duties there when war broke out with the Confederacy. The book offers detailed accounts of all of the above mentioned events from Smith's distinguished antebellum military career.

In 1861, while en route to his new post as commandant of New York's Fort Columbus, Smith was temporarily appointed to command the Department of Washington defenses. According to Mesch, Smith was given little credit for energetically organizing the capital defenses during the very brief time he was in charge there and left the city under some cloud of suspicion, which the author blames on unsubstantiated rumors floated by reporters dissatisfied with access to the commander. After almost despairing of gaining an active command, Smith got his wish in August with orders to go to the Department of the West, where he would be placed at the head of the District of Western Kentucky with headquarters at freshly seized Paducah.

It would be at Paducah where Smith's tight adherence to regulations and his regular army ideas of discipline would endanger his career. His strict orders protecting private property and forbidding maltreatment of civilians of all political persuasions placed him at odds with chief subordinates Eleazer Paine and Lew Wallace, who conspired against him. Smith, unlike many of the more politically astute high ranking Union officers, also failed to cultivate any support among the newspaper reporters hanging around the district, earning their ire by actively blocking access. Mesch carefully documents how accusations and rumors regarding Smith's loyalty (none of which had any foundation in truth) nearly cost him his promotion to brigadier general.

All armies are rife with command jealousies but the Civil War armies offer legions of examples whereby professional army officers of long service and proven ability were leapfrogged in rank within the new volunteer forces by both political appointees and fellow officers of far inferior antebellum grade. The highly esteemed Smith's apparently cheerful subordination to the then lowly Grant is one of the great exceptions. Though one might reasonably wonder whether the traditional story holds up to scrutiny, Mesch apparently didn't discover any evidence casting doubt on the oft repeated analysis of the cordial Grant-Smith relationship. The only negative words about Grant from Smith's pen were those (expressed in a private letter to his wife) that were critical of Grant's Belmont operation. Throughout the book, Mesch makes good use of Smith's papers and the insights they offer into the general's private thoughts at various up and down points in the war and his relationship with his family.

The book presents a thorough treatment of Smith's role in the campaign that seized forts Henry and Donelson. At Donelson, Smith's division would be placed on the far left of Grant's investing army. While this would be the least likely battlefield sector to see action if the Confederate garrison tried to escape (which it did, of course), it was the position directly astride the Union line of communications and thus a place to be held by a trusted subordinate. When the Confederate breakout stalled, Smith's division attacked the weakly held enemy right and captured the outer defense line in its front. Though eventually contained, Smith's advance went some way toward convincing the Confederates that their overall position was untenable.

After Donelson, Halleck, who trusted Smith as much as he distrusted Grant, placed Smith is charge of operations to further penetrate the river line into Tennessee. On March 12, after a meeting with Wallace, Smith badly scraped his shin (apparently down to the bone) on a seat edge. Only able to perform light duties from his office he was promoted to major general on March 21. While it pained Smith to miss leading his men at Shiloh, it pleased him to learn that his men fought gallantly. Sadly, Smith's infected wound only worsened and he died six weeks later on April 25.

It's impossible to predict how much impact Smith might have had in the war had he lived, and Mesch does not delve into alternative history, but there's little doubt that as a Grant and Halleck favorite he would have risen far in the Union high command. Many biographers overstate the historical impact of their subjects but Mesch's study powerfully argues that Smith's lengthy military career has been underappreciated. Decades of exemplary service in the field combined with a key role in the development of the officer corps of the United States during the antebellum period comprise a significant legacy, one documented in fine form in Teacher of Civil War Generals.

Hope: "A SCIENTIFIC WAY OF WAR: Antebellum Military Science, West Point, and the Origins of American Military Thought"

[A Scientific Way of War: Antebellum Military Science, West Point, and the Origins of American Military Thought by Ian Clarence Hope (University of Nebraska Press, 2015). Hardcover, maps, diagrams, photos, table appendix, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:264/347. ISBN:978-0-8032-7685-7 $55]

When it came to its military establishment, the fledgling American republic naturally leaned heavily on continental (especially French) philosophies, practices, and education. However, this devotion would not be slavish but rather adaptive to a force very different from the large European standing armies. In his book A Scientific Way of War: Antebellum Military Science, West Point, and the Origins of American Military Thought, Canadian military officer and history professor Ian Clarence Hope argues powerfully that students should be less concerned with the long standing debate over how "Jominian" the nineteenth century U.S. military was and more cognizant of how an emphasis on mathematics and science uniquely informed the training of professional American officers and by extension the way American wars would be fought.

