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Post by Chuck T on Aug 18, 2010 19:54:55 GMT -5
Allen: It sure is. I don't know where I got "campaign" from. I guess next time I had better verify the title before I post. This book is one of the best I have read. It does not cover anything about LBH, but picks up there and goes to the end of the campaign in 1877. Th author lives in Arvada, Colorado and has at least one other book on the period out also.
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Post by garyzaboly on Aug 20, 2010 15:30:39 GMT -5
I'm extremely critical of Crook in the 76 campaign, and I think his performance is highly overrated - while I know the general outlines of his campaigns against the Apache it never drew my interests like the campaigns against the mounted warriors of the plains. Crook's Civil War career never impressed me. I feel like his Indian War "fame" was owed mor to his press/publicity savy and less to true Indian fighting skills - much like Custer? Most of the criticism of Gibbon, imo, is on track, but I think is taken out of context of his larger army career. Gibbon did not perfrom up to his usual standards in 76. So to me the interesting question is why was Gibbon's performance unusual for him? The Plains wars were tough on military commanders. Ranald MacKenzie is one who seemed to have done better than most, yet his is not the household name that Custer or Crook is.
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Post by Herb on Aug 20, 2010 17:00:53 GMT -5
Definitely, Mackenzie and Miles were the outstanding commanders. They were also the youngest. While like all generalizations, there are too many exceptions, there is a definite corelationship between age and effectivness/energy in the field.
The 1866 law that established the post Civil War army, established that promotion through Captain was by seniority within the Regiment, and through Colonel by seniortiy within the Branch/Arm. Only General Officer promotions were notionally by merit (Presiential Appointments). Most officers in 1876 were the same rank they had been appointed in the 1866 reorganization only a decade older.
From Utley's Frontier Regulars an 1877 survey showed that a new second lieutenant could expect to reach Major in 24 to 26 years, and colonel in 33 to 37 years.
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Post by Chuck T on Aug 20, 2010 17:23:21 GMT -5
Mackenzie was one of the best. His attack on Dull Knife's village on Thanksgiving Day 1876 accomplished all that he wished, ultimately sending them back to the reservation, with relatively few casualties on either side. Unfortunately he went insane and cut short what would have probably been a very long and productive career.
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Post by garyzaboly on Aug 21, 2010 6:01:17 GMT -5
I've had Utley's FRONTIER REGULARS for decades and never read it; for shame, Gary! Will do.
Recently read a bio of William S. Harney (GENERAL WILLIAM S. HARNEY: PRINCE OF DRAGOONS); he'd served on the early northwest frontier, in the Seminole and Black Hawk wars, then the Mexican War, then against the Plains Indians (Battle of Ash Hollow the highlight), then the Civil War, and then again in Plains conflicts. Quite a long, checkered career. But he too was another ornery so-and-so followed by controversies for most of his career, and has not been well remembered. But his type was often the glue that held a bad situation together.
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Post by Herb on Aug 21, 2010 12:40:38 GMT -5
I've had Utley's FRONTIER REGULARS for decades and never read it; for shame, Gary! Will do. It's a real good work, and what you expect coming from Utley. This was part of an outstanding series published by MacMillan beginning in the mid 1960s, by some of the best authors in the field, called The Wars of the United States. Harney was an exceptional officer (in both senses of the word). How old is the book? If it's readily available, I'll have to track it down. Toujour Pret!
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Post by garyzaboly on Aug 21, 2010 13:28:28 GMT -5
I've had Utley's FRONTIER REGULARS for decades and never read it; for shame, Gary! Will do. It's a real good work, and what you expect coming from Utley. This was part of an outstanding series published by MacMillan beginning in the mid 1960s, by some of the best authors in the field, called The Wars of the United States. Harney was an exceptional officer (in both senses of the word). How old is the book? If it's readily available, I'll have to track it down. Toujour Pret! Wolf, the book came out in 2001, University of Nebraska Press. By George Rollie Adams, who is pretty objective about his subject.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Aug 21, 2010 13:31:14 GMT -5
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Post by garyzaboly on Aug 21, 2010 15:34:31 GMT -5
Definitely, Mackenzie and Miles were the outstanding commanders. They were also the youngest. While like all generalizations, there are too many exceptions, there is a definite corelationship between age and effectivness/energy in the field. The 1866 law that established the post Civil War army, established that promotion through Captain was by seniority within the Regiment, and through Colonel by seniortiy within the Branch/Arm. Only General Officer promotions were notionally by merit (Presiential Appointments). Most officers in 1876 were the same rank they had been appointed in the 1866 reorganization only a decade older. From Utley's Frontier Regulars an 1877 survey showed that a new second lieutenant could expect to reach Major in 24 to 26 years, and colonel in 33 to 37 years. I should offer a mild corrective here to an earlier comment I made and note that in 1958-59 there was a TV series called MACKENZIE'S RAIDERS, starring Richard Carlson as Ranald S., and set of course out West. I remember the show but very little specifically about it. But for about a year Mackenzie's name was in national television syndication!
