The American Military - A Narrative History

by Brad D. Lookingbill

  Geronimo gathered a lump of agave and sent it to the American troops as a gift. The 63-year-old warrior then descended the mountain to council with an officer, Lieutenant Charles Gatewood, who brought 15 pounds of tobacco and rolling papers with him. Following a night of deliberation, they reached a decision. On the morning of September 2, 1886, Geronimo's band formally surrendered in Skeleton Canyon.

  Figure 8.1 Geronimo, 1886. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

  The Army's campaign to capture Geronimo represented one of many conducted after the American Civil War. Military operations focused on securing the western territories, where an armed citizenry coursed recklessly through tribal homelands. The War Department also sent regulars to counter insurgents in the South and to suppress strikers in the North. By the late nineteenth century, however, a steady stream of migrations across the North American continent had eroded the security promised by the federal government to Native communities. Railroad surveys, gold rushes, and overland trails accelerated the flow of traffic even in the most remote locations. Once the Interior Department began setting aside defined areas that excluded settlers, policymakers incorrectly hailed the reservations as a final solution to the “Indian problem.”

  Time and again, Indian country became a cauldron of violence. Under threat of prompt military action, the stateless populations tended to remain within their reduced landholdings. Nevertheless, chiefs and warriors considered the changing circumstances and devised new strategies to save their way of life. Their abuse and exploitation by corrupt federal agents caused many to distrust the policies that promised peace. At the same time, the theater of operations remained unstable due to bureaucratic squabbles, poor communication, inadequate planning, and insufficient forces. Even though the nation seemed weary of armed conflict, the Indian wars of North America raged for years in the Trans-Mississippi West.

  Preoccupied with the spectacles of the Gilded Age, the nation hoped to fight the Indian wars on the cheap. Washington D.C. disregarded military readiness, while U.S. forces found themselves overstretched, mismanaged, and underprepared. Whether in deserts, mountains, valleys, or plains, service members performed thankless duties. Though reluctant to engage in pointless battles, they played key roles in a deadly game of concentration that limited the freedom of Indian people. It was the final phase of warfare initially caused by American colonization, which began anew after the guns went silent at Appomattox.

  Road to Reunion

  The U.S. halted the Civil War in 1865. Within the states of the former Confederacy, an occupation by federal troops followed. Army officers assumed responsibilities as governors, commissioners, police, and judges during the reconstruction era. While demobilizing, the American military gradually adjusted its objectives and missions to peacetime.

  In spite of the Confederacy's demise, the demobilization of the Army occurred slowly. West of the Mississippi River and south of the Arkansas River, General Philip Sheridan took command of an aggregate force of 80,000 men. With 52,000 bluecoats in Texas, the War Department directed him to intimidate residual Confederate forces. “If I owned hell and Texas,” he told a newspaper reporter, “then I would rent out Texas and live in hell.”

  At the same time, Sheridan prepared to respond to the presence of French troops in Mexico. In defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, French emperor Napoleon III had invaded Mexico while the U.S. was embroiled in the Civil War. Still in power in 1865, the puppet regime under Archduke Maximilian of Austria faced diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and internal unrest from the Mexicans. Two years later, French troops departed from Mexico and left Maximilian to die before a Mexican firing squad.

  Unhappy with the prospect of a prolonged deployment, Americans in the Army eagerly awaited their discharges. On May 1, 1865, the War Department retained 1,034,064 volunteers in the Army. Six months later, over 800,000 of them were paid, mustered out, and transported home by the Quartermaster Corps. Only 11,043 volunteers remained in uniform the following year. By 1867, most of them had returned home.

  Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, the general-in-chief, wanted a permanent force structure of 80,000 regulars. However, both Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Congress disagreed. On July 28, 1866, Congress approved an establishment of 54,302 officers and enlisted men for the regular Army. In 1869, Congress slashed the number of infantry regiments down to 25 and reduced the end strength down to 45,000. By 1876, the numbers had fallen to a total authorized force of 27,442, a figure that remained virtually unchanged for two decades.

