Our Trust is in the God of Battles: The Civil War Letters of Robert Franklin Bunting, Chaplain, Terry's Texas Rangers, C.S.A. (review)

Abstract

234Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober showed a continual concern for the protection of their homes, and that desertions often resulted when the men felt they were being mistreated by the Confederate leadership. However, this insight reveals litde that was not already known regarding soldiers serving on both sides of the war. Over the course of the work, Hadey becomes too easily distracted in describing circumstances and situations diat are irrelevant to the actions of the Eleventh Texas. What initially offered a unique view into the motivations ofa group ofConfederate soldiers becomes a standard narration of troop movements and personal feuds between senior Confederate leaders. Too often the main subject, the Eleventh Texas, drops out ofdie book's narrative, resurfacing occasionally as die author references it as taking part in movements or engagements that are covered in more effective detail by other authors. This lack ofattention reduces the main point ofinterest to such a degree that it limits the value of the entire work for both the casual reader and the professional scholar. Hadey's work shows diat there are still viable topics ofinvestigation from the Civil War tfiatjustify the era's continuing hold on historical scholarship. Unfortunately, he does not follow through on the work's promising beginning and falls into the trap of covering well-worn material without offering much new information that would make the book useful to any but the most limited audience. Texas A&M UniversityBrian F. Neumann Our Trust is in the GodofBattles: The Civil Wartetters ofRobertFranklin Bunting Chaplain, Terry's Texas Rangers, C.S.A. Edited byThomas W. Cutrer. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Pp. 472. Series foreword, acknowledgments, editorial practice, illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 1572334584- $45-°°. cloth.) Our Trust L· in the God ofBattles is an excellent compilation ofCivil War primary source material that reaffirms that die South was notjust fighting a political war but a cultural and philosophical one as well. Robert Franklin Bunting, a Presbyterian minister, was born in Pennsylvania but, as an adult, he adopted Texas as his home. He also adopted Southern culture and attitudes about states' rights as well. Shordy after the war began, Bunting became the official chaplain of the Eighth Texas Cavalry, more popularly known as Terry's Texas Rangers, which was serving with Gen. Albert SidneyJohnston's Confederate Army ofMississippi in the western theater of the war. During the war, Bunting regularly wrote letters to Texas newspapers in which he relayed news from the front, stories about Texas volunteers, and casualty lists. Ninety-five of those letters saw publication, and editor Thomas W. Cutrer has built this book around them. The letters show clearly that the Southern clergy was a vital force in encouraging Southern men to war. Bunting was both preacher and rebel, delivering the message of salvation on the one hand and anti-Union rhetoric on the other. Bunting witnessed the collapse ofJohnston's thin defensive line in central Tennessee in February 1862. Bunting's description of die situation is biblical and 2007Book Reviews235 exhorts the Southern faithful: "We are retreating now. It is a military necessity and policy. But our army will by and by come back over this ground like a mighty flood. In Kentuckywe were among spies and enemies—here theywill be among Southern people, and when the tide turns, woe! be unto their army" (p. 34). In reporting to his readership about die batde ofShiloh inApril 1 862 (in which Bunting conveyed diat the Confederacy had won a marginal victory) , Bunting stylizes the Confederate army after the small army ofJoshua entering the Promised Land surrounded by Philistines. "Our brave litde army, many ofthem without coats, many with old flindocks, and the great majority woefully lacking in drill and discipline, has badly whipped the very best fighting troops of the federal army" (p. 51). Buntingfreely maligned Federal soldiers, depicting them as the most evil troops history could muster. "I have seen on every side die desolation ofthe enemy; everywhere his footsteps are marked with robbery, insult, theft, oppression, rape, and destruction" (p. 85). He was as openlycritical ofConfederate leaderswhom he thought deserved it, especially Gen. Braxton Braggafterhis abortive campaign into Kentuckyin late 1862. Bunting said that the expedition "widi the...