Dee Brown on the Civil War
Meanwhile hay was ripening in the river bottoms, and extra details marched out to mow and stack it; they harvested 300 tons. After the hay was in, they organized antelope and buffalo hunts, and fresh meat became plentiful. They enjoyed vegetables from the post gardens—green corn, turnips, and radishes. They invented wager games to kill rats, which were overflowing from storerooms to the barracks. They buried Private Hufstudler, who died a lingering death from the arrow wound in his lung. Each night packs of wolves gathered on the hills and howled until dawn, a sign the Indians said of cold moons ahead. But there was no news of mustering out.
On August 25, Sully returned from the North with his expedition; the general had encountered no hostiles, had sought none. He had planned this summer’s march as a show of force meant only to maintain the uneasy peace along the Missouri. Surgeon Herrick was welcomed back, and he entertained his old friends of the 1st Regiment with tales of Canadian half-breeds the expedition encountered near Fort Berthold.
“They are half civilized, a mixture of Scotch, English, French, Irish, and Indian blood. … They carry their priest with them, families and fiddles, hunting and curing meats and hides by day, dancing and singing at night.” Herrick had been surprised to meet a French nobleman among the Canadians, Viscount M. Hyacinthe de Balazic, who gave his address as 10 Cité Antin, Paris. The surgeon was fascinated by the Red River carts used by these hunters—vehicles made entirely of wood with wrappings of rawhide. “The hub is cut from a small tree with an auger hole through it, in which the axle is thrust without grease or other lubricating material, and as they go screeching, squeaking, squalling, and making most unheard of noises over these broad, desolate prairies … it does not require very great stretch of imagination to believe that we are listening to the weepings and wailings of the spirits of the damned.”59
The next day a mail arrived from Fort Sully, and in a matter of minutes after it was opened, the 1st U.S. Volunteers were celebrating the good news they had been hoping for all summer. A Wisconsin regiment was en route from St. Louis to relieve them. As soon as the relief arrived, the 1st would start for Fort Leavenworth to be mustered out of service.
In anticipation of this order, Companies B and K had already been ordered down to Rice from Forts Union and Berthold where they had been stationed since spring. On the last day of August the two companies arrived on the Big Horn, and there was a second celebration in honor of their rejoining the regiment.
From now on officers and men of the 1st Regiment awoke to each new day at Fort Rice with happy expectations. They had the word of General Sully that they would not have to endure another winter of death in Dakota. “The men,” Sully commented in a letter of September 14, “have such a perfect fear of staying up here another winter I verily believe many of them would die of fear alone should sickness break out among them as it did last winter.”60
The Fort Rice officers gave the general a farewell dinner, and he departed with his expedition for Iowa winter quarters. A few days later news was received that the 50th Wisconsin had passed Fort Randall en route to Rice.
This cheering news was dampened somewhat by a rumor that Colonel Dimon was aboard the same boat. Why was Dimon returning? Had orders been changed? The soldiers grew apprehensive, and during the tedious days of waiting, 11 men deserted, the first to do so in many months. It was assumed they preferred to seek their chances in the gold fields of Montana, and little effort was made to apprehend them.
Not until October 6 were definite orders received from department headquarters authorizing the 1st U.S. Volunteers to leave Fort Rice. The regiment was to board the same boat bringing the 50th Wisconsin; it was expected to arrive in three or four days.
During this interval Captain Adams and his printers prepared a final issue of the Frontier Scout. They filled it with the usual post gossip, news of river traffic, Indian arrivals. “Just at retreat roll call the hills on the west of the fort were covered with Indians. They appeared against the amber of the sky like some caravan of Arabia, crossing the desert. They halted some time, and Major Galpin went out to meet them. They came riding in chanting a wild melody, fifty abreast, and marched like well-disciplined cavalry. Their gay robes and fancy saddles gave them a very unique appearance, and one that we shall not soon forget.”