Hope begins in the colonial and early republic years, when military engineering was placed in the hands of European experts at both state and federal levels. When West Point was founded in 1802 some of these men were hired on as faculty. In the wake of the poor performance of the state militias during the War of 1812, the Third System of national defense was established and would be in place for half a century. It would be an integrated continental system, with massive masonry forts located near the entrances to key ports and waterways connected by road (and later railroads) to arsenals, depots, and magazines safely placed inland. The regular army would man these forts and stall enemy invaders long enough for the militia to mobilize or perhaps repel them altogether. Military manuals developed by the federal government would be available to the public in peacetime with the hope that regular army and militia might possess at least a modicum of shared doctrine when the time came for them to fight together. Militarily, it was a flawed system, but it was politically palatable.

The book details the curriculum requirements of each of the four West Point years and shows how the single-minded emphasis on military science, math, and artillery were directly wedded to the requirements of the Third System and the concept of the expansible army. Critics past and present have condemned the antebellum curriculum as being too focused on engineering (and indeed a fifth year with added classes on strategy and history was briefly implemented) but Hope sees this as a fundamental misreading of the constraints American politics and society placed on its military. With national aversion to a large standing army, the U.S. military establishment had to be lean and its officers flexible generalists, with the capability of coordinating rapid expansion in times of dire emergency. The USMA was entirely unique among the world's preeminent national military schools in that it educated all of its officers in the fundamentals of every branch — the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers. With large numbers of graduates cycling through the staff bureaus, assuming key engineer, quartermaster, ordnance, and paymaster duties at various posts and also gaining vital experience siting, organizing, managing, and constructing complex fortifications and other military installations, conscientious West Pointers had the background to competently handle every task asked of them and would be well placed to handle the challenges of the "expansible army." A prevailing thought was that science would win wars by common process, mitigating the need for military genius (a rare, elusive and unpredictable quality) in gaining victory.

Internal improvements were also a vital element of the Third System and Hope also demonstrates the indispensability of West Point trained engineers in designing and managing these huge public works projects that would link installations and regions. Predictably, questions would arise concerning specific projects and whether they advanced purely commercial interests over true military necessity, but the advantages of using army engineers and the lack of suitable alternatives would trump allegations of shady practices.

Given the fact that many West Point graduates would find most of their combat experience comprised of Indian fighting on the frontier, another criticism of the West Point curriculum involved the absence of any discussion and instruction over le petit guerre. A kind of 'class in the field' program designed to address this deficiency was proposed but it never went anywhere. Objections over the doctrinal negligence of the frontier in favor of the Atlantic focus of the Third System seem justified but Hope persuasively contends that the possibility of successful invasion by a seafaring European power like Great Britain and the dire consequences that would follow outweighed military considerations attached to the numerous yet strategically insignificant encounters with American Indians. New additions to the West Point curriculum would mean that something else would have to go.

Though Hope finds that the degree of anti-professionalism ascribed to the Jacksonian Period has been exaggerated, he does go into some of the political challenges to West Point, most of which were resolved by the excellent performance of academy graduates in the war with Mexico. The engineers especially shined in their applications of military science to reconnaissance, siege operations, logistics, and artillery. The chapter covering the Civil War years might disappoint some readers in its brevity [using examples, it focuses mainly on the establishment and use of bases and lines of operation directed toward the capture of strategic points], but it does effectively stress the span as one of continuity with the military science and professionalism of the antebellum period.

A Scientific Way of War is a well researched and keenly argued defense of the nineteenth century U.S. army officer corps against historical charges of narrowly limited education and military dilettantism. Instead, the picture author Ian Hope paints of West Pointers is one of broadly knowledgeable and highly professional officers well adapted to the traditional social and political boundaries uniquely applied to America's budding military power. It also inspires an even greater appreciation of West Point graduate, theorist and instructor Dennis Hart Mahan, who left an indelible stamp on military science and the academy. This study is highly recommended to any reader interested in the early development of the U.S. army.


