Hood's Texas Brigade, Its Marches, Battles, and Achievements . By J. B. Polley . [New York and Washington: The Neale Publishing Company, 1910. Pp. 347.]
It is safe to say that no single brigade on either side in the Civil War gained greater or more merited fame than Hood's Texas Brigade. Composed at first of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Texas, the Eighteenth Georgia, and Hampton's Legion from South Carolina, and later of the three Texas regiments and the Third Arkansas, and serving most of the time in the division of its favorite commander, John B. Hood, it has always clung to its distinctive name. Proud of its reputation, the survivors have maintained an active organization, erected to their comrades a monument in Austin, and have commissioned one of their number to write “a fair and impartial history” of its career and services.
Mr. Polley has executed his commission most admirably; the volume is well conceived and well written. The greater part of the story is compiled from the memories and diaries of the author and his surviving comrades, but it is substantiated by the official records as far as they have been preserved. Naturally enough, the narrative reflects the experiences of the private in the ranks more than that of the officer, and is not the less interesting for doing that; but still it presents a fairly adequate view of the general problems of the several campaigns and thus gives to the work of the brigade its proper setting. The author's happy style has made the book very readable, very unlike the great bulk of regimental and brigade histories that are content with little more than muster rolls and the bare recital of marches and battles and losses. Humor and tragedy are mingled in genuine reflection of the life of the camp; but tragedy predominates, for we know that the ever-decimating regiments are fighting against inevitable defeat. He must be phlegmatic, indeed, who can follow without a thrill of wonder and admiration this intimate story of the weary marches, the perilous skirmishes, and the desperate charges of those poorly clad and poorly fed troops, and of the splendid fighting spirit they maintained throughout it all from Eltham's Landing to Appomattox.
The volume is illustrated with some twenty portraits, chiefly of survivors of the brigade. It contains at the end two lists: one of all officers and men who were enlisted in the Texas regiments during the war, another, in painful contrast, the meager remnant that surrendered at Appomattox.
Chas. W. Ramsdell .
How to cite:
Ramsdell, Charles W., "Hood's Texas Brigade, Its Marches, Battles, and Achievements", Volume 015, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 90 - 91. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v015/n1/review_24.html
[Accessed Mon Nov 23 7:51:56 CST 2009]
