The Black Infantry in the West, 1869-1891 (review)

book reviews365 researched, carefully structured, and dramatically written. The result is an informative and exciting narrative that can be recommended for enjoyment as well as understanding. Otto H. Olsen Northern Illinois University The Black Infantry in the West, 1869-1891. By Arlen L. Fowler. ( Westport , Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971. Pp. xviii, 167. $7.50.) William H. Leckie's The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West ( 1967) shed important new light on black military history as well as the American West. The same may be said for this companion volume by Professor Fowler. A serious shortage of troops following the Civil War induced Congress to employ Negro soldiers, and between 1869 and 1891 the Nindi and Tenth Cavalry together with the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry formed an important segment of the regular army's thin blue line on die rough-and-tumble frontier . The infantry, though shackled with the bulk of the housekeeping chores at isolated posts, was, in Fowler's opinion, as important as the cavalry in the pacification and protection of the West. Both campaigned over much the same territory and faced the same sorts of antagonists: renegade red men, Mexican bandits and revolutionaries, white rustlers, gunmen and horse thieves. Both carried out die dull, non-fighting tasks which were as essential as the military engagements. They built several frontier posts, strung telegraph wire, escorted trains, stages, railroad crews, guarded farmers and ranchers, and generally paved the way for eager settlers. Fowler writes in a clean, direct prose that marches straightaway to its objectives. Illiterate black infantrymen left few personal letters, diaries and journals to supplement official military records in the National Archives. Nevertheless, this thin volume seems to present a balanced view of army life on the plains, including the off-duty carousing, literary tastes, minstrel productions, hobbies and sporting activities of the men of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth. Despite long hours, low pay, woefully inadequate quarters and downright boredom, diey proved able adversaries in many historic Indian engagements on the turbulent Texas frontier during the seventies. The Twenty-fourth, in conjunction with the Tenth cavalry, for example, prevented the Apache warrior Victorio from crossing the Rio Grande and re-entering Texas. During the following decade the Twenty-fifth served in Dakota and Montana Territories while the Twenty-fourth worked to keep the peace in the Indian Territory and Arizona. Though the shift in climate and scenery was a godsend, their guard and fatigue assignments remained unchanged. One therefore marvels upon reading military inspection reports which found them to be efficient and effective regiments with high morale, very little alcoholism and the lowest desertion rate in the army. Fowler attributes such endurance and esprit de corps to the black infantrymen 's desire to prove that they could soldier as well as white troops. Ironically, the impressive role played by these black men in blue received little official recognition at the time and has usually been omitted from historical accounts of the Trans-Mississippi West. Groundless prejudice toward the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth within and outside the army reflected the racial attitudes of American society in the late nineteenth century, yet Fowler demonstrates that those officers who had firsthand experience with black troops were generally satisfied with dieir soldiering. Another interesting facet of the black serviceman's life was the army's education program which by the late 1880's provided obligatory elementary education for enlisted men. Aldiough the author assumes that die traditionally conservative army thereby became a vehicle for important social change, he regrettably does not follow the careers of discharged black infantrymen and the impact, if any, which they had on civilian frontier life. Be that as it may, during their course of enlistment these Negro soldiers enjoyed important opportunities and demonstrated that by any standard Congress' post-war experiment with black regulars was a success. Edmund J. Danziger, Jr. Bowling Green State University 366 ...