On the Plains in ’65: The 6th West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry in the West by George H. Holliday. ed. by Glenn V. Longacre (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: On the Plains in ’65: The 6th West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry in the West by George H. Holliday. ed. by Glenn V. Longacre Wesley Moody On the Plains in ’65: The 6th West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry in the West. George H. Holliday. Edited by Glenn V. Longacre. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-0-82142428-5. 258 pp., hardcover, $49.95. George H. Holliday enlisted in the Union Army in August 1863. The 15-year-old lied about his age to join. Except for a short time guarding the capital, Holliday spent his Civil War career in his home state of West Virginia. In 1864, Holliday reenlisted in the 6th West Virginia Cavalry for the duration of the war. All the men were volunteers and veterans. In the vagaries of army bureaucracy, these men found themselves not going home to farms and families in April 1865 but west to the Great Plains. Inspired to describe this post–Civil War service, George Holliday put pen to paper in 1883. Historian Glenn V. Longacre has edited Holliday’s work and brought it to the modern reader. Longacre gives a short biography of Holliday and puts both his Civil War and western service into perspective. He also provides the reader with a history of the document itself. This, of course, is important if the journal is going to be helpful to a professional historian. Longacre has also provided extensive pages of exceptionally well-researched explanatory notes. I would have preferred these as footnotes instead of endnotes, but that is only a personal preference. At the end of the Civil War, the US Army was nearly one million men. With the Confederacy defeated, most of these men were ready to return home to their prewar lives. The army still had obligations. They were ordered to continue occupying the South, and Reconstruction would demand many soldiers over the next decade. The situation with the Plains Indians was inching closer toward war. Not everyone who wanted to go home could. Holliday and the 6th West Virginia were assigned one year in the West. If that was not bad enough for men ready to return home, the unit that had served the entire war in West Virginia was being sent to the far West. This led to desertions and even a mutiny in Kansas. Civil War memoirs usually end with the [End Page 112] war’s conclusion. This view of the troubles and chaos of demobilization is rare and informative. Holliday was still young and didn’t have a wife or children who were struggling to maintain the farm. He was excited about the potential adventures and experiences to be found on the frontier. Holliday’s motivation in writing was not to justify his or his country’s actions or claim his spot in history. He was trying to tell a good story, which he did. There are humorous and exciting stories about his fellow cavalrymen and their officers. He describes his first meetings with Native Americans, both peaceful and hostile. His impressions of the Native Americans are informative if not comfortable for contemporary sensibilities. He shows us the difficulty of frontier army life. Holliday and Longacre have given us an entertaining and enlightening work. Any historian of the American West would be well served to have On The Plains in ’65 on their shelf. Wesley Moody Florida State College at Jacksonville Copyright © 2023 The Kent State University Press