| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Donald C. Pfanz. Richard S. Ewell: A Soldier's Life. (Civil War America.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1998. PP. xix, 655. $39.95.

"Dear Dick Ewell," wrote one of his fellow former Confederate generals in 1879, "Virginia never bred a truer gentleman, a braver soldier, nor an odder, more lovable character" (p. 476). 1

Richard Stoddert Ewell (1817–1872) was one of those fascinating second-echelon Civil War military figures who played important roles on occasion but who were often eclipsed by others—in Ewell's case most often by Thomas J. "Stonewall' Jackson. The common understanding of Ewell was crafted half a century ago by Douglas Southall Freeman, who depicted the general as a brave, lovable, bird-like eccentric who usually carried out specific orders capably enough but who lacked the capacity for independent command and who was changed drastically by an August 1862 wound that cost him a leg and a May 1863 marriage to a widowed cousin whom he usually introduced as "my wife, Mrs. Brown." 2

Donald C. Pfanz sets out to draw a deeper, more complete picture of Ewell. By treating the general's antebellum military career in depth and by taking advantage of several recent Civil War battle/campaign studies, Pfanz presents us with another Dick Ewell. The general who emerges from these pages is still the odd, eccentric, likable, blunt, and often profane officer, but he is also a very competent military commander who understood soldiers, armies, and battles very well. He performed capably most of the time. . . .

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