  The Navy also downsized the maritime forces. With over 700 ships and 60,000 officers and sailors at its peak in 1865, the numbers sank to just 48 ships and 8,000 officers and sailors a decade and a half later. Moreover, almost all of the warships appeared obsolete by European standards. Nevertheless, Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson reported confidently that the U.S. remained safe from potential threats posed by “warlike naval powers.” Although the Navy Department continued to authorize patrols distant from North American shores, the assumptions of continentalism guided strategic thought in Washington D.C.

  At home, Union veterans began organizing fraternal bodies such as the Grand Army of the Republic, or GAR. Founded by Benjamin F. Stephenson in 1866, the organization complemented the Republican Party by “waving the bloody shirt” during elections. The next year, General John A. Logan, commander-in-chief of the GAR, actively promoted pension legislation in Congress. Eventually, their lobbying led to the creation of the Old Soldiers' Homes. Reaching a membership close to 500,000 at its peak, the GAR held a “National Encampment” annually from 1866 to 1949.

  Meanwhile, policy debates raged about the role of the armed forces in rebuilding the postwar South. In 1865, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to provide federal assistance to former slaves. Under the auspices of the War Department, it was headed by General Oliver O. Howard and staffed mostly by military personnel. Bureau agents worked to found schools, to operate hospitals, to distribute food, to settle disputes, and to provide representation for freedmen in court. One provision of the law authorized them to divide abandoned and confiscated “Sherman lands” into 40-acre plots for rental and eventual sale. However, President Andrew Johnson ordered Howard to return the lands to the former owners. Grappling with a daunting set of tasks, the Freedmen's Bureau operated with a limited budget until 1870.

  During 1867, Congress passed a series of Reconstruction Acts that divided the former Confederate states into five military districts. Under the “Rule of the Major Generals,” the Army took control of each district and administered martial law. Grant directed the commanders to report directly to Congress rather than to Johnson, whose veto of the laws prompted a legislative override. Soldiers handled local problems such as urban riots, horse stealing, moon-shining, and voter registration. While Republican conventions approved revised state constitutions, they helped to organize and to train militia and police forces. Ex-Confederates were removed from state and local offices. African Americans volunteered for military service in southern communities, where they monitored elections. Because most states had completed the reconstruction process by 1871, the War Department organized a Division of the South to administer military affairs thereafter.

  While colluding with the War Department, Congress usurped the power of the commander-in-chief. Also passed in 1867, the Command of the Army Act and the Tenure of Office Act stipulated that General Grant and Secretary Stanton retained their administrative positions unless removed with the consent of the Senate. However, President Johnson defied Congress the next year and removed the latter from his post. The House impeached Johnson as a result, but the Senate failed to convict him by a single vote. A few months later, Grant easily won the presidential election of 1868 and proceeded with plans to make a “New South.”

  Lawlessness greeted the reconstructed governments of the “New South,” which underscored what one victim called a “reign of terror” by secret societies. The earliest and
most famous was the Ku Klux Klan, which ex-Confederate soldiers in Tennessee founded during 1866. Over time, Klansmen committed some of the worst crimes against humanity in American history. To suppress the violence that municipalities often ignored, the Army assisted a handful of federal marshals in an effort to bring the offenders to justice. In 1871, Major Lewis M. Merrill arrived in York County, South Carolina, where he ordered members of the 7th Cavalry to collect information about the insurgency. By the end of the year, he had apprehended close to 700 troublemakers. Within a few years, the Klan abandoned its terrorist campaigns in most southern states.

  To end the dispute over the 1876 presidential election, Republicans agreed to withdraw the last federal troops from southern states. African American militia and police forces were disbanded. Although Rutherford B. Hayes, a veteran of the Union army, became the new president, the reconstructed governments soon fell into the hands of the “redeemers.” After the Compromise of 1877, the Democratic Party seized power across the South and began stripping away the reforms initiated by the Army during the reconstruction era.

