Jeff Davis's Own: Cavalry, Comanches, and the Battle for the Texas Frontier

By James R. Arnold

Book Overview

The men of the Second Cavalry went to Texas to fight Indians. Then they returned home to fight each other. The creation of the Second Cavalry in 1855 was a watershed event in the history of the United States Army. Ordered to engage the Native American tribes whose persistent raids were slowing the settlement of the West, the officers of the Second were unwittingly preparing to fight each other. Established by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, the Second and its officers were assigned-disregarding Army tradition-on the basis of merit and not seniority. Davis's innovation proved sound: Half of the full generals in Davis's Confederate army had served with the Second Cavalry prior to the outbreak of the Civil War.Texas's western frontier was their battleground, and the warriors of the Comanche tribe were their foes. Forsaking the infantry's rustic stockades that had merely served as detour signs for fleet raiding parties, the Second Cavalry developed innovative tactics to address a novel situation, thereby showing the army how to complete the conquest of the West. Led by men such as Robert E. Lee (in his first independent combat command), John Bell Hood, and George Thomas, the troopers of the Second Cavalry schooled themselves in the tactics and strategies of mobile desert warfare, tutored by a skilled and tireless adversary.Drawing upon a wealth of military documents, archival materials, period newspapers, and personal journals, Arnold adds a new and insightful chapter to the history of the U.S. Army and the men who shaped it.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471333646
• ISBN13: 9780471333647
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Birth of U.S. Calvary or What R.E. Lee was doing in 1850s

Arnold has a gift for military history that while informative of facts is also a good read. He makes history interesting even to the casual reader. This book fills what is usually a gap in US military history and a blank in most accounts of R.E. Lees life. Who knew that Lee was an Indian fighter as well as hero of the Mexican American war and great American strategist. His account of Lee's personnel hand to hand fight with an Apache warrior reveals his personnel determination, courage, and humor is an insightful read. This is the second of many American military experience with insurgent, unconventional, gorilla warfare, others being the Seminole war in Florida, for that fact all the Indian wars, the War in the Philippines {part of the Spanish American war} Vietnam war, and now Iraq/Afghanistan. We win as long as we have the political will to do so. Enough of that. This is a really good book, I highly recommend it. A lot of info for a little known period in American Military History.