2007Book Reviews103 the Confederate supply train, did Slough emerge as the commander who forced Confederate retreat after Glorieta. Civil War enthusiasts will find litde new in the present volume, but the lively narrative will keep the reader's interest. The author does a goodjob of laying to final rest the belief that Confederate general Sibley and Union general Canby were related by marriage. He correcdy emphasizes the role played by Colorado territorial governor William Gilpin in putting together the regiments of Colorado volunteers that figured so prominendy in forcing Confederates to withdraw from New Mexico. There are a few shortcomings (for example, the author's statement that Texan Tom Green "graduated from Princeton" [p. 76] may leave the impression that this was Princeton University in NewJersey rather than Princeton College in Kentucky), but these are minor. On the whole readers will find much of interest in Whitlock's narrative. The volume is enhanced by nearly fifty photographs and more than twenty maps. Short descriptions of the postwar careers of Union and Confederate participants of the New Mexico campaign and battle sites of the campaign are helpful. The author appears to have made full use ofmost primary and secondary materials. This reviewer was a little surprised that the author appears to have made litde use of Donald Frazier's Blood and Treasure, which he lists in his bibliography but cites only once in the notes. In this reviewer's opinion it remains the most satisfactory account of Sibley's ill-fated invasion of New Mexico. Lamar UniversityRalph A. Wooster A Texas Cowboy'sJournal: Up the TrailtoKansas in 1868. ByJack Bailey, edited by David Dary. (Norman: University ofOklahoma Press, 2006. Pp. 112. Foreword, illustrations , maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0806137371. $24.95, cloth.) David Dary may well be the reigning authority on the cow country of the latenineteenth -century American West. A major network newsman turned academic journalist, Dary has earned the prestigious Spur and Owen Wister awards from the Western Writers ofAmerica for several of his historical works. His highly regarded Cowboy Culture ( 1 98 1 ) renders him ideallysuited to edit a recendy revealed firsthand account of a post-Civil War Texas-to-Kansas catde drive. In a small notebook,Jack Bailey, a Parker County stock raiser in his late thirties, set down in ink a remarkable picture of his three-month roundtrip in the fall of 1868. His itinerary stretched over approximately 635 miles, fromjust north ofFort Worth across Indian Territory (paralleling today's Interstate 35) and into Kansas. From El Dorado, the route ran to Emporia and Lawrence, where Bailey left the herd. From Lawrence he headed back to Texas, by way of eastern Kansas, southwestern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, southeastern Indian Territory (along what became U.S. 69 through Oklahoma). From the Red River he proceeded through Sherman and reached home on November 8. Amonth into die drive, Bailey decided he would have to limit his notations and use abbreviations, lest he use up his notebook. That 104Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly literary parsimony was regrettable, concludes Dary. "One wishes Bailey had had more paper because he tells a good story" (p. xxviii). And that he does. Bailey scrupulously recorded distances traveled each day, the suitability of the land for livestock, important landmarks, and, without fail, the availability ofwater. Self-diagnosed and self-treated health problems also warranted frequent mention. "Pleuresy [sic],'' he noted, "kept me awake" the entire night of September 18 (p. 52), and on August 14, Bean, another drover, was hobbled because of"several bad boils on his set down" (p. 20). Attitudes toward those he encountered spoke clearly to Texas conditions. "Cuss the Indians. I wish they would stay away" (p. 21) easily related to Comanche and Kiowa raiding that then plagued North Texas. The Civil War and Radical Republican Reconstruction also intruded. A Mississippian who bore Confederate arms, he did not mask his loathing of African Americans and Northerners. At Fort Arbuckle, Indian Territory, the sight of the American flag "floating over the heads . . . offlat nosed ignorant" black buffalo soldiers in a country now "governed by Negroe Supremacy" aroused him to the extent that he finally exclaimed, "Enough" (pp. 5-6). In that presidential election year...
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Jun 29, 2023
Mark A Mccaffrey + 3
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