While under my command Colonel Geddes’s conduct was always exemplary, and I do not hesitate to recommend him to your favorable consideration in the matter which he is about to bring up.
He claims to have been treated with great injustice, and I believe will be able to show that he has been.
He is personally well known to the Major-General Commanding the Army, under whom he served as adjutant of his regiment.
Colonel Geddes’s war service is well known. He was one of the youngest officers of his grade in the Army, and, as a mere boy, served as a commissioned officer with distinction.
I am, very respectfully,
WM. R. SHAFTER,
Brigadier-General, U.S.A., Commanding Department.
THE SECRETARY OF WAR, Washington, D.C.
NOTES
The following abbreviations have been used in the notes:
ACP Appointment, Commission, and Promotion
AGO Adjutant General’s Office
JAG Judge Advocate General
NARA National Archives and Records Administration
OR The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies
RG Record Group
USMA United States Military Academy
Chapter 1
1 QQ1387, JAG, General Courts Martial 1812–1938 RG 153, NARA. Geddes’s statement occupies pp. 9–14. The original affidavit he submitted to General Ord is in Appendix C. Further quotations from the trial will not be identified with note numbers; all came from this transcript. Spellings of some words have been modernized.
2 William T. Generous, Jr., Swords and Scales: The Development of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (Port Washington, N.Y: Kennikat Press, 1973): 8.
3 Luther C. West, They Call It Justice (New York: Viking Press, 1977): 17. The court for the Geddes trial was composed of seven officers. Many courts-martial had six or even five.
4 Generous, Swords and Scales: 8.
5 Stephen Vincent Benét, A Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial, 6th ed. rev. (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868): 71.
6 West, They Call It Justice: 5.
7 Generous, Swords and Scales: 10.
8 Jack D. Foner, The United States Soldier Between Two Wars (New York: Humanities Press, 1970): 36.
9 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Army for the Year 1879, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1879): iii, 191.
10 Marcos Kinevan, Frontier Cavalryman: Lieutenant John Bigelow with the Buffalo Soldiers in Texas (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1998): 78.
11 Sherman to W. S. Hancock, December 9, 1879, Sherman Papers, containers 90—91 (reel 45), no. 202. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
12 A Sketch of the History and Duties of the Judge Advocate General’s Department, United States Army, Washington, D.C., March 1, 1878 as prepared at the requests of the Commission (of 1876) on the Reform and Reorganization of the Army, with addictions (Washington, D.C.: T. McGill, 1878): 11.
13 Garrard Glenn, The Army and the Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943): 44.
14 Secretary of War, Annual Report, House Executive Documents, 44th cong., 1st sess., 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876): 123.
15 Report of the Secretary of War, House Executive Documents, 47th cong., 2d sess., 11 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883): 115—16.
16 S. J. Wright, San Antonio de Béxar: Historical, Traditional, Legendary (Austin: Morgan Printing Co., n.d.): 93.
17 PP2691, Court-Martial of Andrew Geddes, August 19, 1872, JAG, RG 153, NARA. Holt’s report was dated September 11, 1872.
18 PP2691: Andrew Geddes to William W. Belknap, September 8, 1872.
19 Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The True Story of Lady’s Byron’s Life,” The Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politico 24 (1869): 295—313.
20 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lady Byron Vindicates: A History of the Byron Controversy from Its Beginning in 1816 to the Present Time [1870] (New York: Haskell House, 1970).
21 Alice Crozier, The Novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969): 195.
22 Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1941): 428.
23 “The True Story of Lady Byron’s Life,” reprinted in Lady Byron Vindicated: 450.
24 J. Paget, “Lord Byron and His Calumniators,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 107 (January 1870): 138; cited in Elizabeth Ammons, ed., Critical Essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980): 183.
25 Justin McCarthy, “Mrs. Stowe’s Last Romance,” The Independent (August 26, 1869): 1. Cited in Ammons, Critical Essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe: 171.
26 “Mrs. Stowe on Lord Byron,” clipping without date or place of publication preserved in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Scrapbook on the controversy, Harriet Beecher Stowe Library, Hartford, Ct.
27 The World, October 6, 1869, Stowe Scrapbook.
28 Spectator, no date; “The Byron Revelations,” August 26, 1869, Stowe Scrapbook.
29 “The Byron Mystery,” Saturday Review (September 4, 1869): 311.
30 Ammons, Critical Essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe: 180 ; cited in Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994): 365.
31 Stowe Scrapbook.
32 James Russell Lowell to Edmund Quincy, September 15, 1869, in New Letters of James Russell Lowell, ed. M. A. DeWolfe Howe (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932): 146.
33 George Curtis, “From the Editor’s Easy Chair at Harper’s: In Defense of Lady Byron Vindicated,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 39 (1869): 767.
34 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Moral of the Byron Case,” Independent (September 9, 1869): 1; reprinted in Ammons, Critical Essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe: 174, 175.
