A Soldier In His Heart
On July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate Lieutenant Colonel William C. Oates let his troops, the 15th Alabama, in the fateful and unsuccessful charge against Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine on the far left of the Union line at Little Round Top. Chamberlain and the 20th Maine have become American heroes, but far less attention is given to Oates. In "Gettysburg Requiem" (2006) Glenn Lafantasie offers the first full-scale biography of Oates (1833 -- 1910). It is an intriguing picture of a man and his times and of the changing South after the Civil War. LaFantasie is a professor of Civil War history and Director fo the Center for the Civil War in the West at Western Kentucky University. He is the author of "Twilight at Little Round Top", a book which focuses on the struggle for this famous hill on the second day of Gettysburg.
Oates lived a long and eventful life. He was raised in poverty. In his mid-teens, he fled Alabama to avoid prosecution for incidents resulting from what would become his lifelong propensity to violence. For several years, he lived the life of a wanderer in Texas and Louisiana. Oates returned to Alabama, disciplined himself, and became a successful attorney. An ardent Confederate, he raised a company, served with Stonewall Jackson, and with Lee, and participated in many important battles of the Civil War. He was wounded six times and ultimately lost his right arm. After the Civil War, Oates returned to Abbeyville, Alabama where he became wealthy through his law practice and land speculations. He served seven terms in the United States House of Representatives and one term as the Governor of Alabama. Oates was named a Brigadier General in the Spanish-American War, but he never saw combat in that conflict. In 1905, Oates published a book on which he had worked for years, "The War between the Union and the Confederacy and its Lost Opportunities."
Lafantasie gives a full picture of Oates's career, and he describes Oates's character as well. Throughout his life, Oates was courageous, but he remained prone to violence. After losing his right arm late in the war, Oates fathered a child with a young African American woman who was his servant and was nursing him back to health. Later, Oates fathered another illegitimate child with an adolescent 14 years of age. At the age of 48, Oates married a young woman, "T" who was 19. The marriage was lasting (over 28 years) and Oates loved his family and supported the education of his children, including the two illegitimate sons, through college, graduate school, and successful careers. According to LaFantasie, Oates' life was driven by a desire to have power over others. He describes Oates as racist, sexist, and xenophobic. Yet he recognizes many fine qualities in his subject. In 1901, Oates acted courageously at the Alabama Constitutional Convention where he was in a distinct minority in opposing changes which led to the disenfranchisment of Alabama's black citizens.
The best parts of this book are those which describe Oates's early rootless days of wandering in Texas and those which describe Oates's career in the Confederate Army. Lafantasie has a close, detailed knowledge of the fighting for Little Round Top. By focusing on Oates' role in the struggle, Lafantasie made the battle, and the combat between the 15th Alabama and the 20th Maine clearer to me than many accounts which try to discuss the totality of the action. Lafantasie convincingly shows that the Battle for Little Round Top was the pivotal event of Oates's life. Oates's younger brother, John, was fatally wounded in the fight for Little Round Top. John had been ill, and Oates tried to keep him out of the combat, but John insisted on moving forward. Oates never forgave himself. Many soldiers close to Oates died on the hill. Oates relived his brother's death, the terrible combat, and the failure to take Little Round Top many times during the ensuing 46 years of his life. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get a monument to the 15th Alabama at the point of their closest penetration of the Union position and he corresponded with his one-time foe, Joshua Chamberlain.
Lafantasie also gives a good picture of the changes in the South following the Civil War as mirrored in Oates's long life and in his career as Congressman and governor. Oates became a proponent of the "Lost Cause" school of the Civil War, which romanticized the Old South and blamed the defeat of the Confederacy solely on the Union's superiority in numbers and material. Much in Oates life suggests he remained an unreconstructed Confederate to the end. But he did have moments, especially at the 1901 convention, that show he was finding his way to a different, broader view.
It is good to have a biography of Oates. Lafantasie's study is thorough and well-documented. In places it is also polemical, insufficiently historical, and psychologistic, as Lafantasie criticizes sexist attitudes in the South, in particular, and is overly harsh in his speculations on the reasons underlying Oates' attraction to young women. Lafantasie also at times adopts the tone of a historical novel more than that of a history as he tries to read Oates's thoughts and mind in the absence of hard evidence. With these qualifications, I enjoyed and learned something about Oates, the Civil War and the post-Civil War South from reading this book. Readers with a deep interest in the Battle of Gettysburg or in the South after the Civil War will benefit from Lafantasie's study.
Robin Friedman
