Pecos Bill: A Military Biography of William R. Shafter

Rating:
Summary: A FANTASTICALLY WRITTEN HISTORY ABOUT A FORGOTTEN HERO!
Review: Paul Carlson writes history like most novelist wouldlike to write fiction. He is informative about his subject without being a bore. Shafter was the man who cleaned up after Wounded Knee, put down the Pullman Strike and led our Armed Forces in Cuba during the Spanish American War. Why wasn't he publicized as an American hero? Because, he was too fat, was involved in a scandle or two and wasn't popular with the press. Carlson tells it like it happened. And that makes this book the absolute best of its kind.

Jim Wynne

Rating:
Summary: Revisionist History at Its Best
Review: The image of William R. Shafter in American military history is one of a fat, incompetent buffoon who presided over one of the most disorganized escapades in our history, the American Expeditionary Force to Cuba in 1898. According to popular conception, what success that campaign did attain should be credited to Teddy Roosevelt or other commanders, not to Shafter. In this dandy military biography, Paul H. Carlson, a historian specializing in the development of Texas, has set out to correct these misconceptions and rescue Shafter from ill consideration and obscurity. The result is a fine addition to the literature of military biography and the Army during the latter nineteenth century.

Shafter, like so many Army officers during the Gilded Age, served well with volunteer units, most of them from his home state of Michigan, in the Civil War. With the Army of the Potomac at Ball's Bluff and the Peninsular Campaign, Shafter distinguished himself as a capable and effective junior officer. Later, with another regiment, Shafter served in the western theater, participating in the Tennessee campaigns. It was during this period that Shafter took command of his own regiment, a black infantry unit, earning a great deal of experience that served him later in the frontier army. By the end of the Civil War, Shafter had been promoted to brevet brigadier general of volunteers. In 1895 he would receive rather after the fact the Medal of Honor for gallantry at the battle of Fair Oaks Station on May 31, 1862.

When Shafter mustered out of service at the end of the war, he returned to Michigan but quickly found that he did not fit into civilian life any longer. In 1867 he applied for and received a commission in the regular Army and was sent to Texas as a lieutenant colonel of the 41st Infantry, a black regiment. Once again, he served with distinction.

Among his activities on the Texas frontier was the systematic exploration of the southern plains of the state. He was also involved in several Indian campaigns throughout the West, the most significant was probably the restoration efforts at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, following the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. In 1894, Shafter commanded troops that maintained order in Los Angeles during the American Railway Union strike. Once again, in every instance, Shafter's superior officers considered him a capable, efficient, and results-oriented officer.

It made sense, therefore, that he would have been offered command of the American Expeditionary Force to Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Although by then a senior officer with a tremendous weight problem, Shafter was, with men like Sheridan gone from the Army, a reasonable choice. He had a broad base of experience, had been effective at every command, was a senior officer in the Army, and was a Civil War hero with a Medal of Honor to his credit. Even so, Carlson comments that the decision to give Shafter the command was largely political. Secretary of War Russell A. Alger, for instance, was a fellow Michigan native and looked kindly on Shafter, and Shatter had several other highly-placed friends supporting his appointment. Moreover, probably the best candidate, commanding general of the Army Nelson A. Miles, had political ambitions that opposed those of the Republicans and President McKinley was too astute a politician to give him the vehicle to make himself a war hero.

Shafter became the choice, then, and was promoted to major general of volunteers. According to Carlson, he did not do badly. Although he had his troubles, Carlson argues persuasively that most were related to Shafter's inexperience in organizing, equipping, and maneuvering large bodies of men. He had experience previously commanding nothing larger than the shrunken divisions of the frontier Army. Carlson presents a clear assessment of Shafter's strengths and weaknesses: "He failed to bring order at Tampa, the jumping off point for the expedition, neglected to draw clear lines of responsibility for staff officers and troop commanders, and too often overlooked important details. Indeed, his leadership may not have been decisive to the success of the expedition. Nonetheless, despite his shortcomings he moved an army of some 16,000 men a distance of 1,200 miles by water, landed on an enemy shore in open boats, in ten days drove the enemy back to his last line of entrenchments in front of Santiago de Cuba, and in fifteen days more compelled surrender of the city, the district, and an army of 24,000 men" (p 185). This is not the accomplishments, according to the author, of a buffoon.

Carlson's portrait of William R. Shafter, therefore, is a refreshing revisionist analysis of an important nineteenth century military figure. Perhaps at times the author is too persistent in trying to rescue Shafter from his reputation as an incompetent, but the arguments he makes are compelling. Even so, Carlson, does not paper over flaws in his character. Shafter was obstinate, profane, a womanizer, a sometimes drunk, and single-mindedly hard-boiled. He was also, Carlson admits, energetic, ambitious, self-reliant, and hard-working. When one finishes this book, there is a sense that Shafter was a flawed but capable figure. "Pecos Bill" is a fine book, well worth the reading.