The Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 1854-1876: From the Texas Frontier to the Civil War and Back Again
Edited by Thomas T. Smith, Jerry D. Thompson, Robert Wooster and Ben E. Pingenot
(November 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, maps, bibliography, index, 519 pages, 2007. Texas State Historical Association, P.O. Box 28527, Austin, TX 78755, $39.95 plus shipping.

Reviewer: C. Michael Harrington
C. Michael Harrington is a member of the Houston Civil War Round Table and Civil War Aficionados. He has written several articles on South Carolina Confederates. A practicing lawyer, he has degrees in economics from Yale and Cambridge and a law degree from Harvard.

Review:
Some books deserve a better title. A case is point is The Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 1854-1876; From the Texas Frontier to the Civil War and Back Again, edited by a quartet of Texas military historians.

One glance at the title — the memoirs of a general unknown to this reviewer who probably did garrison duty in one or another obscure Texas outposts in the mid-19th century — consigned the book to my in-box for several weeks, until duty to the readers of this newspaper compelled me to pick it up.

Once I commenced reading the book, however, I found it engrossing, and I recommend it to readers who have an interest in the history of the Old Army on the Southwestern frontier in the years surrounding the Civil War.

Born into a prominent Rhode Island family in 1835, at age 15 Zenas Randall Bliss overstated his age by one year in order to meet the minimum age requirement for entrance into the U.S. Military Academy.

Bliss’ reminiscences, written in the 1880s and 1890s from memory, pick up with his 1854 graduation from West Point as an infantry officer. The memoirs cover Bliss’ antebellum and postbellum service on the Texas frontier, sandwiched around his Civil War exploits, which account for roughly a quarter of his text.

Following the Mexican War, the U.S. Army established a string of forts in Texas, mostly along the Rio Grande and in the far western reaches of the state, to protect the citizenry against avenging Mexicans and marauding Indians. Bliss was posted at several of these forts during his two tours of duty in Texas.

Far from being the type of walled stockades portrayed in Western movies, the forts were makeshift habitations, typically constructed of adobe, and built to accommodate only a few companies of officers and men. Army life at these outposts of civilization was anything but glamorous.

In Texas, Bliss found himself chasing, but seldom finding, the small bands of Indians who poached cattle and horses, and occasionally lifted civilian scalps, along the sparsely populated Texas-Mexican border.

The climate and terrain of South Texas, and the tedium of isolated garrison duty, proved more formidable obstacles to Bliss than depredating Indians.

The blistering heat and lack of water along the Rio Grande combined with abundant rattlesnakes, mountain lions and scorpions to make army life generally uncomfortable for the New Englander.

Hunting the abundant game of South Texas, racing his horses for small wagers and kicking up his heels at fandangos on the Mexican side of the border, however, made Bliss’ life in Texas more bearable; and his encounters with a host of future Civil War luminaries such as Phil Sheridan, in addition to local desperadoes, definitely made his life more interesting.

Caught unaware of the outbreak of hostilities in 1861, and loyal to the Union, Bliss found himself a prisoner of war, first in San Antonio and later in Richmond. When finally exchanged in the spring of 1862, Bliss assumed command of a Rhode Island infantry regiment that he led capably at Fredericksburg, earning a Medal of Honor.

Bliss’ description of his regiment’s assault on the terrible stone wall on Marye’s Heights is both graphic and gripping, but the war content of Bliss’ reminiscences is too limited to recommend this book to readers interested only in Bliss’ Civil War experiences.

A modest man possessed of a sharp wit and a facile pen, Bliss’ memoirs give a lively account of army life on the Southwestern frontier.

The memoirs do more than chronicle his military service. They provide a window into the rigors of civilian as well as military life along the Texas-Mexican border during the Civil War era, plus they reflect the changes in Bliss’ personal attitudes about African-Americans as soldiers.

Typical of Regular Army officers, Bliss wanted little to do with black soldiers during the war, and in 1864 he declined a coveted promotion to general officer because it involved command of a black brigade.

After the war, however, Bliss found himself commanding several black regiments, and in time he developed a genuine respect for African-American soldiers.

In 1870, he enrolled as army scouts a group of freed slaves who had lived with the Seminole Indians, an experiment that proved eminently successful and persisted until the eve of World War I.

Bliss’ reminiscences are masterfully edited, with notes helpfully placed at the bottom of the pages they annotate. Maps are few but adequate. Even with its uninspiring title, this book will reward readers interested in day-to-day army life in the Civil War era.