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The Taos Mutiny of 1855 New Mexico Historical Review Volume 88 Number 3 Vol 88, No 3 (Summer 2013) Article 3 7-1-2013 The Taos Mutiny of 1855 Will Gorenfeld Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmhr Recommended Citation Gorenfeld, Will. "The Taos Mutiny of 1855." New Mexico Historical Review 88, 3 (2013). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmhr/vol88/iss3/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Historical Review by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. The Taos Mutiny of 1855 Will Gorenfeld n 27 November 1854, bugler Aaron Stevens of Company F in the First ORegiment of the U.S. Dragoons apologized to his sister Lydia Pierce for not writing any sooner, explaining he had been on patrol since April. Calling himself “d__m sauscy [sic]” and thinking of marrying “a Spanish Lady,” the twenty-four-year-old Stevens was in good spirits. He boasted that his company “had two fi ghts with the Patches . this year and had 9 men killed & 10 wounded . and as luck would have it I have got off safe so far, but they might get me yet.”1 Within a few months of writing to his sister, the free-spirited Stevens and several other men in his company would mutiny in the dusty plaza of Taos, New Mexico Territory.2 The Taos mutiny of 1855 was the fi nal chapter in a series of embarrass- ing incidents that revealed the ineptitude of some army offi cers and led to a cover-up attempt by the high command. Following the mutiny, an army court-martial sentenced Stevens and three other enlisted men to death after fi nding them guilty of attempting to murder their commanding offi cer. They escaped execution because Pres. Franklin Pierce and Sec. of War Jefferson Davis commuted their death sentences to hard labor and ordered subsequent Will Gorenfeld practiced law in California for forty years with San Gabriel Valley Neighborhood Legal Services and California Indian Legal Services; taught for three years at Loyola Marymount Law School, Los Angeles; and clerked at the California Court of Appeal. He has appeared on the 287 History Channe l and lectured in military history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a fellow in the Company of Military Historians and Collectors and the author of over twenty articles in various magazines and journals. 288 N new mexico historical review volume 88, number 3 court-martial proceedings against two of the offi cers present at the mutiny. When all was said and done, the army would censure Stevens’s company commander for being intoxicated and disrespectful at a court-martial, arrange for the transfer of all the enlisted men in Company F to other companies, subject the company’s fi rst lieutenant and the squadron’s commanding offi cer to courts-martial, and effectively banish the commanding offi cer from New Mexico Territory for good measure. The mutiny offers a unique example of the many problems besetting the U.S. Army after the U.S.-Mexico War. In northern New Mexico, enlisted men fought offi cers and offi cers turned against one another. The mutiny sheds light on the character and behavior of the mediocre cast of offi cers who were serving in what was once regarded as an elite regiment. For thirteen years (1833–1846), the First Dragoons crisscrossed the Great Plains, exploring uncharted regions, discovering new trails, meeting Indians in numerous councils, settling disputes between tribes, and protecting the tribes from unauthorized encroachments by whites. Under the command of Col. Stephen W. Kearny, this relatively small body of highly regarded soldiers and insightful offi cers was able to conduct missions and attain its goals without resorting to violence.3 In the words of historian Durwood Ball, “These dragoon expeditions were graphic demonstrations of United States power . and helped to open American roads into the West.”4 Then, on 29 December 1845, Pres. James K. Polk signed a measure admitting the former Republic of Texas into the Union as a state, setting into motion forces that predictably led to a war with Mexico and the forcible acquisition of vast new territories. The U.S.