  Peace Policy

  Even before reconstruction ended, the management of Indian affairs grew more entangled with government bureaucracy. The War Department attempted to concentrate Native Americans onto the reservations created by the Interior Department, even though concentration seemed entirely inconsistent with the indigenous cultures. The Indian Bureau promised food, clothing, and shelter to the pacified tribes, while the Army fought Indian warriors deemed “hostile” to national interests.

  Because the horse made it possible for mounted Indians to traverse extensive hunting grounds, a number of tribes depended upon the most abundant resource of the grasslands – the buffalo. Calling them “the Indians' commissary,” the Army condoned the destruction of the herds. Railroad companies hired riflemen and scouts to lead large shooting expeditions. Gangs of armed hunters killed for sport, while skinners profited from the lucrative hide market. At the same time, diseases reduced the reproductive and survival rates of the buffalo. Before 1865, at least 15 million head grazed the open ranges. A decade later, fewer than 1,000 survived.

  Faced with starvation, Black Kettle and other Cheyenne peace chiefs agreed to camp along Sand Creek in the Colorado Territory. However, young militants began attacking stagecoaches and ranches to obtain forage and plunder. Originally an elite military society, the dog soldiers, or Hotamitaneo, eschewed the comforts of the village and embraced life on the trail. Carrying war medicines into battle, they organized raiding parties and took the war path to achieve honor. With federal troops dispatched elsewhere, violence escalated into the Cheyenne–Arapaho war of 1864–1865.

  With the tacit approval of the commander at Fort Lyon, the 3rd Colorado Cavalry fell upon the Cheyenne camps. On November 29, 1864, Colonel John M. Chivington commanded the volunteers in an assault at Sand Creek. “Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice,” Chivington bellowed. At least 163 men, women, and children perished, although Black Kettle escaped with his life. When a congressional committee later investigated what happened, they uncovered evidence that the bodies of pregnant women were cut open. They learned about the severing of private body parts from the corpses of boys and girls. The trophies taken by the soldiers became saddle horns, hat bands, and tobacco pouches. The gruesome items acquired during the Sand Creek Massacre appeared on public display in Denver for years to come.

  Outraged by news of the Sand Creek Massacre, war parties of Cheyenne and Arapaho conducted retaliatory raids. On September 17, 1868, they trapped Major George A. Forsyth and a small patrol at an island on the Arikaree Fork of the Republican River. Even though the Indians held an almost 10 to 1 advantage, Forsyth's scouts drove them off with Spencer 7-shot repeating rifles. Soldiers referred to the engagement as the Battle of Beecher Island.

  Meanwhile, Navajo raiders stole horses, cattle, and sheep in the deserts of the American Southwest. Colonel Edward S. Canby, Colonel James H. Carleton, and Christopher “Kit” Carson recruited the tribal enemies of the Navajo for a military campaign to stop the pilferage. Before the end of 1864, the defeated Navajo endured a 400-mile trek they called the “Long Walk.” Most arrived in the Pecos River valley at a reservation called the Bosque Redondo, where many Mescalaro Apache suffered in confinement already. Accordingly, concentrating the Navajo near Fort Sumner would create buffer that protected settlers from Comanche raiders out of Texas. The federal government provided limited rations, while the Navajo received farming instructions from the soldiers and the agents. Nonetheless, they struggled through four years of malnutrition, disease, drought, and grasshoppers. On June 1, 1868, the Navajo met with Indian Peace commissioners and signed a new treaty, which allowed them to return to their homeland. They promised to live on a reservation, to stop raiding neighbors, and to become farmers and ranchers.

  General William Tecumseh Sherman questioned the prudence of expecting any Indians to keep their promises. Beginning in 1865, he assumed command of the Division of the Missouri, which stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. In addition, he served as a member of the federal peace commission that met with various tribal leaders and negotiated the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Troubled by the persistence of hostilities, he believed that Indian affairs should be directed by the War Department – not the Interior Department. He advocated a strategy of “hard war,” that is, deploying Army regulars in operations to destroy the resources and the morale of the Indians off the reservations. In his official report to Congress on November 1, 1868, he posited that securing peace in the western territories required the sustained use of force. The next year, he became the Commanding General of the Army.

