An Army Doctor on the Western Frontier

Assigned to the District of Utah during the Civil War, physician John Vance Lauderdale spent the next twenty-five years on army posts in the American West, serving in California, Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Texas. Throughout his career he kept a detailed journal and sent long letters home to his sister in upstate New York. This selection of Lauderdale’s writings, edited and annotated by a premier historian of the American West, offers an insightful account of army life that will teach