Small Wars in North America

Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848-1861. By Durwood Ball. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8061-3312-0. Table. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxxi, 287. $34.95.

The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke,Vol. 1,November 20, 1872-July 28, 1876. Edited and annotated by Charles M. Robinson, III. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2003. ISBN 1-57441-161-6. Illustrations. Notes. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. ix, 518. $49.95.

General Crook and the Western Frontier. By Charles M. Robinson, III. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8061-3358-9. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 386. $39.95.

Sul Sentiero della Guerra: Storia delle guerre indiane del Nordamerica [On the warpath: the history of the North American Indian wars]. By Raimondo Luraghi. Milan: RCS Libri S.p.A., 2000. Maps. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 191. Lire 12,900.

UNIVERSITY of New Mexico historian Durwood Ball's Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848-1861, is the first major study of the U.S. Army in the antebellum West since Robert M. Utley's Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865 (1967), and inevitably will be compared with it. As readers will quickly observe, however, these are very different books. To begin with, Ball does not confine his narrative to the Indian-fighting exploits of the antebellum army, but covers the whole panoply of army activity in the West: bringing the Mormons to heel, damping down sectional strife in Kansas, chasing desperadoes, etc. Nor does he accept the description of the 1848-61 army as a "peace establishment" assigned to "constabulary duty, which benignly meant keeping order and enforcing law." Whatever its mission in the West, the army's undertakings were "martial" in that it "represented the militant will of the United States government and inflicted or threatened violence to coerce frontier peoples" (p. xii).

But, Ball argues, some "frontier peoples" got "coerced" more than others. "Race helped identify legitimate human targets" (p. 203) and thus Indians and Hispanics caught the brunt of the violence, while Anglo settlers went largely untouched. But Anglos' relative immunity from violence stemmed from more than their racial profiles. They also were citizens and thus voters whose support might sway members of the usually penurious Congress to boost funding for the army. Considering the low esteem in which regulars were held by the general American populace during most of the nineteenth century, Ball contends, "Martial violence against Anglo citizens would have destroyed what little credibility the army enjoyed"(p. xiii).

Finally, Ball differs from earlier writers in his willingness to take aim at the notion that the increased professionalism of U.S. Army officers during the antebellum era turned them off from politics. The pre-Civil War army officer corps was extremely political, Ball argues, indeed was riven by the great political issues of the day: slavery and states rights. Few officers of the pre-Civil War era, he contends, had a real sense of loyalty to the nation as opposed to their state or region. Thus, Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, the New Englander who was instrumental in saving Missouri for the Union in 1861, "represented a new kind of professional soldier. The nation-state was his master; his loyalty was to the federal government alone." And, most importantly, "Ahead of his time, General Lyon was willing to enforce national authority against white citizens—that is, to kill rebels and destroy property—in their home states" (p. 202).

This compact book rests on impressive research. Over the decade and a half of its gestation, Ball consulted a wide array of primary and secondary sources, including a broad swath of period memoirs. Inevitably, however, points are raised that need to be called into question. The author argues, for example, that the U.S. Army waged "total war" against the Western Indians over the 1848-61 period. It is no doubt true that some of...