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As with many historians in their treatment of the Battle of Little Big Horn, he jumps to dogmatic conclusions fairly easily when he seeks to cast blame (as on Benteen for "dawdling") and when he attributes to Custer the wise deployment of his troop resources. See for example at page 177: "---he (Custer) was relieved to see that Reno had halted to form a skirmish line and was only lightly engaged. He should now be able to hold out until Custer's larger force could get into action". Gray does not tell us how he managed to communicate with Custer in the after life in order to ascertain these feelings of Custer. He further ignores the testimony of John Martin (the trumpeter who took the message to Benteen) to the court of inquiry that Custer exulted over catching the Indians "napping".
In reaching some of these dogmatic conclusions, Gray simply buys into the overstatement of many historians who find some thin support for their fictionalized conclusions.
However, this book is an excellent narrative of the troop and scouting maneuvers leading up to and following the battle. He also writes at the beginning of the book an excellent summary of the cultural conflicts that led to this tragedy for all involved----the soldiers and the Indians.
We spent the entire afternoon talking about his book. There was one question that I was anxious to get answered. Why did he write less than a page about the Custer fight itself? Gray didn't really know what happened during that battle, so there really wasn't much to say. I laughed but it made sense.
This book is not about the Custer fight, but about the entire campaign of the Sioux War of 1876 and it is filled with new revelations about the causes and events of this war. Most interesting is Gray's narrative about the White House meeting between Grant and his aides concerning how they should deal with the Sioux problem and why they started a war.
The book is filled with detailed maps of the Indian movements during the campaign, where and when they camped and for how long. The same is done for soldier column movements.
There is an excellent analysis of the size of the warrior force at the Little Bighorn that historians accept to this day. The numbers will surprise you.
If you have not read much on the Sioux war, then I highly recommend this book. You'll learn that the Custer fight was just one of many events of a long brutal, bloody war.
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But Newton had a darker side. Despite the fame and recognition he had received, Newton refused to let anyone threaten to overshadow him or stand in his way of greater achievements.
Reverend John Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal - a position he held for 44 years serving under 6 kings. He spent his night in the observatory of Greenwich gazing through telescopes, cataloguing the stars. Newton wanted this information to figure out a better way to navigate to oceans, a major problem in his day. He was convinced Flamsteed was holding back the critical information he needed. For that, Newton used all the considerable power at his disposal to end the career of Flamseed. He almost suceeded. It was only because of the dedication of Flamsteed's widow that his 3-volumn Historia Coelestis Britannica was published.
Today, because of Flamsteed's work, we measure longitude from the place he accomlished his work - Greenwich.
The work of Stephen Gray is less known. A commoner trained as a dyer, he was a most unlikely member of the Royal Society.
Gray was a long time friend of Flamsteed. He carried on a regular coorespondence with the elder scientist, sharing with him his own celestial observations.
But it was Gray's pioneering work in using electricity for communications that earned him immortality. Work, that if not for Newton, may have been accomplished 20 years sooner.
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