The civil society of the “wild west” of the post-1865 era was much more peaceful than American folklore suggests.  There was a real culture of violence there, however — the U.S. government’s 25-year war of extermination against the Plains Indians, primarily “to make way for the railroads,” as General William Tecumseh Sherman said.  This involved Sherman, Grant, Sheridan, Custer, Hancock, and many other “Civil War luminaries,” as one historian described them.  This is all the subject of my latest scholarly publication in The Independent Review, edited by Robert Higgs.

We’ll be discussing this and many other similar issues in my online course on “The Political Economy of War” under the auspices of the Mises Academy beginning on September 21.

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