This pre-war militia officer’s belt plate of the Savannah Volunteer Guards belonged to Major General John Stevens Bowen.
John Stevens Bowen was one of the finest division commanders in the Confederate army. Born in October 1829 near Savannah, Georgia, Bowen graduated from West Point in 1853. He served at Carlisle, Pennsylvania and on the Texas frontier before resigning from the army in 1856. After moving to Missouri the following year, he joined the state militia and worked as an engineer and architect. As a colonel of Missouri State Militia, Bowen was captured by Captain Nathaniel Lyon at Camp Jackson in May 1861. After his parole, he organized the First Missouri Infantry (CS).
Promoted to brigadier general, he commanded a brigade at the battles of Shiloh and Corinth and a division during the Vicksburg Campaign, and was promoted to major general in May 1863. Although Bowen led his division with great skill, and his men fought desperately in several battles near Vicksburg, Union forces under General U.S. Grant steadily pushed the Confederates back into the city’s defenses. After a siege of 47 days, an ill General Bowen helped arrange the Confederate surrender. He died only a few days later of chronic dysentery at the age of 34.
His brother-in-law, a soldier in the 1st Missouri Regiment, said upon Bowen’s death that “our Brigade was like a lot of orphant (sic) children they did not know how to take care of themselves….the men say he was a father to them.”
Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 30189
