4 comments about Custer and the Great Controversy: The Origin and Development of a Legend.

1. Despite its age (it was first published in 1962) this book is probably the best of the scores of books available to start with for those interested in exploring the ever elusive and controversial life of George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Utley, while steering clear of making judgments of his own ("I do not aspire to offer the last word on the subject"), lays out the scene of the battle, shows how the press and early writers colored events and created heroes and villains, looks at the Indian side of the story, and discusses some of the myths that have gone into creating the Custer Legend. The Custer literature is prodigious in amount, and tends to be either Custerphilic (pro-Custer) or Custerphobic (anti-Custer). Again, Utley refuses to take sides, but points out that virtually every "fact" regarding the battle and its participants issues up opposing interpretations. This short book gives a powerful sense of what the student of Custer and especially the Little Big Horn is up against. A useful and straightforward introduction.



2. Anything by Robert Utley is indispensible, especially when it comes to Custer as he wrote CAVALIER IN BUCKSKIN, probably the best biography of the man. Also to his credit are the official NPS Little Bighorn Battlefield guide, a biography of Sitting Bull, and numerous other Custer/Indian Wars/Western history books.

   This book is primarily focussed on an examination of the immediate aftermath of the Little Big Horn and how the various lines of controversy were established that still echo (unresolved) and are with us today. These include Did Custer Disobey Orders? Was Reno a coward when he fled from the valley fight? Were both Reno and Benteen negligent in not responding to Custer's written order for the packs, an order with an audible reminder of the gunfire four miles away that, two days later, the men on Reno Hill learned signalled the end of Custer and his command. All of the seeds of future books and endless debates were firmly planted by the end of the 1870s, topped off with the Reno Court of Inquiry. Excellent insight into that event and some of the second-hand talk and gossip sorroundingsthe officers who testified and why they may have said what they did. Utley is his usual dispassionate, detached self as he explores these issues in his highly engaging writing style.

   Originally published in 1962, the book concludes with Utley's brief commentary on most of the major battle books published up to that time. One can only wish that this section were revised and updated. Lacking that, we can all look forward to the autor's CUSTER AND ME, due in October 2004.




3. Early book by the great western writer Robert Utley provides a brief description of the Indian situation that evolved before the LBH and then he provides an abbreviated but well described sequence of battle events. Utley then describes the press' role in developing the story that caught General Sherman and Sheridan off guard as Sherman provides Terry's second controversial report to a reporter by accident. Utley describes the fireworks that arises between Custer supporters such as his old classmate Confederate Rosser and Reno and other military men such as Colonel Hughes, Terry's adjutant and relative. The controversy is even made even more complex by the chapter spent on the Indian's version of events that has elements of truth combined with confusing facts or half truths perhaps aggravated by poor translations and the Indians unique individualistic versions of battle that lack time and spatial realities. Finally, Utley tackles a number of the mythical stories about Custer and the LBH including Frederick Whitacker's quick print and fanciful book on Custer that became a best seller. The best part of this chapter is the discussion about the last four crow scouts to see Custer particularly the debate over when Curley departed from Custer. An excellent book that frames the controversies about Custer's battle which also explains the fascination, nothing is totally certian but amongst all the testimony and physical evidence, somewhere lies the truth.



4. Good reading offers some good insight into the whole Custer and Little Bighorn 'fiasco'! I'm more prepared now to find out what possibly happened on that fateful day. The case has been well made that there may 'never' be a definitive conclusion?

No comments about George McClellan: The Disposable Patriot.

1 comments about The Most Fearful Ordeal: Original Coverage of the Civil War by Writers and Reporters of The New York Times.

1. While the excerpts from the New York Times are valuable and instructive in themselves, this book is disappointing for what it does not have--any valuable input from McPherson. He adds about one paragraph at the beginning of each chapter, information summing up the war at that period, available in any encyclopedia. The Times text is totally un-annotated. There are no notes to identify individuals mentioned in the reports or the reporters who sometimes left their initials at the end of their text. Anyone interested in how the war was covered is left searching other sources for information.

1 comments about Retreat With Honor (Battles & Leaders of the Civil War) (Battles & Leaders of the Civil War).

1. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: Retreat with Honor edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel of the editorial staff of "The Century Magazine" is the fourth and concluding installment of a four volume series written about the Civil War. Being for the most part contributions by Union and Confederate officers, these are their eyewitness accounts of the battles planned and fought during the duraion of the war.

   These accounts were part of series that was concieved in 1883 by the editors of the Century Company to give future readers an idea of what went on during this, one of the costliest wars, fought by Americans on their home soil. Accounts found in this volume take us to General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, but there are accounts of the battles leading upto this event that are important to the outcome and final resolution of this conflict. As this volume opens we find an account of the land and sea operations of the Battle of Charleston, South Carolina and Grant's Wilderness Campaign. Sherman's march through the South, starting in Atlanta, also included in this volume, we read about the final actions in Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee.

