The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, July 1957 - April, 1958 Page: 555

Book Reviews

(February, 1955), 91-100, and Joseph H. Harrison, Jr., "Harry
Williams, Critic of Freeman: A Demurrer," Virginia Magazine
of History and Biography, LXIV (January, 1956), 70-77-hardly
affected the more than five hundred pages that he devoted in
Lee's Lieutenants to Jackson's career from Manassas to Chan-
cellorsville.
Freeman's treatment of Jackson, imbedded in a larger study,
and beginning only in 1861, was not meant to be an autonomous
life. This fact, plus the somewhat antique character of Hender-
son's work, and the boisterous demand for readable books about
the Civil War, left even after Lee's Lieutenants an excellent op-
portunity for a well-rounded biography of Jackson. Under such
circumstances They Called Him Stonewall (1954), by Burke
Davis, met with a favorable reception. Davis' was a creditable
book, but he did not pretend to scholarship, nor did he achieve
literary distinction. It has remained for the volume that occasions
the present review, Vandiver's Mighty Stonewall, to fill the place
that was open for a really good biography. Using to full advan-
tage the works of Arnold, Cook, and others, as well as fresh
material of his own finding, the Texas scholar has written seven
excellent chapters on Jackson before the war. His military narra-
tive ably follows, and occasionally improves upon, his eminent
predecessors. Warm, engagingly written, convincing in its picture
of Jackson the man, unobtrusively learned, Mighty Stonewall
belongs alongside Henderson, Freeman, and Douglas in the panel
of best reading on Thomas Jonathan Jackson.
BARNES F. LATHROP
University of Texas
Three Years among the Comanches. By Nelson Lee. Norman
(University of Oklahoma Press), 1957. Pp. xvi+g79. One
illustration. $2.oo.
In 1859 the Baker Taylor Company in Albany published a small
volume entitled Three Years among the Comanches. It was a story
told by Nelson Lee of adventures in Texas and Mexico and had,
as was stated by the unnamed editor, the ring of authenticity.
The book was destined to become a collector's item, and, in time,
there grew up a generation of readers who, because of the volume's

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