The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861-1865

A Study in Command

William Royston Geise, Michael J. Forsyth

• Publisher: Savas Beatie
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781954547438
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

William Royston Geise was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1970s when he researched and wrote The Confederate Military Forces in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861- 1865: A Study in Command in 1974. Although it remained unpublished, it was not wholly unknown. Deep-diving researchers were aware of Dr. Geise's work and lamented the fact that it was not widely available to the general public. In many respects, studies of the Trans-Mississippi Theater are only now catching up with Geise. This intriguing book traces the evolution of Confederate command and how it affected the shifting strategic situation and general course of the war. Dr. Geise accomplishes his task by coming at the question in a unique fashion. Military field operations are discussed as needed, but his emphasis is on the functioning of headquarters and staff—the central nervous system of any military command. This was especially so for the Trans-Mississippi. After July 1863, the only viable Confederate agency west of the great river was the headquarters at Shreveport. That hub of activity became the sole location to which all isolated players, civilians and military alike, could look for immediate overall leadership and a sense of Confederate solidarity. By filling these needs, the Trans-Mississippi Department assumed a unique and vital role among Confederate military departments and provided a focus for continued Confederate resistance west of the Mississippi River. The author's work mining primary archival sources and published firsthand accounts, coupled with a smooth and clear writing style, helps explain why this remote department (referred to as "Kirby Smithdom" after Gen. Kirby Smith) failed to function efficiently, and how and why the war unfolded there as it did. Trans-Mississippi Theater historian and Ph.D. candidate Michael J. Forsyth (Col., U.S. Army, Ret.) has resurrected Dr. Geise's smoothly written and deeply researched manuscript from its undeserved obscurity. This edition, with its original annotations and Forsyth's updated citations and observations, is bolstered with original maps, photographs, and images. Students of the war in general, and the Trans-Mississippi Theater in particular, will delight in its long overdue publication.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Confederate Northwest Frontier: May 1861 – August 1861
• Chapter 2: Divided Command and Divided Counsels in Missouri: August 1861
• Chapter 3: Continued Command Problems on the Northwest Frontier and a New Year’s Promise of Solution: August 1861 – January 186
• Chapter 4: Texas: The First Year
• Chapter 5: Increasing Isolation and a New Command in the Trans-Mississippi West: January 1862 – May 1862
• Chapter 6: Hindman and Hebert Divide Command While the Trans-Mississippi Department Awaits a Department Commander: June – July 1862
• Chapter 7: General Holmes Fails to Create a Department: August 1862 — February 1863
• Chapter 8: Holmes, Arkansas, and the Defense of the Lower River: August 1862 — February 1863
• Chapter 9: The Department Faces Total Isolation: February – July 1863
• Chapter 10: Isolation: July – December, 1863
• Chapter 11: Kirby Smith’s War Department, 1864
• Chapter 12: Kirby Smithdom, 1864
• Chapter 13: Military Command and the Campaigns of 1864
• Chapter 14: Decline and Collapse: December 1864 – June 1865
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Editor’s Supplemental Bibliography
• Excerpt: Thirteen Months in Dixie
• Author and Editor Biographies
• The Trans-Mississippi Department
• Indian Territory
• Pea Ridge
• The Red River Campaign
• Brigadier General Ben McCulloch
• Brigadier General William J. Hardee
• Major General Earl Van Dorn
• Major General Thomas C. Hindman
• Major General Theophilus Holmes
• Major General Richard Taylor
• Major General John G. Walker
• Lieutenant General Edmund Kirby Smith
• Missouri’s governor in exile, Thomas C. Reynolds
• Major General Simon Bolivar Buckner