   Anyone wishing to know more about the Civil War... this is a must to own and read at your leisure. You will experience a rich satisfaction of accounts written by the people who fought these battles... battles that pitted brother against brother, North against the South, and ideals agaist ideals. A war that had to be fought to resolve issues that the Founding Fathers knew some day would have to come to pass if they could not settle them. A war for the very existence of the union, otherwise there would never be a United Staes as we know it today.

   These are the accounts of men who bravely fought on both sides, giving their all, some the ultimate sacrifice, but settled nonetheless, to make this country what it is today. Excellent history for all to read, The Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: Volume one, "The Opening Battles." Volume two: "The Struggle Intensifies." Volume three: "The Tide Shifts." Volume four: "Retreat with Honor." you will NOT be disappointed.

No comments about Yankee Stepfather: General O.O. Howard and the Freedmen.

No comments about Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper And the Impending Crisis of the South (Southern Biography Series).

2 comments about Dr. Henry R. Porter: The Surgeon Who Survived Little Bighorn.

1. This is an excellent history of a personality that survived Custer's ego at work at the Little Big Horn. I can see this history of Dr Porter as a basis for a documentary. Dr Walker's book proves there is life before and after Custer. He shows Dr Porter a man of his time, warts and all.



2. I did not care to much for this book, me being a big Custer reader. The book was not worth the money for a paper back. He talks to much about his travels over seas & about the banking business in Bismark, North Dakota. He tells a lot about the early history of Bismark, which is interesting. At times a slow read.

1 comments about Chickasaw, A Mississippi Scout for the Union: The Civil War Memoir of Levi H. Naron, As Recounted by R. W. Surby.

1. Chickasaw the Scout is a relative of my wife and the story is family legend. It describes in detail how a Southerner is conflicted about the WBTS and how important preservation of the Union was to Levi Naron. Chickasaw was Chief of Union Scouts (spies) for the Southern Campaign and served Sherman, Grant, and others in the TN, MS, AL, GA theaters of operation. Needless to say, he could not return to Chickasaw County, Mississippi after the war because of retaliation from his neighbors so he relocated to Kansas on government land grants where his family still resides.

No comments about A Southern Moderate in Radical Times: Henry Washington Hilliard, 1808-1892 (Southern Biography Series).

2 comments about Memoirs of Robert E. Lee: His Military and Personal History.

1. One time when Lee was on his travels, a woman ran from her house, grabbing his arm and dragging him into her front arm. She told of how her grandfather had plant the tree in the front yard, how it had grown so tall and perfect. The tree was now nothing but dead limbs. She told how the dreadful Yankees came and stayed in her home, and they destroy the tree for fun and target practise. To her the tree was her 'red badge of courage', and she was proud to show Lee how terrible the in justice the Yankees visited up her, how she suffered. Lee quietly told her to cut it down. Not the reaction the woman hoped for, but so like Lee. When the war ended, it ended. He made sure there the war did not devolve from armies fighting armies, into a situation similar to Northern Ireland, local resistance prolonging the fighting, likely bringing down swift retribution from the Northern Reformations.

   Lee started his memoirs, but never finished, and at his death, the part of history was never really addressed by Lee. There have been many like Longstreet who wrote about the war, but not Lee.

   His father had been Lighthorse Harry Lee, a friend of George Washington and a Revolutionary War Hero - a role that would have been Lee's had the Confederacy won. Instead of helping to forge a new nation of independence as his father had, by the simple act of the South losing, he was on the 'wrong side'. Instead of hero, he was a rebel. Lee was troubled deeply by his decision to leave the Union Army and take up leadership for the Army of Northern Virginia. He was the husband of Mary Ann Randolph Custis, great-granddaughter of Washington. Arlington, our national cemetery that is so honoured, was her plantation, and the dead originally put there was done so as an insult to the Lee family.

   Lee was a brilliant tactician, did what so few did before him, divide his army in the face of superior forces, and succeeded until the fiasco at Gettysburg in Pickett's Charge.

   Since Lee could not or would not complete his memoirs, A.L. Long, with backing of Lee and later his family, took up the role, an amazing chore since most of his work was done when he was losing his sight, and the writings accomplished with a slate used for the blind. Long was military secretary to Lee and the vast amount of information was unpublished before this work. The papers were collected with the assistance of Marcus J. Wright, formerly Brig. General of the Army of Tennessee and Agent for the Collections of Confederate Records.

   This books provides a wealth of information on a gentleman, a husband, a father, a lady's man, but first and foremost a soldier and leader.

   I highly recommend this for anyone wanting a clear pictures of Robert E. Lee.




2. Long knew Lee in the pre-war army and was with him in notth-west Va. and the sea coast defenses in '61 through Appotamox. As his milt. secretary, Long drew on his own resources as well as those of Taylor and Venable also on Lee's staff, in addition to corrospondance with Lee's family members after the war. When one wonders why Lee resigned his commission to offer service to his Virginia, one can readily find the answers in this text....As a professional soldier being above politics, Lee merely was"doing his duty" to Vriginia and his family. Who won was not as important as duty, in the life and times of Lee. One can readily understand the resolve displayed by Kempe, Gordon, Armistead and others after reviewing the text. A recommended reading for any serious student of history studying the period