More CWBA reviews of Nebraska titles:
* Spring 1865: The Closing Campaigns of the Civil War
* Busy in the Cause: Iowa, the Free-State Struggle in the West, and the Prelude to the Civil War
* Manassas: A Battlefield Guide
* Standing Firmly by the Flag: Nebraska Territory and the Civil War, 1861-1867 (Bison)
* The Enemy Never Came: The Civil War in the Pacific Northwest (For Caxton Press)
* The Settlers' War: The Struggle for the Texas Frontier in the 1860s (for Caxton Press)
* Of Duty Well and Faithfully Done: A History of the Regular Army in the Civil War
* Antietam, South Mountain, and Harpers Ferry: A Battlefield Guide
* Counter-Thrust: From the Peninsula to the Antietam
* Shenandoah Summer: The 1864 Valley Campaign
* The Peninsula & Seven Days: A Battlefield Guide
* Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge, and Prairie Grove: A Battlefield Guide, with a Section on Wire Road

Hannings: "THE U.S. - MEXICAN WAR: A COMPLETE CHRONOLOGY"

[The U.S.-Mexican War: A Complete Chronology by Bud Hannings (McFarland, 2014). Softcover, illustrations, bibliography, index. Pp. 208. ISBN:9780786476480 $55]

Bud Hannings, the author of numerous chronological event registers of American wars (including a massive Civil War tome), sets his sights on another 18th Century conflict with The U.S. – Mexican War: A Complete Chronology. He begins the book long before 1846, with yearly sections stretching all the way back to 1816. Much of this material is not directly related to U.S. – Mexican relations and the subsequent war fought between the two countries, but it does highlight other American foreign military adventures in other parts of the world and contemporaneous Indian fighting on the continent. While the utility of some of this toward understanding the subject at hand is debatable, Hannings’s coverage of the 1830s Texas troubles clearly provides essential background context to the 1846-48 war.

Entries for the war years average one every few days and can be quite extensive in nature, addressing various military, political, and diplomatic matters. Most consist of brief, paragraph length summaries (every once in a while, historical documents are reproduced in their entirety) but the most important battles are accorded special attention. Their headings are in all-caps for ease of discovery while browsing and their descriptions are often chapter length narrative affairs. Numbers data, as well as order of battle information, is recorded. Those U.S. officers that would play prominent roles in the Civil War are singled out for special recognition for their services on particular Mexican battlefields.

All of the major war fronts are covered, including California, New Mexico, Texas, and the vast areas of northern and central Mexico directly affected by the conflict. Hannings focuses a great deal upon the lesser appreciated naval aspects of war, which stretched up and down the Pacific and Gulf coastlines. The reading experience will be an eye opening one for those believing the war, outside of the Vera Cruz landing, to have been conducted almost entirely on land. The famous campaigns – Zachary Taylor in northern Mexico, John C. Fremont and Commodore Stockton in California, Doniphan’s March, and the saga of the Mormon Battalion – are well documented, but so are countless other less well known skirmishes battles and guerrilla actions.

The book is abundantly illustrated with reproductions of period lithography, such as one would find in the newspapers of the day. What’s missing are maps. Not only are none of the battles accompanied by tactical scale drawings, no campaign or even general area maps are included. 

Readers perusing the bibliography will find a collection of secondary sources published almost entirely during the 19th and early 20th centuries. None of the many excellent modern military studies were consulted, nor were any Mexican sources utilized. Given the latter, it is no surprise that the entries are very U.S.-centric in content and perspective.  With those limitations in mind, The U.S. – Mexican War: A Complete Chronology does have real (though high priced) value as an unusually comprehensive register of land and sea engagements.

(edited version of review first published in On Point magazine)

Kiser: TURMOIL ON THE RIO GRANDE: The Territorial History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846-1865"

[Turmoil on the Rio Grande: The Territorial History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846-1865 by William S. Kiser (Texas A&M University Press, 2011). Cloth, 10 maps, photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:228/301. ISBN:978-1-60344-296-1 $35]

According to historian Jerry D. Thompson, Mesilla, a New Mexican town located astride the most direct and favorable invasion route to and from Texas, experienced the harshest degree of Civil War military rule of any occupied community in the southwest. Arizona State University grad student William Kiser's Turmoil on the Rio Grande confirms this judgment and more with his military and political history of the strategic territorial region centering roughly on the southern New Mexico towns of Mesilla, Las Cruces, and Doña Ana.

