The American Soldier, 1866-1916

In the years following the Civil War, the U.S. Army underwent a long period of professional decline on the widening American frontier. Through the decades of the Indian Wars, American soldiers served out their enlistments in desert stations, prairie forts, mountain posts, and nameless places from Florida to Alaska. It was a hard life, where harsh weather, bad food, wretched living conditions, and long stretches of boredom were adversaries every bit as tough as Indian raiders. Desertion and alcoholism plagued the army, yet every year more men enlisted to take their chances as soldiers in blue for $13 a month in pay. Drawing on a wealth of soldiers narratives and personal letters augmented with official records and contemporary sources, John Haymond examines what life was like for the ordinary American soldier during the years when the U.S. Army experienced some of its toughest challenges while also undergoing the greatest transformation in its history. Covering the Reconstruction Era, the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, and the Punitive Expedition into Mexico, this is the common soldiers view of how the U.S. Army changed from a neglected frontier constabulary into an internationally-deployed force of empire.