The Tarnished Cavalier: Major General Earl Van Dorn, C.S.A.

Abstract

The Tarnished Cavalier: Major General Earl Van Dorn, C.S.A. By Arthur B. Carter. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 247. Preface, acknowledgments, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $42.00.) In a November 15, 1862 letter to the court of inquiry investigating charges of incompetence against him, Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn wrote that he had been a soldier for nearly twenty-five years and that although his career had been an eventful one, he had never before had to defend himself against charges of any kind. Having, he claimed, devoted his life to the service of his country, he had accumulated nothing of the world's wealth, leaving him only his good name. My is all that belongs to me, he insisted, without which life to me were valueless the crisp and faded leaf of autumn. He begged the court, therefore, to conduct a through and complete investigation of his conduct as the only adequate means of securing my exoneration from charges which nearly touch a reputation (Emily Van Dorn Miller, A Soldier's Honor, [New York: Abbey Press, 1902], 157-158). Alas for the general, although found innocent by the court, not only has his soldier's reputation come down the decades blemished by two disastrously mishandled campaigns, but his personal character has been more than tarnished by his repugnant disregard for his wife and children and his seemingly compulsive penchant for extramarital liaisons. Van Dorn was born into the Mississippi plantation aristocracy, graduated near the bottom of the West Point class of 1842, served with distinction in the Mexican War, and gained something of a national a company commander in the Second United States Cavalry on the plains of Texas. Not surprisingly, with the outbreak of Civil War, his fellow West Pointer and Mississippian, Jefferson Davis, appointed him first to command the Confederate forces in Texas and then, on September 19, 1862, to command of the Trans-Mississippi Department. Typically of too many officers promoted too quickly, based either on success junior officers in the old army or on friendship with the president, Van Dorn proved incapable of high command. Although dashing, handsome, and personally courageous-in fact, Arthur B. Carter makes clear, a thirst for personal glory was Van Dorn's primary motivating factor-he had developed no talent for reconnaissance, logistics, or any of the other tedious minutiae that insure success in battle and campaign. His performances army commander at the battles of Elkhorn Tavern and Corinth, therefore, proved disastrous for the Confederacy and helped to doom the nation to ultimate collapse. Reduced in responsibility and transferred to a branch of service better suited to his temperament, however, Van Dorn began to salvage his battered reputation. With a spectacular raid against Grant's base of operations at Holly Springs, Mississippi, on December 20, 1862, followed with a well-fought battle at Thompson's Station, Tennessee, March 4-5, 1863, Van Dorn, leader of a cavalry division, seemed poised to rival such other beau sabres of the South John Hunt Morgan and even Nathan Bedford Forrest. …