The Commanders

by Robert M. Utley

  The army suffered a high desertion rate and a low reenlistment rate. This dismal record was attributed to various causes. Execrable living conditions at the frontier posts were one. “Fatigue” labor substituting for soldiering was another. Tyrannical noncommissioned officers accounted for many desertions. Each year 20 to 40 percent of the enlisted ranks deserted, died, or were discharged. The consequence was an army of untrained and inexperienced soldiers.

  One exception was the four black regiments. The army offered stable employment to a downtrodden people as well as a uniform that civilian blacks could look up to. These regiments boasted high reenlistment rates and low desertion rates. They suffered discrimination from the high command and passed years in the most undesirable parts of the West. Yet most made good soldiers. The only drawback was their inability to do paperwork, throwing most of that chore on their officers.11

  The postwar army benefited from greatly improved arms. The rifled musket of Civil War times was altered to receive metallic cartridges. No longer did soldiers have to load their weapons with the awkward, time-consuming paper cartridge and ramrod. Metallic cartridges, quickly slipped into the breach, permitted greater rapidity of fire, greater accuracy, and greater velocity and fire power. The cavalry also rode with metallic ammunition, although they failed to decide between two contenders: the old single-shot Sharps and the Spencer, a seven-shot repeater loaded from a tube drilled into the stock. Some regiments carried a mix of the two, as well as pistols. Not until the early 1870s did metallic cartridges appear for pistols. Until then troopers used the cap-and-ball six-shooter of Civil War times.

  In 1872 Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry headed a panel of officers charged with selecting a single rifle and carbine for issue to the troops. They chose the single-shot 1873 Springfield rifle and carbine, .45 caliber, that loaded from the breech. Officers complained that the rapid-fire Winchester failed to be included, especially after George Armstrong Custer’s disaster dramatized the superiority of the Winchester in the hands of the Sioux. But the Ordnance Department refused, on the grounds that the Winchester had far less range and penetrating power than the Springfield.

  The Terry board did not consider sidearms. By 1873, however, the Colt six-shooter had emerged as the favorite, although a Remington .44 caliber and a Smith and Wesson, as altered by Major George W. Schofield, attained some popularity.

  Cavalrymen were also issued a saber. It made a fine ornament on dress parade but was almost never carried in the field. It was cumbersome, noisy, and useless to horsemen, who never got close enough to an Indian to use it.

  Artillery took the form of Gatling guns and Hotchkiss howitzers. The Gatling fired 350 rounds a minute from ten revolving barrels. Standard infantry ammunition was fed through a hopper. Most officers considered the Gatling useless. It quickly overheated and jammed with black powder refuse. Also, the Gatling was difficult to transport in rough country and slowed the march of any command that took it. More effective was the light mountain howitzer, a steel-tubed two-pounder that could readily be transported and fired rapidly at ranges up to four thousand yards.

  Soldiers went west after the war clad in the huge stocks of clothing left over from the war: dark blue blouses and light blue trousers trimmed with the color of their arm of the service—blue for infantry, yellow for cavalry, and red for artillery. Although the quartermaster general wished to rid his warehouses of surplus clothing, he dealt with constant complaints from the men who had to wear them. They particularly abhorred the ungainly high-crowned hat with a wide brim turned up on one side and decorated with an ostrich feather. The French-style kepi offered little protection from the elements but was the preferred headgear in garrison. The Civil War clothing also suffered from improper fitting, leaving the wearer to have it tailored at his own expense. Civil War contractors, moreover, had turned out shoddy clothing that deteriorated under frontier conditions. All uniforms were wool, hot in the summer and cold in the winter.

  Civil War stocks were not exhausted until the late 1880s, but certain sizes ran short, leading the army to adopt new uniform regulations in 1872. Reflecting Prussian influence as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, the new uniforms produced a far more handsome soldier. Spiked helmets with horsehair plumes and large amounts of gold braid and brass buttons characterized dress uniforms, while undress proved more satisfactory.

