Robert Wooster - Böcker

The United States Army and the Making of America: From Confederation to Empire, 1775-1903 is the story of how the American military-and more particularly the regular army-has played a vital role in the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century United States that extended beyond the battlefield. Repeatedly, Americans used the army not only to secure their expanding empire and fight their enemies, but to shape their nation and their vision of who they were, often in ways not directly associated with shooting wars or combat. That the regular army served as nation builders is ironic, given the officer corps' obsession with a warrior ethic and the deep-seated disdain for a standing army that includes Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and debates regarding congressional appropriations. Whether the issue concerned Indian policy, the appropriate division of power between state and federal authorities, technology, transportation, communications, or business innovations, the public demanded that the military remain small even as it expected those forces to promote civilian development.Robert Wooster's exhaustive research in manuscript collections, government documents, and newspapers builds upon previous scholarship to provide a coherent and comprehensive history of the U.S. Army from its inception during the American Revolution to the Philippine-American War. Wooster integrates its institutional history with larger trends in American history during that period, with a special focus on state-building and civil-military relations.The United States Army and the Making of America will be the definitive book on the army's relationship with the nation from its founding to the dawn of the twentieth century and will be a valuable resource for a generation of undergraduates, graduate students, and virtually any scholar with an interest in the U.S. Army, American frontiers and borderlands, the American West, or eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nation-building.

Army surgeon, ethnographer, and writer William Henry Corbusier (1844-1930) witnessed the transformation of the United States from young republic to world power. In Soldier, Surgeon, Scholar, the retired army officer and surgeon recounts his experiences, which include a New York City childhood, adolescence in gold-rush California, and army life from the wilds of Arizona to the jungles of the occupied Philippines.In 1864, Corbusier joined the Union army as a contract surgeon, serving in the cavalry brigade under General Benjamin Grierson. His memoir covers seventeen military assignments in the South, the Northeast, the Great Lakes, and the American West, as well as two tours of duty in the Philippine Islands. Enthusiastically embracing these frequent relocations, Corbusier delighted in observing frontier peoples and studying natural history.An ethnographer and ethnologist, Corbusier published studies of the languages and cultures of the Yavapai, the Sioux, and the Shoshoni. And his memoir records his observations on American Indian dances and ceremonies and his medical treatment of prominent figures, such as Sarah Winnemucca, Red Cloud, and American Horse.An account largely free of self-promotion and editorializing, Corbusier's memoir of his eight decades of widespread experiences is a fascinating work of extraordinary breadth. Corbusier's wife, Fanny, also recorded her reminiscences (Fanny Dunbar Corbusier: Recollection of Army Life in the Frontier West), and together, these companion memoirs present a unique view of frontier army life with two distinct viewpoints on the shared events of Fanny and William's marriage, as well as the separate topics that husband and wife, respectively, deemed worth recounting.

With a career spanning multiple decades—from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era—John M. Schofield (1831–1906) left a lasting impact on the American military. Despite his accomplishments as a general and statesman, Schofield is arguably one of the most overlooked figures in the history of nineteenth-century United States. This rich biography, masterfully written by historian Robert Wooster, draws on fresh scholarship to place Schofield's remarkable career of military service within the broader contexts of American politics and social reform.Despite narrowly escaping expulsion before graduating from the U.S. Military Academy, Schofield advanced at a young age to the rank of general, holding several Union Army commands during the Civil War. Decades later he would be recognized with a Medal of Honor for his courage at the 1861 Battle of Wilson's Creek. His career of service had only just begun, though. In the wake of Reconstruction and in an era of limited government, Wooster explains, the nation needed its soldiers to serve as diplomats, administrators, and agents of empire. Schofield rose to these challenges, moving on to serve, among other roles, as envoy to France, U.S. secretary of war, and, in retirement, as advisor to presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Today he is familiar to many as the namesake for the Schofield Barracks on Oahu, Hawaii, established to defend Pearl Harbor.Through this unflinching biography, covering both Schofield's successes and shortcomings, Wooster delivers a broad narrative that moves beyond military experiences and unearths the complex relationship between the U.S. Army and American politics in the nineteenth century. At the same time, this volume reveals the inner workings and trajectory of the American military as it moved forward into the twentieth century.

As the fledgling nation looked west to the land beyond the Appalachian Mountains, it turned to the army to advance and defend its national interests. Clashing with Spain, Britain, France, Mexico, the Confederacy, and Indians in this pursuit of expansion, the army's failures and successes alternately delayed and hastened western migration. Roads, river improvements, and railroads, often constructed or facilitated by the army, further solidified the nation's presence as it reached the Pacific Ocean and expanded north and south to the borders of Canada and Mexico. Western military experiences thus illustrate the dual role played by the United States Army in insuring national security and fostering national development.Robert Wooster's study examines the fundamental importance of military affairs to social, economic, and political life throughout the borderlands and western frontiers. Integrating the work of other military historians as well as tapping into a broad array of primary materials, Wooster offers a multifaceted narrative that will shape our understanding of the frontier military experience, its relationship with broader concerns of national politics, and its connection to major themes and events in American history.

When brothers William and John Wright arrived in the United States from Ireland in 1850 and could find no other suitable employment, they joined the U.S. Armys Regiment of Mounted Rifles, which served on the Texas frontier. Their description of their experiences is unusual on several counts: it is a view of Texas in the 1850s, when personal accounts were rare, and it is written from the point of view of visitors to this nation. And because the Wrights published their book in 1857, only three years after they left the army, their story has an immediacy lacking in many memoirs. He was a man in the prime of life, tall and slender, with black plaited hair descending all the way down his back, and a countenance, whose handsome, intelligent, and dignified expression, was scarcely concealed by the red streaks of war-paint that covered it. Little mercy is shown to an Indian in war, and especially by the Texan rangers, who are scarcely, if at all, advanced beyond the savage state themselves. So the prisoner was immediately tied to a tree, and a number of men were selected to shoot him. On ascertaining his fate, he instantly commenced singing his death-song...which vibrated like the notes of a clarion on the air of early night. ..until his voice was lost in the fatal volley, and all was over. This softcover facsimile of the Book Club of Texas' 1995 fine limited edition of 300 copies makes this classic firsthand account available to a broad audience for the first time since 1857. It is illustrated with wood engravings from William H. Emorys Report of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey.