Overview
"In 1855, at the urging of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, the U.S. Congress funded an unusual experiment: the importation of camels in order to test their fitness for military purposes in the Southwest. Camels, it was presumed, would fare much better than horses and mules in the desert's punishing climate and terrain, and therefore could be used to transport supplies to frontier forts more quickly. Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale led the nation's first and only ""camel corps"" expedition from Texas to California in 1857. Joining him was nineteen-year-old May Humphreys Stacey, who kept a detailed journal of their harrowing adventures. In ""Uncle Sam's Camels"", Lesley reproduces Stacey's account as well as Lt. Beale's glowing report on the expedition, in which he frequently comments on the camels' remarkable endurance. Originally published in 1929, Lesley's study was one of the first to treat this curiosity in U.S. military history, and it remains the definitive text on the subject."
Full Product Details
Author: Lewis Burt Lesley ,
Paul Andrew Hutton
Publisher: Huntington Library Press,US
Imprint: Huntington Library Press,US
Dimensions:
Width: 16.50cm
, Height: 2.20cm
, Length: 24.10cm
Weight: 0.476kg
ISBN: 9780873282208
ISBN 10: 0873282205
Pages: 317
Publication Date: 01 June 2006
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
"""[Stacey's] journal vividly portrays the trials and hardships of the expedition as it moved...to the land of the Mojave on the Colorado, which was its destination. In perusing the journal, one is forcibly impressed with the hazards of travel in the United States in the 1850s, especially in the largely unexplored regions of the Southwest."" - Mississippi Valley Historical Review"""
[Stacey's] journal vividly portrays the trials and hardships of the expedition as it moved...to the land of the Mojave on the Colorado, which was its destination. In perusing the journal, one is forcibly impressed with the hazards of travel in the United States in the 1850s, especially in the largely unexplored regions of the Southwest. - Mississippi Valley Historical Review
Author Information
Lewis Burt Lesley was a history professor at San Diego State University. Paul Andrew Hutton is a history professor at the University of New Mexico and Executive Director of the Western History Association. He is the author of Phil Sheridan and His Army and the editor of The Custer Reader, Frontier and Region, and Ten Days on the Plains.
