Customer Reviews

Arkansas Confederates in the Western Theater

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although Arkansas committed most of its men and boys to the Confederate cause, and her regiments served in every theater of the Civil War, there has been precious little attention given to the important role they played. James Willis has fixed that with his landmark book, "Arkansas Confederates in the Western Theater."

When the book was published, the reviewer for the Arkansas statewide newspaper complained that it was "too detailed." For the serious Civil War reader, that phrase is music to our ears.

This massive book (nearly 900 pages) was thoroughly researched and meticulously footnoted. Although all of the Arkansas regiments which served in the Army of Tennessee are covered, the vehicle Willis used to carry the narrative is a day-to-day chronicle of the 9th Arkansas Infantry Regiment. As a counterpoint to the "big picture" of campaigns and battles, Willis provides numerous "soldier's eye" vignettes, using excerpts from letters, diaries, journals, and muster roll entries.

The result is a monument to the perseverance and dedication of the Arkansas volunteers.

Included are several appendices which list a complete regimental roster, casualty lists, officer lists, etc. I continually refer back to this book in the course of my own research.

I highly recommend this book.

Civil War research is often written from a soliders point of view or contains romantic idealism. This book simply states the events, describes the conditions, offers personal glimpses of the soilders, and provides a timeline of events. If you had an ancestor in the Western Theater, this book will provide information of what their world was like. I found soilder listings here that I have not seen anywhere else. This book has become a valuable source of information and I wish there were more like it.

Despite the fact that the book is long and contains well researched facts and figures, I found it difficult to put down! As a very personal account of a group of Arkansas men who try to survive the Civl War, from recruitment to the final surrender, it had me wondering what was going to happen to each of them mentioned by name. I read every footnote and enjoyed it so much that I would recommend the book to anyone. I also think it would make a great screen play as well.

As geneologists well know, it is the research that is really the fun part of working on a historic subject. Clearly the author here relished digging into obscure archives looking for undiscovered tidbits of information on Arkansas' Confederate soldiers. He probably did the most extensive research on this topic of any historian. For that he deserves great credit. This book is probably a valuable addition to a Civil War historian's library for its 41 page bibliography alone.
His problem begins when he has to decide what information to include and what to exclude as he writes his book. Apparently he did not exclude anything and ends up with neither a first rate annotated bibliography nor an interesting read. It is too bad that the author did not publish an annotated bibliography on Arkansas Confederates and then also a separate history of the 9th Arkansas Infantry Regiment.
The story jumps around to the extent that it is quite annoying. At one moment we are on one part of the battlefield and suddenly we are with a completely different unit on the otherside of the battlefield. Too the writing is stilted and overdone. For example in describing one Confederate attack, the author writes that they "hit the enemy line with a determined, resolved, resolute, and firm fierceness, an unbridled, violent, barbarous, and savage fury."
If not for the first-rate research I would have to rate this book two stars or less, but it is valuable as a research tool.