Beginning with the Mexican War conquest of New Mexico and Alexander Doniphan's victory at Brazito, the greater part of Kiser's study deals with the pre-Civil War years. Students of U.S.-Mexican relations will appreciate the extensive attention paid to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the bilaterial international commission charged with surveying the permanent border. The war and its legacy inspired heated conflicts between Whigs and Democrats, so matters dealing with the Mexican Cession, including the U.S.-Mexico border and potential trans-continental railroad routes, inevitably became hot button political issues. Kiser's discussion of the partisan politicization of the U.S. commissioner position, a long and wasteful process that saw the appointing and firing of several individuals, is enlightening.

With the Gadsden Purchase and the final sorting out of the border, the next pre-Civil War source of turmoil was the dissatisfaction felt by many inhabitants with the U.S. government's denial of their request for a new territorial status apart from New Mexico, an issue that would later lead to significant local support for the formation of Confederate Arizona in 1861-62.  Another historical thread common throughout the period examined by the book was the problem of Apache raids.

Turmoil informs us that Mesilla Valley civil authorities, newspaper editors, and business interests were strongly pro-Confederate, welcoming Lt. Colonel John R. Baylor's initiation of what would become a full scale invasion of the New Mexico Territory. Kiser summarizes well the subsequent Battle of Mesilla, as well as Baylor's dramatic pursuit and capture of U.S. army Major Isaac Lynde's far larger Fort Fillmore garrison command near the San Augustine springs. Conventional wisdom from the historical literature holds that Lynde's superior force collapsed from lack of water and wide scale drunkenness, with many soldiers foolishly filling their canteens with whiskey instead of water for the long desert trek, but Kiser suggests the possibility that the troops were slyly plied with the foul liquid by pro-Confederate fort sutlers and even disloyal officers. While one generally wishes to shy away from unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, the idea might be worthy of consideration.

While the Mesilla Valley ruling classes supported the Confederates, what the Hispanic majority thought of the Civil War in terms of governmental loyalty remains largely enigmatic after reading the book; however, it is entirely possible that the needed primary source material is unavailable. This lack of evidence makes the assumption by both sides that the Mexicans were predominately pro-Union in sentiment unsatisfactory. The civil and property rights of the newly American inhabitants were not a serious consideration for either side. Confederate actions against suspected unionists were harsh, but the property confiscation, arbitrary arrest, and travel restriction policies of Union officers James H. Carleton and Joseph R. West during the period 1862-65 were less discriminant and demonstrably more severe.  A proper social and cultural history of the experiences and attitudes of the New Mexico-Arizona territorial inhabitants during this period would make for a useful and original adjunct to the existing scholarship.

City, county, and other local Civil War era studies abound but few if any of these venture into the Trans-Mississippi theater's desert regions. Turmoil on the Rio Grande is an notable foray into this historical genre. If William Kiser can research and write a scholarly study of this quality as an undergraduate and graduate student, one suspects he has a bright future in his chosen field.


Other CWBA reviews of TAMU Press titles:
* Tejanos in Gray: Civil War Letters of Captains Joseph Rafael de la Garza and Manuel Yturri
* Why Texans Fought in the Civil War
* Moss Bluff Rebel: A Texas Pioneer in the Civil War
* Frontier Defense in the Civil War: Texas' Rangers and Rebels
* Confederate Struggle For Command: General James Longstreet and the First Corps in the West
* Planting The Union Flag In Texas: The Campaigns of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks in the West
* The Yankee Invasion of Texas
* Blood & Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest

Dishman: "A PERFECT GIBRALTAR: The Battle for Monterrey, Mexico, 1846"

[A Perfect Gibraltar: The Battle for Monterrey, Mexico, 1846 by Christopher D. Dishman (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010). Hardcover, maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:240/288. ISBN:978-0-8061-4140-4  $34.95 ]

In terms of inspiring premier modern style battle studies, the U.S.-Mexican War lags far behind other 18th and 19th century American wars, especially the Civil War. Thankfully, Christopher Dishman's A Perfect Gibraltar, a military history of the September 21-23, 1846 Battle of Monterrey, goes some distance in addressing this historiographical deficiency.

