The Civil War In The American West

by Alvin M. Josephy Jr.

As most Americans of the 1860s fixed their attention on the battlefields of Shiloh and Manassas, another war raged on the largely unsettled Western frontier. This splendid work by the author of The Patriot Chiefs restores this "other" Civil War to its true, epic proportions. With formidable scholarship and irresistible narrative ease, Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., tells of the Yankee armada that foundered in the Louisiana bayous; of the bloody fighting on the ridges and prairies of the border states. where a Cherokee guerrilla leader was the last Confederate general to surrender — two months after Appomattox: and of the U.S. Army's brutal campaigns against the Plains Indians in theaters as far apart as Minnesota and Colorado.

Genres: History, Civil War, American Civil War, Nonfiction, Westerns, American History, War

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

An American historian who specialized in Native American topics. He served as a combat correspondent during World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star for his coverage of the U.S. capture of Guam. His interest in Native American history started during an assignment from Time Magazine.

Reviews

[Roger Burk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really a very good narrative of war west of the Mississippi during the Civil War. The overall situation was that the Federal army was dispersed in small detachments throughout the west to keep the peace. These were summoned east to fight the decisive battles there. Their place was mostly taken by locally raised and poorly disciplined militia units. Officers from seceded states sometimes remained in service, sometimes quietly resigned and made their way home, and occasionally worked some mischief before departing. Some Confederate units, and some Indians, tried to take advantage of Federal weakness in the area, without much success.

The account is organized by theater:

(1) New Mexico. In early 1862 an adventurous Confederate army advanced up the Rio Grande from El Paso, hoping to expel the Union from the territory and claim it (including the present Arizona) for the South. They managed to get as far as Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but at Glorietta Pass east of there a Union detachment got around their flank and destroyed their entire supply train, making it impossible to continue. The Confederates were forced to fall back along the river, now pursued by Federal units that had marched over the desert from California, and their ragged remnants trickled into central Texas. New Mexico and Texas west of the Pecos remained in Union hands for the rest of the war.

(2) Minnesota. Starving, driven beyond human endurance by delayed payments for ceded territory, infuriated by contemptuous treatment, hotheaded Sioux braves started massacring whites and sparked a general uprising in 1862. Federal troops managed to suppress it, but reprisals were sometimes brutal and led to decades of warfare with the Sioux, who were forced out of MN and the eastern Dakota.

(3) Western Louisiana. The Federals captured New Orleans in 1862. From that base, small expeditions went out against the western part of the state and the Texas coast, with mixed success. In 1864 a sizeable Union force, including a large naval flotilla, tried to ascend the Red River in order to invade Texas. The poorly led Federals were defeated by a smaller Confederate force and only narrowly escaped being captured or destroyed.

(4) Southern plains. Bands of Indians, driven to rage, desperation, or both after being dispossessed of their land, visited brutal depredations upon vulnerable whites. In 1864 there was a general uprising in Kansas and in Colorado Territory. At one point Denver was cut of and in danger of starvation. In southern New Mexico, Apaches also went on a rampage. Indian fighting devolved to local and California militias, as often as not virulently prejudiced against Indians. They often used extreme brutality and made no effort to discriminate between peaceful and hostile Indians, culminating in the infamous Sand Creek massacre in 1864. Of course, such reprisals only increased and multiplied Indian hostility.

(5) SW Missouri/NW Arkansas/western Indian Territory. Sizeable Union and Confederate armies maneuvered and fought in 1862 for control of the area, culminating in the Battle of Pea Ridge. The Union victory there left them in control north of the Arkansas River. But units kept being called east, and neither side developed enough force for further decisive results. The rest of the war consisted of some maneuvering, much bushwhacking, "guerrilla" raids by irregulars who were really no better than bandits, and a few spectacular cavalry raids that had no effect on the course of the war. The quasi-sovereign Indian tribes contributed units to both sides, but also fought their own civil war, leading to much destruction and suffering in the Territory.

[Charles Inglin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The American Civil War affected, directly or indirectly most of the United States. The furthest West the Confederate Army reached, surprisingly, was Tucson, Arizona, where a small force of Texans established temporary control. The Confederacy has hopes of extending their control to California to gain ports on the Pacific Ocean. California itself was something of a toss up early on, with pro-Confederate and pro-Union factions vying for control. The Union side won out and California volunteers units marched east to retake Tucson and then continued on to New Mexico. At the same time Texan troops pushed up the Rio Grande Valley, and captured Santa Fe, continuing on towards Colorado where they were stopped at the battle of Valverde by pro-Union Colorado volunteers, in what they dubbed the "Gettysburg of the West."

Hard fought campaigns were waged on the Red River, in Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory. The "Five Civilized Tribes", Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaw and Seminoles, in the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, were sucked into the fighting with disastrous affects. The tribes, courted by both sides, were split into pro-Union and pro-Confederate factions, resulting in internecine strife and many Indians becoming refugees.

The author includes the Indian wars in Minnesota, the Great Plains , the Great Basin and the Southwest as part of the Civil War. The withdrawl of federal troops from western outposts, along with long simmering grievances and mistreatment by settlers and corrupt Indian agents caused many tribes to resort to violence. Replacement of federal troops with volunteers, many from the west and virulently anti-Indian made matters worse, resulting in incidents like the Sand Creek massacre where Colorado volunteers attacked a village of peaceful Indians.

A very interesting read on aspects of American history usually overshadowed by the great events in the East.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Naturally this books provides more detail on the war west of the Mississippi. I found the book somewhat awkward in that the various regional campaigns are disconnected in time and in influence of the senor Washington command structure. I believe the book is most valuable as a reference for details of specific campaigns and on the impact on Native Americans.

