The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (review)

BOOK REVIEWS261 The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West. By William H. Leckie. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. Pp. xiv, 290. $5.95.) This book must be considered as part of the current effort to rewrite American history to give the Negro his due. The manner in which it can be done can be seen in comparing The Buffak Soldiers with an earlier one by Leckie, The Military Conquest of the Southern Pkins. Both books cover some of the same ground, although the one which is the subject of this review is concerned solely with the careers of die Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments. In the earlier book, Leckie treats objectively and dispassionately the performance of a number of army units in die post-Civil War years on the southern plains. He does not frequently single out units for praise or condemnation , certainly not the Ninth or Tenth Cavalry. Indeed, the term Buffalo Soldier does not appear in the text of the first book. But in The Buffalo Soldkrs he L· fulsome in his praise of the performance of the Negro troopers, and harshly critical of their detractors. Leckie traces the history of these two cavalry regiments from their organization to their last campaign against the Indians at die time of the Ghost Dance Uprising. His reconstruction of their garrison duty, and marching and counter-marching enlivened by rare movements of combat, is thoroughly researched and ably presented. Leckie makes a convincing case that the Buffalo Soldiers were badly underrated. They had a much lower incidence of desertion and other infractions of military regulations than did white troopers, and they demonstrated their bravery and endurance in a gruelling series of campaigns. Leckie makes the serious charge that these two Negro regiments were deliberately slighted in rations and equipment, citing official protests of regimental officers in support of his contention. He also offers instances of friction between the Negro troopers and civilians among whom they were stationed as evidence of discrimination . The latter charge is easier to accept than the former. Certainly the typical community with a Confederate background did not welcome offduty Federal troops, particularly Negro troops. However, the complaints of officers that their men were ill-equipped and ill-fed were so common as to lead one to wonder if similar complaints from officers of the Negro regiments are sufficient proof of discrimination in this area. What we do have here are histories of die Indian fighting days of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, which incidentally tell a great deal about the army's mission on the plains after the Civil War. They tell us very little more than we knew previously about die life of Negro enlisted men in those regiments. As Leckie points out, the very high rate of illiteracy among the troopers meant that there were available to him practically no letters and diaries such as enlisted men might have produced. This occasions the final irony, and that is that in trying to rewrite history to present more fairly the role of the Negro, die author has had to depend almost 262CIVIL WAR HISTORY exclusively on the same sources he previously used—reports and reminiscences of white officers. It remains to be seen whether this treatment of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, which emphasizes their racial characteristics, does greater credit to these two good regiments than Leckie's previous tactic, wlu'ch was to handle them exactly as he did the other cavalry assigned the same mission. William T. Hagan State University College Fredonia, New York Patriotism Limited, 1862-1865: The Civil War Draft and the Bounty System. By Eugene Converse Murdock. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1967. Pp. ix, 270. $7.95.) During the Civil War the United States adopted a military policy which has long been the subject of serious criticism. The primary targets of that criticism have been the conscription program, which authorized a drafted man to avoid service by paying a commutation fee or by furnishing a substitute , and the bounty system by which men were given a sum of money as a reward for entering the armed forces. The conscription law of 1863 created enormous...