Sentinel of the Plains: Fort Leavenworth and the American West (review)

286civil war history son between what he visualizes as the unproductive "lazy" (p. 166) rebels and the industriously successful Blacks and Yankees who worked in the South after the holocaust. Finally, the last half of Magnolia Journey contains some excellently descriptive stories and passages. The negative side of the balance sheet cannot help but consider the laboriously repetitive and deadening emphasis the first half of this book places on the physical condition of former battlefields, the number of unmarked as compared to marked graves and the relative aesthetic appearance of Confederate as opposed to Union cemeteries. The realization that this volume offers little in the way of new information only increases such irritation. Editor and arranger Joseph C. Carter, with the exception of a weak introduction, has done a commendable job that only occasionally reflects preoccupation with nonessential minutia. Unfortunately the printing of this selection was obviously hindered by the necessities of economy . One wonders if the exclusion of the extraneous material from the earlier sections could have provided for a physically more attractive product. S. F. Roach, Jr. Kennesaw Junior College Sentinel of the Plains: Fort Leavenworth and the American West. By George Walton. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Pp. xii, 210. $8.95.) In this volume of Prentice-Hall's American Forts Series, George Walton has written (with enthusiasm) a history of Fort Leavenworth. Founded in 1827 and named for its founder, Colonel Henry Leavenworth , the fort endured from a frontier outpost built to protect Whites from Indians to a training school for a complex army establishment in the twentieth century. In between it has gone through a number of changes reflecting the development of the nation and the army. For only a few decades did Leavenworth live up to its protective title of sentinel; the itinerant frontier soon passed it by. Its central position on the Missouri saved it from abandonment. It became a supplier for the newer posts, exchanging its status of frontier guard for that of quartermaster . Its role in the Civil War was important. While secessionists, threatened it from all sides, it stood stalwart for federal authority in those tumultuous times. Thereafter, its history was more serene, changing to an academic center for America's modern army. Touching lightly on the post's make-up from 1900 to 1945, Walton emphasizes the more colorful decades of the nineteenth century, a period which he sees as a pageant through which march Indian chiefs, army officers serving their country and in some cases themselves, grasping fur trappers, idealistic missionaries, and in the Kansas "Civil War" fanatical abolitionists, and equally fanatical anti-abolitionists. Now a BOOK REVIEWS287 full time writer with a professional army background, he is at his best in recounting the tribulations of army officers and their bureaucracy whose bizarre characteristics were highlighted by the stresses of frontier conditions. The book is entertaining, reads well, and is a good introduction to plains history in the nineteenth century. For sources Walton relies primarily on published works with some unpublished records from National Archives to beef up the account. His approach is primarily biographical, recounting events of lives of officers stationed at the post or famous people who passed through its environs. The book lacks social analysis; it has little to say about the development of society on the post and less to say about the post's impact on its surroundings, except for the brief though important Civil War years. And it does not criticially evaluate its sources. More careful editing could add to its strength. Somehow the editors let slip Alabama for Arkansas (p. 19), and Iowa for Kiowa (p. 28); and the Missouri River dwelling Arikara would be astonished to learn that they were living at Pueblo, Colorado, in 1829 (p. 30). Forrest D. Monahan, Jr. Midwestern University ...