Jeffery S. Prushankin

This excellent volume not only details the contentious command relationship between Richard Taylor and Edmund Kirby-Smith in the Trans-Mississippi, but provides good coverage of the campaigns fought there, especially the Red River Campaign. Bottom line: Taylor was a pain in the rear subordinate, but Kirby-Smith was a duplicitous bureaucrat lacking in leadership skills. Taylor was surely correct that Kirby Smith had ruined a good chance to crush Banks and possibly destroy Porter's fleet when Smith took Taylor's infantry away for a vainglorious and pointless offensive in Arkansas. Prushankin provides sharp analysis of the correspondence between the two generals that is fair but reveals the weakness of Smith's actions.… (meer)

Between the title and the subtitle you will learn all you need to know about this book, as the author examines in detail the political and personal strains that short-circuited the efforts of Edmund Kirby Smith and Richard Taylor from accomplishing all that they might have in their region of the Confederacy. In particular, Prushankin sees a missed opportunity to really smash Nathaniel Banks' Red River operation, had Kirby Smith demonstrated a wider strategic perspective. While there is nothing particularly wrong with this book, the author might have cultivated a somewhat wider perspective himself, by considering the wider problem of the Confederacy not being able to trade space for time, as to trade space would mean the destruction of the way of life that was being fought for, even if the ground in question was taken back.… (meer)