Amy Regulars on the WestmFrontieq r 848-1 861 This page intentionally left blank Army Regulars on the Western Frontier DURWOOD BALL University of Oklahoma Press :Norman Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ball, Dunvood, 1960- Army regulars on the western frontier, 1848-1861 / Dunvood Ball. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8061-3312-0 I. West (U.S.)-History, Military-I 9th century. 2. United States. Army-History- 19th century. 3. United States-Military policy-19th century. 4. Frontier and pioneer life-West (U.S.) 5. West (US.)-Race relations. 6. Indians of North Arnerica- Government relations-1789-1869. 7. Indians of North America-West (U.S.)- History-19th century. 8. Civil-military relations-West (U.S.)-History-19th century. 9. Violence-West (U.S.)-History-I 9th century. I. Title. F593 .B18 2001 3 5~'.00978'09034-dcz I 00-047669 CIP The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources, Inc. m Copyright O 2001 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A. 12345678910 For Mom, Dad, and Kristina This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of Illustrations and Maps IX Preface XI Acknowledgments xv INT R o D U C T I o N : Organize, Deploy, and Multiply XIX Prologue 3 PART I. DEFENSE, WAR, AND POLITICS I Ambivalent Duty: Soldiers, Indians, and Frontiersmen I 3 2 All Front, No Rear: Soldiers, Desert, and War 24 3 Chastise Them: Campaigns, Combat, and Killing 3 8 4 Internal Fissures: Soldiers, Politics, and Sectionalism 56 PART 11. BORDER CONSTABULARY 5 Stop Them: Regulars, Filibusters, and Vigilantes in San Francisco, I 85 I -I 85 6 89 6 Riding the Line: Regulars on the Texas-Mexico Border I 2 7 7 It Is Ours: The Amy and the San Juan Island Dispute I 3 9 PART 111. CIVIL INTERVENTION 8 Treat Them as Enemies: Regulars and Saints in Utah I 5 3 9 Suppress Them: Regulars and Partisans in Bleeding Kansas I72 I o Schism: The FrontierAmzy and the Civil War 189 Conclusion 2 o 5 Abbreviations 209 Notes 2 I I Bibliography 2 55 Index 277 ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES followingpage 106 Winfield Scott John M. Washington Samuel Cooper Edwin V Sumner Philip St. George Cooke Fort Leavenworth Fort Craig William S. Harney George Wright Fort Laramie Fort Vancouver David E. Twiggs Earl Van Dorn Albert S. Johnston Randolph B. Marcy Army of Utah Benicia Barracks John E. Wool Ethan A. Hitchcock Samuel P. Hein tzelman MAPS I The Prairies and Plains XXIV 2 Texas and the Southern Plains 49 3 The Pacific Coast 9 4 The Greater Southwest IS7 TABLE Table of Organization United States Army Authorized Strength, I 85 5 XXII PREFACE AT L A S V E G A S , New Mexico, I st Lt. Henry B. Judd of the Third Artillery coldly received forty Jicarilla Apaches on I 6 August I 849 and refused to trade with them for "powder and ball." He believed that these Indians had "false- ly treated for peace at Taos" the previous year and invested Mora, Barclay Fort, and other settlements along the eastern frontier afterward. After dis- missing them, the lieutenant decided to "seize" them and ordered 2nd Lt. Ambrose E. Burnside's company to "procede" to the Apaches' camp ten miles to the south.' When Judd, Burnside, and the regulars rode in, the Apaches were in the saddle to meet them. Under Judd's instruction, the local prefect rode forward into their leveled lances, muskets, and bows and vainly harangued the Apaches to forego the lethal consequences of flight or resistance. As the prefect trotted back, Burnside deployed his regulars, probably men of the Third Artillery astride horses, into line and advanced to within "short range," but the Jicarillas turned to flee. Burnside halted his line, and the Jicarillas suddenly wheeled to deliver "a flight of missiles from their bows and rifles." The twenty-five-year-old second lieutenant ordered a "charge as skirmishers," and the regulars drew sabers and swept forward. Slowed by "hills" and "ravines," some Apaches turned to fight "hand to hand." Over some nine miles, the regulars cut them down. Judd fig- ured that only "8 to 10" escaped and added, "Many of the dead remain in the ravines where they were sabred." The only federal casualties were wounds to Burnside and a sergeant.* Saber charges were the exception in nineteenth-century frontier combat, but armed force, actual and threatened, was commonplace in the interwar American West, the unincorporated frontier beyond the Missouri River and western Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana between the Mexican-American and Civil Wars. At the end of the conflict with Mexico, the army undertook an old mission on frontiers new to the United States: occupying territory; sup- pressing American Indian resistance; keeping the peace among feuding Indians, Hispanos, and Anglos; and consolidating United States sovereignty regionwide. As regular troops fanned out across the American West in 1848 and I 849, the diverse inhabitants intensified their competition for natural resources, political