This book are stories of American unsung heroes. The mostly unknown and forgotten men who put their stamp on American history. The Ninth and Tenth U.S. Cavalry and the Twenty-fourth, and Twenty-fifth Infantry Regiments

The idea of Texas was forged in the crucible of frontier warfare between 1822 and 1865, when Anglo-Americans adapted to mounted combat north of the Rio Grande. This cavalry-centric arena, which had long been the domain of Plains Indians and the Spanish Empire, compelled an adaptive martial tradition that shaped early Lone Star society. Beginning with initial tactical innovation in Spanish Tejas and culminating with massive mobilization for the Civil War, Texas society developed a distinctive way of war defined by armed horsemanship, volunteer militancy, and short-term mobilization as it grappled with both tribal and international opponents. Drawing upon military reports, participants' memoirs, and government documents, cavalry officer Nathan A. Jennings analyzes the evolution of Texan militarism from tribal clashes of colonial Tejas, territorial wars of the Texas Republic, the Mexican-American War, border conflicts of antebellum Texas, and the cataclysmic Civil War. In each conflict Texan volunteers answered the call to arms with marked enthusiasm for mounted combat. Riding for the Lone Star explores this societal passion--with emphasis on the historic rise of the Texas Rangers--through unflinching examination of territorial competition with Comanches, Mexicans, and Unionists. Even as statesmen Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston emerged as influential strategic leaders, captains like Edward Burleson, John Coffee Hays, and John Salmon Ford attained fame for tactical success.

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"In 1877, John Bigelow Jr. and seventy-five other cadets graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, after which he chronicled his experiences, observations, opinions, and musings as a young Cavalry lieutenant in Texas. Sixty of the new lieutenants, including Bigelow and seventeen others who were assigned to black regiments called Buffalo Soldiers, soon departed for the frontier where they were scattered over numerous small and often ramshackle posts and camps. Their work of training soldiers, exploring and patrolling wilderness areas, protecting the mail, travelers, and settlers, chasing and sporadically clashing with unpacified Indians, and enforcing federal laws and policies was usually arduous, occasionally dangerous and seldom glorious. Yet the value of their accomplishments was immense." "In addition to providing a comprehensive view of army life in the late 1870s, including the social practices and prevailing Victorian customs, the author addresses the widespread attitudes of the times toward the Buffalo Soldiers and how these views changed when black and white soldiers fought side by side against common foes." "Also portrayed are the results of sending poorly prepared officers and men to fight in unconventional conflicts, desertion-inciting conditions and practices, and how an obsolete military justice system developed into a model of fairness far in advance of its civilian counterparts."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Originally published in 1967, William H. Leckie’s The Buffalo Soldiers was the first book of its kind to recognize the importance of African American units in the conquest of the West. Decades later, with sales of more than 75,000 copies, The Buffalo Soldiers has become a classic. Now, in a newly revised edition, the authors have expanded the original research to explore more deeply the lives of buffalo soldiers in the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments. Written in accessible prose that includes a synthesis of recent scholarship, this edition delves further into the life of an African American soldier in the nineteenth century. It also explores the experiences of soldiers’ families at frontier posts. In a new epilogue, the authors summarize developments in the lives of buffalo soldiers after the Indian Wars and discuss contemporary efforts to memorialize them in film, art, and architecture.

The inclusion of the Ninth Cavalry and three other African American regiments in the post-Civil War army was one of the nation's most problematic social experiments. The first fifteen years following its organization in 1866 were stained by mutinies, slanderous verbal assaults, and sadistic abuses by their officers. Eventually, however, a number of considerate and dedicated officers, including Major Guy Henry, Captain Charles Parker, and Lieutenant Matthais Day, in cooperation with capable noncommissioned officers such as George Mason, Madison Ingoman, and Moses Williams, created an elite and well-disciplined fighting unit that won the respect of all but the most racist whites.

An unheralded military hero, Charles Young (1864–1922) was the third black graduate of West Point, the first African American national park superintendent, the first black U.S. military attaché, the first African American officer to command a Regular Army regiment, and the highest-ranking black officer in the Regular Army until his death. Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment tells the story of the man who—willingly or not—served as a standard-bearer for his race in the officer corps for nearly thirty years, and who, if not for racial prejudice, would have become the first African American general. Brian G. Shellum describes how, during his remarkable army career, Young was shuffled among the few assignments deemed suitable for a black officer in a white man’s army—the Buffalo Soldier regiments, an African American college, and diplomatic posts in black republics such as Liberia. Nonetheless, he used his experience to establish himself as an exceptional cavalry officer. He was a colonel on the eve of the United States’ entry into World War I, when serious medical problems and racial intolerance denied him command and ended his career. Shellum’s book seeks to restore a hero to the ranks of military history; at the same time, it informs our understanding of the role of race in the history of the American military.