cover image Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates

Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates

Glenn W. LaFantasie, . . Oxford Univ., $35 (414pp) ISBN 978-0-19-517458-8

Leading Alabama's 15th regiment in the final charge up Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, was the supreme moment for Confederate colonel Oates, though he retreated after meeting bloody resistance. LaFantasie (Twilight at Little Round Top ) does not claim his subject is undeservedly neglected, but he finds enough other highlights to justify this biography of the hot-tempered, brave, sexist and implacably racist 19th-century Southern white male. Born poor, Oates managed to educate himself well enough to pass the bar. After secession, he recruited a company and went to war, fighting with great courage and perhaps too little judgment, returning home in 1864 when he lost an arm. Despite Alabama's struggling postwar economy, Oates's legal practice made him wealthy with suspicious rapidity. An ambitious politician, he spent seven terms in Congress, served as governor during the 1890s and as a general in the Spanish-American War. LaFantasie spends too much time reminding readers that abusing blacks, oppressing women and exploiting the poor were acceptable in Oates's circle, and he is positively clairvoyant in his ability to read Oates's thoughts and describe his emotional reactions. Though most readers will agree Oates deserves his obscurity, his life still makes for an engaging biography. (July)