Greyhound Commander: Confederate General John G. Walker's History of the Civil War West of the MississippiRichardLowe, Editor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.

Abstract

Greyhound Commander: Confederate General John G. History of the Civil War West of the Mississippi Richard Lowe, Editor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.Greyhound Commander is one of two published Civil War chronicles from the perspective of a leading Confederate general in the Trans-Mississippi theater from 1863 to 1865. Written by General Walker while in exile in England, it relates various relatively unknown battles, divisions, troop movements and commanders with infrequent personal insights and commentary. This objectification of the past is driven home by diction: he refers to himself and his Walker's Texas Division obliquely and in the third person as if led by someone else. Thus, the tangled and sprawling nineteenth century prose exudes both a militaristic mindset set on forensically codifying what really happened and an exile's leisure.Lowe provides an excellent introduction to this previously unpublished manuscript as well as on-going footnotes throughout the text. His contribution helps underscore why this text is worth reading. It not only is of interest to the Civil War specialist but also provides an accessible point of entry for the novice historian wanting to wade deeper into primary sources and the discipline of historiography. For instance, there are many times in the text where Walker gets it wrong; his estimates about troop numbers/casualties are off, some of his dates are wrong, his inferences about Federal maneuvers off the mark, and even some of the dates and names are incorrect. Lowe, of course, had access to more sources than a few letters and memories about the battles to paint a more balanced picture. Therefore, the gap between an eyewitness account dulled by time and the hard research of the historian comes into clear focus.Moreover, the novice historian will be challenged in various ways through the reading of an annotated text like Greyhound Commander. Firstly, as aforementioned, the nineteenth century diction of Southern aristocracy is a challenge in and of itself. For example,In the meantime the Federal General Schofield, in command of the district of country including Missouri and Kansas, pushed forward another army under Gen. Blount into the northwestern part of the state of Arkansas with the apparent object of occupying Fort Smith at the head of navigation on the Arkansas river, and the key to the country occupied by the Indian tribes who had espoused the Confederate cause. …