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Book Reviews These are some reviews from a recent issue of
The Civil War News:
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A Soldier’s General—The Civil War Letters of Major General Lafayette McLaws.
Edited by John C. Oeffinger.
Illustrated, maps, footnotes, appendix, bibliography, index, 299 pp., 2002. The University of North Carolina Press, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288, $34.95 plus shipping.
Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws played a significant role in several of the Confederacy’s most important campaigns, and yet his military career has received little scrutiny. McLaws often appears in the context of the endless discussions and debates about his controversial peer, James Longstreet, but rarely is the spotlight shined directly upon McLaws. In a diligent endeavor worthy of the highest scholarly admiration, historian John C. Oeffinger sifted through piles of McLaws’s wartime correspondence. Straining to interpret McLaws’s rather ghastly penmanship, Oeffinger succeeded in reconstructing the eloquent humanity of a Confederate officer who has stood in the shadows of his legen-dary comrades for more than a century. The letters in A Soldier’s General reveal Lafayette McLaws to be a loving husband, a concerned father, a Confederate patriot, and a warrior who longed for peace as much as victory. The tenderness and thoughtfulness expressed in these pages is quite moving and provides a unique glimpse into the heart of a fighter. Of course, Longstreet is present here, and McLaws’s famous letter calling him a “humbug” after Gettysburg is included, but readers will see that McLaws’s remarks about Longstreet fit into a larger historical context. If the late author Michael Shaara and actor Tom Berenger had created their popular portrayals of Longstreet from McLaws’s viewpoint, the image of Lee’s “Old War Horse” might be considerably different today. A Soldier’s General is one of the most important recent contributions to our understanding of the Army of Northern Virginia and Longstreet’s First Corps. More than that, the book is a long overdue study and revelation of a key Confederate battlefield commander. Lafayette McLaws died in 1897, but A Soldier’s General brings him to life for the benefit of all students of the Civil War.
John E. Deppen
John E. Deppen is a member of the Susquehanna Civil War Round Table. He has an MA in military studies with honors in Civil War studies from American Military University.
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