Unlike previous histories, this book argues that the politics of slavery profoundly influenced the western mission of the regular army - affecting the hearts and minds of officers and enlisted men both as the nation plummented toward civil war."--BOOK JACKET.
The enlisted men in the United States Army during the Indian Wars (1866-91) need no longer be mere shadows behind their historically well-documented commanding officers. As member of the regular army, these men formed an important segment of our usually slighted national military continuum and, through their labors, combats, and endurance, created the framework of law and order within which settlement and development become possible. We should know more about the common soldier in our military past, and here he is. The rank and file regular, then as now, was psychologically as well as physically isolated from most of his fellow Americans. The people were tired of the military and its connotations after four years of civil war. They arrayed their army between themselves and the Indians, paid its soldiers their pittance, and went about the business of mushrooming the nation’s economy. Because few enlisted men were literarily inclined, many barely able to scribble their names, most previous writings about them have been what officers and others had to say. To find out what the average soldier of the post-Civil War frontier thought, Don Rickey, Jr., asked over three hundred living veterans to supply information about their army experiences by answering questionnaires and writing personal accounts. Many of them who had survived to the mid-1950’s contributed much more through additional correspondence and personal interviews. Whether the soldier is speaking for himself or through the author in his role as commentator-historian, this is the first documented account of the mass personality of the rank and file during the Indian Wars, and is only incidentally a history of those campaigns.
Frontiersmen in Blue is a comprehensive history of the achievements and failures of the United States Regular and Volunteer Armies that confronted the Indian tribes of the West in the two decades between the Mexican War and the close of the Civil War. Between 1848 and 1865 the men in blue fought nearly all of the western tribes. Robert Utley describes many of these skirmishes in consummate detail, including descriptions of garrison life that was sometimes agonizingly isolated, sometimes caught in the lightning moments of desperate battle.
For the U.S. Army, Western experiences illustrated its role in ensuring national security and in fostering national development. Its soldiers performed feats of great heroism and rank cruelty. Debates regarding the military's role in projecting Indian policy, the division of power between state and federal authorities, and the size of a professional military establishment reveal the inconsistency in the nation's views of its army.
Acclaimed independent history scholar Gregory Michno has created a chronological listing of every significant fight between Indians and the United States Army, as well as better-known Indian battles with civilian emigrants. This detailed study is more tha
Benjamin Harrison was an early proponent of American expansion in the Pacific, a key figure in such landmark legislation as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the McKinley Tariff, and one of the Gilded Age's most eloquent speakers. Yet he remains one of our most neglected and least understood presidents. In this first interpretive study of the Harrison administration, the authors illuminate our twenty-third president's character and policies and rescue him from the long shadow of his charismatic secretary of state, James G. Blaine. An Ohio native and Indiana lawyer, Harrison opened the second century of the American presidency in a rapidly industrializing and expanding nation. His inaugural address reflected the nation's optimism: "The masses of our people are better fed, clothed, and housed than their fathers were. The facilities for popular education have been vastly enlarged and more generally diffused. The virtues of courage and patriotism have given proof of their continued presence and increasing power in the hearts and over the lives of our people." But the burdens and realities of his office soon imposed themselves upon Harrison. The biggest blow came at midterm with the Republicans' devastating losses in the 1890 congressional elections. In an era of congressional dominance, those losses eroded Harrison's position as a legislative advocate—at least, for domestic issues. His impact in foreign affairs was more lasting. One of the highlights of this study is its revealing look at Harrison's visionary foreign policy, especially toward the Pacific. Socolofsky and Spetter convincingly demonstrate that although Harrison's ambition to acquire the Hawaiian Islands was not realized during his presidency, his foreign policy was a major step toward American control of Hawaii and American expansion in the Far East.
The full story of what led Crazy Horse and Custer to that fateful day at the Little Bighorn, from bestselling historian Stephen E. Ambrose. On the sparkling morning of June 25, 1876, 611 U.S. Army soldiers rode toward the banks of the Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory, where 3,000 Indians stood waiting for battle. The lives of two great warriors would soon be forever linked throughout history: Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, and General George Armstrong Custer of the Seventh Cavalry. Both were men of aggression and supreme courage. Both had become leaders in their societies at very early ages; both had been stripped of power, and in disgrace had worked to earn back the respect of their people. And to both of them, the unspoiled grandeur of the Great Plains of North America was an irresistible challenge. Their parallel lives would pave the way, in a manner unknown to either, for an inevitable clash between two nations fighting for possession of the open prairie.