Probably the best published on Watie's activities in the war is Wilfred Knight's "Red Fox: Stand Watie's Civil War Years". The failure of this book is it over glorifies Watie as a military strategist and understates his role as a leader. Watie was not a military man and his command was poorly armed and under supplied. He was not the Mosby or Forrest type character Knight makes him out to be. Like Quantrill and Livingston, he received credit/blame for being many places he wasn't. With that said, he is a fascinating character as the leader of the Southern Cherokee -- the progressive, English-educated, businessmen of the Cherokee which included the slaveholders and mixed bloods of the nation. He was a lawyer, politician, and businessman. The Southern Cherokee had strong economic ties with Arkansas and Missouri and many whites served in his two Cherokee Regiments. Watie's nephew, Elias C. Boudinot, was secretary of the Arkansas Secession Convention, served with the Arkansas cavalry at Wilson's Creek, for a short time a major in Watie's first regiment, and then to Richmond as the Cherokee delegate to the Confederate Congress. Watie was not only a colonel and then brigadier general but was the political leader of the Southern Cherokee and put much effort into protecting and providing for Cherokee refugees in exile in the southern Indian Territory and north Texas. It is amazing that under such difficult and even hopeless circumstances, he was able to keep two Cherokee regiments intact and hold together a government and citizenry of the Southern Cherokee.

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