Frontier Regulars
Page 10
In the long view, Huntington argues persuasively, the army profited from its separation from the people. Turning inward, it laid the groundwork for a professionalism that was to prove indispensable in the great world wars of the twentieth century. The postgraduate military school system, original thought about the nature and theory of warfare, and professional associations and publications trace their origins to this time of rejection by the people. In parsimonious appropriations and the low esteem of their countrymen, however, the frontier Regulars paid heavily for a future gain that few could then foresee.30
If the public’s view of the army began to soften as the frontier period drew to a close, a large share of the credit is due to one man. Capt. Charles King turned to the pen after an Apache bullet ended his career in the Regular Army. For four decades, beginning in 1880, he told Americans about their soldiers out on the frontier. In almost seventy novels and other books, he portrayed his characters in warm and appreciative terms. A frontier veteran, viewing King’s record as early as 1894, marveled at “the load of indifference, ignorance, suspicion and malice regarding the regulars which has been cleared away from American homes through the instrumentality of his versatile pen.”31 For all their romanticism, King’s novels did indeed give countless readers a new sympathy for their border defenders and help arrest the drift of the army away from the people.32
NOTES
1. William A. Ganoe, The History of the United States Army (New York, 1924), chap. 9.
2. Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d sess., p. 950 (Feb. 6, 1869).
3. Cong. Rec., 44th Cong., 1st sess., p. 3780 (June 13, 1876).
4. “The Army of the United States,” p. 195. See also Bigelow, William Conant Church and the Army and Navy Journal, pp. 176—77.
5. “It would be well to be a little conservative on the subject of requests made by Congressmen, and to yield as far as you can consistently with the public service and justice to officers. They do not understand our standard, get angry, and the [staff] Bureaus at Washington know how to fan the flame to limit your legitimate rights by law.” Sheridan to Sherman, April 3, 1876, Sherman Papers, vol. 43, LC.
6. Army and Navy Journal, 14 (Oct. 14, 1876), 155.
7. Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 2d sess., p. 1875 (March 21, 1872).
8. SW, Annual Report (1873), pp. 5–6. House Ex. Docs., 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 275.
9. During the Battle of Atlanta, Sherman bypassed Logan, heir apparent, and named Howard to command the Army of the Tennessee after the death of Gen. James B. McPherson. Logan erroneously attributed the decision to West Point prejudice against Volunteers. Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet, pp. 388–89, 603–06.
10. Sherman to Sheridan, Jan. 10, 1879, Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Vol. 2, Sheridan Papers, LC. See also Sherman to Rep. J. D. Cox, Feb. 25, 1878, Sherman Papers, vol. 90, pp. 537–40, LC.
11. House Reports, 44th Cong., 1st sess., No. 354 [Banning Committee Report]. Cong. Rec., 44th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 3356–64 (May 27, 1876); pp. 3457–69 (June 1, 1876); p. 3780 (June 13, 1876); pp. 3837–51 (June 16, 1876); pp. 3874–75 (June 17, 1876); pp. 4720–21, 4743 (July 19, 1876); pp. 5674–75, 5694–96 (Aug. 15, 1876). 19 Stat. 97–101 (July 24, 1876). 19 Stat. 204 (Aug. 15, 1876).
The increase originated in a measure sponsored by the Texas delegation in both House and Senate requiring each cavalry troop stationed on the frontier to be increased to 100 enlisted men and a “sufficient force” of cavalry to be stationed on the Texas frontier. This provision, inserted by amendment in the House on June 17 and the Senate on June 26, preceded the Custer battle and grew wholly out of conditions in Texas. It was contained in the appropriations act as passed on July 24. Subsequently, however, on August 15, Congress responded to the Sioux crisis by temporarily lifting the 25,000-man ceiling by 2,500 in order that the cavalry could be increased to 100 men as required by the Texans’ amendment without reducing the infantry.
12. Sherman to Sen. J. D. Cameron, Jan. 31, 1878, Sherman Papers, vol. 90, pp. 511–12, LC. (Cameron had left the War Department and won a Senate seat.) Sherman to Rep. J. D. Cox, Feb. 25, 1878, ibid., pp. 537–40. Army and Navy Journal, 75 (March 9, 1878), 489.
13. Cong. Rec., 44th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 2111–20, 2151–52, 2171, 2230, 2178, 2193, 2241–42, 2214, 2246, 2248–52 (March 2–3, 1877).
14. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the President, 7, 452–54. Cong. Rec., 45th Cong., 1st sess., pp. 222, 285–302, 306–26, 328–39, 345–52 (Nov. 8–12, 1877); pp. 415–23 (Nov. 15, 1877); pp. 510–14 (Nov. 17, 1877). 20 Stat. 1–4 (Nov. 21, 1877).
15. Garfield, “The Army of the United States,” pp. 463–65. Cong. Rec., 45th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 3534–55, 3579–89, 3615–25, 3631–46, 3669–84, 3715–30, 3731–36, 3760–71, 3793–3813, 3836–55, 3873–78, 3907, 4016, 4021, 4059, 4073, 4180–4200, 4234–48, 4295–4307, 4386, 4358, 4400, 4647, 4648, 4684–86, 4719, 4258, 4876 (May 18-June 21, 1878). House Misc. Docs., 45th Cong., 2d sess., No. 56. 20 Stat. 145–52 (June 18, 1878).
16. Senate Ex. Docs., 45th Cong., 3d sess., No. 555. Bernard L. Boylan, “The Forty-Fifth Congress and Army Reform,” Mid-America, 61 (1959), 173–86.
17. Sherman to Sheridan, Dec. 30, 1878, Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, LC.
18. Boylan. Cong. Rec., 45th Cong., 3d sess., pp. 125, 297–300, 849–50, 689, 896, 897–926, 963–76, 1034–41, 1059–69, 1132–45, 1707–14, 1755–67. 1809–25 (Dec. 18, 1878-March 3, 1879). Sherman to Sheridan, Dec. 18, 1878, Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, LC. Schofield to Sherman, Dec. 20, 1878, Sherman Papers, vol. 4g, LC.
19. 21 Stat. 30–35 (June 23, 1879).
20. Cf. Cong. Rec., 45th Cong., 2d sess., p. 3585 (May 20, 1879). Sherman to Sheridan, Jan. 10, 1879, Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, LC.
21. Sherman to Sheridan, Nov. 20, 1877, Sherman-Sheridan Letters, Sheridan Papers, LC. See also pp. 353—54.
22. House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 384, p. 229.
23. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 222–30. See also Weigley, History of the United States Army, pp. 270–72.
24. Roe, Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, p. 333.
25. Army and Navy Journal, 75 (Sept. 8, 1877), 72–73. See also ibid. (Dec. 1, 1877), 265; and Bigelow, pp. 187–88.
26. House Misc. Docs., 45th Cong., 2d sess., No. 56, p. 34. See also the speech to a veteran’s group quoted by Weigley, pp. 270, 272.
27. Sherman to Rep. S. A. Hurlbut, May 26, 1874, Sherman Papers, vol. 90, pp. 326–35, LC.
28. House Misc. Docs., 45th Cong., 2d sess., No. 56, pp. 33–34.
29. House Reports, 43d Cong., 1st sess., No. 384, p. 245. The most detailed exposition of this scheme was by Maj. William R. Price in a letter to Rep. John Coburn, April 2, 1872, ibid., 42d Cong., 3d sess., No. 74, pp. 135–36.
30. Huntington, chap. 9.
31. W. H. Carter in Journal of the U.S. Cavalry Association, 7 (1894), 323–24.
32. For a sketch of King, see Don Russell’s introduction to King’s Campaigning with Crook (Western Frontier Library ed., Norman, Okla., 1964), pp. vii-xxii. See also Russell’s “Captain Charles King, Chronicler of the Frontier,” Westerners Brand Book (Chicago), 9 (March 1952), 1–3, 7–8, which lists all sixty-nine of King’s books.
Weapons, Uniforms, and Equipment
IN ARMAMENT, CLOTHING, AND ACCOUTERMENTS, the postwar Regular Army regressed to the conservatism of prewar years. Warehouses bulged with stocks accumulated during the Civil War. Depletion of these stocks, by issue, condemnation, and sale, consumed fifteen years or more for some categories. Innovation thus came slowly and modestly. Even after the approval of new uniforms and weapons in the early 1870s wartime items continued to be issued. The new patterns, scarcely major departures from the old, endured for twenty years with only minor and infrequent improvements.
The most significant advances were in weapons technology. Breech-loading arms and metallic cartridges, employed on a limited scale but with dramatic effect in the Civil War, reached the han
ds of all Regulars soon after the war’s end. The Civil War musket had to be loaded at the muzzle with powder and ball contained in a paper cartridge and a percussion cap for ignition placed in a receptacle under the hammer. Fixed ammunition combined ignition, propellant, and projectile in a single metal cylinder inserted at the breech. Besides ease of loading and rapidity of fire, the metallic cartridge permitted greater velocity and accuracy.
