The Western War Between the States

Among the thousands of volumes treating the American Civil War rare is the study venturing west of the Mississippi River. Andrew E. Masich’s Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands 1861-1867 (University of Oklahoma Press, $34.95) is a notable exception.

california volunteer infantry regiment true west — Andrew E. Masich’s Civil War in the Southwest Borderlands, 1861-1867 uses extraordinary primary sources to detail the military role of U.S. troops stationed in California, including a California Volunteer Infantry regiment stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco in June 1865, during the Union’s fight to protect the region from the Confederates.
– Courtesy Huntington Library, San Marino, California –

Based on exhaustive research including a sprinkling of oft-overlooked Mexican sources, Masich sets a high bar for military treatments of the Southwest. Of equal importance, he analyzes the complex concurrent dynamics of “not only Union and Confederate forces clashing but Indians, Hispanos and Anglos struggling for survival, power, and dominance on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.” The title is must reading for those eager for a new look at an old subject.

—John P. Langellier, author of El Presidio de San Francisco