From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have
stepped forward in their nation's defense. This book breathes new
vitality into a stirring subject, emphasizing the role men who have come
to be known as "buffalo soldiers" played in opening the
Trans-Mississippi West. This concise overview reveals a cast of
characters as big as the land they served. Over 150 images painstakingly
gathered nearly a half century from public and private collections
enhance the written word as windows to the past. Now, 150 years after
Congress authorized blacks to serve in the Regular Army the reader
literally can peer into the eyes of formerly enslaved men who bravely
bought their freedom on the bloody battlefields of the Civil War, then
trekked westward, carried the "Stars and Stripes" to the Caribbean, and
pursued Pancho Villa into Mexico with John "Black Jack" Pershing.