The standard infantry arm for seven years following the Civil War was a modification of the famed Springfield rifle-musket. By August 1867 about 50,000 of these, left over from the war, had been altered to fire a metallic cartridge loaded at the breech. Most of these were the so-called “Allin Conversion” effected at the U.S. Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, although some were modified by private contractors. Most, too, featured a reduction in caliber from .58 to .50. An 1868 improvement substituted a wholly new barrel rather than brazing a .50-caliber tube in the original .58-caliber barrel. “Almost unanimous opinion,” wrote General Grant in 1867, “pronounces the weapon simple, strong, accurate, and not apt to get out of order.”1
Cavalry carbines attained no such easy standardization. Some regiments carried the Spencer, others the Sharps, and all from time to time used a scattering of experimental models. Most troopers preferred the Spencer, a .50-caliber repeater fed from a tube in the stock containing seven rounds. The Spencer had proved itself in the Civil War. A unit armed with it could deliver devastating sustained fire, as Custer’s Seventh Cavalry demonstrated at the Washita in 1868. Also popular, and preferred by many even though a single-shot, was the Sharps carbine. A sturdy and powerful veteran of frontier service since the 1850s, the Sharps was originally a breech-loading percussion arm using a paper cartridge. By 1869, however, the Ordnance Department had altered some 30,000 to receive a .50-caliber metallic cartridge.2
In 1872 an arms board was convened under the presidency of General Terry to select a single breech-loading system of rifles and carbines. After testing more than one hundred types, the board settled on the tried and popular Springfield Allin system. The model 1873 Springfield rifle and carbine resulted. Singleshot, caliber .45, these weapons served the army, with periodic improvements, for the next twenty years.3 The infantry version Colonel Gibbon pronounced “a first-rate rifle, and probably the best that was ever placed in the hands of troops.”4 The cavalry carbine impressed some as too light, and at the Little Bighorn enough of them jammed to stir considerable criticism. It quickly subsided, however, and the Springfield carbine seems to have performed satisfactorily for the balance of the army’s Indian service.5
Metallic-cartridge pistols began to appear in the early 1870s, gradually replacing the cap-and-ball six-shooters of Colt and Remington popularized in the Civil War. Colt’s 1872 army revolver, the famed “Peacemaker.” emere-ed the overwhelming favorite. The Army bought almost 13,000 of these single-action, .45-caliber six-shooters in 1873–74 and about 1,000 each year thereafter until 1891. A Remington .44-caliber and a Smith and Wesson .45-caliber, the latter with an automatic ejector perfected by Maj. George W. Schofield of the Tenth Cavalry, gave the Colt its principal but never very serious competition.6
In addition to carbitie and pistol, cavalrymen also received a saber. It was heavy, cumbersome, and noisy, and its owner rarely got close enough to an Indian to use it. Few officers required their men to carry it in the field. Even so, proposals to abandon the saber altogether drew opposition from such champions of “cold steel” as old Gen. Philip St. George Cooke. Somehow the saber seems to have reassured them that the cavalry had not degenerated into mere mounted infantry, as many charged. “Give our troopers the saber. Sharpen it and teach them to use it,” implored an anonymous correspondent of the Army and Navy Journal who signed himself “Sabre of the Regulars.” “It never misses fire, and who does not believe that the gallant Custer would not have given millions for an hundred sabres when he made the last stand?”7 The saber figured in a few engagements with Indians, but for most units it remained almost exclusively an ornament for inspection and parade.
