The Custer Reader, and: Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army (review)

I70CIVIL WAR HISTORY The Custer Reader. Edited by Paul Andrew Hutton. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Pp. 585. $40.00.) Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight ofthe Frontier Army. By Robert Wooster. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Pp. 391. $35.00.) Following the days of carnage and epic battles of the Civil War, the regular army returned to its more familiar role as a frontier constabulary. Field command of troops in the American West was turned over to a host of young, energetic officers who literally grew up on the battlefield and cut their teeth in the great struggle to save the Union. During the war, these boy generals had enjoyed swift promotion and unparalleled fame. With peace restored they could only look forward to years of isolation and obscurity in the remote military posts of the West. To counter this threat, some of the more ambitious officers turned to self-promotion in an attempt to mold themselves into heroic Indian fighters serving as the guardians of the frontier. Two of these more successful officers were George Armstrong Custer and Nelson A. Miles. Custer has come to epitomize the frontier military in the post-Civil War era. Custer was a truly enigmatic cavalryman, and thousands of pages have been written in an attempt to separate the man from the myth and provide an understanding of both. Few studies come closer to this objective than Paul Andrew Hutton's edited volume, The Custer Reader. Organized as an anthology that skillfully blends classic articles from the past with engaging new essays by noted Custer scholars, The Custer Reader proves to be a work that will aid historians in understanding how and why this particular soldier has cut such a compelling swath across history. Hutton's book is divided into four major sections that chronologically follow Custer's career from the Civil War to the Little Big Horn and beyond. Each section contains a judiciously crafted introduction by the editor and is complemented by a photographic essay at the end. With so many books dealing only with Custer's defeat at the Little Big Horn, this organization tends to bring greater balance to the study of his life and military career. In the section dealing with Custer's meteoric rise to prominence during the Civil War, Gregory J. W. Urwin contributes an insightful essay that evaluates the "Boy General's" military abilities. In his final analysis, Urwin concludes , "Whatever errors he later committed as an Indian fighter, George Armstrong Custer shone in the conventional set-piece battles that decided the Civil War in the eastern theater. As a cavalryman, he rated second only to Sheridan" (23). Like Custer, Nelson A. Miles emerged from the Civil War with an enviable combat record and was recognized as a young, flamboyant, indefatigable campaigner. Also, like Custer, Miles gained a reputation as a resourceful Indian fighter who was absorbed with fame and self-promotion. While Custer ensured his place in history and popular culture with his dramatic death on the slopes above the Little Big Horn River, Miles lived long enough to be BOOK REVIEWSI7I regarded as an anachronism. It is, primarily, because of this fact that only a handful of scholars have given much attention to Miles's military career. Now, Robert Wooster, in his probing and objective biography Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight ofthe FrontierArmy, has rescued Miles from near obscurity and placed him squarely in the center of the military's role in national expansion following the Civil War. In examining Miles's career, Wooster carefully details little-known episodes such as the controversy surrounding the final disposition of the Apaches following Geronimo's surrender in 1886. In his final assessment, the author concludes that Miles was arguably a better Indian fighter than both Custer or George Crook. Nonetheless, as Wooster points out, "Miles was an able though irritating officer whose great ambition rivaled only his great talent" (128). Over the years, Miles's relentless campaigns for recognition and promotion only served to further alienate him from important political supporters and fellow officers. These contemporaries went so far as to claim that Miles's marriage to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's...