The Late 19th Century U.S. Army, 1865-1898: A Research Guide

(Hardback)

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Description

The period between the Civil War and the end of the 19th century was a time of hard choices for the US Army and those who led it. The federal government thrust numerous responsibilities upon the military, including pacifying the Indians, patrolling the defeated Confederacy, suppressing striking labourers, and supervising national parks. This comprehensive bibliography focuses on this period of military history, cataloguing, surveying, and appraising the substantial body of contemporary and historical literature that traces the evolution of the US Army from 1898. As the largest single-volume reference work of its type, the book covers all major aspects of Army activities, and contains annotations on 80 percent of its entries. In this survey of government document and manuscript collections are included a variety of US government publications pertaining to the Army, many from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Subsequent chapters group sources under bibliographic topics, such as general secondary works, fiction and memoirs and contemporary accounts, as well as under subjects that refer to the Army's activities. These include the Army and Reconstruction, the Indian-fighting Army, forts and post life, the late 19th century Army, and coastal defense. A series of appendices provides a period chronology, list commanding generals and secretaries of war, and chart army strength.

Reviews

A strong addition to the existing military history reference literature and to its series (e.g., Marvin Fletcher's The Peacetime Army 1900-1941, ). Dawson's research guide is more useful than a standard bibliography, and much more thorough for the time period covered than sources such as Jack C. Lane's America's Military Past and the noted Guide to the Sources of United States Military History, ed. by Robin Higham, and two supplements. Dawson builds his guide around more than 1,100 bibliographic entries, many of which have brief, descriptive annotations. The citations, arranged topically in eight chapters, are drawn from books, periodicals, and dissertations. A ninth chapter covers pertinent government documents and manuscript collections. Author and subject indexes and four useful appendixes are included. There is a fine introductory essay: the preface lists and briefly describes 50 top secondary sources selected from the larger body of literature. These features truly enhance the bibliographic core of the book and make it a guide useful to general readers, upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars.-Choice
Dawson's annotations are descriptive and critical, displaying a full grasp of a vast literature. This research guide is exactly what it should be: exceedingly useful. . . . This book nevertheless belongs in every major research library collection on frontier and military history, as well as in the personal libraries of all western military historians.-Montana the Magazine of Western History
"Dawson's annotations are descriptive and critical, displaying a full grasp of a vast literature. This research guide is exactly what it should be: exceedingly useful. . . . This book nevertheless belongs in every major research library collection on frontier and military history, as well as in the personal libraries of all western military historians."-Montana the Magazine of Western History
"A strong addition to the existing military history reference literature and to its series (e.g., Marvin Fletcher's The Peacetime Army 1900-1941, ). Dawson's research guide is more useful than a standard bibliography, and much more thorough for the time period covered than sources such as Jack C. Lane's America's Military Past and the noted Guide to the Sources of United States Military History, ed. by Robin Higham, and two supplements. Dawson builds his guide around more than 1,100 bibliographic entries, many of which have brief, descriptive annotations. The citations, arranged topically in eight chapters, are drawn from books, periodicals, and dissertations. A ninth chapter covers pertinent government documents and manuscript collections. Author and subject indexes and four useful appendixes are included. There is a fine introductory essay: the preface lists and briefly describes 50 top secondary sources selected from the larger body of literature. These features truly enhance the bibliographic core of the book and make it a guide useful to general readers, upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars."-Choice

Author Bio

JOSEPH G. DAWSON III is Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University, where he specializes in American Military History. He was co-editor of the Dictionary of American Military Biography (Greenwood Press, 1984), American Military Leaders (Praeger, 1989), and the author of Army Generals and Reconstruction in Louisiana, 1862-1877.