Reno requested an adjournment: he scarcely had time to go through the charges with his attorneys. That was granted. They consulted all that day. He liked these lawyers but wondered if they grasped what he was up against. This wasn’t just a trial about his conduct as an officer and a gentleman. This was much more, and everyone present knew it.
The next day, March 9, the trial got underway with Mrs. Bell as the first witness. His attorneys had sense enough not to land on her testimony. She stepped down, avoiding so much as a glance at Reno. Then Wainwright. Reno’s attorneys questioned the reverend closely, especially as to why he did not move from the Bell residence when asked to do so to avoid scandal. The man simply said it was not necessary.
Hazelhurst was next, and then Robinson, and then two men who were not at Abercrombie: Wallace and Benteen. Both denied saying to Reno that Mrs. Bell should be expelled from the regiment. Then Slocum, and Troxel, and Van Horne, one by one.
Together, they made the prosecution’s case, all laid out neatly, the specifics in each article backed by testimony, most of it by men present at Abercrombie.
The only testimony that rankled, as far as Marcus Reno was concerned, was that of Benteen and Wallace, both of them brother survivors from the Little Bighorn.
“Question them closely,” he said to his attorneys.
And his attorneys did, making some headway at last. Benteen allowed that Marcus Reno’s character was first rate. Wallace agreed that Reno’s character had been very good. Benteen acknowledged talking to Reno about Mrs. Bell’s questionable character.
It was time for a defense. Reno’s attorneys presented a statement to the court, in which Reno asserted that he had never pulled Mrs. Bell toward him, but had only taken her hand gently to bid her good night. And in the episode at the doorstep, she had simply stumbled when she missed a step and fallen into his arms. She had not asked for an apology for these supposed offenses, neither when they happened nor later.
Reno thought his attorney, Davis, had made a good case. If Mrs. Bell had been outraged, she certainly would have shown it.
He had scarcely arrived at Fort Abercrombie when all this supposedly transpired; barely gotten his own bags unpacked, had not even taken over the command. He had arrived the afternoon of Sunday, the seventeenth of December; the first of his supposed outrages had occurred the evening of the eighteenth, before he had even assumed command; the second of these alleged outrages occurred on the twenty-first, a day after he assumed command.
Would the court believe that from the moment he arrived at Abercrombie, he was busy outraging Mrs. Bell? That, upon discovering that Captain Bell had just departed, he laid plans to seduce Mrs. Bell and put them into effect before he unpacked his kit? That he expected to have his way at once with a woman he didn’t know except for a brief encounter at Fort Abraham Lincoln? That all of this alleged seduction had transpired in the space of seventy-two hours, from Monday to Thursday?
That all this could have occurred in the hours after he arrived, and on the eve of Christmas, defied credulity. Marcus Reno was certain the court would see a young harpy’s machinations in all this and toss out the whole business and free him. He worried more about the rest of it; that he had assailed her reputation. No doubt he had, but if the court pitched out the absurd allegations of seduction, the court would probably pitch out the rest. The real Emily Bell was there, for all to see, and any experienced man could see it.
There was a second charge, that Reno had attempted to bribe Mrs. Bell’s colored servant to conceal evidence, but it was as if the charge didn’t exist. Everyone knew it was just another item to throw at Reno, concocted by officers with an agenda. And so it was barely discussed.
But the prosecution was intent on proving that he had spotted a vulnerable woman, tried at once to seduce her, had been twice rebuffed, and had found his revenge by blackening her reputation, using his powers as the commanding officer to do so. As if she had a reputation that could suffer any more blackening than it already had. She had irritated him; he would grant her that. She was a peculiar case, all right. Snubbing the post commander at her little party. So self-absorbed and vain that she interpreted everything that happened as seduction.
He sat heavily through all this, aware of the stares directed his way. There was anger in the room, undercurrents of cold hostility, something savage burning in the breast of Captain Bell and others: piety, righteous outrage, holier-than-thou scorn. He studied the judges one by one, their faces masks, their minds masked as well. They were veteran officers, skeptics, aware of the foibles of human nature, but would they waltz with Mrs. Bell? Of course not. Not unless they believed that the new commander had set down his bags and assaulted her, that ministers were unconcerned about their reputations, that Mrs. Bell’s motives were snowy.
And so it went, day upon day, in St. Paul, Minnesota that March.
The trial wound up on the twentieth of March, and the room was emptied so that the judges could deliberate. Reno thanked his costly attorneys, and waited, feeling hopeful about it.
When at last the court brought Reno before it, he stood stiffly while the president, Colonel Hazen, read the verdict: guilty of the first charge in almost all particulars; not guilty of the second.
“And the court does therefore sentence him, Major Marcus A. Reno, Seventh Regiment of Cavalry, to be dismissed from the service.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IT WASN’T OVER. AT LEAST THAT IS WHAT MARCUS RENO TOLD HIMSELF, as he puffed a fine Havana at a St. Paul chop house. He was alone. He was too much alone, and yet he rejected company.
General Terry had to review the proceedings and could pitch them out if he felt there was anything irregular about them. Then the case would be reviewed by the judge advocate general, and then it would go to General of the Army Sherman, and eventually to the president, Rutherford B. Hayes.
