Jo Shelby’s Iron Brigade
The Trans-Mississippi Theater has been often been overlooked in histories of the Civil War. It is easy to forget that thousands of men fought and died in hundreds of battles west of the Mississippi River. Deryl Sellmeyer relates the experiences of one unit in the Trans-Mississippi that rode thousands of miles and fought in countless engagements in service to the Confederacy. The Iron Brigade was a unit of Missouri cavalry that served throughout the Trans-Mississippi, most notably in Arkansas and its home state. It was commanded by Brig. Gen. Joseph Shelby, a rope maker and plantation owner who started the war commanding a company of cavalry. Elements of the Iron Brigade would fight in every major engagement in Missouri and Arkansas. Shelby opened his war at the Battle of Carthage, Mo., on July 5, 1861, and followed that with service at Wilson’s Creek in August 1861 and Pea Ridge, Ark., on March 7 and 8, 1862, with his Missouri State Guard Cavalry unit. After the bulk of the army moved east of the Mississippi River, Shelby returned to Missouri and raised his own regiment. Colonel Shelby was soon placed in command of other regiments of cavalry from Missouri, and the Iron Brigade was created. Participating in Marmaduke’s second raid into Missouri, the Missourians also fought at the Battle of Helena, Ark., on July 4, 1863. Shelby was wounded there, but rejoined his command in time to lead them on a raid into Missouri later in the year. After returning to Arkansas, he was promoted to brigadier general. The brigade next opposed the Camden Expedition in the spring of 1864. With the repulse of the Union forces in southern Arkansas, Shelby took his brigade on a wide-ranging recruiting mission that saw him perform one of the most daring feats of the war. In June 1864 the Iron Brigade captured and sank the USS Queen City, a tinclad vessel at Clarendon, Ark. Later that year another raid into Missouri was launched, with disastrous results for the Confederates. At the end of the war, some of the Iron Brigade joined Shelby in temporarily fleeing into Mexico. Sellmeyer supplements numerous published and unpublished manuscripts with countless secondary sources. The text is accompanied by maps and illustrations throughout and closes with an index. The work is an examination of the brigade and its movements and actions on almost a daily basis. There are a few problems with the work, however. The maps lack detail and add little to the text. The reader can easily become bogged down by minutia in many places throughout the work. Many paragraphs lack citation information, making it difficult for the reader to learn more about a particular aspect of the work. Some major secondary sources were not consulted by the author, and there is little critical analysis of the actions of Shelby and his men. Overall, the work does relate the experiences of the Confederate Iron Brigade and ably fills a gap in the literature on the Confederate experience in the Trans-Mississippi. Reviewer: David Sesser A former museum curator, David Sesser is Special Collections Curator and E-Resources Coordinator at the Huie Library, Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, Ark.
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Illustrated, photographs, maps, bibliography, index, 381 pp., 2007, Pelican Publishing Company,