WHITESTONE: The Second Nebraska Cavalry Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This was a great little book about the 1863 Battle of Whitestone Hill. Jack Botts is a former UNL journalism professor turned writer who put together a well researched historical novel about the 2nd Nebraska cavalry. The author utilized historical documentation and letters to draw the primary characters, Colonel Robert Furnas and General Alfred Sully. He succeeded in creating vivid realistic assessments of both men.
The story line follows the line of march from the Second Cavalry's base in Sioux City to the White Stone Hills by the James River in Dakota Territory. The purpose of the campaign was to pacify renegade Sioux Indians after the bloody Minnesota uprisings that had occurred over the previous year. The author does a good job of giving the reader a background in the complex political situation of America's territorial frontier during the Civil War. The men of the Second Nebraska, however, remain his focus. The book is told entirely from the soldier's point of view and so persons wanting to gain insight into the motives and tactics of the Santee Sioux should look elsewhere.
Still the work is a fantastic addition to Nebraska historical fiction and many persons should note that this campaign was a teenage Luther North's first military experience

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During the Civil War, after Santee Sioux killed several hundred settlers in the fall of 1862, residents of Nebraska and Iowa feared for their lives. Washington supplied encouragement, enough supplies to muster a volunteer regiment of cavalry from each state, and a general to lead them against the Indians. This is the story of that long summer campaign by untrained Nebraska soldiers-mostly boys between seventeen and twenty-enduring extremes of weather and shortages of provisions before finding and defeating a large encampment of renegade Indians at Whitestone Hill.

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