  Still, in the field, officers and men dressed as they pleased. In 1876 a reporter described the appearance of the Fifth Cavalry at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, on the way to join General Crook’s column:

  They came along in thorough fighting trim. . . . To the fastidious eye . . . there was something quite shocking in the disregard of the regulation uniform . . . and the only things in their dress which marked them as soldiers were their striped pants and knee boots. . . . Their blue Navy shirts, broad brimmed hats, belts stuffed with cartridges, and loose handkerchiefs knotted about the neck, gave them a wild bushwhacker appearance which was in amusing contrast with their polished and gentlemanly manners.12

  The Fifth Cavalry would not have appeared in this manner if they were marching in a winter climate. The Clothing Bureau experimented with various forms of winter gear, but the men themselves improvised. In a Dakota winter they turned out in blanked-lined buffalo overcoats with buffalo skin footgear and headgear. The desert climate also posed a challenge. Finally the army settled on white canvas for fatigue but the old uniform for duty. The one exception was the British-style white pith helmet. The field troops did not like that either.

  Gerald Russell typified the soldier who had risen from the ranks of the prewar army and become an officer during the war. Like many, he was an Irishman who had fled to the United States because of the potato famine. The surest employment for an Irish immigrant just off the boat was the U.S. Army, in which he enlisted in 1851. Assigned to the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen (later the Third Cavalry), he served on the Texas and New Mexico frontier, advancing to sergeant by 1862. After being commissioned a second lieutenant in his old regiment, now the Third Cavalry, he distinguished himself in the Vicksburg campaign and in 1867, back on the frontier, was promoted to captain. Like many of his countrymen who had risen from the ranks, he never shed the rough edges of ten years as an enlisted man. As captain of a troop of the Third Cavalry at Fort Selden, New Mexico, he greeted a newly arrived contingent of recruits with words that introduced them and others like them to the world of the frontier enlisted man:

  Young Min! I conghratulate yiz on bein assigned to moi thrupe, becos praviously to dis toime, I vinture to say that my thrupe had had more villins, loyhars, teeves, scoundhrils and, I moight say, damn murdhrers than enny udder thrupe in the United States Ormy. I want yiz to pay sthrict attention to jooty—and not become dhrunken vagabonds, wandhrin all over Gods Creashun, spindin ivry cint of your pay with low bum-mers. Avoide all timptashuns, loikwoise all discipashuns, so that in toime yiz kin become non-commissioned offizurs; yez’ll foind your captin a very laynent man and very much given to laynency, fur oi niver duz toi no man up bee der tumbs unless he duz be late for roll-call. Sarjint, dismiss de detachmint.13

  For the recruits, Fort Seden represented the kind of home that they would occupy during their five-year enlistment. In southern New Mexico near the Rio Grande, surrounded by desert sands, Fort Selden was built of adobe long since fallen into disrepair and inhabited by desert insects, enclosing crowded barracks with rude wooden bunks supporting straw mattresses. As cavalry, the men had to maintain their horses in addition to the many chores that substituted for true soldiering. They dined largely on beef, bacon, beans, hardtack, and coffee, prepared by untrained cooks detailed from the troop. Governed less by Captain Russell than by noncommissioned officers, some tyrannical, the soldiers did not always heed their captain’s warnings about “discipashun.” Most frontier posts boasted a “hog ranch” just beyond the boundary, dedicated to relieving the soldiers of their paltry pay—this and more for thirteen dollars a month.

  To vary the terrib
le table fare, both officers and enlisted men could resort to the post sutler, who charged exorbitant prices for such delicacies as tinned oysters. Post gardens were tilled at some posts but were mainly private gardens maintained by officers. At Fort Rice, Dakota, in 1873, an officer in the mold of Captain Russell exclaimed: “The damn hoppers came along, by God, and ate my garden, by God, then the birds ate the hoppers, by God. And we killed and ate the birds, by God, so that we were even in the long run, by God.”14

  Despite the best efforts of the post surgeon, poor sanitation and hygiene plagued the frontier stations. Water, usually of dubious purity, came from runoff in cisterns or the nearest spring or well. At Fort Sully, Dakota, for instance, water wagons drawn by mules had to make the half-mile journey to the Missouri River to keep the post supplied; there was no other source. In the absence of plumbing, pit toilets had to do. “Honey wagons” made the rounds each morning collecting waste. Not until the late 1880s did permanent posts begin to receive plumbing.

