Post by miker on Aug 4, 2023 15:40:24 GMT
I wanted to explore Phil Sheridan and his Army to study how he controlled or failed to control his two departments because I felt he just let Crook and Terry do what they wanted. He properly understood that he would not be in a position to control them since he was based in Chicago and Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Nebraska were far away. Communications was the bug-a-boo since they did not have the ability to stretch telegraph wires so far but it seems to me he failed to give adequate instructions as to communications between the three columns and his headquarters. He corrected this after the Little Bighorn, and by then the campaign pretty much petered out as the Indians largely were able to evade the flailing of the columns until winter set in and some more aggressive commanders continued the campaign. A good book for background and worth it if you are into the subject. It was not very illuminating.
Next up to learn more about operational issues in the latter half of the 19th Century was The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare. Here too, I was trying to learn how lessons were applied from the Civil War to the Indian Wars. The answers appear to be "not much" but that may be myopia on my part. The book was also dense in both subject matter and weight. It appeared to concentrate mostly on logistics, signal, and command. I don't recommend it to the general reader, but if you happen to like Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army
(I do, it is a profound book) then it should be right up your alley.
Finally is The Killing of Crazy Horse. I chanced on this because I was searching for some info about BG (CSA) Richard Garrett who was killed at Gettysburg and discovered that he had a son named William with a Sioux wife. "Billy" became an interpreter for the Army and was well regarded. The book starts well before The Little Bighorn and covers a wide array of other events leading to Crazy Horse's death. It seems to me the death of Crazy Horse could be made into good Shakespearian Drama. He worked with Crook in the Centennial Campaign and there is some good coverage of The Battle of the Rosebud as well as the Little Bighorn told from the perspective of the Sioux/Cheyanne but they are not battle studies. However, the book is very engrossing and I recommend it if you are interested in how the real "Longest War" of the United States culminated. It is extensively footnoted (nearly every paragraph as a matter of fact) and in the two battle narratives (Rosebud and LBH) he merely reports and does not add detail. His narrative of the LBH is "conventional" as Chuck would say but I find the lack of made up dialog and fantasy refreshing. The maps are lacking.
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