-Mexico War had a devastating effect on the First Dragoons and particularly Company F. Colonel Kearny’s marches across the Plains and his tough diplomacy with a variety of tribes earned him and the First Dragoons both fame and the gratitude of frontier settlers.5 Although the skills of a crack mounted regiment developed slowly and the cost in lost men and horses was high, dragoon of- fi cers and sergeants learned how to train and lead their men effectively. The dragoon expeditions between 1839 and 1848 testify to their achievement. A dragoon corporal stationed at Fort Leavenworth wrote in 1847: In the Army, we know not at which moment our services may be required and although we may be at this post today, yet we may be about some fi fty miles by the morrow. Such has been the case with me during the past winter. I have been ordered to take charge of a party to go among the Indians, and in one quarter of an hour have been in my saddle, and on my journey, fully armed and equipped. Such is a summer 2013 gorenfeld N 289 Dragoon’s life, he must have always, all his accoutrements ready, and in the proper place, so that whether we are ordered night or day, it makes no difference in the dispatch. I have been called upon at 10 O Clock at night and traveled without moment’s rest the distance of one hundred and forty miles.6 At the end of the U.S.-Mexico War, Sgt. Frank Clarke, writing home, pro- claimed that the proud First was “the best disciplined Regiment in the U.S. Service.”7 Before the war, Kearny made an effort to have the First Dragoons staffed with some of the army’s best offi cers and to cull the misfi ts. Graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point typically received assignments to a service branch based on their class standing: the top graduates obtained commissions in the engineers, while those below them went to ordnance, artillery, dragoons, and infantry (in descending order). By the early 1840s, many cadets at West Point had begun to regard the U.S. Dragoons as a corps d’elite within the U.S. Army and wanted to participate in its great adven- tures out on the western Plains.8 More than other regiments, the elite First Dragoons tended to attract recruits who were educated, including a few who came from well-to-do families.9 During the war with Mexico, Gen. Winfi eld Scott honored Company F of the First Dragoons by selecting it as his personal escort. On 20 August 1847, the Americans defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of Churubusco. The company was ordered to attack Mexican soldiers fl eeing down a causeway into Mexico City. Reporter George Kendall of the New Orleans (La.) Picayune viewed the resulting charge of Company F as “one of the most brilliant and decisive feats which has occurred in the war.” Widely celebrated by the press, this singular event brought a measure of glory to those who participated in the charge.10 After the U.S.-Mexico War, Capt. Philip Thompson resumed command of Company F. Thompson had graduated from West Point in 1835, ranked thirty-sixth in a class of fi fty-six. During the war, he was an adjutant for Col. Alexander W. Doniphan’s regiment of Missouri Volunteers and participated in the invasion of the state of Chihuahua. In return for his valuable assis- tance to Doniphan at the Battle of Sacramento, Thompson received a brevet promotion to the rank of major. Tragically, he was also fi ghting a lifelong and ultimately losing battle with alcohol, which had prevented Kearny from granting him important assignments.11 Leaving Mexico on 16 July 1848, Thompson arrived at Jefferson Bar- racks in Missouri on 8 August, where Company F’s short-term “for the war” 290 N new mexico historical review volume 88, number 3 enlistees were discharged. After rebuilding with an infusion of new recruits and transfers, the company arrived at Fort Scott in November, staying there for slightly over two years before being dispatched to New Mexico. By 1855 Company F was an experienced detachment: nearly half its sixty enlisted men were on their second enlistment, and many had combat experience in the late war. Troopers identifi ed with their own tightly knit group. Military historian Don Rickey observes that most soldiers took pride in their company and tended “to look on the company as their home and family, a feeling especially important to younger, homeless men, and to the old professional privates who re-enlisted in the same units time after time.”12 The U.S.-Mexico War, however, resulted in the death, transfer, or resignation of a signifi cant number of the dragoons’ original cast of offi cers. By 1855 all the U.S.-Mexico War–era staff offi cers (colonels Stephen Kearny and Richard Mason, Lt. Col. Clifton Wharton, and Maj. Nathan Boone) and many fi eld-grade offi cers (captains and lieutenants) were gone. With the exception of Maj. Benjamin Lloyd Beall, the replacements, especially at the staff level, were not as capable as their predecessors and destroyed what was once a showpiece regiment.
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