"The veriest offscouring of the earth." That was how one Confederate soldier remembered the men of Wheat's Battalion, better known as the Louisiana Tigers. The Tigers were widely considered, by northerners and southerners alike, the wildest and wickedest unit in the South-a reputation that has long overshadowed the individual lives of the men who filled its ranks. In Louisiana's Tigers: The Men of Wheat's Confederate Battalion, Ross A. Brooks draws on unparalleled research and never-before-seen documents to look beyond battlefield myths, offering a definitive social history of these soldiers. Louisiana's Tigers meticulously traces the lives and journeys of the battalion's members from the 1830s to their deaths. The men in the unit, products of a nation growing in wealth and size yet torn apart by slavery, were wanderers that fate brought together in New Orleans in 1861: a transient population of immigrants, native-born laborers, criminals, and opportunists. Their lives were as unfixed as that of Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat himself, the charismatic military adventurer who led them. In his exploration of the unit's Civil War years, Brooks focuses on the battalion's strategic role under Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee but also moves beyond the battlefield, delving into the internal and surrounding tensions of this dysfunctional, constructed community and examining the frictions these men sparked among the civilians they encountered. The story continues long after the Confederate defeat, following the Tigers through Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. From building livelihoods, legal or otherwise, to founding and relying on early veterans' relief groups, many of the unit's members struggled to navigate their final years in the postwar South. Louisiana's Tigers provides an essential look at the men in this singular battalion and the South that created them, unearthing new details of the Tigers' complex history.
Ross A. Brooks holds a PhD in American history from La Trobe University, where he is currently a research associate, and is head of visual arts at a leading independent school in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Visible Confederacy: Images and Objects in the Civil War South.
"No one knows more about the men of Wheat's Battalion than Ross Brooks. He thoroughly investigates the background and formative years of those who served in the ranks of the First Special Battalion raised in 1861 by Chatham Roberdeau Wheat. Flashes of bravery from Wheat and his Tigers illuminate the account of each battle, after which the ranks of the battalion were decimated. The book is accompanied by a series of well-defined original battle maps, and an extensive bibliography."--Ron Field, author of Civil Rights in America, 1865-1980 "Ross A. Brooks has given us a fascinating look at what may well have been the most unusual unit in the Confederate army. Wheat's Louisiana Tigers were the scourge of their foes--and sometimes their fellow Confederates. Brooks's informative account reveals not just the battalion's battlefield prowess but also the backgrounds and personalities of its ultimate rebels, making their story come alive. This is one of the most interesting unit studies in Civil War history."--Steven E. Woodworth, author of Manifest Destinies: America's Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War "Ross Brooks does a great job in telling the history of Wheat's Battalion and, through impressive research, fleshes out the lives of many of its members who have heretofore been rather anonymous. The author's meticulous study confirms what anecdotal evidence has long suggested: that many of the Tigers were Irish immigrants and northerners by birth, and that some had long criminal histories."--Terry L. Jones, author of Lee's Tigers Revisited: The Louisiana Infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia "Under the leadership of Maj. Chatham R. Wheat, the First Special Battalion of Louisiana Infantry became widely known as the 'Louisiana Tigers, ' a name that was later adopted by other units from the Pelican State. Lost behind the almost mythical status of the Tigers were the men who made up the battalion. In this compelling work, Ross Brooks brings many of their individual stories out of obscurity. He has mined scores of fresh primary accounts to bring those long-ago voices back into the limelight."--Scott L. Mingus, author of The Louisiana Tigers in the Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863
