A review of The Civil War in the American West by Alvin M. Josephy (Vintage, 1993).
As the “history” books to which government school students are subjected begin to deal with the War of Northern Aggression, they tend to make little mention of those states and territories west of the Mississippi, with the exception of Missouri and Kansas. Missouri, so we’ve been told, was chock full of greasy, “racist, hate-mongering “nativist” bushwhackers, who wanted nothing more out of life than to lie in wait so they could ambush the noble, virtuous, godly abolitionists from Kansas to whom “anti-slavery was the law of God.” Other than their presenting us with this little tidbit of historic fertilizer, they tell us almost nothing of what went on in the rest of the West. Either they haven’t done the homework or they have and hope we haven’t.
I’ve seen lines in some Western movies that talk about the War being an “Easterner’s War” and saying the West had nothing to do with it. Not quite accurate!
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