[Alethea Hammer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked it a lot. I've read many books about the Civil War, or about the Indian Wars. But never one explaining the interconnections of the two.

[Iain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book isn't perfect it earns five stars by standing out in several regards. First Josephy presents _many_ aspects of the Civil War in the West that I, an experienced reader on the topic, have not seen elsewhere. Second he pulls it all together into a single volume. And it's a very readable volume, not a tome of minutia.

Josephy's style might not be for everyone. In particular, his segues into a topic and conclusions afterwards can be awkward and abrupt. I almost set the book down during the first chapter which focused on the history of the Republic of Texas, a topic in which I have no interested and which seemed out of place in a book ostensibly about the Civil War. I persevered and the second chapter really shined, I recommend interested readers do the same, give the book two chapters. Which is true throughout the book, perhaps owing to its organization, by theater of action and not by chronology, the major sections "jump around" between theaters some of which may hold no interest for the reader. Between theaters the modern reader may not even consider parts of The West per se, such as the bayous of Louisiana. Understand that Josephy is writing about the Trans-Mississippian theater as it was know then. He covers the Red River campaign as well as other campaigns in Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Minnesota. Some, such as the struggles in Minnesota do not even involve Confederate forces. It might be better to think of the book as "The Western United States during the American Civil War."

A small highlight of the book is how many "big names" enter the picture. Famous cast members from the over analyzed Eastern theaters of the war. Here we see Lee,Longstreet, and Stuart before the Army of Northern Virginia. We see Rosencrans and Pope after their stars have set.

Here we see so much more than general histories ever cover regarding the Civil War in Colorado, New Mexico, California ... all the states of the inter-mountain West. It's all very well annotated, avid readers will find many other books to pursue on topics on interest. The maps are well done as well, with places mentioned in the prose being present on the maps, a detail that too many titles neglect.

This book is well researched and quite engaging. It's not flawless, but readers interested in the American Civil War or the western Indian Wars, should seriously consider it. For those like myself, interested in both the history of our country's Western states and the American Civil War, this book is simply a must-read.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alvin M. Josephy's The Civil War in the American West provides a fine overview of some of the more obscure battles in the War Between the States. While the nation's attention was focused on titanic clashes in Virginia and Tennessee, America's frontier seethed with tensions between secessionists and unionists, Mormons and miners, and of course Native Americans from Arkansas to Arizona, who wound up sucked into a war most wanted no part of. The book is capacious if a bit awkwardly organized, covering large scale military clashes generally relegated to footnotes: Josephy covers General Sibley's ephemeral invasion of New Mexico (fictionalized in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Nathaniel Banks' botched Red River campaign in East Texas (intended to capture Confederate cotton and intimidate French troops occupying Mexico) and battles in the Trans-Mississippi region from Pea Ridge to Sabine Pass. There's also interesting discussion of frontier settler conflicts, from California's flirtation with secession to Mormon Utah's uneasy neutrality, or the brutal bushwhacking wars in Kansas and Missouri. The core of the narrative, however, is the Native American tribes who either sought to use the Civil War to their advantage, or were reluctantly drawn in: the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota (one of the bloodiest, but least-remembered Indian conflicts), campaigns by both Union and Confederate troops against the Apache in the Southwest, the Cherokee civil war within the Civil War in modern Oklahoma, and brutal massacres by Federal troops at Bear River and Sand Creek. Josephy shows that these conflicts, while perhaps having a marginal effect on the bigger war, exacerbated tensions with Natives that quickened the pace of Westward expansion and military conquest after the war. A worthy volume on an overlooked subplot of the Civil War.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alvin Josephy Jr.'s book The Civil War in the American West was an interesting albeit not a perfect book. As one reviewer noted, the history of the Republic of Texas felt out of place. Sometimes the book does not have a good flow and I lost interest at times. However, I give Mr. Josephy credit for writing about a topic in the Civil War that gets little to no attention. One of Grant's officers said, "Crush the head and the heart of the rebellion, and the tail can then be ground to dust or allowed to die." In other words the war in the east was seen as more important than the west. Most Civil War books focus on the eastern theater and there are who knows how many books about Gettysburg alone, but the western theater should be studied more. For me, this was a refreshing book to read because I learned new things about the Civil War and saw a different perspective of the war. Not just Union and Confederate, but also the Native Americans. Not a perfect book and not readable at times, but overall it is an interesting read and you will discover new things about the American Civil War.

[Stephen Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are relatively few works on the war west of the Mississippi River. This does a reasonably good job, though there are parts that are derivative of a few sources. For instance, one might as well read Utley's Civil War era coverage of the Indian Wars. It would also be good to see more detail in the coverage of events such as Price's 1864 Missouri raid. Structurally it's not clear why Josephy chose to divide matters as he did. One would think that the coverage of the battles for Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory would be relatively early in the book instead of at the end and after the coverage of the Red River campaign of 1864.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

First book that I have read which really goes into the conflicts of the Native American tribes during the Civil War instead of acting like the problems went away for the duration of the war only to pick up again afterwards.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Cicil War in the American West is largely ignored as most battle took place in the eastern and southern regions. New Mexico, Texas, and the Indian territories were sites of several battles.

[David Vanness]

my copy is 448 page hardback

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It does a good job covering the war in the entire Trans-Mississippi Theater. As a criticism, I wish he would have covered the war sequentially, instead of jumping around to different parts and times.

[Jefferson Coombs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is wonderful. The west is usually excluded from Civil War studies. There were no battles involving hundreds of thousands of men like back east yet some very important things happened.

[Paul Wilner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful.