Prince of Edisto: Brigadier General Micah Jenkins, CSA, and: Defender of the Valley: Brigadier General John D. Imboden, CSA (review)

242CIVIL WAR HISTORY John Stevens Bowen. His biography adds insight to the sectional turmoil in Missouri and the Confederate command system in the West. With or without the title "Stonewall of the West," Bowen is a commander worthy of study. Likewise is General William Tatum Wofford, the subject of Gerald J. Smith's biography. Smith takes a no-nonsense, workmanlike approach to his narrative, recounting Wofford's Mexican War experience, his political career in antebellum Georgia, and his Civil War career as commander of the Eighteenth Georgia Infantry, the Texas Brigade of John Bell Hood's division in the Army of Northem Virginia, and finally a department in northern Georgia at the close of the war. Tatum was prominent in many of the major battles in the East, including Second Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. With Smith's writing, Wofford becomes more than a Confederate statue on a battlefield: he is man leading men in a brutal business. The deaths of two of his children while he is away aggrieve him to the point of recklessness on the battlefield . The destruction of his beloved state of Georgia in 1 864 rums him into a humanitarian. With the state government in ruins and Georgians starving, socalled guerrillas in northern Georgia took advantage of the chaos to loot for themselves. Confederate president Jefferson Davis gave Wofford permission to take command of a military department in northern Georgia, round up Confederate deserters there, and use them to end the outlawry. Wofford was so occupied when the war ended, and, recognizing the Union army could feed hungry Georgians, he eagerly surrendered his command to remove any obstacle to his neighbors' aid. "One of Me Most Daring ofMen" is a tight, readable biography. Smith's tendency to use lengthy block quotes, however, breaks up the reader's attention at times. Nevertheless, the book provides good insight to a general largely ignored . Both biographies are fine additions to Civil War libraries, especially for readers most interested in the Confederate side of the conflict. Steve Jones Southwestern Adventist University Prince ofEdisto: Brigadier General Micah Jenkins, CSA. By James K. Swisher. (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1996. Pp. 188. $25.00.) Defender ofthe Valley: Brigadier General John D. Imboden, CSA. By Harold R. Woodward Jr. (Berryville, Va.: Rockbridge Publishing Company, 1996. Pp. 199. $25.00.) Though biographies of those sometimes called dead white males are often dismissed or ignored by those preferring to emphasize the undeniably significant role of race, class, and gender as determining factors in history, there is little doubt that the gerne has produced many of the most influential and most popular titles in Civil War literature. As new biographies ofthe war's major political BOOK REVIEWS243 and military figures continue to appear, they arejoined on bookstore and library shelves by numerous studies of less prominent Union and Confederate personalities . Skeptics might be pardoned for fearing that at some not-too-distant date all 583 Union generals and all 425 Confederate generals will have their lives chronicled in at least one biography, whether needed or not. These two short books from the same publisher—studies of a Confederate brigadier best known for the manner of his death during the war and another best known for his writings after it—will do little to dissuade such critics. Micah Jenkins, a South Carolina planter's son, graduate of the Citadel, and co-founder of the Kings Mountain Military School, was only twenty-five when he began the war as colonel of the 5th South Carolina Infantry. He later organized and commanded an elite regiment known as the Palmetto Sharpshooters, commanded a brigade in the Seven Days' Campaign, and was promoted to brigadier general in the summer of 1862, participating in most ofthe major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia for the next two years. Jenkins, an excellent combat officer, was long a favorite of his corps commander James Longstreet, who elevated him to temporary command of a division after John B. Hood was wounded at Chickamauga. On May 6, 1 864, as he rode with Longstreet during a flank attack in the Wilderness, Jenkins was mortally wounded by Confederate fire in the same accidental volley...