Of all the U.S. Army posts in the West, none witnessed more history than Fort Laramie, positioned where the northern Great Plains join the Rocky Mountains. From its beginnings as a trading post in 1834 to its abandonment by the army in 1890, it was involved in the buffalo hide trade, overland migrations, Indian wars and treaties, the Utah War, Confederate maneuvering, and the coming of the telegraph and first transcontinental railroad.
Douglas C. McChristian has written the first complete history of Fort Laramie, chronicling every critical stage in its existence, including its...
Of all the U.S. Army posts in the West, none witnessed more history than Fort Laramie, positioned where the northern Great Plains join the Rocky Mount...
"The drums they roll, upon my soul, for that's the way we go," runs the chorus in a Harrigan and Hart song from 1874. "Forty miles a day on beans and hay in the Regular Army O " The last three words of that lyric aptly title Douglas C. McChristian's remarkable work capturing the lot of soldiers posted to the West after the Civil War. At once panoramic and intimate, Regular Army O uses the testimony of enlisted soldiers--drawn from more than 350 diaries, letters, and memoirs--to create a vivid picture of life in an evolving army on the western frontier.
After the volunteer...
"The drums they roll, upon my soul, for that's the way we go," runs the chorus in a Harrigan and Hart song from 1874. "Forty miles a day on beans and ...
