General Jo Shelby's March Review
If this was a modern film, it would be lauded as a five-star fantasy; instead, it's a history of a man and the troops he led who were unable to separate the fantasies of their lives from the reality of changing times.
Instead, it's the story of a man who was bound by tribal loyalties to his tribe, his honour and his fate. William Shakespeare would have written it as the hero who falls on his sword in a final fatal gesture of honour; instead, Arthur portrays the typical American story of a great man who learns and matures with his times.
General Jo Shelby is a true American; he fought brilliantly for a society that was based on the idea that some people were less than human. He lost to the inevitable values of a Constitution that declares all men are equal. Defeated, he was never crushed by defeat. Instead he rose to become a much better person and to set an example.
Gen. Shelby was a brilliant leader of men who fought for the best of motives in an evil cause. When the war ended, he led three hundred fellow true believers in one of the truly epic marches of survival in all history; only the ancient Greek march of the 10,000 comes close, and Gen. Shelby did it with one thirtieth of the men over a more hostile terrain.
They marched into Mexico, looking for a renewal of their old life -- the book jacket says they "fought their way into Mexico for a new life." Perhaps. In my view, the "new life" for Gen. Shelby came after his return to the US and his renouncing of slavery. The book jacket also says he became "a model of nineteenth-century progressivism."
In today's terms, he matured into the liberalism of civil rights for all while retaining his basic conservative values of personal responsibility. America has seldom done better, but it is continually blessed by others who follow his example of honour, commitment and courage to a bettert society.
America would do well with politicians of his courage today, instead of the mad scramble to be merely re-elected. Arthur eloquently describes the career of a great man, a true leader of men, one with the stature to rise above his own heritage.
This is truly a book for our times.
General Jo Shelby's March Overview
Acclaimed historian Anthony Arthur tells one of the most remarkable but surprisingly unknown stories of the post–Civil War era in full for the first time. Here is the unforgettable account of how a famous Confederate general forged a defiant new life out of crushing defeat, and how he finally achieved forgiveness and respect in his own reunited land.
General Jo Shelby had been a daring and ruthless cavalry commander, renowned and notorious for his slashing forays behind Union lines. After Appomattox, Shelby, declaring that
he would never surrender, headed for Mexico. With three hundred men, some from his fighting “Iron Brigade” regiment, others adventurers, fortune hunters, and deserters, the man Arthur refers to as “the last holdout of the Confederacy” made the treacherous twelve-hundred-mile trip.
In thrilling and vivid detail,
General Jo Shelby’s March describes
the dusty and dangerous trek through a lawless Texas swarming with desperadoes, into a Mexico teeming with Juárez’s rebels and marauding Apaches. After near fratricide among his fraying band of brothers, Shelby arrived to present a quixotic proposal to Emperor Maximilian: He and his fellow Americans would take over the Mexican army and, after being reinforced by forty thousand more Confederate soldiers, the government itself. Though a dramatic, doomed, and brave endeavor, Shelby’s actions changed both himself and American history forever.
Anthony Arthur then reveals the astonishing end of Shelby’s career: his return to America and his renouncing of slavery, his nomination by President Grover Cleveland to become U.S. marshal for western Missouri, his eventual fame as
a model of nineteenth-century progressivism.
General Jo Shelby’s Marchis a riveting book about a uniquely American man, both brave and brutal, a hero and a hothead, whose life’s startling last chapter is a microcosm of the aftermath of our most divisive war.
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