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358CIVIL WAR HISTORY and thanks to George Armstrong Custer and his Michigan Brigade, as much as to any other commander and command in the Army of the Potomac, it was a Union victory" (p. 81). Such interpretaHons insult the reader's intelligence. Urwin has real talent as a writer, but his enthusiasm for his subject someHmes leaves his style hackneyed. His overuse of block quotes interrupts a usually smooth, fast-paced narrative. A strong editorial hand could have curbed his excesses and saved him from assaulHng the reader with sentences like: "While the 3rd Division pursued its hasty preparaHons , Mother Nature was marshaling her awesome might to chasHse the mere mortals who had dared to shake the cosmos for three days with their orgy of mass murder" (p. 87). Although Urwin's bibliography and notes list a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, his narraHve reflects only those accounts favorable to Custer. While Custer partisans will undoubtedly welcome this ringing defense of theirhero, students of the CivilWarin search of a balanced account of the cavalry operations in the East, and of Custer's role in them, will still want to consultJay Monaghan's Custer (1959) and Stephen Starr's The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, vol. 2 (1981). Paul A. Hutton Utah State University Cry Comanche: The 2nd Cavalry in Texas, 1855-1861. By Harold B. Simpson. (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Jr. College Press, 1979. Pp. xii, 185. $10.50.) Ten More Texans in Gray. Edited by W. C. Nunn. (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Jr. College Press, 1980. Pp. xii, 215. $12.50.) Cry Comanche and Ten More Texans in Gray are suitable to be reviewed together because both volumes deal with similar themes and topics. Both give a hearty slice of Texas history and both relate to the Civil War era. And both, it can be added, are indeed very well done. Simpson's volume details the history of the Second U.S. Cavalry when in the 1850s it was assigned to the Texas fronHer. The original Second Cavalry had an acHvation span of only six years and five months, from 1855 to 1861; yet it produced sixteen Civil War generals and two Spanish-American War generals. The unit was often referred to as "Jeff Davis's Own." It was an elite regiment whose officers were handpicked by Davis when he was secretary of war. Most of the officers were West Pointers, and many were Southerners. For example, the Second later provided the Confederacy with four (or one-half) of its full generals— Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, E. Kirby Smith, and John Bell Hood. Some officers served the Union during the Civil War—most notably George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chickamauga," who became a major general for the Union army. The two men who later served as BOOK REVIEWS359 generals in the Spanish-American War were Fitzhugh Leeand Abraham K. Arnold. The unit saw years of heavy action while in Texas because the War Department changed its policy regarding frontier Indian warfare. Earlier , garrisons maintained a defensive posture and reacted only to Indian "aggression." However, in 1855 when the Second Cavalry was posted on the state's frontier, the War Department began advocating a policy of long-range scouting to ferret out marauding Indians who were striking out because of Anglo encroachment. Thus the Second was involved in scores of patrols, many long reconnaissance missions, and numerous escort services; altogether, it also fought forty engagements against such tribes as the Comanche and Kiowa. In eleven chapters Simpson thoroughly chronicles the actions of the Second. After an introductory chapter on the"History of the U.S. Horse Soldier," the author covers the organization of the unit and then takes a step-by-step, year-by-year approach to let the unit unfold. Notably, the fronrier was pacified as long as the unit was active. The unit, of course, then broke up with the coming of the Civil War, and most of the regiment 's members served the Confederacy. Professor Nunn's volume neatly dovetails with Simpson's work because it, too, focuses on Texas and Confederate history, although the approach is somewhat different. In 1968 Professor Nunn...

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