35 Stanton, “The Moral of the Byron Case,” in Ammons, Critical Essays: 175, 76.
36 Stowe, Lady Byron Vindicated: 162—63, 428, 343.
37 Stowe, Lady Byron Vindicated: 74.
38 Benita Eisler, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998): 487.
39 John S. Chapman, Byron and the Honourable Augusta Leigh (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975): 215, confirms the absence of any “record that Augusta was with her husband [George Leigh] during the period of conception.”
40 Phyllis Grosskurth, Byron: The Flawed Angel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997): 230; Byron to Lady Melbourne, April 25, 1814, in “Wedlock’s the Devil”: Byron’s Letters and Journals 1814-1815, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, vol. 4 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975):104,99n.
41 Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963): 254; Margot Strickland, The Byron Women (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974): 166, 172.
42 “Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Vindication of Lady Byron,”’ Stowe Scrapbook.
Chapter 2
1 Theodore A. Dodge, “The Battle of Chancellorsville,” Southern Historical Society Papers 14 (1886): 277, 284, 287.
2 Dodge, “The Battle of Chancellorsville”: 282; Augustus Choate Hamlin, The Battle of Chancellorsville (Bangor: n.p., 1896): 32.
3 Schurz to Stanton, May 18, 1863; Report of Major General Carl Schurz, May 12, 1863, cited in Hamlin, The Battle of Chancellorsville: 170, 168.
4 Captain Joseph B. Greenhut, OR I: vol. 31, pt. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1890): 143.
5 OR, vol. 31, pt. 1: 209.
6 Cited in Hamlin, The Battle of Chancellorsville: 157.
7 0159 CB 1866*—consolidated Civil War file of L. H. Orleman, Letters Received by the Commission Branch of AGO 1863-1870, roll 286, RG 94, NARA.
8 E. H. Brininstool, “The Rescue of Forsyth’s Scouts,” Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society 1926—1928, ed. William Elsey Connelley, vol. 17: 848; Edward L. Glass, The History of the Tenth Cavalry 1866—1921 (n.p., 1921): 16.
9 “A Terrible Experience
: Pen Pictures of a Prairie Pilgrimage,” by Lt. Orleman of the Tenth Cavalry, St. Louis Daily Democrat, January 12, 1875.
10 Orleman to Adjutant General, Department of Texas, October 28, 1877, and July 15, 1878, 0159 CB 1866*.
11 Unless otherwise indicated, information comes from the consolidated ACP file of Andrew Geddes, No. 6373, AGO, RG 94, NARA.
12 OR, I: vol. 39, pt. 1 (1892) Reports: 479.
13 OR, I: vol. 49, pt. 1 (1897): 268.
14 N. B. Baker to Edwin M. Stanton, April 4, 1867.
15 William Loughridge, 4th Congressional District, Iowa, to Edwin M. Stanton, March 13, 1867.
16 PP2691, JAG RG 153, NARA. All references to this court-martial are taken from the trial transcript.
17 The review, signed Bureau of Military Justice, September 11, 1872, is eleven handwritten legal-size pages, unnumbered.
18 Daniel E. Rankin to Wm. W. Belknap, September 9, 1872, ACP File of Andrew Geddes.
19 C. L. Carpenter to Wm. W. Belknap, September 5, 1872, court-martial PP2691, RG 153, NARA.
20 Andrew Geddes to William W. Belknap, September 8, 1872, in PP2691.
21 James Evetts Haley, Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier (San Angelo, Tex.: San Angelo Standard-Times, 1952): 235, 236.
22 Lieutenant Hans J. Gasman, entry of October 31, 1875, cited in Haley, Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier: 236.
23 Haley, Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier: 237.
24 Haley, Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier: 237-38.
25 In many records the name of Dr. Baily is misspelled “Bailey.” I have silently corrected this in the text wherever it occurs. Baird Report (see Appendix B of this book, p. 231).
26 Court-Martial of Elisha Baily, PP1207, JAG RG 153, NARA. All citations are taken from the trial transcript, whose pages are unnumbered.
27 Testimony of James B. Burbank for the defense, twenty-second day: PP1207.
28 Exhibit FF: PP 1207.
29 “Court-martial of Surgeon Elisha J. Bailey,” August 13, 1870, The Army and Navy Journal 7 (1870): 817.
30 Deposition of Private Robert Jones, QQ1387, Box 1926.
31 Deposition of John Burton, QQ1387, Box 1926.
32 Baird Report (see Appendix B of this book, p. 232). John Bigelow, Jr., Journal, January-November 1878, John Bigelow Collection, Union College. Fannie McLaughlen was 35 at this time.
33 Entry of September 4, 1877, John Bigelow, Jr., Diaries, USMA Archive.
34 Entries for August 18 and August 25, John Bigelow, Jr., Journal, January-November 1878, John Bigelow Collection, Union College.
35 Entry of July 16, 1879, John Bigelow, Jr., Diaries, USMA Archive.
36 See James Morton Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relation (New York: Macmillan, 1932): 278-340, for a detailed treatment of the French threat; see also George W. Grayson, The United States and Mexico: Patterns of Influence (New York: Praeger, 1984): 13-17; and Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juarez (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992).
37 House Miscellaneous Docs., 45th Cong., 2d sess., no. 64: 26; cited in Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian 1866-i8gi (New York: Macmillan, 1974): 350.