Monterrey was preceded by a pair of demoralizing Mexican defeats at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, but the Mexican authorities responded by marshaling heavy reinforcements and fortifying the Monterrey defenses. Dishman's text does a good job summarizing the political situation in northern Mexico and informing the reader how the chaos hampered their ability to repel the invaders. Terrain difficulties and time worn issues of time and distance were also critical. The author also describes well the Mexican efforts to fortify all likely military approaches into the city, the imposing geography and defensive works together comprising the "perfect Gibraltar" of the book's title.

Mexican War studies generally gush about the role of West Point trained U.S. topographical engineers in scouting roads and gathering intelligence (especially during Winfield Scott's later more famous Mexico City campaign). However, for the approach to Monterrey, Taylor instead relied on Texas Ranger companies, who did an excellent job of scouting and screening the U.S. advance, capturing enemy soldiers for interrogation, and, most important, discovering the best routes for the passage of the army's artillery and trains. In his private correspondence, engineer officer George Meade bitterly laments Taylor's perceived lack of respect for and use of the Pennsylvanian's professional skills prior to Monterrey.

Once the army arrived at Monterrey, the lack of siege artillery led Taylor to plan a direct assault on the city. Accordingly, he divided his army into wings for an attack on September 21. The left, under Taylor himself, would press against the works on the Mexican right and center in what was later termed a diversion but what was in reality a fairly vigorous assault with heavy casualties. The right wing, entrusted to William Worth, would pass both through and around the fortified high ground ringing the west and southwest approaches to the city. Though he captured Fort Teneria, Taylor's attack on the left was essentially repulsed, but Worth succeeded magnificently, capturing all of his objectives with comparatively little loss. It only remained for the Americans to pitch into the city itself and squeeze the Mexican army between Taylor and Worth's wings.

It is here, once the street fighting begins, that the balance of perspectives is most upset. Dishman recounts the swirling combat in stirring detail, noting that the Texan volunteers leveraged their knowledge of Mexican architecture and experience in urban warfare (most notably at Mier) to demonstrate to the rest of the army the way to press back the Mexican defenders without suffering catastrophic loss. In contrast to the detail lavished on the Americans, however, the Mexican point of view from command level on down is only intermittently presented, with the reader provided with little information about their order of battle or positioning of forces to oppose the Americans. One suspects a dearth of source material is the primary culprit.  The rank and file of the Mexican army was clearly less literate than their American counterparts, and it is a shame more officers and civilian residents did not write of their experience.  

The author's treatment of the end of the battle is abrupt, with the negotiations to surrender the Mexican forces covered in a single short sentence. However, the political fallout over Taylor's too generous terms is  recounted and a lengthy final chapter relates the war's course subsequent to the battle.

The book's main failing is in its cartography.  Including previously unpublished archival maps and a series of beautiful battle lithographs is fine, but usefulness needs to trump all other concerns. Shrinking a large historically significant map to fit within a half page space makes identifying its features all but impossible. All proper battle histories must have original terrain and troop position maps specifically wedded to the text. As an example, for all its narrative excellence, a truly solid grasp of the course of the street fighting around Fort Teneria during Taylor's diversionary attack, and for the combined urban assault on the 23rd, is substantially lost on the reader without clear maps.

Nevertheless, even with its presentation flaws, A Perfect Gibraltar is clearly one of the better Mexican War battle studies in the literature, certainly the finest account of the Battle of Monterrey to date. All serious students of the U.S. war with Mexico will want to find a copy of this book. The exploits recounted therein of prominent volunteer and West Point trained officers who would go on to assume roles of great responsibility during the Civil War should be of interest to enthusiasts of that later conflict, as well. Recommended.


Other CWBA reviews of books from this publisher:
* Patrick Connor's War: The 1865 Powder River Indian Expedition (Arthur H. Clark)
* Texas: A Historical Atlas
* Civil War Arkansas 1863: The Battle for a State
* Jayhawkers: The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane
* Powder River Odyssey: Nelson Cole's Western Campaign of 1865 the Journals of Lyman G. Bennett and Other Eyewitness Accounts (Arthur H. Clark)
* Three Days in the Shenandoah: Stonewall Jackson at Front Royal and Winchester
* The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare In The Upper South, 1861-1865
* The Civil War in Arizona: The Story of the California Volunteers, 1861-1865