Robert E Shalhope's 1971 Sterling Price: Portrait of a Southerner.

Copyright © 2011 Bob R Bogle


http://www.amazon.com/Sterling-portrait-Southerner-Robert-Shalhope/dp/0826201032

I just finished reading Robert E Shalhope's 1971 Sterling Price:  Portrait of a Southerner.  When I started reading this book I was neutral on the subject of Price and mildly hopeful that I would find him admirable.  I have concluded the opposite:  Price was, for much of his life, uncommonly lucky, and he attributed his good fortune to a superior mind.  But he did not possess a superior mind or soul.  He was an obnoxious aristocrat, a bigot, and a conceited fool with an unfortunate ability to draw unfortunate men to him who would follow him to their own destruction.  I find Price to be less courageous than frequently dim-witted and manipulative.  In the final analysis his only principles were white supremacy and an unquenchable desire for personal power, as well as a few niggling obsessions concerning monetary policy.  It was only a wonder that his luck held out so long as it did; however, during the Civil War, the Missouri rebels desperately needed a symbolic hero, and there was no one other than Price available to fill that role.  It seems a shame that Price eventually died still thinking of himself as a Southern hero, and that that reputation stands unexamined with many in Missouri to this day.

I would add that Shalhope rather transparently affects a thin and sometimes almost fawning defense of his subject, sweeping aside the manner in which Price so cavalierly used and expended his various armies during the Mexican and Civil wars largely (exclusively?) to advance his own personal political aims. 

I'm going to write a chapter about Price that will appear early in the novel.  I did gain quite a lot of insight from this book into the thinking of confederate Missourians during the war.  That will help.