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Author: Jeremy Agnew
Publisher:
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 284
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Focusing on the Indian Wars period of the 1840s through the 1890s, Life of a Soldier on the Western Frontier captures the daily challenges faced by the typical enlisted man and explores the role soldiers played in the conquering of the American frontier.
Author: Douglas C. McChristian
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2017-05-04
Total Pages: 783
ISBN-13: 0806159030
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →“The drums they roll, upon my soul, for that’s the way we go,” runs the chorus in a Harrigan and Hart song from 1874. “Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army O!” The last three words of that lyric aptly title Douglas C. McChristian’s remarkable work capturing the lot of soldiers posted to the West after the Civil War. At once panoramic and intimate, Regular Army O! uses the testimony of enlisted soldiers—drawn from more than 350 diaries, letters, and memoirs—to create a vivid picture of life in an evolving army on the western frontier. After the volunteer troops that had garrisoned western forts and camps during the Civil War were withdrawn in 1865, the regular army replaced them. In actions involving American Indians between 1866 and 1891, 875 of these soldiers were killed, mainly in minor skirmishes, while many more died of disease, accident, or effects of the natural environment. What induced these men to enlist for five years and to embrace the grim prospect of combat is one of the enduring questions this book explores. Going well beyond Don Rickey Jr.’s classic work Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay (1963), McChristian plumbs the regulars’ accounts for frank descriptions of their training to be soldiers; their daily routines, including what they ate, how they kept clean, and what they did for amusement; the reasons a disproportionate number occasionally deserted, while black soldiers did so only rarely; how the men prepared for field service; and how the majority who survived mustered out. In this richly drawn, uniquely authentic view, men black and white, veteran and tenderfoot, fill in the details of the frontier soldier’s experience, giving voice to history in the making.
Author: Bert Entwistle
Publisher:
Published: 1919-01-20
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9780989676182
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Leftover Soldiers tells the story of the Western Frontier after the last battle of the Civil War was fought near Brownsville, Texas. When the blood stopped flowing and the rifles were stacked for the last time, Texas became home to thousands of ex-soldiers from both sides, most with few prospects for their future. The story follows three ex-Union soldiers and one Confederate soldier, thrown together by circumstance, trying to move forward with their life on the ragged edges of the frontier. In the winter they find work as buffalo runners on the wide-open prairies of the Texas panhandle. In the spring they sign on as cowboys driving thousands of longhorn cattle north from San Antonio to the newly formed Wyoming Territory. Life on the prairie proves to be another battle against the weather, Indian attacks, displaced men turned outlaws and often against each other. The never-ending strain of the dangerous, back-breaking work helps to dull the horrors of war as each man comes to terms with his own past demons and begins to find his own path to the future on the prairies of the rapidly expanding country.
Author: H. H. McConnell
Publisher:
Published: 1888
Total Pages: 326
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Personal narrative of army life from approximately 1867-1871. Includes appendices: The cowboy's verdict, by R.G. Carter (pages 301-306) and Cattle-thieving in Texas, by WWW (pages 307-313).
Author: Charles King
Publisher: DigiCat
Published: 2022-09-16
Total Pages: 189
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Starlight Ranch, and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier" by Charles King. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Author: Kevin Adams
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2012-11-19
Total Pages: 294
ISBN-13: 0806185139
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Historians have long assumed that ethnic and racial divisions in post–Civil War America were reflected in the U.S. Army, of whose enlistees 40 percent were foreign-born. Now Kevin Adams shows that the frontier army was characterized by a “Victorian class divide” that overshadowed ethnic prejudices. Class and Race in the Frontier Army marks the first application of recent research on class, race, and ethnicity to the social and cultural history of military life on the western frontier. Adams draws on a wealth of military records and soldiers’ diaries and letters to reconstruct everyday army life—from work and leisure to consumption, intellectual pursuits, and political activity—and shows that an inflexible class barrier stood between officers and enlisted men. As Adams relates, officers lived in relative opulence while enlistees suffered poverty, neglect, and abuse. Although racism was ingrained in official policy and informal behavior, no similar prejudice colored the experience of soldiers who were immigrants. Officers and enlisted men paid much less attention to ethnic differences than to social class—officers flaunting and protecting their status, enlisted men seething with class resentment. Treating the army as a laboratory to better understand American society in the Gilded Age, Adams suggests that military attitudes mirrored civilian life in that era—with enlisted men, especially, illustrating the emerging class-consciousness among the working poor. Class and Race in the Frontier Army offers fresh insight into the interplay of class, race, and ethnicity in late-nineteenth-century America.
