A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray.

A Soldier to the Last: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler in Blue and Gray. By Edward G. Longacre. (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2007. Pp. xvi, 288. $29.95, ISBN 978-1-57488-591-0.)

Major General Isaac Ridgeway Trimble: Biography of a Baltimore Confederate. By Leslie R. Tucker. (Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland and Company, Inc., c. 2005. Pp. [viii], 263. Paper, $35.00, ISBN 0-7864-2131-2.)

T. Harry Williams once mused that the tragedy of the Confederacy may have been that while it had a number of first-rate second-class men, it did not have enough first-rate first-class military men to meet its needs (P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray [1955: Baton Rouge, 1995], viii). It can hardly be said, though, that there has been a lack of interest among historians in the Confederacy's second-class military men, a fact reflected in the two books under consideration here. The first is the latest in a long line of biographies of second-class Civil War military figures, such as Henry Jackson Hunt and James H. Wilson on the Union side and Fitzhugh Lee and Wade Hampton on the Confederate, that have been written during the last few decades by Edward G. Longacre. The subject of this particular volume, Joseph "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler, has long been a figure of controversy due to his role as commander of the Army of Tennessee's cavalry in that army's almost unbroken record of defeats and the steady decline of Confederate fortunes in the western theater. In the second book Leslie R. Tucker offers a study of Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, whose service to the Confederacy was not as extensive as Wheeler's but who did participate in the battle of Gettysburg--and who, thanks to the colorful dramatization by Michael Shaara in the novel The Killer Angels (New York, 1974) and Ronald Maxwell in his film Gettysburg (1993) of Trimble's frustration with events on July 1, probably enjoys a much greater degree of recognition among casual students of the Civil War than many of his more accomplished contemporaries.

There has not been a full biography of Wheeler published in over fifty years, and there are not many who can match Longacre's qualifications as a student of Civil War cavalry. Few readers familiar with Longacre's previous works will be surprised that he has executed his study of Wheeler effectively. His research in both primary and secondary sources is thorough; his narrative of events is clear and straightforward; and although he offers a more favorable take on Wheeler's military exploits--in both the Civil War and the Spanish-American War--than some historians do, Longacre's arguments are by no means strained or unreasonable. Some readers, especially those looking for more than "drums and trumpets" military history, may finish the book wishing Longacre had gone beyond battles and leaders (of the book's 235 pages of text, only about 50 address events before and after the Civil War) to offer a few more details about Wheeler's experiences as a member of the U.S. Congress during the 1880s and 1890s and an analysis of the broader social and cultural forces that shaped his life and times.

If Longacre's work can be criticized for not going much beyond a traditional narrative of events, incorporating insights from other fields, or drawing on recent scholarship on larger social and cultural forces in nineteenth-century America, Tucker's book may go too far in the opposite direction. Trimble, one of the older general officers to serve the Confederacy (he graduated from West Point in 1822), saw action as a brigade commander during the 1862 Shenandoah Valley campaign, the Seven Days battles, and the second Manassas campaign and as a division commander at Gettysburg, suffering wounds during the last two operations and ultimately losing a leg. Tucker provides fairly clear and interesting descriptions of these campaigns, Trimble's role in them, and Trimble's noteworthy antebellum career as an engineer and railroad executive--although some may quibble with Tucker's heavy reliance on Trimble's own writings in the account of events in June and July 1863. Like Longacre's work, Tucker's is distinguished by extensive research; however, Tucker also endeavors to explain why a Marylander like Trimble "made the decision to cast his lot with the Confederacy" by discussing the modernization of American society during the nineteenth century and placing Trimble's experiences in that context (p. 3). Tucker also employs psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs in analyzing Trimble's life and relationships with his various communities, from Baltimore and Maryland to the Confederacy and New South. The effort to place Trimble in the context of his times is certainly an important and worthy one that will provide some useful insights to the reader; however, the employment of Maslow's concepts is much less effective, and it is debatable how much benefit readers will really get from their use to analyze Trimble's life and his reactions to the forces that shaped it.

In the final analysis, neither of these books can be considered in the same class as such stellar recent contributions to scholarship on the Confederacy's second-class leaders as Donald C. Pfanz's work on Richard S. Ewell, Craig L. Symonds's biography of Patrick Cleburne, and Lesley J. Gordon's study of George E. Pickett. Moreover, neither study offers such compelling insights or has as its subject so important a figure as to make the book essential reading for general students of the Civil War. Nonetheless, those who have an interest in Isaac Trimble, "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler, or the particular battles and campaigns in which they participated will find these books of value and interest.

ETHAN S. RAFUSE

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College