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eReview: Soldier of Tennessee : General Alexander P. Stewart and the Civil War in the West

by Sam Davis Elliott Hardcover - 352 pages (May 1999) Louisiana State Univ Pr; ISBN: 0807123404

Review by eHistory Team

Elliott chronicles a distinguished yet unsung military career, adding usefully to knowledge of the Civil War in the West. A graduate of West Point, Alexander P. Stewart (1821^-1908) spent most of his civilian career as a professional educator. In the war, he went with his native Tennessee and became one of the Confederacy's highest ranking officers, rising from major of artillery to lieutenant general as the last field commander of the Army of Tennessee. His career is scantily documented (e.g., no physical description of him survives), yet he appears to have been a sound tactician, taken good care of his men, and avoided the political backbiting that disfigured the careers of so many other western Confederates. After the war, he returned to teaching as a professor at Ole Miss. Resigning in 1886, he later completed his public career by establishing the Chickamauga Battlefield Park for the National Park Service. A straightforward and useful biography of a straightforward and useful man.

---Roland Green Copyright© 1999, American Library Association. All rights reserved

General Alexander P. Stewart (1821-1908) has garnered little attention from historians. In this biography, Sam Davis Elliott removes Stewart from the shadows of history by tracing the life of this influential general, providing the first in-depth analysis of his critical role in the Civil War's western theater. A West Point graduate, Stewart served in the Army of Tennessee from its days as the Tennessee Provisional Army in 1861 to its final surrender in April 1865. He participated in nearly all the battles the army fought - including those at Belmont, Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, New Hope Church, and Spring Hill, and during the Atlanta campaign - rising from the rank of major to lieutenant general. Always a gallant fighter and a calm, confident leader, "Old Straight" - as he was soon known for his steadfastness in battle - took over General Leonidas Polk's command when Polk was killed near Marietta, Georgia, and eventually led the Army of Tennessee's battered remnant in its final stand against William Tecumseh Sherman at Bentonville. At the war's end, Stewart was the ranking Confederate officer from Tennessee, and at the time of his death in 1908 he was the ranking Confederate survivor. More than the story of one man, Soldier of Tennessee conveys the triumphs and failures of the Confederate effort in the West and a divided nation's efforts at reconciliation. As Elliott demonstrates, both the Volunteer State and the Army of Tennessee may have had more flamboyant soldiers fight under their banners, but none was more constant than "Old Straight."