Surely, one of these discerning men would pitch out a case based on the proposition that within three days of arriving at a new post Major Reno assaulted a lady and impugned her honor.
His army career would be over if the charges were upheld. For nearly twenty years he had served honorably, often in harm’s way, advancing in rank, winning commendation for gallantry. And now this.
He could only wait and fret and bide his time in St. Paul, where he was still under orders, until all that should be settled.
Things did not go well. Terry passed along the court-martial without comment. The judge advocate general, Brigadier General William Dunn, found largely against Reno:
“His course I cannot thus but regard as having been highly discreditable to himself, and as having most seriously compromised the respectability and honor of the military service.”
Sherman confirmed the sentence, but with a certain tenderness for Reno, “who has borne the reputation of a brave officer.”
Next was President Hayes, who approved the sentence but commuted it to suspension from rank and pay for two years from May 1, 1877.
Then the matter went to the secretary of war, George McCrary, who called Reno’s conduct despicable, but “it is thought that his offenses, grave as they are, do not warrant the sentence of dismissal, and all its consequences, upon one who for twenty years has borne the reputation of a brave and honorable officer, and had maintained that reputation upon the battlefields of the Rebellion and in combat with Indians. The president has therefore modified the sentence, and it is hoped that Major Reno will appreciate the clemency thus shown him …”
And so it was settled in early May. Terry sent his adjutant to Reno with the papers. Reno might return to service after two years. He trembled upon reading the news. Hayes had spared him ignominy, and yet what was left? And how would he support himself? There was something of Mary Hannah’s estate remaining, even after paying off the two lawyers, but now he would need to subsist himself for two long years without his three hundred a month salary.
But there was more: a great sorrow. He headed for his favorite chophouse alone that evenin
g. There was no one to share this with, not even his lawyers. Especially not his lawyers. He ordered up two doubles of good rye, and had the barkeep bring him a dozen cigars. And there, in the shadowy corner of the saloon, under a hissing gas lamp, he puffed and sipped and finally quit the place, not hungry. He drifted through unknown alleys, had an uneasy time negotiating his way back to Fort Snelling, and several times lost his way. When he ascended the steep bluff to the post, he felt his heart hammer.
He waited for orders, for dismissal, for anything, but days slipped by without word. Would he serve his entire suspension within the confines of the Department of Dakota? He finally obtained a thirty-day leave. Then he petitioned to remove himself from the department, and set out for Pennsylvania, letting the department know how to reach him there.
He would visit his son in Pittsburgh, where he was being sheltered by Mary Hannah’s sister and brother-in-law, Bertie and Wilson Orth, and then what? Reno didn’t know. It wouldn’t be a happy meeting. The Orths had never forgiven him for not coming home for Mary Hannah’s funeral, and it did no good to explain that he was under orders and could not get away until the summer’s work for the boundary commission was completed. He scarcely knew Ross; the boy was a stranger, and maybe much of that was Marcus’s own failing. But now he would visit.
He boarded a steam train, and another and another, wending his way east in rocking coaches, smoking cigars whenever he could, sliding whiskey down his throat now and then from the flask at his bosom, his friend and companion in a time when he had no other.
Ross was an odd boy, pale and unsure, shy and sly around his father, who by then was merely a phantom to him; his real father and mother were the Orths. Reno took the boy to dinner, and on several outings around Pittsburgh. They walked out to the famous old point, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers joined in a turbid flood, and the ruins of old Fort Pitt stood, but he could make no headway with the young stranger.
Ross rarely spoke, and only when spoken to, and seemed as distant and shrouded as the Allegheny hills lost beyond the steel city’s perpetual haze.
“You doing all right, Ross?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe you’ll join the army some day.”
“Maybe, sir.”
“The Orths, they taking good care of you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you wanting anything?”
“No, sir.”
“You keeping up your grades?”
The boy paused. “I guess.”
“Someday you’ll inherit your mother’s wealth; held in trust now, but yours on your majority. Enough to go to college. Become a professional man.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Miss your mother?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t get to see her very much. Always stationed somewhere, and she was sick.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We had some good times, Ross, you and she and I, running around the prairies out in Kansas.”
“Yes, sir.”
Reno pulled a cigar from his pocket, cut off the end with his cigar cutter, and fired up. “Good cigar is the best thing a man can have sometimes.” That and a good wife and some good whiskey.
“I’m going to be in Harrisburg for a while. I’ll look after you more.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe have you come stay with me when school’s out.”
The boy nodded.
They walked back to the Orths, and Marcus knew he was not soon going to make headway getting to know his son.
He left for Harrisburg, on the Susquehanna River, the only place he could call home, the only place he had known love and hearth and family. They remembered him in gracious Harrisburg. He had helped organize the defense of the state capital, had been brevet brigadier general of the Pennsylvania volunteers during the war, and was related by marriage to the leading families. In Harrisburg, honor still resided in his name.
He engaged a room at the dark, comfortable Lochiel Hotel. He would await orders there. And soon the orders arrived, curtly addressed to “Sir” and not “Major Reno”: he was free to leave the Department of Dakota, but not to leave the United States.
