A good narrative history of the Civil War in the West and its aftermath and drawing on a wide range of useful and varying sources which bring in important perspectives. ( )

A wonderful study into the neglected story of what happened in the New Mexico/Arizona territories during the Civil War. The book is titled this because of the groups that come into play - the Union, the Confederacy and the Native American and several Native American tribes in those territories. I teach history at a local junior college and I learned a lot. The North pretty quickly vanquishes the South so the majority of the book is the tragic story Native conquest and relocation to an unsuitable place called Bosque Redondo. A key person in this is Kit (Christopher) Carson who I learned much about. Well worth all the acclaim. ( )

The story of the Civil War in the West as a conflict among Unionists, Confederates, and Apaches. I’m not as familiar with the Western battles but there was a fair amount of stupidity and tragedy here, as well as a consensus among whites that natives should be gotten rid of; the only disagreement was whether they should be enslaved, exterminated, or put onto reservations to be civilized. ( )

My initial response to this narrative history was to second guess myself as to whether it was worth my time, as I feared that it was just going to rehash material covered by Alvin Josephy decades ago. Not to mention that I've seen the use of disparate personal narratives as the tent poles for a wider story often come to grief. However, my interest was peaked when it turned out that Nelson was going to use the perspective of John Clark, Lincoln's appointment as Surveyor General of the New Mexico Territory, as one of her voices, as this is not a typical choice; the surveyor general of a given territory being a then important but now obscure position.

It turns out that this book is a bit narrower than I thought it was going to be, and that's a good thing. Sure, you will get coverage of the "organized" war between the Union and the Confederacy, but that was of short duration. The real war for both Confederate and Union forces was with the Apache and Navajo nations. The contrast there might be best illustrated by looking at the relevant men Richmond and Washington had on the scene; John Robert Baylor and James Carleton.

J.R. Baylor started out well in terms of protecting Confederate interests in New Mexico, but he was as fine an example of a Jacksonian thug in a frock coat as you might find and had no interest in being an administrator. His solution to the challenge of the Apache resistance was annihilation, but he was mostly too easily distracted to carry through, and satisfied himself with a raid into Mexico where he killed one household's aging house servants; they were Apache so why not? Jefferson Davis wound up having to write letters of apology over that incident, though Baylor never suffered any real consequences.

Carleton on the other hand was a by-the-book officer who is ill-regarded for his role in presiding over the Navajo "Long Walk," an actual death march and failed exercise in "productive" detention that was thankfully resolved by allowing the Navajo survivors a reservation on their traditional territory. Carleton actually comes off somewhat better in Nelson's narrative than I've usually seen, as he genuinely had some positive intentions, but refused to allow reality to temper the imperatives he was trying to satisfy.

I'm probably not the person this work was aimed at but I found it worth my time and can recommend it to the general reader, particularly if you want a story that takes non-white voices seriously. ( )