| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Jeffery S. Prushankin. A Crisis in Confederate Command: Edmund Kirby Smith, Richard Taylor, and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Pp. xx, 308. $39.95.
Among Civil War historians, it is almost a commonplace observation that the Trans-Mississippi theater of the war has very limited representation in the war's historiography. One can speculate on reasons for the neglect, though some seem rather obvious. No major, turning-point battles occurred there; in the war's big picture, the Trans-Mississippi did not play a decisive role. With one or two exceptions, no widely known officers or armies participated in the various actions in the area. The two main characters of this book, Richard Taylor and Edmund Kirby Smith, are not notable to war buffs, and through the years, historians have paid but little attention to them. Thus it is refreshing to see any new work on the Trans-Mississippi make an appearance. Always, one hopes that such a book will be a good one, and Jeffery S. Prushankin has indeed produced a worthwhile study that explains interactions between the key Confederate officers of operations west of the Mississippi.	1
Prushankin explains that the personal conflicts between the two generals were rooted in diverse visions of what Confederate strategy ought to be in the West Louisiana and Arkansas areas. Smith opted for a defensive stand; he wanted to do as much as could be done to blunt Federal incursions into both states, without bringing on a major engagement that might destroy his means to execute his overall strategy. Conversely, Taylor wanted to carry the battle to the enemy. Their conflicting views laid the groundwork for continual friction between the two and reached the point where Taylor, who technically, if not enthusiastically, was under Smith's command, ignored Smith, sometimes through carefully though out loopholes, sometimes through pointed disobedience.	. . .

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