Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th US Cavalry by Robert W. Lull (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th US Cavalry by Robert W. Lull Michael Burns Civil War General and Indian Fighter James M. Williams: Leader of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and the 8th US Cavalry. By Robert W. Lull. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2013. ix + 289 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 cloth. The military campaigns of the American Civil War in the Trans-Mississippi West have received [End Page 311] little attention from historians. In his biography of James M. Williams, the original commander of the Union’s First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and an officer with the US Regulars after the war, Robert W. Lull provides a depiction of the frontier’s Civil War as well as the army’s role in westward expansion after 1865. Williams contributed to many important events in the Great Plains, both as a peripheral and central player. After arriving in Kansas in 1856, Williams, a staunch abolitionist, took part in Bleeding Kansas, established the First Kansas Colored Infantry in 1862, and ably led it and eventually a brigade through most of the Trans-Mississippi Civil War. While commanding, Williams supported the equal treatment of black officers and soldiers. After the conflict, Williams joined the Eighth US Cavalry in Arizona and New Mexico territories. Wounded while on patrol in July 1867 and discharged as a result, Williams settled in Colorado and remained active with the Grand Army of the Republic. He died in Washington dc in February 1907 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. While Lull tracks Williams’s entire life, he primarily focuses on the Civil War years. This provides an interesting opportunity to discuss the racial dynamics of the conflict in the Great Plains. Williams led white, black, and Indian soldiers into battle, and his men fought both white and Indian Confederates. This racial tension led to atrocities on both sides, but Lull focuses mainly on those of white Confederates against black troops. The unique nature of battle in the Trans-Mississippi West also emerges from the narrative. Unlike the large-scale traditional battles east of the Mississippi, the fighting that involved the First Kansas consisted of primarily small unit actions and hit-and-run attacks. This type of warfare, Lull argues, prepared Williams for his post–Civil War command. As a former military officer himself, Lull’s discussions of military actions are the greatest strength of his study. Outside the military dimensions, Lull’s study possesses some weaknesses. As is common with many biographies, Williams comes off as a one-dimensional hero who rarely made mistakes. Providing some discussion of Williams’s personal or professional problems that resulted from his own actions would have made him even more interesting. Despite the book’s purpose, Williams disappears at times, making it seem like a history of the First Kansas Colored Infantry rather than a biography. Additionally, Lull’s section on the Indian Wars employs a fairly traditional approach. The Apache emerge as obstacles to American progress and the US Army as the vehicle of American civilization. Little complexity exists. Yet Lull interprets a little-known theater of the American Civil War. Using Williams as a central character adds a humanistic dimension to the mid-to late-nineteenth century conflicts in the West. As a result, Lull shows how historians can still employ biographies to explore larger concepts of American history. Michael Burns Department of History and Geography Texas Christian University Copyright © 2015 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln