Review of Phil Sheridan and His Army By Paul Andrew Hutton

Authors

Michael L. Tate, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Date of this Version

1986

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 6:4 (Fall 1986). Copyright © 1986 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

Drawing upon extensive manuscript collections, government documents, and other published materials, Hutton has provided us with the definitive treatment of Sheridan's western command. Going well beyond Carl Coke Rister's outdated and narrowly-focused Border Command: General Phil Sheridan in the West (1944), he has artfully synthesized the course of American Indian and military policies from the 1867-1868 winter campaign along the Washita through the 1874 Red River War and the 1876-1877 Little Big Horn and Yellowstone expeditions, to the conclusion of the 1885-1886 Apache War. Never content to merely rehash familiar materials about narrow battlefield tactics, the author has kept the broader, fully-integrated story before his readers' eyes. Few writers could have done as well.