| SHELBY'S
EXPEDITION TO MEXICO
An Unwritten Leaf of the War
John N. Edwards
Edited by Conger Beasley Jr.
Epic
adventures of the Confederate soldiers who refused to surrender
Confederate
general Joseph O. Shelby and his legendary Iron Brigade refused
to acknowledge the end of the Civil War. Instead, they fought
their way to Mexico in search of a place where they could
continue to defy the U.S. government. These veteran Missouri
cavalrymen clawed their way for fifteen hundred miles, fighting
Juaristas, Indians, desperados, and disgruntled gringos. They
disbanded only after they had offered their services to Emperor
Maximilian and were turned down. Shelby’s adjutant,
journalist John N. Edwards, first published his story of the
exploits of this superb mounted brigade and its quixotic final
march in 1872. Conger Beasley provides a lively introduction
that includes the first biographical sketch of the author.
The 1969 movie The Undefeated starring John Wayne
and Rock Hudson was based upon Shelby's expedition.
““The
story of probably the most colorful and important adventure
of ex-Confederates in postwar Mexico. . . . An expertly edited
reprint of the history of a most unusual and enlightening
chapter of the Civil War . . . it will be both enjoyed and
valued by anyone interested in the war in the western states
and territories.”
—Civil War Book Review
“This is the romantic yet authentic
tale of how brave men with brave hopes sought to redeem defeat
in one war by victory in another war, only again to lose all
save honor. A classic.”
—Albert Castel, author of Decision in the West:
The Atlanta Campaign of 1864
". . . [R]ecords the acts and sufferings
of a body of men as desperately brave and as wildly adventurous
as any whom the world has known. . . . [This is] a story to
dazzle the fancy and stir the blood with deeds of desperate
valor, with hair-breadth escapes, with splendors of tropical
scenery, and horrors of Mexican cruelty. . . . [The] author,
after the manner of Victor Hugo, whose style he has taken
for his model, has thrown some arabesques of a lively imagination
around and among his historical figures."
—September 1874, Southern Magazine, The Transactions
of the Southern Historical Society
"Shelby's Expedition to Mexico
is the romantic yet authentic tale of how brave men with brave
hopes sought to redeem defeat in one war by victory in another
war, only again to lose all save honor. A classic."
—Albert Castel, author of Decision in the West:
The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Kansas, 1995)
Conger Beasley Jr. is the author of a number
of books, including Patagonia: Wild Land at the End of
the Earth; Spanish Peaks; We
Are a People in the World: The Lakota Sioux and the Massacre
at Wounded Knee; and Sundancers and River Demons:
Essays on Landscape and Ritual (University of Arkansas
Press), winner of the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Achievement.
NOW
IN PAPER!
March 2007
6 x 9, 272 pages, index
$17.95 (s) paper
978-1-55728-842-4 | 1-55728-842-9
2002
$29.95, cloth
978-1-55728-732-8 | 1-55728-732-5
|
