Gordon Harper’s remarkable book, Fights on the Little Horn: Unveiling the Mysteries of Custer’s Last Stand (Casemate Publishing, 2014) was conceived, researched, compiled, and written over a fifty-year period. After becoming fascinated with the story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Gordie (as he was known) discovered that many of the stories, secondary publications, and accounts of the battle were based on erroneous information. Gordie’s stated goal in writing the book was to compile all of the primary sources related to the battle and campaign—letters, reports, interviews, testimony, diary entries, and contemporary newspaper articles—and glean from them the information that was reliable, factual, and untainted by subsequent embellishment. His intent was to have all of those primary sources, plus the book he compiled based only on those sources, published simultaneously. The problem with that plan was that there were more than 1,700 pages, nearly two million words, of primary source material which, in addition to the 400 pages of his manuscript and more than 80 pages of bibliography, amounted to a larger publication than is realistic or cost beneficial for modern publishing houses.
Casemate Publishers overcame that problem by publishing the book both in traditional hard copy and in an electronic version, and the appendices and bibliography companion only as an e-book: The Fights on the Little Horn Companion: Gordon Harper's Full Appendices and Bibliography.
In this publication readers will find a treasury of hard-to-find research material, including the orders issued by Brigadier-General Alfred H. Terry during the campaign, pertinent correspondence from key figures, the various accounts, narratives, journals and testimony from participants, plus a reference section covering such matters of significance as the proper organization of a cavalry regiment, Armstrong Custer’s Court Martial in 1867, the Seventh Cavalry’s rosters, and reports on the reburials at the battlefield.
All of these records are thoughtfully annotated by the author, where relevant, using the unique insight into all of these matters he gained from a lifetime of study of this fascinating episode in history. Mr. Harper’s half century of research and writing, which sometimes required exhaustive searches for elusive manuscripts and obscure first-person accounts, has resulted in a compilation of materials unavailable in any other single place than here. Everyone who uses this e-book has the rare privilege therefore, of benefiting from the extraordinary detective work of an extraordinary man.