  With federal troops fresh from Civil War battlefields, Sherman authorized winter campaigns to punish tribes threatening the corridors of American expansion. While a military operation in cold weather presented serious logistical problems, it offered opportunities for decisive results. If the subsistence of the Indians could be destroyed, then they lived at the mercy of the federal government. The winter campaigns, which amounted to waging war on noncombatants, raised moral questions about warfare against the Indians.

  One advocate for winter campaigns was General Sheridan, who transferred to the Department of the Missouri within Sherman's Division. Echoing the views of his predecessor, General Winfield Scott Hancock, he believed that winter conditions severely constrained the range and the mobility of tribes. As snow began to fall during 1868, his troops maneuvered against the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. Sheridan called on Colonel George Armstrong Custer, a brevet-ranked general, to lead a regiment into battle. “There are not Indians enough in the country to whip the 7th Cavalry,” the flamboyant Custer once boasted.

  On the frigid morning of November 27, 1868, Custer's scouts led him to a Cheyenne village encamped along the Washita River in Indian Territory. The pony tracks stretched to the edge of Black Kettle's village, where four women and children were held captive. Custer's 600 mounted men road through the village, firing their carbines as they charged. A military band struck a tune. Black Kettle died in a volley of fire, while another bullet struck his wife. Custer declared victory, claiming to have killed 103 warriors in the Battle of the Washita. However, Cheyenne survivors said only 11 warriors perished. The rest of the dead, they said, were women and children. While viewing a number of starving Cheyenne and Arapaho coming into the Fort Cobb agency, Sheridan allegedly remarked: “The only good Indian I ever saw was dead.”

  During his inaugural address in 1869, President Grant announced the federal “peace policy.” Echoing the sentiments of federal peace commissioners, the commander-in-chief promised to move the Indians toward “civilization and ultimate citizenship.” Encouraging missionaries to serve as agents, he pledged to march Indians on the “white man's road” through patient instruction, moral suasion, and economic incentives. Thereafter, members of the Society of Friends, or the Quakers, actively mana
ged Indian affairs, although other religious sects participated as well. Ely S. Parker, a Seneca who reached the rank of brigadier general on Grant's staff, became the first American Indian appointed to head the Indian Bureau. He improved the distribution of rations, goods, and annuities, but he allowed his office to become a tool for patronage and scandal. Tried by the House of Representatives in 1871 for fraud, he was exonerated but resigned from office.

  While the “peace policy” became mired in corruption, the federal government ended the practice of treating the Indian tribes as sovereign nations. In 1871, Congress passed a law that defined them as “wards” of the U.S. Changing “treaties” into “agreements,” the legislative branch began to assume a direct role in determining the welfare of Native communities. As the soldiers stood watch, the Indian agents insisted that the chiefs and the warriors assimilate into American culture.

  Conquering the Sioux

  Between 1854 and 1890, the Army conducted a series of military operations against the Lakota Sioux and their Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho allies. Also known as the Teton or the Western Sioux, the Lakota were a coalition of seven bands or councils: the Oglala, the Brulé, the Minneconjou, Sans Arcs, Two Kettles, Blackfeet, and the Hunkpapa. They established their dominion from the Minnesota River to the Yellowstone River and from the Republican River across the U.S. border into Canada. Shortly before the Civil War erupted, the Sioux began engaging in raids near the North Platte River.

  Faced with increased colonization from the eastern U.S. during 1851, representatives of the Sioux and other Plains Indian tribes signed the first Fort Laramie Treaty. While agreeing to permit the construction of roads and forts, they guaranteed safe passage for settlers on the Oregon Trail in return for the promise of annuities. To provide security on the trails and along the upper Missouri River, the federal government deployed various units from the Army. Three years later, Lieutenant John L. Grattan at Fort Laramie led a small detachment of infantrymen to the Sioux camp of Conquering Bear. He intended to arrest a thief accused of killing an emigrant's cow, but instead one of Grattan's soldiers shot Conquering Bear in the back. In minutes, all 29 of the soldiers were killed by the Sioux, as was Grattan and his interpreter.