autonomy, and cultural survival. Their contests often erupted in violence that sucked the army into riot duty and bloody war. This book examines the full continuum of martial force in the American West. The United States government called the post-Mexican-American War army a "peace establishment," treated its regulars as a federal police force, and labeled the army's frontier mission constabula~duty, which benignly meant keeping order and enforcing law. However, in the antebellum West, the army's field duty was rarely peaceful, generally dangerous, and often violent. Whether "chastising" Indians, quelling civil unrest, or ejecting trespassers, regular troops represented the militant will of the United States government and inflicted or threatened violence to coerce frontier peoples. The deploy- ment of the standing army implied the anticipation of armed resistance that would overwhelm unescorted civilian law-enforcement officers but that fed- eral regulars-professional men of violence-would overcome. Frontier military historians have generally treated armed war and civil interventions as unrelated missions.3 However, the Lndian wars, political riots, and frontier lawlessness were threats to United States internal security, and the deployment of regular troops implied the breakdown of political negoti- ation or civil law and the anticipation of extraordinary armed violence. When waging war on indigenous peoples or suppressing public riot, the object was to establish United States sovereignty and force obedience to federal law. In the American West, the regular army was a federal agency deployed to assist the incorporation of frontier peoples, lands, and resources into the cultural, political, and economic system of the United States. Federal regulars inflicted state-sanctioned violence inequitably in the American West. Citizenship, overlaid with race, was their measuring stick. American Indians enjoyed neither citizenship nor political rights, and United xii PREFACE States law protected them indifferently from Euroamerican assault. Anglo Americans incompletely accepted the citizenship of Hispanos living in the Mexican Cession. After the passage of the Compromise of 1850, Congress formally declared neither war on Indians, Mormons, Hispanos, or Anglos nor martial law in their homelands, territories, or states, but under executive order regulars waged war routinely on American Indians and sporadically on Hispanos and intervened repeatedly against social rebels, political dissidents, and armed brigands of all ethnicities. Race, culture, and law protected white settlers. The U.S. Arrny-comprised exclusively of free white men when they enlisted or were commissioned in the service-envisioned itself as the sharp edge of Manifest Destiny, the Anglo- Saxon mission, divinely inspired, to spread Euroamerican civilization over North America. The officer corps hoped for an honorable conquest but assumed that the white race was destined to settle and develop the continent. Under the command of white officers, federal troops might police but would never interdict the frontier onslaught. In national mythology, the profession- al standing army occupied no firm place, and the U.S. Congress still distrust- ed the regular establishment. Martial violence against Anglo citizens would have destroyed what little credibility and toleration the army enjoyed. The president could and did deploy the federal military to maintain domestic order, but the Constitution made clear that the primary role of national rnil- itary forces was to defend the United States against foreign enemies. Waging war on whites was generally forbidden. Throughout the interwar period, churning through the East, the politics of slavery spilled into the new states and territories of the American West and helped trigger civil riot and mayhem on the frontier. Like federal executives before them, interwar presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, FranMin Pierce, and James Buchanan deployed their regulars as a heavily armed con- stabulary to contain or quell political unrest and social upheaval. The poli- tics of slavery did not dictate federal action in the American West, but every interwar president figured sectional party politics into his legal response to frontier disorder, and the growing crisis shadowed all frontier commanders who deployed regular troops against civil lawles~ness.~ Interwar civil constabulary duty in the West politically destabilized the reg- ular army. As the slavery controversy stressed the Union, it also weakened the morale and cohesion of the officer corps. Frontier soldiering was lonely, aggravating, and punishing in good times; it became embarrassing and some- times unbearable in the sectional cauldron. The effects of sectional politics in the field often humiliated professional soldiers and weakened their bond to . PREFACE Xlll the army, president, and Union. In the antebellum army, professionalism did not always translate into Union loyalty.