Generals Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan are considered the triumphant triumvirate of the Civil War, Union army leaders whose radical tactics and bold action hastened the Confederacy's defeat. Yet Sheridan is often overlooked by biographers and historians--thanks in large part to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed all of his wartime documents--but Joseph Wheelan (Jefferson's War) has reconstructed the general's life in Terrible Swift Sword.
Much of the book is dedicated to Sheridan's meteoric rise from West Point graduate to general. The battlefield prose is a whirlwind of corps numbers, troop formations and officer names, yet Wheelan never loses focus on Sheridan, his men and their personal struggles. Sheridan's unusual place in military history comes from his role as cavalry commander. Wheelan describes Sheridan's use of cavalry with infantry support, an early--and very successful--type of combined arms warfare. He was also a practitioner of "total war," burning much of the Shenandoah Valley and holding local civilians partially responsible for guerrilla attacks. (After the war, during a visit to Prussia, he would discuss both of these tactical strategies with Otto von Bismarck.)
Sheridan's military career continued through Reconstruction and several Indian Wars, ending, somewhat surprisingly, with his role as an advocate for Yellowstone National Park. Wheelan's greatest success is in chronicling the complexity of postwar Sheridan, a man who endorsed the extermination of all buffalo (to deprive rogue Indian warriors of sustenance) while using military troops to defend the wildlife in Yellowstone. History buffs, biography aficionados and even readers without vast Civil War knowledge will appreciate this book. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer