Book Review

In the years between 1861 and 1865, the United States Army faced a second front often neglected in historical accounts of this tragic period of American history. In 1862, while the armies of Gen. Henry W. Halleck suffered Robert E. Lee's aggressive assaults in the battles of the Seven Days' Campaign and an embarrassing blow at the second battle of Bull Run, the thin detachments of the West had to confront serious threats from Indian tribes residing in Minnesota, the Dakota and New Mexico territories, Kansas, and Colorado. It seemed as if the frontier had never been so restless. The military commanders of the Union could not ignore a "problem" that endangered many American citizens' lives.	1
The first major and unexpected attack from western Indian tribes during the Civil War came in 1862, in Minnesota. A group of Santee Sioux, exasperated by the delay in the payment of annuities and by the indifference of United States agents in charge of them, took up arms under the leadership of Little Crow and began attacking Euro-American settlements.	2
As Michael Clodfelter puts it, "the calamity that crashed down upon Minnesota during those deadly August days of 1862 is fully deserving of the title of massacre." Hundreds of white settlers were killed, and hundreds of Indians died in the ensuing chase led by Gen. John Pope, who had been removed from his command in Virginia after Bull Run.	3
Thirty-eight Indians were hanged for the murders committed by Little Crow's party, and not all of them were guilty. Many more, however, died of starvation or other hardships when the army mounted a full-fledged campaign against the hostile Santees. Clodfelter gives a detailed and well-documented account of those years in Minnesota and Dakota, underlining the relevance of that second "western front" for the United States Army.	. . .