A short story by an unsigned author filled one page, “The Southern Mother’s Pride, or the Loyalized Rebel; a Tale of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Infantry.” The hero’s name was Reginald Ravensworth, and the story was concerned not only with his adventures in the regiment but also his return to the old plantation—a look into the future of any Galvanized Yankee who might have a plantation to which he could return. There was also a poem, “Song of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Infantry”:
We are going home, o’er Missouri’s foam
While the ruddy sunlight flashes
To the sunny South, from the land of drouth
For Rebellion’s burned to ashes.
From the barren plain, where there is no rain
From Dakota’s Territory
We are sailing down to village and town
Of the Union in its glory.
In a final editorial salute to his “boys,” Captain Adams wrote: “Our sojourn in the wilderness is nearly over. … We have a country redeemed from anarchy, redeemed from disunion, which we can call our own. We have served that country honorably, let us preserve our good name. We are the first fruits of a re-united people. We are a link between the North and the South—let us prove that it is a golden link, and of no baser metal.”
Adams dated this last issue ahead to October 12, estimating that would be the day of departure. However, on October 9, Colonel Dimon arrived unexpectedly from Fort Sully, announcing that the 50th Wisconsin would reach Fort Rice the next day. Dimon quickly dispelled all false rumors that orders had been changed. His furlough had ended, and instead of waiting for the regiment at Fort Leavenworth, he had come up to join his men on their happy voyage downriver for mustering out.
A month later the six companies of the 1st arrived at Fort Leavenworth, where they expected to meet again their old comrades of Companies A, F, G, and K, who had spent the past year as garrison troops in Minnesota forts. The latter companies, however, had reached Fort Leavenworth some days earlier, and instead of being mustered out had been reassigned and were already en route to western Kansas to guard a new stage line to Denver (see Chapter X).
For several days, the veterans of Fort Rice waited in the Leavenworth barracks, expecting a similar assignment, but it never came. They were mustered out November 27, 1865.
V
“Give It Back to the Indians”
THE 4TH U.S. VOLUNTEER Infantry Regiment was slow in getting started, never achieved its full strength, and from the time it left St. Louis until it reached the upper Missouri was exposed to so many exaggerated rumors of horrors endured by the 1st Regiment that practically every officer and man viewed his prospective service in Dakota with forebodings.
Although the 4th did not reach the West until May 1865, its history began eight months earlier in October 1864 when General Benjamin Butler was authorized to recruit a second regiment at Point Lookout. To command this new regiment, Butler selected another of his protégés, a former officer of the 12th Maine, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles C. G. Thornton, and instructed him to recruit prisoners for “service in the North West.”1
After several weeks of effort, Thornton was able to organize only six companies, and the quality of these men was not as high as those of the 1st Regiment. In hopes that more prisoners would soon be available for recruiting, Butler transferred the six companies to Norfolk, and there they remained with very little increase in numbers until the war ended. Urgent calls for troops in the West in April 1865 finally led the War Department to issue orders transferring the 4th to General Sully’s command in Dakota.
On April 30, Thornton and his six companies traveled by sea to New York, by rail to St. Louis, and on May 10 were aboard the steamboat Mars, en ro
ute for Sioux City to report to Sully.
Partly because of the quality of the men, partly because of the stories they were hearing of the 1st Regiment’s ordeal at Fort Rice, more than one-tenth of the command deserted before the Mars reached Sioux City May 28.2
Sully reported the situation in a message to Pope that same day. “My cavalry are after them. I wish permission to execute if caught and sentenced. They have but one officer to a company, most of them boys. If officers are not on their way to join them I wish permission to appoint suitable officers. I can then enforce discipline.”3
With little trouble, Sully’s cavalry rounded up large numbers of deserters. The general confined them to the guardhouse, where he allowed them to repent for a few weeks until he had the regiment settled in the upper forts; then he released them to their company commanders.
As Sully planned to start his summer expedition northward in June, he ordered the 4th Regiment to precede him on a slow overland march, which he hoped would put the former Confederates in condition for frontier soldiering. On June 19 the 4th arrived at Fort Sully, which was then garrisoned by companies of the 6th Iowa Cavalry. When General Sully arrived he added the Iowans and three companies of the 4th to his column, and placed Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton in command of Fort Sully, leaving him the remaining three companies of the regiment.
