Book Reviews
Hurlbut’s Civil War experiences conformed to previously established behavioral patterns. Yearning always to gain political stature against the backdrop of war, the general sullied his already shaky reputation in his first battle, Shelbina in Northeast Missouri, in September 1861. Arrested by a subordinate officer after the battle on charges of intoxication, Hurlbut nevertheless endured his dishonor, eventually receiving divisional command within Grant’s Army of the Tennessee in early 1862. An unexpectedly solid showing at the bloody Battle of Shiloh helped gain Hurlbut two stars; by November, Grant (who was Hurlbut’s onetime subordinate) named the general military commander at Memphis, the critical Mississippi River supply depot. Hurlbut’s stay there was characterized by his own heavy drinking, squalid camp and prison conditions, few operational initiatives, and wholesale smuggling of Southern cotton (a process in which the general played a leading part). Relieved from his Memphis command in April 1864 by William T. Sherman, Hurlbut subsequently found himself that autumn in charge at a still loftier locale, New Orleans, where his smuggling activities reached monumental proportions. There Hurlbut finally overreached himself: his bold disobedience of Federal cotton regulations and opposition to Lincoln’s reconstruction policies in Louisiana sparked his investigation by a special military commission. By April 1865 the general, disgraced yet again, departed New Orleans; two months later he was allowed to resign quietly from national service.
If it is true that many a biographer has become an apologist for his or her subject, then it is axiomatic that others unswervingly flog history’s more disreputable actors. Lash, however, does a splendid job maintaining a level of academic detachment rare in Civil War biography, a real feat given Hurlbut’s mainly infamous nature. Yet there are some methodological and stylistic issues that hinder this otherwise fine volume’s overall effectiveness. Chiefly, Lash’s cumbersome, pedantic prose might displease casual enthusiasts or other non-scholars, and the vast amount of narrative detail spent on secondary (and tertiary) issues/figures can be taxing even to the Civil War specialist.
Furthermore, the volume’s maps, taken from early twentieth-century sources, fail to illustrate key places mentioned throughout the text. Also, the leading authority on American Whig political culture—Oxford University’s Daniel Walker Howe—is incorrectly identified as “David W. Howe” (220, 279). Lastly, the book’s penultimate chapter, a compact and dense look at Hurlbut’s postwar career (featuring, among other things, the erstwhile general’s divisive one-year term as president of the Grand Army of the Republic and his equally tempestuous stint as American ambassador to Peru) reads like a hurried afterthought. Such criticisms aside, A Politician Turned General has much to recommend it for those interested in nineteenth-century politics, Civil War military affairs, and Union occupation policies in the Western theater.
Christopher S. Stowe
University of Toledo
Toledo, Ohio
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