Confederate Guerrilla Sue Mundy —
A Biography of Soldier Jerome Clarke
Thomas Shelby Watson and Perry Brantley
(September 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, notes, references, 238 pages, 2008. McFarland, Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640, $35 plus shipping.

Reviewer: George Khoury
George Khoury is an adjunct professor at University of Central Florida. He will present a workshop this summer at the Civil War Preservation Trust's Teacher Institute. He has taught the war from a Southern perspective and is the winner of six National Endowment for the Humanities History grants.

Review:
Watson and Brantley have presented a fascinating book that takes the reader into the world of the Civil War guerrilla. Using such primary documents as diaries, interviews with family members, letters and government records, the “non-existent” persona and legend of Sue Mundy comes alive. Sue, we learn, never lived.

 In 1864 the editor of the Louisville Daily Journal invented Mundy. The figment of George Prentice’s imagination was in reality a young terrorist named Marcellus Jerome Clarke, who was part of a gang that roamed Kentucky during the ending years of the Civil War.

Historians have put Clarke in the same league as William Quantrill, the James Brothers and the Youngers. Clarke never wore women’s clothing but thanks to Prentice was portrayed as a “wild-riding, gun-slinging” woman.

Readers will be fascinated with the various theories as to why Prentice would invent Sue as well as the many interpretations of Clarke’s role in the war as understood by his relatives. In some cases Prentice would have Sue in one part of the county doing her business, while having Clarke in another part raiding Federal supply depots.

The book does not gloss over the cruelty inflicted by the guerillas or the inhumane tactics of prisoner executions and search and destroy operations inflicted by the federal government as it sought to hunt and kill the marauders.

The final chapter answers what happened to the major characters and ties everything together nicely. Confederate Guerilla Sue Mundy is a valuable read in giving insights into the life of a guerilla and helping to solve or continue the legend of Sue.