It was probably a mistake on Sully’s part to take Companies A, C, and D of the 4th to Fort Rice, where these newcomers to Dakota could hear firsthand reports from the hardbitten soldiers of the 1st. The general, however, had little choice in the matter; he had been instructed to relieve the 1st for mustering out when suitable placements became available, and the only replacements he had at that time were these companies of the 4th. Veterans are always inclined to exaggerate to recruits, and whatever apprehensions the 4th had about military life in Dakota must have been reinforced many times over by what they heard from survivors of the 1st. And then of course came the Battle of Fort Rice on July 28, which was enough to convince the 4th that the Dakota Indians were in earnest about fighting for their land.
Thus it was that early in their period of service on the Missouri, the Galvanized Yankees of the 4th Regiment developed a rather jaundiced view toward their mission. Their philosophy was that “they hadn’t lost any Indians.” If the Indians wanted to live in such a grim place as Dakota, then why not give it back to them? The 4th had none of the esprit de corps of the 1st, and after the regiment was divided among three forts, it soon lost what little sense of cohesion Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton had tried to impart among his men.
Sully sent C Company up to Berthold, an old fur-trading fort built upon a high bluff on the north bank of the river. Formerly the property of Charles Chouteau’s American Fur Company, it had been taken over by the U.S. Government after Chouteau was accused of being a Confederate sympathizer. The Northwestern Fur Company, which acquired Chouteau’s interests, claimed ownership, but Sully insisted upon keeping troops there to protect the friendly Rees, Gros Ventres, and Mandans from hostiles. The Berthold Indians maintained vegetable gardens around their villages, and soldiers stationed at the fort were able to obtain corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and potatoes from the squaws who performed most of the work in the fields.
After disembarking from their boat, the men of Company C discovered that their new home was surrounded by numerous dead Indians mounted on scaffolds, the bodies fastened in wooden boxes stamped “U.S. Army Subs. Dept.,” “Hospital Dept.,” “Q.M. Dept.,” “Ordnance Dept.,” and “American Fur Company.” The fort was as gloomy as its surroundings—ancient log houses squared off inside a stockade. Living quarters consisted of long, low, poorly ventilated barracks. There was no mess room. For each meal the men lined up, entered the dingy kitchen, and carried the rations to their barracks, eating on their bunks.4
Fortunately the company was commanded by one of the regiment’s best captains, Adams Bassett, who proudly recorded on arrival that Company C was stationed at Fort Berthold “on the Missouri River some 2000 miles from its mouth.”5 The company also had a first-rate surgeon, 22-year-old Washington Matthews. Matthews had been sent out to Dakota from Rock Island Prison, where he had attended many of the Confederates who joined the 2nd and 3rd U.S. Volunteers. He knew all the strengths and weaknesses of Galvanized Yankees. In spite of his cramped quarters, Dr. Matthews maintained one of the best hospitals on the Missouri. While at Berthold he mastered the languages of the Mandans and Rees, and in later years of service became an outstanding military surgeon and a famed anthropologist.
Bassett and Matthews kept their men busy and in fair health through a year of dreary routines. After cold weather came, drill and target practice were abandoned and never resumed. The men were occupied mostly with cutting and hauling wood across the river in order to keep from freezing in their dank quarters. They had no Indians to fight, but kept up a continuous and unsuccessful war against bedbugs and fleas.
When General Delos B. Sacket arrived to inspect the post in the spring of 1866, he reported Company C as “the best I have inspected belonging to the 4th U.S. Volunteers.”6
Less fortunate were the other companies. Late in the autumn, Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton and A, B, and D Companies were sent down to Fort Randall, with Thornton as post commander. E and F remained at Fort Sully, and after the 50th Wisconsin arrived at Fort Rice, Lieutenant-Colonel Pattee transferred to Sully as post commander.
