Status Updates From The Commanders

First sentence about Miles. “Vain, arrogant, ambitious, egotistical, dogmatic, obstinate, duplicitous, abrasive, petulant, quarrelsome, scheming: Nelson A. Miles was perhaps the frontier army’s most detestable officer.”

“By the standards of his time in the East and the West, Oliver Otis Howard’s army service may be judged slightly above mediocre.”

Page 66. “General George Crook does not deserve the exalted view that history accords him. But he does deserve to be remembered as one of the great generals of the frontier army.”

Utley evaluates seven department commanders of the Americans West, all of whom served in the Civil War: Auger, Crook, Miles, Pope, Terry, Ord, and Howard.