He accepted the limitation peacefully, stocked up on Havanas, and wondered how he would spend two years without pay. The Lochiel was expensive, but he chose to live there because it offered social contact. There would be money from Mary Hannah’s real estate, willed half to him and half to Ross, whose portion was held in trust. He wasn’t far from Washington, and didn’t doubt that some personal contact with people in the War Department would turn things around for him.
He had his possessions expressed, and soon his entire worldly goods arrived via Railway Express in a steamer trunk. It amazed him sometimes that he was well advanced in years but without material possessions. He had no home or real estate, no furnishings, no considerable wardrobe, no library, no jewelry, no farms or timber lands or mines, no portion of any business. He had given his whole life to the United States Army, and had only his honor to show for it, and now his honor had been lost to him because of one transient moment he had been tempted by an unstable woman.
In those personnel files in the War Department rested his most cherished possessions: commendations from his commanders. Thrice raised in rank for “gallant meritorious services.” There, nestled in his folder, was one he cherished particularly: his commander in the First Division, General Alfred T. A. Torbert, had thought so highly of Reno’s conduct at Cold Harbor that he wrote Secretary of War Stanton:
“Sir, I take pleasure in recommending ‘to your favorable consideration’ Captain Marcus A. Reno, First U.S. Cavalry, for promotion to the rank of Brig. Gen’l …” Torbert went on to say that Reno had “distinguished himself at the battles of Coal Harbor and Trevillian Station for coolness, bravery, and good judgment. I know him to be fully competent to fill the position.”
And Sheridan approved:
“The recommendation of Brig. Gen’l Torbert is highly approved. The cavalry service has no better officer than Capt. Reno. He is full of energy and ability, has been in all the cavalry engagements of present campaign. He is one of the most promising young cavalry officers of this army …”
Nothing came of it, but those glowing recommendations rested in Reno’s file.
Later, when Torbert encouraged Reno to apply to Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtin to give Reno the colonelcy of the Twelfth Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment, Sheridan weighed in once again:
“I think so much of Captain Reno that I heretofore recommended him for appointment as Brig. General … Your Excellency will make no mistake in making this appointment.”
And General William Emory concurred: “I consider him one of the best and most faithful cavalry officers …”
These were his sole wealth, and all that he really cared to own. These were his gold, his silver, his castles, and his heaven. Let him possess honor and his soul asked for little more.
There in Harrisburg he set out to renew old acquaintances, but fate swiftly intervened.
One day, he picked up his mail at the hotel desk, and found himself facing a new set of charges, these endorsed by most of the officers of the Seventh Cavalry, and dating back to his first hours at Fort Abraham Lincoln after the regiment returned from the Little Bighorn, the very night the worn and weary command had returned to its base.
By the light of the purring gas lamp, alone in his room, he read the accusation.
Three charges in all:
First, drunkenness on duty. It accused him of being drunk on September 26, at Fort Abraham Lincoln, at a time when the post was endangered by Sioux; and second, that Reno had become drunk while on duty, commanding at Fort Abercrombie, December 31, 1876.
The second, conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman. It accused Reno of making insulting and malicious remarks to a brother officer and engaging in fisticuffs with Lieutenant Manley to the disgrace of the service, September 26, at Fort Abraham Lincoln.
Reno did provoke an encounter with Manley and attempted to expel Manley from the Officers’ Club Room at Fort Abraham Lincoln, and provoked a personal encounter with Lieutenant Varnum, challenging Varnum to a duel. And in addition, sent for pistols for the purpose of engaging in a duel.
Reno read it and sighed.
“We, the undersigned officers of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry earnestly desire … that Major Marcus A. Reno be brought to trial on the foregoing charges and specifications.”
Reno studied the signatures, and found among them some of the officers who had been with him on the hilltop at Little Bighorn, in addition to the Fort Abercrombie contingent that had brought the earlier charges. Here were McDougall and Moylan and DeRudio, men who had fought beside him during those darkest hours.
He remembered bitterly that he had failed in his report on the battle to commend any of them, citing only Benteen for brave and meritorious service. The other officers had, by and large, fought bravely, and should have been commended. But Reno had not cited them for gallantry or courage or coolness under fire, and now he was paying the price.
They wanted him out, along with half a dozen other officers who weren’t there: Bell, Robinson, Eckerson, Slocum, Fuller, Gresham, Mc-Cormick, Russell. And the complaint was also signed by Dr. Williams, who had been in the Club Room. Reno scarcely knew some of them; they had joined the Seventh after he had removed to Fort Abercrombie. Yet they had been persuaded to join in the lynch party against a man they didn’t know solely on hearsay.
Reno sat heavily on his bed, digesting all this. Benteen had not signed it. Others who had been his friends or at least comrades under fire, had not signed it. Not Wallace, not Godfrey, not Edgerly, not Hare. So it wasn’t all of them, but just a cabal, led by the implacable Captain Bell whose sole purpose was to eject Major Reno from the army. But the news afflicted him to his very core. The cabal was not content with his suspension for two years, and wanted him out, out forever, out in disgrace.
An Obituary for Major Reno Page 17