Robert E. Lee’s Reluctant Warrior: The Life of Cavalry Commander and Railroad Businessman Brigadier General Williams Carter Wickham. By Sheridan R. Barringer. ISBN 978-1-945602-25-2. Columbia, SC: Fox Run Publishing, 2024. Maps. Images. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 255. $32.95 (hardback).

By the late afternoon of September 22, 1864, the Confederate Valley Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson “Old Jube” Early, was fleeing the battlefield at Fisher’s Hill, in the Lower Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. It was the second disastrous defeat for Southern arms in the Shenandoah within three days. On September 19, Early’s forces had been routed at the Battle of Third Winchester forcing the army to retreat about 20 miles south up the Valley to a former Confederate defensive position at Fisher’s Hill not far from Strasburg, Virginia.

    As was the case at Third Winchester, at Fisher’s Hill the cavalry brigade of Brigadier General Williams C. Wickham, and others, with some success, strove mightily to cover the retreat of the Rebel army. It was to be the general’s last combat mission during the Civil War.

    Most students of the American War of the Rebellion interested in cavalry operations are familiar with the name of Williams Carter Wickham, a leader of Southern horse soldiers who participated in every major military operation during the war in the East from First Manassas in 1861, through the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864. However, not until the appearance of Sheridan R. Barringer’s excellent biography of Wickham has the man’s character, as well as the major phases of his life – military and civilian – been so clearly and accurately portrayed.  

   Sheridan Barringer is retired from NASA, where he worked for 37 years as a mechanical engineer and project manager. One of his ancestors was Confederate Brigadier General Rufus Barringer, a noted cavalry officer in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The connection with his illustrious forbearer spurred Sheridan to pen a very well received biography of General Barringer entitled “Fighting for General Lee: General Rufus Barringer and the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade.” Continuing his quest to inform students of the American Civil War about once prominent Rebel cavalry leaders – though now little remembered – Barringer authored a comprehensive study of Thomas L. Rosser, in his “Custer’s Gray Rival: The Life of Confederate Major General Thomas Lafayette Rosser.” Barringer followed with an applauded work on Thomas T. Munford called “Unhonored Service: The Life of Lee’s Senior Cavalry Commander, Colonel Thomas Taylor Munford, CSA.”

   As in his earlier books, the author clearly and seamlessly recounts Wickham’s prominent family history and how it affected his up bringing, from his earliest years to young adulthood when he became a well-respected Virginia attorney and state politician.

   Vehemently against secession, Wickham nevertheless supported his home state and went off to war seeing his first combat at the Battle of First Manassas in July 1861.

    In September 1861, the 4^th Virginia Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was raised with Wickham as Lieutenant-Colonel. The author allows the reader to view how the 41-year-old officer grew into a capable and caring leader of men, while relating Wickham’s military career from a Virginia militia officer in 1861 to his promotion to brigadier general of cavalry in September 1863. Throughout, Barringer graphically details Wickham’s leadership qualities on numerous battlefields – large and small – with cogent, fast paced battle narratives.  

Elected to the Second Confederate Congress in May 1863, Wickham then faced an internal struggle between the duties of his new political position and his overriding desire to actively fight for his country. Emotion prevailed, and he stayed in the army until finally resigning in October 1864.

   By the time he took his Congressional seat at Richmond, Wickham, never in favor of leaving the Union, grappled with the idea and task of ending a war he knew the South could not win. Still, while trying to fashion a road to peace, Wickham continued to support the South’s war effort, and sponsored bills to improve the Army – the cavalry in particular.

   With the end of the war, Wickham, a former Whig, aligned himself with the newly formed Virginia Republican Party. Barringer’s narrative of the ex-Confederate’s attempts to rebuild Virginia’s economy after the conflict, as well as extolling the proposition that the Confederacy was in fact “a rebellion against lawful authority…” is compelling and shows a man of strong character and convictions willing to stand-up for his beliefs as well as the welfare of his community.

   In 1865, the former Rebel general was appointed president of the war-ravaged Virginia Central Railroad, which later became, after a merger, the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. He stayed involved in the company’s affairs for the remainder of his life.

    In 1883, Wickham became a Virginia State Senator, and until his death in 1888, did all he could to strengthen his state’s economy and bind-up the wounds caused by the Civil War.

   Sheridan R. Barranger’s study of the life and careers of Williams Carter Wickham is well supported by wide-ranging primary and secondary sources, excellent maps, and a very fine-tuned writing skill. The author’s latest portrait of a general of the “Lost Cause” deserves a place in every Civil War enthusiast’s library.

   Highly recommended.

The Reviewer

Arnold Blumberg is an attorney residing in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of “When Washington Burned: A Pictorial History of the War of 1812” published by Casemate Publishers. Mr. Blumberg also contributes to numerous military history journals and magazines.