If President Lincoln could have unmade a general, perhaps he would have started with Samuel Peter
Sourdough
Heintzelman, whose early military successes were overshadowed by a prickly disposition and repeated Union defeats during the Civil War. By the time his friend Robert E. Lee left Arlington to lead a Rebel army against the bluecoats, Heintzelman had already seen duty in Mexico, established Fort Yuma in California in 1850, mined for silver in Arizona, and ably led U.S. forces on the Texas-Mexico border during the 1859-60 Cortina War. During the Civil War, he was in the forefront of the fighting at First Bull Run and the disastrous 1862 Peninsula Campaign. He commanded the III Corps of the Army of the Potomac at the siege of Yorktown and in the ferocious fighting at Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Oak Grove, Savage’s Station, Glendale, and Malvern Hill. Although he aspired to succeed General George B. McClellan, he was relieved of his command after his troops were badly mauled at Second Bull Run. After demonstrating his inability to guard the southern approaches to Washington, D.C., from Virginia guerillas, he spent the latter part of the war administering prison camps in the Midwest, keeping a watchful eye on Copperhead subversives, and quarreling with more than one disgruntled governor. In early Reconstruction Texas, Heintzelman struggled with the conflict between former Secessionists and Radical Republicans. Despite his failures, Heintzelman remains among the most fascinating military figures of nineteenth-century America, if only for his broad involvement across much of the South and West during this pivotal era of the nation’s history. By mining Heintzelman’s massive journals and countless historical archives, Jerry Thompson has not only provided a retelling of the personal history of a frustrated general but has also given readers a richly textured account of the events, the political crosscurrents, and the times in which
Sourdough
won his unenviable reputation.