The improved firearms that suddenly appeared in the hands of the bluecoats at the close of the Civil War took the Indians by surprise. The Sioux, for example, suffered bloody repulses at the Wagon Box and Hayfield fights of 1867 because of the deadly fire of the Allin-converted Springfields recently issued to the Twenty-seventh Infantry (see Chapter Eight). But as the soldiers obtained better arms, so too did the Indians. Indeed, while the army moved toward a single-shot system, warriors came increasingly into possession of repeaters. Favored over all others was the almost legendary Winchester, a weapon particularly well designed for mounted use. The number of warriors who boasted such weapons was greatly exaggerated. Most, if they owned a gun at all, had to content themselves with old trade muskets of doubtful utility or captured military arms. Too, ammunition was difficult to obtain, and few Indians became any better marksmen than their soldier opponents. Nevertheless, enough repeaters found their way into Indian hands, largely through traders, to prompt speculation on the changing nature of Indian warfare. “As long as the muzzle-loading arms were in use we had the advantage of them,” declared General Crook in 1878, “and twenty men could whip a hundred, but since the breech-loaders came into use it is entirely different; these they can load on horseback, and now they are a match for any man.”8
The anomaly depicted by survivors of the Little Bighorn (not without considerable exaggeration) of Sioux warriors armed with Winchester repeaters gunning down troopers armed with singleshot Springfields dramatized the need for a military repeater. Shortly after the Custer disaster, Colonel Mackenzie formally applied to have his regiment’s Springfields replaced with Winchesters, but the Ordnance Department replied that the Winchester attained less range by 100 yards than the Springfield as well as less penetrating power by one-half.9 Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the Ordnance Department tested one magazine system after another, only to reaffirm each time its preference for the Springfield. Not until 1892 did the long reign of the 1873 Springfield draw to a close with the adoption of the Krag-Jorgen-sen magazine rifle.10
The army boasted one weapon that, when it could be employed, invariably dispersed, repulsed, and demoralized Indian concentrations. Although some commanders regarded artillery as useless in Indian warfare,11 cannon accompanied many offensive expeditions and figured importantly in numerous engagements. The rough western terrain demanded light, easily transported types. One such, the twelve-pounder mountain howitzer, had been a familiar fixture on the frontier since the 1840s. In the postwar years, breech-loading, rifled steel cannon and Gatling guns became increasingly conspicuous.
The Hotchkiss “mountain gun” provided the most popular and effective artillery piece for western service. A 1.65-inch, 2-pounder steel rifle, it could be fired rapidly and accurately at ranges up to 4,0 yards. Above all, it was light and compact enough to be taken almost anywhere on a wheeled carriage. General Miles declared in 1890 that he had campaigned with the mountain gun all over the northern plains and had found only one area, the timbered country around Yellowstone National Park, where it could not follow the cavalry.12
The Gatling gun gave less satisfaction. Forerunner of the machine gun, the Gatling fired 350 rounds of rifle ammunition per minute from a bank of ten revolving barrels turned by a crank and fed from a hopper. Gatlings “are worthless for Indian fighting,” Miles declared. “The range is no longer than the rifle and the bullets so small that you cannot tell where they strike.”13 Moreover, the Gatling easily fouled with the refuse of black powder cartridges and jammed with overheating. It was also cumbersome; rather than have his march slowed, Custer refused to take a Gatling platoon up the Rosebud to the Little Bighorn.14
Whether Gatlings, rifles, or howitzers, artillery contingents almost never came from the artillery regiments. Instead, details from infantry or cavalry manned the weapons and condemned cavalry horses drew them. Col. Henry J. Hunt of the Fifth Artillery, who had been the Army of the Potomac’s chief o
f artillery in the Civil War, thought this outrageous, especially since half of the ten light batteries authorized for the regular artillery regiments were not mounted and equipped. Hunt believed Gatlings would be found highly effective in Indian warfare if served by trained artillerists and strong animals.15 Lending support to his belief was an experiment conducted in Texas by General Ord. In 1 878 he added a Gatling platoon formed from detailed men of the Twenty-fourth Infantry to Battery F, Second Artillery, and gave it extensive training. The unit impressed both Ord and Colonel Mackenzie with its accuracy of fire as well as its mobility. In 1881, equipped with Gatlings and field artillery, the battery took station at Fort Leavenworth as part of the new Cavalry and Infantry School.16
The Regulars went west in 1 866 attired in the familiar blue of the Union armies—dark blue blouse and light blue trousers trimmed in the distinctive colors of the wearer’s arm of service. To the vast annoyance of Quartermaster General Meigs, this uniform drew widespread and chronic complaint. No one liked the cumbersome and fragile “Kossuth” hat with its high crown, turned-up brim on one side, and decorative ostrich feathers. Less objectionable was the kepi or forage cap, but it too looked unsightly when compared with the trim French model from which it had been copied. More fundamental were defects of cut, sizing, and quality, largely the result of contract profiteering during the war. Soldiers had to bear the cost of tailoring issue clothing to acceptable standards of comfort and appearance, and then sustained additional expense when, because the cheap cloth swiftly wore out in hard frontier service, they overdrew their clothing allowance. Moreover, the single weight of the uniform roasted the wearer in hot weather and chilled him in cold.17