Courage and Country: James Shields, More Than Irish Luck

By J. P. Sean Callan
Illustrated, maps, softcover, 294 pp., 2004. IrishQuill Publishing, P. O. Box 955, Libertyville, IL 60028, $29.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Richard A. Sauers
Richard A. Sauers is the author of numerous Civil War books, including Advance the Colors!

Review:
This is the first full-length biography of James Shields, an 1826 Irish immigrant to New York, since 1900. Shields drifted west to Illinois, earning a living as a teacher while studying law.

He was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature in 1836, then almost got into a duel with Abraham Lincoln over Mary Todd, whose newspaper letter criticizing Shields started the feud.

After serving as a justice on the state supreme court, Shields became a state militia general and went off to Mexico and served under Winfield Scott. After the war, he was appointed governor of the Oregon Territory before being elected to the Senate from Illinois.

After serving a term, Shields went to Minnesota and joined the Senate from this state where after one term he went to California and then to Mexico as a mining official.

When the Civil War erupted, Shields was commissioned a brigadier general of volunteers and led a division in the Shenandoah Valley, where he was wounded as the fighting began at Kernstown.

Shields' division was repulsed at Port Republic during Jackson's campaign, a defeat that shelved the general and led to his resignation in early 1863. The general then served as a railroad commissioner in California then moved to Missouri, where, after serving in the state legislature, he was again elected to the United States Senate. Shields died in 1879 and was buried in Missouri.

Because of Shields' wide-ranging career, it is a challenge to write a biography of this active citizen. Callan seems to have searched for all available records, but since this book lacks a bibliography, it is very difficult to discern where all of his research occurred.

And since Callan is not a historian, his footnotes lack the proper methodology and quite often are difficult to comprehend, thus rendering his research difficult to check.

Still, a reading of this book shows that the author dealt with the Herculean task of writing a competent tale of Shields' life. The book would have been better with proper notes and a bibliography, not to mention a thorough index.