The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970 Page: 418
605 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
forces in the national defense effort. Despite this thread of continuity,
the book suffers from a lack of a central theme due in part to the mul-
tiplicity of authors, Matloff's absence from Washington during the
final preparation of the manuscript, and the contradictory objectives
of many OCMH staffers who viewed the army's institutional develop-
ment as of prime importance and those military officers who demanded
an extensive discussion of campaigns and battles.
This latter dualism is easily seen in three chapters of particular
interest to southwesterners. "The Mexican War and After" by Lida
Mayo is a competent but uninspired study. She discusses too many
battles with too few maps to give a thorough analysis of any. Excessive
concentration on campaigns forces Mrs. Mayo to make little use of the
scholarship of such historians as Francis P. Prucha and William H.
Goetzmann who are concerned with the army's social, economic, and
scientific contributions to national development. On the other hand,
Paul J. Scheips' chapter on "The Interwar Years, 1865-1898" ef-
fectively develops the army as an institution. Little Rock and Oxford
are foreshadowed in actions against Ku Klux Klansmen and Pullman
strikers in which the military was used to suppress domestic unrest
even though local officials objected to federal interference. Scheips
accurately analyzes the rise of military professionalism that laid the
foundations of such pillars of military education as the Medical School
at Fort Sam Houston, the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, and the
Air Defense Artillery School at Fort Bliss. William G. Bell in "Win-
ning the West, 1865-1890" strikes somewhat of a middle ground be-
tween the Mayo and Scheips approaches. He takes a broad view of
many subjects, only mentions most Indian battles, but gives a detailed
analysis of the Bighorn campaign of 1876.
When the volume reaches the period since 1940 the expertise of the
OCMH staff becomes widely apparent. Probably nowhere in such
short space is so much military history discussed so well. Omitted,
however, is what General Harold K. Johnson recently called the
army's "third mission" (after protecting us from all enemies foreign
and domestic) -foreign military assistance. Unaccountably missing in
a work with almost unexcelled maps are several important ones. How,
for instance, can one discuss the Kansas and Wyoming Lines and the
Iron Triangle of Korea or the corps areas of Vietnam without proper
illustrations? The deficiencies are few, however, when compared with418
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 73, July 1969 - April, 1970, periodical, 1970; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117147/m1/454/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.