The Last Campaign
Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America
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Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands follows the lives of General William Tecumseh Sherman and Apache war leader Geronimo to tell the story of the Indian Wars and the final fight for control of the American continent.
"Gripping...Brands’ writing style and his mastery of history make the book an excellent introduction to the time period for newcomers, and a fresh perspective for those already familiar with this chapter in the nation’s history.” —AP
William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for what the American West would be: a sparsely settled, wild home where Indian tribes could thrive, or a more densely populated extension of the America to the east of the Mississippi.
Sherman was a well-connected son of Ohio who attended West Point and rose to prominence through his scorched-earth campaigns in the Civil War. Geronimo grew up among the Apache people, hunting wild game for sustenance and roaming freely on the land. After the brutal killing of his wife, children and mother by Mexican soldiers, he became a relentless avenger, raiding Mexican settlements across the American border. When Sherman rose to commanding general of the Army, he was tasked with bringing Geronimo and his followers onto a reservation where they would live as farmers and ranchers and roam no more. But Geronimo preferred to fight.
The Last Campaign is a powerful retelling of a turning point in the making of our nation and a searing elegy for a way of life that is gone.
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Historian Brands (Our First Civil War) takes a fine-grained yet somewhat lopsided look at the final military battles fought between the U.S. government and the Apache, Lakota, Nez Perce, and other Native American tribes. Covering the period between the first forced marches along the Trail of Tears in the 1830s and the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, the narrative documents decades of relentless government pressure to push Native Americans away from valuable land, brutal relocation campaigns, tense negotiations, internal debates among tribal leaders about whether to resist or capitulate, and key battles. Brands incorporates Indigenous perspectives, including She Walks With Her Shawl's eyewitness account of the Battle of Little Big Horn, but most of the narrative is spent with U.S. Army general William Sherman and other military leaders, including Philip Sheridan and Nelson Miles. Though Brands quotes from Sherman's letters and journal entries calling for peace, he's more interested in delivering battlefield play-by-plays than interrogating the racist attitudes of the day or conveying the full range of the Native American experience. Though well written and often engrossing, this history is missing some crucial context.
