Reviews for Jennison's Jayhawkers

The average rating for Jennison's Jayhawkers based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-25 00:00:00 Steven Edwards Without a doubt, the 7th Kansas Cavalry, known as Jennison's Jayhawkers, was the most anti-slavery regiment in the entire federal forces in the Civil War. Starr took on the burden of writing a history for this storied regiment, and he does an admirable job with the task. Are the contents reflected accurately by the title? Yes and no. Yes, this is the story of the Kan7thCav, as can best be pieced together from available sources. No, since the title and subtitle would leave you to believe that Charles R. Jennison is also the primary focus. Not so. Other leaders of the regiment, and related military leaders associated with the regiment get as much attention as Jennison, specifically James H. Lane, and Daniel Anthony. The latter happens to have been brother of Susan B. Anthony. The main protagonists were incredibly brave, interesting characters, and this is brought out well in the book. Some of the others who served in the regiment are John Brown, Jr., son of THE John Brown. William H. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was also in the regiment. The regiment was formed out of a collection of men who, with Jennison, were fighting against pro-slavery Missourians across the eastern border of Kansas, often in the form of stealing the belongings of the slavers, including their slaves, bringing them to freedom in Kansas which they were endeavoring in pre-Civil-War days to be established as a "free state," where slavery was outlawed. This practice of not just fighting, but stealing, burning down properties, and sometimes murder came to be known as Jayhawking, named for a mythical bird that was loud and vicious. These practices carried over into the Civil War, at least to some extent, and though initially frowned upon by upper commanders, eventually as the war became more desperate, the practice of getting sustenance from private ownership to keep troops moving because more or less a standard practice. It's a pretty lengthy book, assembled in large part from four sources, or put another way, Starr used four sources to assemble a narrative, adding info from other sources as needed. The four sources are the official records of the Civil War; the war diary of one of the soldiers, Pomeroy; the letters written to his wife by another soldier, one Moses; and a scrapbook of articles (and other items) about Jennison, kept by Jennison's wife, and maybe by Jennison. This is how an unknown histories are written. Starr does a great job identifying his sources, using footnotes on the pages (a style regrettably not used any longer!), and they are not a distraction, and very handy. Starr also is not afraid to point out doubts he has about the facts of a situation, or to question assertions of fact which may not have been truthfully rendered when written more than a century earlier. One thing I would have liked, was to learn much much more about the Jennison scrapbook. It is obviously a huge wealth of information, but when I checked the archive's website I couldn't even find it. A few things would have made the book better for me. One, there are no guides to refer to. That is, while the narrative is laid out chronologically, it is difficult to know at what time you are in at a glance if the book were to be consulted as a reference. The same might have been down with major battles or places where the regiment found itself, but there is a severe lack of rubric. A history of this type benefits with lists and tables, although it is already a pretty long book. These lists might be a list of names (a full regiment is about 1000 men, plus officers.) This information was easily accessible to Starr, but it was not reproduced. Too bad. There are two maps, put onto somewhat random pages (if at the start of the book they would be much easier to reference). Neither is very helpful to navigate through the detailed descriptions of battles. Though the author puts lots of work into his description of battles, it is not the kind of thing I find easy to picture without a detailed graphical representation, and my brain just reads the words without quite understanding what's going on. A knowledge of military maneuvering terms is also helpful. The index is not very good. I note that Susan B. Anthony is not even listed, but the worst sin is that the sub-topics are listed in page order, not alphabetically. Yikes! Partly making up for this is the use of asterisks in front of names of soldiers who were in the 7th, those who are mentioned in passing, mostly because of Pomeroy's diary or Moses' letters. The effort spent to create a record for this famous regiment, a traditional regimental history, means the book gets five stars, despite some of its shortcomings. I mostly wish I could have learned more about some of the other jayhawkers, soldiers who fought in the 7th, who I'm sure were characters in their own right and likely went on to live interesting lives after the war...

Review # 2 was written on 2020-11-16 00:00:00 Tom Wilson One of the best, local histories I have ever read. Very well written.