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Reviews
General William S. Harney: Prince of Dragoons
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By George Rollie Adams
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University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2001. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 409 pages. $50.00 cloth.
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Reviewed by Robert Carriker
Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington
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Biographies are a terrific resource. They put a human face on national
events that would otherwise be just another historical incident.
Like the people they examine, of course, not all biographies are
created equal. General William S. Harney is a good case in
point. It is such an exceptionally readable book, based upon such
reliable sources and with such well-chosen illustrations and maps,
that it makes most other biographies of nineteenth-century military
figures seem lacking. The book is based on a strongly researched
doctoral dissertation completed in 1983, and Adams took his time
rethinking and rewriting. William S. Harney (1800–1889) was
a complex and fairly irascible character, so the maturity that Adams
added to his insights during these many years has been worthwhile.
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Entering the U.S. Army after the War of 1812 as a non–West Point second lieutenant, Harney had to earn every promotion he received during forty-five years of active service. Yet, he also made friends. He served with Andrew Jackson in the wars against the Creek Indians, and he rubbed shoulders with Captain Abraham Lincoln during the Black Hawk War. He led troops in the Second Seminole War, the Mexican War, and the so-called Mormon War. No one doubted the man's courage under fire or disparaged his recommendations for improvements in training and equipment for the men. His unorthodox riverine tactics for combat in swamps saved lives. Less acclaimed were his humane ideas about how to treat Indians with justice and respect. Harney commanded and devised the strategy for the largest and most successful pre–Civil War campaign against the Sioux Indians, but, to his chagrin, he could not win a lasting peace. Actually, he could not achieve a lasting peace in the Dakotas or anywhere else. Named commander of the newly created Department of Oregon in 1858, Harney reached Fort Vancouver at the tail end of the Coeur d'Alene Indian War that associated the names of Edward Steptoe with humbling defeat, George Wright with unconditional victory, and Peter De Smet, not William Harney, with negotiated peace. There immediately followed the San Juan Islands dispute with Great Britain, and this time Harney's "diplomacy" almost pushed the United States into war. Exasperated, the secretary of war reassigned Harney in 1860 to the Department of the West, headquartered in St. Louis. The Civil War did not benefit Harney's career, although he was one of only four with the rank of general in the regular U.S. Army when the conflict began. Blamed for the secession of Missouri — Harney was falsely thought to be a Confederate sympathizer because of his ties to slaveholding in-laws — in a mater of months he was relieved of his command, officially retiring in 1863. In 1867, Harney returned to public service as part of an Indian peace commission, and, for a brief time, he administered a Sioux reservation in Dakota Territory. In his private life, he divorced his wife and married his housekeeper — decidedly non-Victorian conduct — and generally kept to himself. Having penned no journals during his years in uniform and having kept only a few personal papers, Harney had nothing to edit or publish as reminiscence — or apologia — an activity that consumed many of his fellow retired officers. As a source of good anecdotes about himself, however, Harney amused only one journalist, who recorded only a few tales for publication in 1878. |
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To achieve this biography, Adams had to delve deeply into unpublished sources in eight states and the National Archives. Serious scholars are grateful for his efforts. Oregon, by the way, honors the man with the town of Harney, Harney Valley, Harney Lake, and Harney County, named in 1889, the year the general died. |
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