  Most garrisons had their complement of women. Officers brought their wives and children with them, at great expense because the army made no provision for them. They made life more bearable by organizing social events. Many of the wives also indulged in gossip and feuding, which soured the harmony of officers’ row. One officer entitled the first chapter of his book “Ladies in the United States Army to the Prejudice of Good Order and Discipline.”

  Tucked away in a remote corner of a post was “Soap Suds Row,” which housed the laundresses. Each company rated four, who received rations and a scant wage. Many were married to noncommissioned officers. Like the wives along officers’ row, however, they feuded with one another and caused so much discord that the War Department abolished their jobs.15

  Most recruits entered the army expecting to be assigned to the frontier and campaign against Indians. Often Indian tribes met their expectations, and the soldiers found themselves marching off to war. More often a soldier served his entire enlistment without ever seeing an Indian. Most campaigns failed in their objectives. Indians refused to fight the soldiers unless enjoying overwhelming odds; instead they simply vanished. The troops could prevail only by taking the Indians by surprise, which was rarely allowed to happen. Columns of troops moved ponderously, slowed by wagon trains bearing supplies. Indians had no trouble eluding such expeditions.

  The generals who had to conduct campaigns against Indians apparently gave no thought to devising a strategy for contending with tribesmen. Throughout the postwar decades, scores of lightly garrisoned forts supposedly protected nearby communities. When Indian wars broke out, the troops assembled in columns to advance on the enemy. The generals debated whether to consolidate the garrisons in a few posts from which they could be organized quickly for a campaign. But settlers demanded the visible presence of soldiers as well as the market that they provided. Not until Indian hostilities receded in the late 1880s did the War Department succeed in reducing the number of forts.

  Largely under the influence of General Sherman, the army sought to professionalize during the postwar era. Schools sprouted for special training, and professional journals proliferated. Yet neither in the schools nor in instructional manuals was the unconventional warfare practiced by Indians addressed. West Point had no courses addressing the subject. The emphasis was on the next conventional war, to be fought by orthodox strategy and tactics. The strategists believed that Indian warfare would soon vanish. The next campaign or two would be the last, as the tribes were concentrated on reservations. This thinking, of course, ignored the fact that for a century the prime mission of the army was fighting Indians.

  As a result, Indian campaigns were conducted according to orthodox concepts. Few succeeded because the Indians fought, if at all, by their own very different methods. In the hostile western landscape, offensive columns contended with the daunting challenge of keeping their own men and animals supplied. This meant remaining with their wagon trains or establishing supply depots from which to operate. The mix of the army’s conventional methods with the Indian’s unconventional methods left the army unprepared for the conventional wars of the nineteenth century: the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War.

  Ironically, the postwar drive to professionalize partly owed its origins to the alienation of the army from the people. The public condescended to the soldiers and their families, isolated and hardly visible on the remote frontier. As the Army and Navy Journal editorialized, “the present trouble with the Army is that it is separated from the knowledge and affections of the people who pay the taxes, and is only seen from year to year in the form of heavy appropriations.”16 Brigadier General John Pope constantly voiced this serious problem. In 1878 he told a congressional committee that it was essential that the army’s “relation to the people and to the government should be made closer and more harmonious. Unless this can be done it always invites and will always provoke criticism and unfriendly action.”17

  Faced with public and congressional contempt, if not hostility, the army turned in on itself. One way to relieve their frustration, officers discovered, lay in the movement toward greater professionalization. The special schools and the literature provided an outlet for improving themselves professionally and taking greater pride in their profession.

  Even so, it was a profession drifting toward radical change. The Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection marked the last days of the frontier army. In the early twentieth century the reforms of Elihu Root created a different army, organized to fight two world wars. Truly has the period between 1865 and 1900 been labeled “The Twilight of the Frontier Army.”

