Life and Manners in the Frontier Army

Very unusually for a well-regarded volume of social history, Knight's book is based less on original reportorial sources than on the Victorian novels of Captain Charles King, whose active military career was brief -- from West Point graduation in 1866 to what would today be considered retirement on disability in 1879, following his inability to fully recover physically from wounds suffered a few years before in an Indian fight in Arizona. King was a natural soldier, however, and very observant besides, and his time in the Fifth Cavalry, as well as on detached duty in New Orleans and elsewhere, formed an extremely accurate and detailed background for his several dozen novels and scores of short stories. By the turn of the 20th century, and on through the 1920s, he was one of the most popular novelists in America and was esteemed throughout the Army itself for his grasp of frontier military life and Indian-fighting tactics. Knight, a prize-winning historian of the Western frontier, mined King's books for information and produced an organized, critical survey of day-to-day life in the Old Army, the character of the typical officer and his family (who generally regarded him as a knight errant, the frequent squalor of their physical establishment in isolated posts notwithstanding), the relationship between officers and noncoms and privates, the garrison as extended or substitute family, the role of romantic matchmaking by Army wives among young bachelor officers, the generally rigid caste system (again, promoted more by the ladies than by their husbands), the details of daily routine from staff meetings to meals to guard house detail, and the nomadic nature of Army life in the West generally. And there were also those tense periods when the troops were engaged in field campaigns against the Indians, leaving their families back at the post hungry for reports and letters. Knight's style is very easy and highly readable, though footnotes are frequent and there's an excellent bibliography. As a source for background and flavor of the American military west, this is an excellent starting point.

This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of American military affairs. Oliver Knight's Life and Manners in the Frontier Army is significant because it is a social history that explores the manners and customs of army officers and their wives on the frontier. Knight argues army officers and their wives "maintained...a stylized code of conduct which gave a unique cast to the life and manners of frontier posts." Although Knight is particularly interested in the manners and customs adopted on these posts, his work is an excellent social history and demonstrates how "the officers and ladies of the Old Army...carried into the West the social hierarchies of the officer class and made themselves aristocrats within their limited circle." By doing so, Knight highlights class and social conflicts that arose between army officers and army enlisted, as well as conflicts that arose between army people and frontier civilians. Knight's research is an appreciated contribution to this field, because it is a detailed social and cultural history of the army's presence on the American frontier. Recommended reading for anyone interested in military history, and American history.

Using Captain King's fictional writings of the late 19th and early 20th century, the author has gleaned an almost complete retelling of the life and manners of the Indian Fighting army of the plains. Captain, later General, King through his service years wrote through fiction to list the non-fictional rules of behavior that he and his brother officers had to adhere. Not to do so made one not an officer and gentleman, and the career of that man soon came to an abrupt end. Though this book has very long chapters and has the feel of a slow read, it is every bit worth the time expended with it. Anyone remotely interested in what went on inside those western posts and encampments, needs to read this book. I am very surprise mine is the only review listed here. I bought this book in hardcover back when originally published and after a rereading, decided to at the least give it some review. And the best test of Charles King's novels was that the cadets at West Point who read these books, when later seeing service at western posts, knew exactly what to expect and fit in correctly. Their service proved the truth and reliability of these writings of General King. Now you too can benefit from an armchair reading of these rules of conduct and behavior from the military past. Semper Fi.