Morgan's Raiders

by Dee Brown

Dee Alexander Brown Konecky & Konecky raiders, morgan 354 1993 English 0914427792 9780914427797 Hardcover List Unknown

Genres: History, Civil War

353 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1993

About the author

AKA: Dee Alexander Brown

Dorris Alexander “Dee” Brown (1908–2002) was a celebrated author of both fiction and nonfiction, whose classic study Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is widely credited with exposing the systematic destruction of American Indian tribes to a world audience.

Brown was born in Louisiana and grew up in Arkansas. He worked as a reporter and a printer before enrolling at Arkansas State Teachers College, where he met his future wife, Sally Stroud. He later earned two degrees in library science, and worked as a librarian while beginning his career as a writer. He went on to research and write more than thirty books, often centered on frontier history or overlooked moments of the Civil War. Brown continued writing until his death in 2002.

Reviews

[Trace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dee Brown is a superb writer, but he sort of fell into the romantic writing of Civil War cavalry. There were two sides of John Hunt Morgan and the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry (Confederate) during the war, but we only see one. That sort of surprised me coming from a man who wrote so pointedly about the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota.

I liked the book. A Southerner is much more comfortable with John Hunt Morgan, Basil Duke, and Lightning Ellsworth than northerners. I've always enjoyed reading and hearing about Morgan's daring and -- in the polite Southern sense -- his unconventional style of fighting.

I've long called him "The Man of a Thousand Brass Markers" because no matter where you go in Tennessee and Kentucky -- even Virginia -- you're likely going to run across a historical marker recounting some exploit of Morgan and/or his cavalry. A former co-worker, who was a Northerner, and I were working in Ohio several years ago. We ran across a brass sign near Jackson recounting Morgan's Great Raid in 1863. My co-worker exclaimed, "Son-of-a-bitch, that guy got around!"

Dee Brown does a great job of recounting all the raids and all the daring. The shortcoming is perspective. Maybe Brown had it out for the Bluecoats, who acted out a militarized nation's wrath upon the Plains Indians following the Civil War and ultimately at Wounded Knee. I know little about the author, actually.

[JD Carruthers · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book, rich with excitement as well as Kentucky Civil War history. Dee Brown demonstrates that it is entirely possible to write a book from the perspective of one side of a conflict without surrendering to bias. I would highly recommend this book.

[Tom Darrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good coverage of one of the more colorful commanders of the war. Makes one wonder what would have happened if either there were more southern cavalry commanders like Morgan or if he was placed in a higher level of command.

[Babs M · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was pretty good. My main interest in this book was the read the bit of Ohio history in the battle in Salineville in Columbiana County where Morgan was captured.