Guide to Missouri Confederate Units 1861-1865
As a student of the Western Theater I often find myself trying to trace the history of Missouri Confederate regiments - often a difficult task. The information on the National Park Service's Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System is often skimpy. James McGhee has solved this issue with his new book. For each Missouri Confederate unit McGhee provides its official name, any other designations it may have had, a list of its field officers, a list of company geographic origins and commanders, a bibliography for further research and a narrative of the unit's service that lists known casualty numbers. Generally the information is quite extensive with infantry regiments averaging about five pages of text while artillery batteries garner about two pages. For cavalry regiments there is much more diversity, some short-lived units only having a page or two of information while others are as long as the infantry sections. The narratives themselves are quite descriptive. Instead of simply saying the regiment fought at Franklin, the text details where in line the unit's soldiers were, what they attacked, how long they fought and the toll the unit suffered in the battle. I wish the book had a few maps. I would have liked a map of Missouri showing principal towns and county names. Another useful map would have been a theater map so one could find the smaller actions Missouri troops were involved in. The photograph section is very good because the pictures don't just focus on the generals from Missouri but include men of nearly every rank, from generals to privates. The only informational deficiency is the lack of a section on the Missouri State Guard units. McGhee explains in the introduction that he did not include the state guard because it was a state force and not officially mustered into the Confederate service. The index, however, does lead the reader to the various units that came out of each Missouri State Guard Division. Despite the absence of maps and a section on the Missouri State Guard, I recommend this book. There is no equal or better resource on Missouri's Confederate units.
Reviewer: Nicholas Kurtz
Nicholas Kurtz graduated from the University of Colorado-Denver in 2001 with a B.A. in history. He loves wandering battlefields and is an aspiring author. Although he finds all aspects of the war interesting his primary interest is the Western Theater.
|
Photographs, bibliography, index, 314 pp., 2009, University of Arkansas Press,