The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 129
673 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
an elitist antiegalitarianism ill-suited to the democratic changes that were trans-
forming American life. In the end, Johnson observes, Scott proved to be his own
worst enemy.
Unlike Eisenhower, Johnson devotes considerable attention to Scott's restless
striving for wealth and status. Fond of a lifestyle that his soldier's salary could not
provide, Scott was a social climber who married into one of Virginia's most
prominent families. Eisenhower, by contrast, shows little interest in such mat-
ters, inexplicably characterizing the marriage as one of "domestic bliss" (p. 1o9),
despite the fact that Maria Mayo Scott spent much of her time abroad, leaving
Scott a bachelor for years at a time.
Scott's long and multifaceted career poses significant challenges for the dedi-
cated researcher. Unfortunately, Eisenhower relies almost exclusively on a very
limited number of published sources. He does not seem to have read the recent
scholarship on this period, and tends to accept uncritically the sources he does
use, such as the largely adulatory memoir of Erasmus Keyes, Scott's longsuffer-
ing aide-de-camp, and the general's own self-serving autobiography published in
1864. Johnson, on the other hand, has delved deeply into archival materials in
libraries across the country, and manages to mine from these sources many
nuggets of insight and detail.
Thus the two biographies cover identical terrain and often come to much the
same conclusion about their subject, but they are utterly dissimilar scholarly
achievements. The general reader unfamiliar with the military history of the first
half of the nineteenth century may find Eisenhower's Agent of Destiny to be a live-
ly and entertaining narrative. Serious students of the period, however, will find
little that is new or illuminating, and will want to turn to Timothy Johnson's
biography for a more nuanced and credible character study of one of the coun-
try's most enduring military figures.
University of Texas at Arlington Sam W. Haynes
The Battle of Glorieta: Union Victory in the West. By Don E. Alberts. (College Station:
Texas A&M University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi+226. Illustrations, foreword,
acknowledgments, epilogue, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN o-
89o-96825-X. $29.95, cloth.)
The Battle of Glorieta Pass: A Gettysburg in the West, March 26-28, I862. By Thomas
S. Edrington and John Taylor. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1998. Pp. ix+176. Illustrations, maps, acknowledgments, notes, bibli-
ography, index. ISBN 0-826-31896-7. $29.95, cloth.)
The battle of Glorieta Pass, fought in March 1862, was the climactic event in
the Confederate effort to gain control of New Mexico, and perhaps the greater
Southwest, during the American Civil War. In the final day of fighting the
Confederates, all Texas cavalrymen commanded by Lt. Col. William R. Scurry, a
San Augustine lawyer and politician, appeared to be the victors when the Union
troops, Colorado volunteers led by Col. John P. Slough, withdrew from the field
and retired to Kozlowski's Ranch five miles from Pigeon's Ranch where the main129
2000
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001, periodical, 2001; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101221/m1/157/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.