Author: Mickey L. Dennis
Publisher:
Published: 2008-11-01
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13: 9781438934204
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Black Heroes in Every American War There has scarcely been a battle in which America has not been served by the valor and sacrifice of what poets have called, "the darker brother." American has a history of forgotten black heroes, and a public that seems barely aware of their courage and honor. The first Buffalo Soldiers were the 9th and 10th Calvaries, formed by the U.S. Army in 1866 and composed mostly of freed slaves and Civil War veterans. The patrolled the Mexican border, and took part in the Spanish-American war and in the U.S. expedition to the Philippines. While it is regrettable that Black Americans should have participated in military actions adversely affecting native peoples, we must remember that not all the measures taken by the government were unprovoked, nor were all of them carried out with the ruthlessness we sometimes hear of. Buffalo soldiers and Black cowboys were merely one factor in the opening of the West. It was a job somebody had to do, and certain toughness went with the territory; the oppressive aspects, while not excusable, were indeed part of that history. During the Indian Wars, from 1866-1890, the use of Black soldiers was widespread in the West, and numerous engagements demonstrated the valor and toughness of the African fighters. Colonel Benjamin Grierson insisted to his superiors that the term "colored," which originally prefixed the title of the regiment, was demeaning and unnecessary. Ultimately, he prevailed, and it was dropped. Two all-Black Calvary regiments, the 9th and the 10th, saw considerable service; tow all Black infantry regiments, the 24th and 25th, were also much used. Stuck with a thankless job, it fell to these Black freedmen togarrison forts, quell disturbances, and generally keep the peace. Not infrequently called to put their lives on the line in the name of the United States government, these heroic Black regiments won a total of twenty Medals of Honor.
Author: George Croghan
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2014-04-14
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 0806146397
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From Fort Snelling on the upper Mississippi and Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri to Fort St. Philip below New Orleans, the string of military bases along the western frontier of the United States played an essential part in the orderly advance of settlement following the War of 1812. Small, isolated , and insignificant in terms of fortification—after all, the authorized strength of the whole army was only 6,000 men—they were nevertheless the stabilizing and moderating force in the dramatic "rise of the new West." For twenty years prior to the Mexican War, Colonel George Croghan, as inspector general of the army, examined these frontier garrisons with a critical eye. His reports give an intimate, firsthand picture of what the western outposts were really like. Moreover, whether lashing out at the unreasonable discipline prescribed for privates or quietly commending an officer's good work, he wrote with a warmth and vitality seldom found in government documents. Arranged topically with brief introductions by the editor, the reports cover all phases of army life: quarters, clothing, the mess, hospitals and medical care, army chaplains, quartermaster supplies, the small arms of the troops, instruction, fatigue duties, military discipline, recruiting, and army sutlers. They also contain much additional information on roads, frontier conditions, Indian affairs, and related matters. George Croghan was a perceptive reporter, and his account of life and conditions at the western forts will prove valuable and interesting to the western Americana enthusiast as well as to the student of western history.
Author: Robert Marshall Utley
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 1984-01-01
Total Pages: 514
ISBN-13: 9780803295513
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Details the U.S. Army's campaign in the years following the Civil War to contain the American Indian and promote Western expansion