  Brigadier General Christopher C. Augur, commanding Department of the Platte, 1867–1871; Department of Texas, 1871–1875, 1878–1883; Department of the Missouri, 1883–1885.

  Brady Collection, U.S. Signal Corps (photo BA-350), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHRISTOPHER C. AUGUR

  Despite his brushy sideburns sweeping into an immense mustache, C. C. Augur was the least visible of the postwar department commanders. Even so, he was the steadiest, most competent, most reliable, most attentive to duty, and most administratively able. In contrast to some of the others, moreover, he was thoughtful, modest, unassuming, undistracted by ego or ambition, loyal to his superiors, and considerate of his subordinates. As for his attitude toward the Indians within his jurisdiction, he prompted General Sherman’s remark that he “leans to the side of forbearance and moderation.”1 Finally, Augur was one of several department commanders who preferred to command from his headquarters rather than leading troops in the field. Nevertheless, he left his desk often enough to acquire and retain a working knowledge of his posts, troops, Indians, landscape, communications, government officials, and settlers. In short, C. C. Augur was a superior department commander.2

  Born on July 10, 1821, at Kendall, New York, Augur entered West Point Military Academy in 1839 and graduated in 1843. As a second lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry, he fought in the first two battles of the Mexican War, Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, on May 8 and 9, 1846. Thereafter he spent the rest of the war first on recruiting service and then as aide-de-camp to General Enos B. Hopping and, after Hopping’s death, to General Caleb Cushing.

  PACIFIC NORTHWEST

  Promoted to captain in 1852, Augur took station at Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory. In 1855 he went East to conduct a contingent of recruits to Oregon. On his return, while stationed at Fort Yakima, Washington, he received his first introduction to Indian warfare—a skirmish with Yakima Indians at Two Buttes, Washington, on November 9, 1855. The conflict heralded the forthcoming Yakima War, but Augur participated instead in the newly erupted Rogue River War to the south in Oregon.

  The Rogue River expedition of 1856 featured three columns aiming to converge on the lower Rogue River: Major Robert C. Buchanan coming east from Fort Humboldt; Captain Christopher C. Augur coming east from F
ort Orford; and Captain Andrew J. Smith coming downstream from Fort Lane. Captain Smith, a tough dragoon, reached the rendezvous first. Alerted to an approaching band of combative warriors, Smith posted his command of fifty dragoons, thirty infantry, and a howitzer atop a low ridge on May 25, 1856, and had them dig in for defense. During the night he sent a courier to summon Major Buchanan to his relief. Through two days and one night, May 27–28, the Indian warriors pounded Smith’s position. On the second afternoon, with a third of his command dead or wounded and ammunition and water running low, Smith confronted a howling assault that seemed likely to overrun his position. At that moment he glimpsed Augur’s infantry advancing at double time. Smith led his men in a counterattack down the slope and hit the charging warrior force just as Augur’s men struck the rear. The Indians fled in disorder, ending the Battle of Big Meadows.3

  As a headquarters general after the Civil War, Augur could cite (although he was not given to boasting) his baptism of fire at Big Meadows in 1856.

  Captain Augur spent the next five years in routine garrison duty at Fort Hoskins, Oregon. Promoted to major of the Thirteenth Infantry on May 14, 1861, he was assigned to West Point Military Academy as commandant of cadets and instructor of artillery, cavalry, and infantry tactics. It was a prestigious posting, but the Civil War had broken out and he was an experienced officer. On November 12, 1861, Major Augur was anointed Brigadier General Augur, U.S. Volunteers.

  CIVIL WAR

  General Augur first served in the defenses of Washington and then along the Rappahannock River in Virginia. With the failure of General George B. McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign, however, Major General John Pope was brought from the West to command the newly constituted Army of Virginia. In July 1862 General Robert E. Lee dispatched Stonewall Jackson and later A. P. Hill to confront Pope. Instead of Pope, the Confederates encountered Nathaniel P. Banks at Cedar Mountain, near Gordonsville.