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Post by Chuck T on Aug 25, 2010 9:31:10 GMT -5
Opened an e-mail from Military Book Club this morning only to find a new Custer book on sale - "Custer Lessons in Leadership" by Duane Schultz. Reading the blurb it does not trip my trigger - reckless golden boy etc etc. Come to think of it Custer is the very last person I would look to for lessons in leadership.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Aug 25, 2010 9:49:40 GMT -5
I was browsing through Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne at a bookstore and went to sections on Custer and Washita. He does not come off well. Says he was lucky to survive that one and that it was a near-miss of what happened at LBH; lucky to get out with his skin and then only with a nighttime forced march.
It's ironic that the LBH and the 1876 campaign are so iconic and widely known, but the whole thing was a dismal failure. Yet Miles's subsequent repeated successes, like Miles himself, are relatively little known. Mackenzie also comes off as a very effective, professional and even humanitarian officer.
Allen
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Post by Chuck T on Aug 25, 2010 9:52:00 GMT -5
Gary: I remember Mackenzies Raiders although not well. As I recall it focused on the cross border episodes. Ford's Rio Grande, based upon the Bellah short story Mission With No Record was loosely based on Mackenzie also.
On another track, the nice thing about the western battlefields is that they are largely untouched. I hope that during Allen's upcoming trip he can visit the Fetterman site as well as Rosebud. They are both within sixty miles of LBH. Makenzies' Thanksgiving Day fight with Dull Knife is on private property down in the Big Horns. I don't know about who owns the Wolf Mountain site. Warbonnet Creek, I understand is pretty hard to find, How I would love to have the time and money to travel the 76 campaign in the order they happened from Yellowstone on 17 March through the spring of 77. Now that would be a trip.
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Post by Chuck T on Aug 25, 2010 10:03:10 GMT -5
Allen: Mackenzie was relentless in pursuit.
I think only parts of the 76 campaign were a failure. Yellowstone was, LBH proper was, as was the Horsemeat March. The 4th Cavalry and 5th Infantry under Mackenzie and Miles I believe did extremely well, and the 5th Cavalry further south was fairly effective. In the end though the Northern Confederation was broken, andn ever again posed any real danger.
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Post by Herb on Aug 25, 2010 14:00:10 GMT -5
I was browsing through Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne .... It's ironic that the LBH and the 1876 campaign are so iconic and widely known, but the whole thing was a dismal failure. Yet Miles's subsequent repeated successes, like Miles himself, are relatively little known. Mackenzie also comes off as a very effective, professional and even humanitarian officer. Allen Allen, a lot of this is also tied up in the Civil War, and post Civil War politics and even the Republic of Texas. To the Comanche, Texas and the United States were two different countries (some Texans and the eastern media apparently still think so, ), the Comanche never believed that a treaty signed with the US, applied to Texas, and while the Comanche almost never engaged US citizens north of the Red River, just the opposite happend south of the Red. When the Civil War came along the Comanche were even encouraged by the US Army and US political governments in the west to raid in Texas. Post Civil War, the cries from Texans to get the Army to take the field against the Comanche were thought by the Republican leadership in the east to only being an unsubtle effort to get the Reconstruction Troops out of Texas towns and cities. The US Government never really attempted to stop Commanche Raiders until anly an accident of fate kept Sherman himself from being killed in an Comanche/Kiowa ambush while on an inspection tour headed toward Fort Richardson. As long as the Comanche, were "only" killing ex Rebels, it just wasn't a problem for the Northern Press. Custer was of course the hero of the Northern Press. It's pretty easy to understand why the Great Souix War and Custer gets so much coverage, and MacKenzie and the Comanche have almost been relegated to footnotes. I don't understand why Nelson Miles has been relegated to the ash heap, though I think it may have more to do with his actions at the turn of the century, when as the Commanding General of the army he supervised the fiasco of the Spanish American War, and later fought the Root reforms of the US Army. Personally, I think the only Indian War that compares with the Comanche and what went on in the Southern Plains, was the Shawnee in the Ohio Valley.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Aug 25, 2010 15:54:03 GMT -5
Allen: Mackenzie was relentless in pursuit. I think only parts of the 76 campaign were a failure. Yellowstone was, LBH proper was, as was the Horsemeat March. The 4th Cavalry and 5th Infantry under Mackenzie and Miles I believe did extremely well, and the 5th Cavalry further south was fairly effective. In the end though the Northern Confederation was broken, andn ever again posed any real danger. Right -- What I should have said was that the Yellowstone campaign comes off as a botched fiasco; I think I was associating that with Gray's book Centennial Campaign, which I associate with the 1876 mess.
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