ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-0803236363<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe largest battle you will ever see is when you come under fire.\u00a0 This is an intensely personal experience you will never forget.\u00a0 Later, history might name this experience; even declare it an important event.\u00a0 If this happens, it becomes part of family lore.\u00a0 Your descendents can say \u201cDad was at Pearl Harbor\u201d or \u201cUncle Jim landed on Omaha Beach\u201d or \u201cMy Great-Great Grandfather was with Chamberlain on Little Round Top\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 This is a rare experience.\u00a0 Named battles, while important at the time and always important to those involved, normally sink into oblivion ending up in footnotes rarely the subject of a book.<\/p>\n
The Civil War has many obscure battles that have no important general or famous regiment on the field.\u00a0 None seem as obscure as Birch Coulie!\u00a0 In fact, the 1862 Sioux War in Minnesota is almost a nonevent.\u00a0 The most important thing about the war might be that the War Department used it to exile General Pope far far from Washington.<\/p>\n
Having said all of this: why would anyone want to read this book?<\/p>\n
First, it is a unique look at how frontier communities were defended.\u00a0 The \u201carmy\u201d that fights this is a collection of regiments in the process of being inducted.\u00a0 Regiments comprised of civilian volunteers or local militia and equally inexperienced volunteer regiments assigned to police the reservation.\u00a0 They are commanded by politicians, local community leaders or semi-trained elected officers from the volunteer regiments.<\/p>\n
Next, this battle is small enough to detail the personalities involved giving us a real look at the 1862 Frontier.\u00a0 We can move up and down the Chain of Command making an intensely personal story.\u00a0 Additionally, the events and tactics can be clearly explained making the action easy to follow and understand.<\/p>\n
Lastly, the author presents the battle not as a single event but as part of the regional and personal history.\u00a0 This includes following some of the participants throughout their lives and the regions commemorations of the battle.<\/p>\n
There are some problems.\u00a0 Sources, at the end of the book, replace end notes.\u00a0 The sources have a page not item reference.\u00a0 There are no maps, illustrations or photographs.\u00a0 Lastly, the Sioux uprising is notable for two things: first it is the \u201clargest mass execution in American history\u201d.\u00a0 This occurs when thirty-eight Sioux were hanged for murder and rape.\u00a0 The second is the largest mass rape in American History.\u00a0 While the author dwells on the executions, he says very little about the rapes.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Birch Coulie: The Epic Battle of the Dakota War by John Christgau Product Details Paperback: 152 pages Publisher: Bison Books (March 1, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 0803236360 ISBN-13: 978-0803236363 The largest battle you will ever see is when you come under fire.\u00a0 This is an intensely personal experience you will never forget.\u00a0 Later, history might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,80,35,11,84,69,392],"tags":[3729,3731,3730],"class_list":["post-12918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishers","category-books-reviews","category-books","category-authors","category-books-new","category-books-now-reading","category-james-durneys-book-notes","tag-birch-coulie-the-epic-battle-of-the-dakota-war","tag-dakota-war","tag-john-christgau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brettschulte.net\/CWBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Product Details<\/strong><\/p>\n