The Colonel's Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson (Women in the West)

The modern woman who tries to juggle private and public roles with equilibrium will discover a spiritual ancestor in Alice Kirk Grierson. The colonel's lady spent most of her life at army outposts on the nineteenth-century western frontier, where she faced the problems of raising a large family while fulfilling the duties of a commanding officer's wife. Fortunately for history, she left a large and extraordinarily candid correspondence, which has now been edited by Shirley Anne Leckie. 
Alice was the wife of Benjamin B. Grierson, a major general in the Civil War who won fame for a raid that contributed to the fall of Vicksburg. Her letters begin in 1866, when her husband reentered the army as colonel of the legendary "buffalo soldiers" of the Tenth Cavalry, and end with her death in 1888. During these years she chronicles the criticism experienced by her husband in commanding one of the army's two black mounted regiments and the frustration when he is repeatedly passed over for promotion, in part because he advocated a more humane Indian policy. All the while her position requires her to assume heavy responsibilities as a hostess. Her letters are just as unflinching in describing the daily hard-ships of raising a family at frontier posts like Forts Riley, Gibson, Sill, Concho, Davis, and Grant, where two of her seven children died young and two suffered from manic-depressive psychosis. They are extraordinary for their insight into nineteenth-century attitudes toward birth control, childbearing, marital roles, race relations, and mental illness.

Biographies & Memoirs

Leckie, Shirley A.

Historical

Bison Books

Georger Armstrong Custer’s death in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Big Horn left Elizabeth Bacon Custer a thirty-four-year-old widow who was deeply in debt. By the time she died fifty-seven years later she had achieved economic security, recognition as an author and lecturer, and the respect of numerous public figures. She had built the Custer legend, an idealized image of her husband as a brilliant military commander and a family man without personal failings. In Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth, Shirley A. Leckie explores the life of "Libbie," a frontier army wife who willingly adhered to the social and religious restrictions of her day, yet used her authority as model wife and widow to influence events and ideology far beyond the private sphere.

Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth

Community & Culture

University of Oklahoma Press

Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin H. Grierson and His Family

Unlikely Warriors is the story of Benjamin Henry Grierson, Civil War hero and postwar commander of the Tenth Cavalry "Buffalo Soldiers," and his family on the western frontier. In 1863, Colonel Grierson led a cavalry brigade of 1,700 men on a daring raid through Mississippi, which helped Ulysses S. Grant launch his successful campaign against Vicksburg. In the army reorganization of 1866, Grierson accepted an appointment as colonel of the Tenth Cavalry, a command of white officers and black enlisted men. In this biography, William and Shirley Leckie explore three generations of Grierson’s family, and for this edition they include a new preface on recent interest in the Buffalo Soldiers.

Leckie, William H.

The daughter of Oklahoma sodbusters, a student of Edward Everett Dale, and a Protegee of Frederick Jackson Turner, Angie Debo was an unlikely forerunner of the New Western History. Breaking with the followers of Turner, Debo viewed the westward movement of European Americans as conquest rather than settlement. Her studies on the Five tribes presented the Native American point of view and incorporated ethnological insights more than a decade before ethnology emerged as a separate field. Shirley A. Leckie’s biography of Debo is the first to assess the significance of Oklahoma’s pioneering historian in the historiography of the American Indian, the writing of regional history, and the development of national law and court cases involving indigenous people. Leckie sheds light on Debo’s family’s background, her personality, and the impact of gender discrimination on her career. Finally, Leckie clarifies why Debo became a scholarly pioneer and, later, a "warrior-scholar" activist working on behalf of Native Americans during a period of changing Indian policy.

Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian (Volume 18) (The Oklahoma Western Biographies)

Originally published in 1967, William H. Leckie’s The Buffalo Soldiers was the first book of its kind to recognize the importance of African American units in the conquest of the West. Decades later, with sales of more than 75,000 copies, The Buffalo Soldiers has become a classic. Now, in a newly revised edition, the authors have expanded the original research to explore more deeply the lives of buffalo soldiers in the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments.
Written in accessible prose that includes a synthesis of recent scholarship, this edition delves further into the life of an African American soldier in the nineteenth century. It also explores the experiences of soldiers’ families at frontier posts. In a new epilogue, the authors summarize developments in the lives of buffalo soldiers after the Indian Wars and discuss contemporary efforts to memorialize them in film, art, and architecture.

The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West, Revised Edition

History

Americas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leckie, Shirley A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Leckie, Shirley A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leckie, Shirley A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Colonel's Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson (Women in the West)

Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth

Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin H. Grierson and His Family

Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth

Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian (Volume 18) (The Oklahoma Western Biographies)

Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian (Volume 18) (The Oklahoma Western Biographies)

The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West, Revised Edition