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The Battle of Little Bighorn

The purpose of this research is to examine The Battle of the Little Bighorn by Mari Sandoz, with a view toward exploring a twentieth-century interpretation of the pattern of misjudgment and what might generously be called hubris that informed the command structure of the United States Army division that encountered a massive Native American division at the Little Bighorn River in 1876. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the book examines the details of the battle, and then to discuss the political social, cultural, and historiographical background and environment in which the modern understanding of the battle may be most profitably explored. Throughout, as appropriate, reference will be made to the point of view that Sandoz brings to judging events and circumstances of the incident itself and its myriad implications.

Sandoz takes the view that the massacre of George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry was the result of his overweening concern with reputation and fulfillment of ambition. Essentially, Sandoz's thesis is that Custer wanted to be drafted as the Democratic presidential candidate for the election of 1876, and that he hoped to use a well-timed Indian-war victory as the principal vehicle to achieve that purpose. Sandoz'

s method of structuring this argument is to begin her narrative the day before the battle and to identify the principal actors in the command structure of Custer's 7th Cavalry. This is an important technique for the reason that Custer's last stand, occurring though it did because of Custer's incompetence, was not the only battle at the Little Bighorn, and the historical testimony of the other commanders in the detail turns out to have been an important means of piecing together the facts of the battle. Thus the parts of the scouting detail commanded by and the personalities and careers of Major Marcus A. Reno and Captain Frederick W. Benteen are reviewed early in the na...

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The Battle of Little Bighorn. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:39, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1704621.html