The Forgotten "Stonewall of the West": Major General John Stevens Bowen, and: "One of the Most Daring of Men": The Life of Confederate General William Tatum Wofford, vol. 16, Journal of Confederate History Series (review)

240CIVIL WAR HISTORY intriguing is Cashin's examination of refugee women. By scanning personal diaries and secondary sources, Cashin provides rich detail on a shadowy area of the war. The refugee experience was profoundly disillusioning for most women, challenging their concepts of class and racial superiority and rupturing the "bargain between the sexes," which exchanged female dependency for male protections (53). In the next essay, Thavolia Glymph sheds similar light on another facet ofdisplaced women with an examination ofcontrabands.They lived precarious lives during the war, seen as a danger by Southern whites and as a problem by Union military leaders. By escaping to the Union lines they, like their male counterparts , played a crucial role in the transformation of the war into a conflict to end slavery. The third essay on the war years, by Kym S. Rice and Edward D. C. Campbell Jr., captures experiences of women through diary excerpts. The final two essays deal with women in the postwar South and reveal much about the limits on female behavior and the changes in women's roles in Southern society. John M. Coski and Amy R. Feely provide the context and background for Confederate Museum's founding, emphasizing the assertive role women played in the museum's creation. The most probing essay is the concluding piece by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, in which she examines the role the war and Southern memory in the debate over women' s suffrage. Both sides invoked the Lost Cause as justification for their position, but those opposed to suffrage were more successful. Having succeeded in disfranchising blacks by the turn of the century, southern antisuffragists controlled the discourse by successfully casting the issue as a test of southern and state loyalty. Proponents of suffrage had the impossible task of "invoking tradition in support of change" (183). Lavishly illustrated with many rarely published photographs, this is an accessible and insightful work by a collection ofdistinguished historians that should find a broad audience. It can serve for many as a useful starting point to understanding women in the Confederacy, but the essays also provide new insights for advanced students of Southern women and the war. Richard D. Loosbrock Chadron State College The Forgotten "Stonewall ofthe West": Major General John Stevens Bowen. By Phillip Thomas Tucker. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997. Pp. xviii, 379· $32.95·) "One of the Most Daring ofMen": The Life of Confederate General William Tatum Wofford, vol. 16, Journal of Confederate History Series. By Gerald J. Smith. Series editor, John McGlone. (Murfreesboro, Tenn.: Southern Heritage Press, 1997. Pp. xiii, 241. $16.95 paper.) Civil War history all too often becomes "great-man history." Historians and aficionados frequently talk about what Gen. Robert E. Lee did at Second Bull BOOK REVIEWS24I Run or what Stonewall Jackson did at Chancellorsville, seemingly forgetting the many subalterns who executed their orders. These biographies offer longneeded studies of two Confederate generals: William Tatum Wofford, in the eastern theater of war, and John Stevens Bowen in the western theater. Philip Thomas Tucker's Forgotten "Stonewall ofthe West" offers a good account of Bowen's prewar life and military career. A strong narrative depicts Bowen's attempts to save Missouri from Federal control in 1861 and his subsequent capture at Camp Jackson by Union forces under Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon. Paroled, Bowen became a confidant of Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston, and he commanded troops in combat at the Battle of Shiloh. Tucker's narrative shines when he tells of Bowen's clever and valiant—yet ultimately futile—attempts to stop Union general Ulysses S. Grant's invasion of Mississippi at the outset of his Vicksburg campaign. Bowen opposed Grant at Grand Gulf, Port Gibson, and Champion Hill, only to find himself bottled up inside Vicksburg defenses with the rest of Gen. John C. Pemberton's Confederates. Bowen caught dysentery during Grant's siege ofthe town and died one week afterVicksburg's surrender. Tucker parallels the careers of Bowen and Grant throughout the book. The men knew each other at West Point, and they were neighbors in Missouri. At first this seems like an unnecessary literary device, but Tucker builds the comparison to an exciting climax when Bowen and...