Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 133

BOOK REVIEWS

This is but one example of the relevance of renewed
consideration of material that applies to our current
understanding of the events and leaders during that
period. The compilation of these previous articles
provides significant counterpoint to prevailing given wisdom that may change many philosophies and
ideological positions on how the war was fought by the
Union. This collection is truly worth a read.
Col. Thomas S. Bundt, Ph.D., U.S. Army, Fort
Belvoir, Va.

COLUMNS OF VENGEANCE: Soldiers, Sioux and
the Punitive Expeditions, 1863-1864
Paul N. Beck, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
Oklahoma, 2013, 328 pages

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onventional wisdom holds the Plains Indian
Wars and the United States Civil War were
two separate, unrelated events. Historian Paul
Beck’s latest book, Columns of Vengeance, challenges this
commonly held view. In his analysis, the Dakota War
of 1862 and the U.S. expeditions of 1863-64 against
the Plains Indians were not isolated campaigns, but
part and parcel of the larger Civil War. Throughout the
book, Beck routinely demonstrates the links between
the two theaters and the impact of the Plains War
upon both Grant’s and Sherman’s attacks into the
Confederate South.
Beck opens with an extensive examination of the
Sioux and Dakota peoples, cultures, intertribal relations, and desires for territorial expansion based
upon population growth and competition for natural
resources. Further, he explains the tribes’ growing
concern over white settlements on Indian land and
failed attempts to broker treaties with the U.S. government. Indian frustration with unwanted encroachment, forced removal to reservations, and broken
promises created a schism, with some tribes openly
advocating for violence while others were opting for
peace. Ultimately, this frustration led to attacks against
individual homesteaders and settlements. Indian raids
forced the abandonment of entire towns, potentially
threatening the Union’s war effort as Washington relied
upon the Great Plains to provide critically needed
manpower and material. In response, Secretary of War
MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2015

Edwin Stanton created the military Department of the
Northwest and ordered Maj. Gen. John Pope to take
command of the offensive. Pope would spend the next
three years pacifying the tribes through a campaign of
revenge that still generates controversy today.
Undoubtedly, Columns’ greatest strength is Beck’s
extensive use of private letters, diaries, and personal
accounts—to include those from the Indian perspective—to reveal a more complete understanding of the
war. These individual accounts ensure Columns is more
than just a dry retelling of the battles as much of the
prose describes the soldiers’ view of the operation. The
men, mostly volunteers fresh from civilian life, wrote
prolifically, and their words will sound eerily familiar
to Iraq and Afghan veterans.
They vividly describe vague political objectives,
campaigning on the open plains, the difficulty of identifying the enemy hidden within an unfamiliar civilian population, and their longing for home. Similarly,
Pope and his senior commanders frequently fought
Washington for resources required on the plains that
were too often diverted to the Eastern and Southern
campaigns of the Civil War.
The book suffers from two problems distracting
from its narrative. First, Beck includes just two very
simple pen-and-ink maps and a paltry six photographs
to illustrate the story. Readers unfamiliar with the
details of the campaign will have difficulty visualizing
its conduct. More critically, Beck’s writing in the latter
half of the book appears heavily biased against the U.S.
Army, leaving the reader to question the impartiality
of his analysis. While this imbalance distracts from
Columns overall value, Beck does reveal an often overlooked dimension of an important era of American
history.
Lt. Col. Chris Heatherly, U.S. Army, Fort
Leavenworth, Kan.

BEYOND WAR: Reimagining American Influence
in a New Middle East
David Rohde, Viking, New York, 2013, 213 pages

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n Beyond War, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist
David Rohde critiques American nonmilitary
strategies during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
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