San Antonio College Library

One Texan called them "blue-coated dogs of despotism." They were the federal army, and in Texas after the Civil War they were an army of occupation. Their role in carrying out Reconstruction in Texas was especially difficult because the state had a large voting majority of white former Confederates. The army was essential to the enforcement of loyalist policies and, more controversially, to the electoral success of the Republican party. How the military...

Military historians are, quite rightly, concerned with war, but the Army does not simply cease to exist between the treaty ending one conflict and the opening guns of the next. The people who made up the "garrison world" during the peacetime intervals between the War for Independence and the Spanish-American War are the subject of this book. These were men collected mostly from the streets of Northern cities. Although the occasional Indian war made...

"Books, art, and movies most often portray the frontier army in continuous conflict with Native Americans. In truth, the army spent only a small part of its frontier duty fighting Indians; as the main arm of the federal government in less-settled regions of the nation, the army performed a host of duties." "The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West examines the army's non-martial contributions to western development. Dispelling timeworn stereotypes,...

Analyzes the government's strategic policy against American Indian tribes in the years immediately following the Civil War.

"After the Civil War, the United States Army faced a tremendous challenge on the Texas frontier. Military authorities had to overcome major obstacles in mobility and communications, and they had to learn a far different kind of warfare to defeat the Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche Indians." "Large military posts have been examined in detail in numerous books written about the Texas frontier, but the importance of smaller outposts and picket stations...