Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates (review)

Abstract

J U L Y 2 0 0 7 231 and the Christian left. Each side insists that its political position is the only one that a reasonable person could take from the Bible. Unlike these Christian logicians, Kimbrell unselfconsciously draws on his fundamentalist background as support for his humane political positions. His descriptions of the politics of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s are both period pieces and relevant to current politics. They highlight the changes that have occurred over time (for example, free flowing undocumented cash exchanges during campaigns) as well as those elements that have not changed (the political influence of money and the hangers-on). Many of Alabama’s leaders of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s appear in Kimbrell’s narrative, but none is portrayed fully. Only the charismatic and eccentric Big Jim Folsom is rendered in anything near recognizable form. The icy reactionary Sen. J. Bruce Henderson, the endlessly selfseeking George Wallace, the brilliant parliamentarian Rankin Fite, and Folsom’s aggregation of principled, corrupt, sophisticated, and crude aides and hangers-on are little more than stick figures in this book. This is a matter of choice for Kimbrell. He is simply too polite to write a tellall book. The book contains one slight mistake. It has the first Dixiecrat convention occurring in Montgomery; it was held in Birmingham (p. 387). Also, toward the end, the narrative becomes somewhat disjointed and repetitive . These flaws do not, however, obscure this volume’s many virtues. Fuller Kimbrell’s picture of life in rural Alabama in the early part of the twentieth century is extraordinary, and he captures important elements of election campaigning and legislative maneuvering. Anyone interested in Alabama history and politics would find the book enjoyable. CARL GRAFTON Auburn University Montgomery Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates. By Glenn W. LaFantasie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xxxi, 414 pp. $30.00. ISBN 0-1951-7458-5. Each year thousands of articles, books, and essays are written on the Civil War, the majority of which examine the strategies and tactics of various battles or the war’s commanders. Most biographies focus on the well-known generals such as Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, William T. Sherman, and Ulysses S. Grant, giving minimal attention to T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 232 mid-level officers. Therefore, Glenn W. LaFantasie’s Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates is a muchneeded examination of one of the more aggressive and remarkable commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia. LaFantasie, a professor at Western Kentucky University, examines the life of William C. Oates in the context of nineteenth-century southern culture, paying special attention to Oates’s experience at Gettysburg, which LaFantasie argues was the turning point in the colonel’s life. Oates, colonel of the Fifteenth Alabama, led the famous attack against Joshua Chamberlain’s Twentieth Maine as it was defending the Union left flank at Little Round Top. In many ways Oates’s life was emblematic of southern culture. Born into a poor family in rural Alabama in 1833, he was an advocate of southern beliefs and mores, including ideals of southern masculinity and dominance over women and blacks. Like many antebellum southerners, Oates possessed a steadfast commitment to slavery and cultivated a deep resentment toward the North. His early years were defined by a continual pattern of violence, which LaFantasie suggests was a “distinguishing quality of his unique personality” (p. xxii). At age fifteen, believing he murdered a man in an act of self-defense, Oates fled Alabama and sought refuge in Florida and later Texas. His violent behavior continued when several months later he had to be restrained from murdering his employer for delayed wages. The Civil War gave the Alabamian an outlet for his reckless and aggressive personality. In July 1861 Oates joined a local volunteer regiment, the Henry Pioneers. He was soon appointed colonel of the Fifteenth Alabama and led his regiment into many of the war’s major battles. On July 2, 1863, Oates and his regiment earned a...