GENERAL JO SHELBY’S MARCH

A proficient study of a diehard Confederate cavalry general.

Historian Arthur (Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, 2006) doesn’t disguise his ambivalence toward this hotheaded opportunist who threw his lot into the losing side and gained little, save a reputation as a ferocious fighting man, “the embodiment of certain enduring American characteristics and values.” Raised in Kentucky and “groomed as a merchant prince,” Joseph Orville Shelby (1830–1897) was offered the chance to serve for the Union after hostilities broke out in 1861. His good friend and fellow Missourian Frank Blair, a Republican congressman, offered him a commission, but Shelby fervently supported states’ rights in the bloody aftermath of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and had been involved in nasty cross-border raids. Indeed, he was already funneling munitions to the Confederates and was soon put in charge of defending the Trans-Mississippi Department, the 400,000 square miles that lay west of the Mississippi. While the federal forces recognized the significance of controlling the river, the Confederacy used the area as a “salvage yard” for dumping “malcontents and incompetents.” Shelby’s Iron Brigade was effective at the quick attack-and-retreat style in the face of the Union’s superior numbers, establishing Shelby’s reputation as fierce and reckless. Refusing to acknowledge Southern surrender, he forayed into Mexico in June 1865 with a band of about 300 “hard cases on the prowl and bristling with weapons,” looking to incite the Mexicans under Benito Juárez against the Union, then switched sides and offered their services to Maximilian and the French invaders, who rejected them. Arthur fashions a dignified portrait of this troublesome character and knowledgeably delves into a little-studied period of post–Civil War machinations with Mexico.

An evenhanded biography of an unlovable figure of Civil War history.