As both companies at Fort Sully were understrength, they were commanded by lieutenants—Leopold Parker and William Vose. Before the winter ended, the contrast in appearance and attitudes of the soldiers of E and F were striking, reflecting sharp differences in leadership abilities.
Lieutenant Parker gave his men rigid inspections, insisting that uniforms be tidy and that arms and accoutrements be kept in good order. He permitted no slackness of discipline, and dealt out immediate punishments for infractions of regulations. Because of his coal-black hair and beard, his piercing black eyes, and the black pipe which he smoked almost constantly, his men called him “Black” Parker. Some may have feared him; all respected him. (Leopold Parker was to serve the army for more than 30 years, much of the time with Mackenzie’s Raiders.)
Lieutenant Vose, on the other hand, was an indifferent officer, allowing his men to appear in dirty, ragged uniforms, their hair unkempt. Part of his command was mounted, but these men gave little attention to the care of their horses, allowed their carbines to become rusty, and performed their duties in an unmilitary manner.
Although the post commander, Pattee, was an excellent frontier Indian fighter, he disliked garrison duty, and his own casual dress and disregard for military ceremony set a poor example for soldiers who had no fighting to do.
Fort Sully was a depressing place to be, located almost a mile from the river, with not a stick of wood, a bush, or a blade of grass within two miles. The well water was so alkaline that no one could drink it, and river water had to be hauled laboriously up the slope from the Missouri. The only available wood was on an island, and details were always busy cutting and hauling. Winter rains dripped mud into the quarters; the rotting rafters were beginning to collapse. Blizzards whistled through cracks in warped cotton-wood-slab walls, and snow drifted in upon the bunks. Bedbugs and fleas invaded barracks, defying all efforts to keep them out. Then the rats came, so many that uniforms had to be locked into sheet-iron boxes to keep them from being gnawed to bits.
By midwinter grain and hay for horses and cattle became so scarce that Pattee ordered the cattle driven across the frozen river to an island where they could forage on brush and trees. An unexpected early thaw swept away the fort’s only flatboat, and there was no way to obtain wood until a replacement could be nailed together from scraps. Meanwhile the flooding river inundated the island, almost drowning the cattle before they could be taken off on the flimsy boat.
In March 1866 a smallpox outbreak brought more misery to Fort Sully, but Surgeon L. F. Russell quickly isolated his patients in one building. He f
orbade any one to go near it, or any of the hospital attendants to leave it, and soon had the epidemic under control.7
During the last weeks of winter the men lived on a diet of wormy bacon and weevily beans, and then at last came May and the first supply boat. In that same month, General Sacket arrived on his inspection tour. “The only structure I saw in and around Fort Sully of the least value,” he reported, “was the flagstaff, and it was only a tolerable one.” Sacket approved of only one officer, Lieutenant Parker. He was shocked when John Pattee asked to be excused from accompanying him on the inspection tour. Pattee said he had no uniform to wear. “His dress while about the garrison is shirt-sleeves,” Sacket wrote, “a citizen’s pants and moccasins. Pattee may be a most excellent man, but he certainly has not the first element of a soldier in his composition.”8
More than 100 miles farther south at Randall, conditions were not much better. In addition to his three infantry companies, Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton had a detachment of 7th Iowa Cavalry. The cavalrymen were supposed to carry mail and perform other mounted duties, but they had only two or three serviceable horses.
A few weeks after Thornton assumed command at Fort Randall, he wrote a rather obsequious letter to General Butler in which he stated that Randall was the “largest and pleasantest post in the district.” While this may have been true, relatively, Thornton failed to mention that winds were constantly blowing alkali dust into eyes, ears, and noses, that the water was unpotable, that the rotting cottonwood quarters were almost uninhabitable and so infested with biting insects and rodents that the soldiers preferred to sleep out-of-doors, except in the bitterest weather. Thornton of course was trying to impress Butler, the purpose of the letter being to gain the general’s support in securing another command after the 4th was mustered out.9