38 Ord to E.O.C. Ord. Jr., n.d., Edward Otho Cresap Ord, 1818-1883, Correspondence and Papers, Box 9, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
39 Letter of Ord to Pacificus Ord, May 17, 1843, Preston Collection of Ord Papers; cited in Bernarr Cresap, Appomattox Warrior: The Story of General E.O.C. Ord (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1981): 16.
40 Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, ed. John T. Morse, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911)3:243.
41 Ord to Pacificus Ord, February 27, 1845, Alexander Collection of Ord Papers, cited in Cresap, Appomattox Warrior: 20.
42 Daily Herald, April 18, 1856; cited in Cresap, Appomattox Warrior: 43.
43 Cresap, Appomattox Warrior: 77.
44 Ord to President Abraham Lincoln, February 19, 1864, Letters Received, Army Headquarters, 1821-1903, RG 108, NARA.
45 Grant to Charles A. Dana, August 5, 1863, Charles A. Dana Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
46 Ord to Sherman, August 14, 1863, W. T. Sherman Papers, Box 12, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
47 John M. Carroll, ed., The Black Military Experience in the American West (New York: Liveright, 1971): 261; Cresap, Appomattox Warrier: 307.
48 Robert E. Denney, The Civil War Years : A Day-by-Day Chronicle of the Life of a Nation (New York: Sterling, 1992): 441.
49 Ord to Levi Maish, Edward S. Bragg, and Harry White (draft), February 14, 1878, Correspondence and Papers, Box 1, Outgoing Letters, 1852-1881, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.
50 Peter Gay, The Education of the Senses, vol. 1 of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984): 103.
Chapter 3
1 Glenda Riley, Women and Indians on the Frontier 1825-1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984): 156.
2 Cited in J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas [1889] (Austin, Tex.: Pemberton Press, 1967): 554.
3 Cited in Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas: 554, 560.
4 Carl Coke Rister, Border Captives: The Traffic in Prisoners by Southern Plains Indians, 1835-1875 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1940): 107.
5 Herman Lehmann, Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879 [1927], ed. J. Marvin Hunter (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993): 216-17.
6 Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas: Or, A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978): 296.
7 Brevet Major Earl Van Dorn, cited in Robert Wooster, Soldiers, Sutlers, and Settlers: Garrison Life on the Texas Frontier (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1987): 149.
8 Governor Richard Coke,Journal: 37, 14 Legislature, 2 sess., January 1875; cited in Carl Coke Rister, The Southwestern Frontier 1865-1881 (New York: Arthur H. Clark, 1928): 149-50.
9 Cited in R. G. Carter, On the Border with Mackenzie, or Winning West Texas from the Comanches (Washington, D.C.: Eynon, 1935): 299.
10 The Army and Navy Journal 10 (April 26, 1873): 586—87.
11 Report of the Secretary of War, Executive Documents, House of Representatives, vol. 1, 2d sess. 46th Cong. 1879-80 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880): 90.
12 S. E. Whitman, The Troopers: An Informal History of the Plains Cavalry, 1865—1890 (New York: Hastings House, 1962): 17. The comparison of hell and Texas has also been attributed to various other people, but it sounds like the kind of thing the plain-speaking Sherman would say.
13 Larry McMurtry, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968): xxiii.
14 Cited in William H. Leckie and Shirley A. Leckie, Unlikely Warriors: General Benjamin H. Grierson and His Family (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984): 220. The Leckies title this chapter “Banished to West Texas.”
15 Lydia Spencer Lane, I Married a Soldier, or Old Days in the Old Army [1893] (Albuquerque: Horn & Wallace, 1964): 22, 25, 42.
16 Report on the Hygiene of the United States Army, Circular No. 8, War Department, Surgeon General’s Office, Washington, D.C., May 1, 1875: 95-96.
17 Zenas R. Bliss, “Reminiscences,” vol. 5: 187–90, Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas, Austin; cited in Clayton W. Williams, Texas’ Last Frontier: Fort Stockton and the Trans-Pecos 1861–1895, ed. Ernest Wallace (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1982): 158.
18 Medical History of Post—Fort Stockton—May 1869-october 1871, vol. 63: 10; July 1874–June 1886, vol. 362: 12; Entry 547, AGO, RG 94, NARA.
19 “Medical History of Post”: 28–29.
20 DeB. Randolph Keim, Sheridan’s Troopers on the Borders: A Winter Campaign on the Plains (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1885): 59; Chaplain George G. Mullins to AGO, October 1, 1875, ACP record, RG 94, NARA.
21 B. F. Pope,
Medical History of Post, December 1874: 6; James Evetts Haley, Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier (San Angelo, Tex.: San Angelo Standard-Times, 1952): 14.
22 George A. Forsyth, The Story of the Soldier (New York: Appleton, 1900): 109; Shirley A. Leckie, ed., The Colonel’s Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondence of Alice Kirk Grierson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989): 231 n.; Fairfax Downey, Indian-Fighting Army (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941): 110.
Ungentlemanly Acts: The Army's Notorious Incest Trial Page 24