The Commanders: Civil War Generals Who Shaped the American West

Taking a novel approach to the military history of the post-Civil War West, distinguished historian Robert M. Utley examines the careers of seven military leaders who served as major generals for the Union in the Civil War, then as brigadier generals in command of the U.S. Army's western departments. By examining both periods in their careers, Utley makes a unique contribution in delineating these commanders' strengths and weaknesses.

While some of the book's subjects--notably Generals George Crook and Nelson A. Miles--are well known, most are no longer widely remembered. Yet their actions were critical in the expansion of federal control in the West. The commanders effected the final subjugation of American Indian tribal groups, exercising direct oversight of troops in the field as they fought the wars that would bring Indians under military and government control. After introducing readers to postwar army doctrine, organization, and administration, Utley takes each general in turn, describing his background, personality, eccentricities, and command style and presenting the rudiments of the campaigns he prosecuted. Crook embodied the ideal field general, personally leading his troops in their operations, though with varying success. Christopher C. Augur and John Pope, in contrast, preferred to command from their desks in department headquarters, an approach that led both of them to victory on the battlefield. And Miles, while perhaps the frontier army's most detestable officer, was also its most successful in the field.

Rounding out the book with an objective comparison of all eight generals' performance records, Utley offers keen insights into their influence on the U.S. military as an institution and on the development of the American West.

ISBN-13: 9780806159782

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Publication Date: 02-01-2018

Pages: 256

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

Robert M. Utley served in the National Park Service for 25 years in various capacities, including Chief Historian from 1964 to 1972. Since his retirement from the federal government in 1980, he has devoted himself full-time to historical research and writing with a specialty in the American West. He is author, among many articles and books he has published, of Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier, Revised Edition; Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life; Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers; and The Commanders: Civil War Generals Who Shaped the American West. A founder of the Western History Association, Utley has served on its governing council and as its president.

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CHAPTER 1

THE POSTWAR U.S. ARMY

Spring 1866. The Civil War had ended a year earlier at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, yet only now had all the members of the Volunteer Army that had fought the war been mustered out of federal service and sent back to their states. The Regular Army, in its prewar form, waited impatiently for Congress to fix the size and composition of the postwar army. Not until the end of July 1866 did Congress send an act to President Andrew Johnson for his signature.

The three generals who had emerged from the war with the greatest combat record and highest public esteem were Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Philip H. Sheridan. Three days before Congress passed the army act, it also passed an act elevating Grant to four-star rank as General of the Army. That slipped Grant's three stars as lieutenant general to Sherman. Sheridan retained his two-star rank as major general.

Instead of fixing a numerical size, the army act authorized the president to vary the number of men in a company between 50 and 100. When the War Department set the number of privates per company at 64, the postwar army emerged with a strength of 54,000. This figure would not endure, however, even with the increased demands of Reconstruction in the South and settlement and development in the West. An economizing Congress pared the strength in 1869 to 37,313 and in 1870 to 30,000. In 1874 Congress set a figure of 27,000 officers and enlisted men, which remained stable.

The 1866 act also specified the composition of line and staff. In reducing the army strength in 1869, however, Congress left the army with ten cavalry regiments, five artillery regiments, and twenty-five infantry regiments for the next three decades. The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry were composed of black soldiers with white officers. To lead this army Congress reduced the number of generals to one full general (William T. Sherman, Grant having been elected president), one lieutenant general (Philip H. Sheridan), three major generals, and eight brigadier generals. When Sherman and Sheridan retired, their grades also retired.

The act provided that the officers of the line would consist half of regulars and half of former volunteer officers who wished to apply for a regular commission. Two of the generals treated in following chapters fell into this category: Nelson A. Miles and Alfred H. Terry.

Complicating the issue of rank was the system of brevets. In the absence of medals to recognize outstanding battlefield performance, brevets were awarded in the next higher rank than then occupied. A captain displaying "gallant and meritorious conduct" could be breveted major. Few generals during the war failed to win brevets in the Volunteers, and many did in the Regular Army. Customarily, as a courtesy, officers were addressed by their brevet rank and wore the uniforms, or at least the insignia, of their brevet rank for the first few years after the war. The system became so confusing that the War Department issued orders to abolish the practice, but officers continued to be addressed by their brevets even while ridding their uniforms of evidence of brevet rank.

Existing brevets, of course, endured throughout the postwar decades. For years, the system sparked controversy in the officer corps. As Colonel John Gibbon advised General Sherman in 1877, "So long as the present system of brevets is maintained the delusion will be kept up, not only in the minds of the officers themselves, but of the people at large, that our army is largely composed of generals and colonels; and I can see but one remedy for the evil, a total abolishment of all brevets in the Army, a return to a solid basis in military rank, by its complete annulment of all brevet commissions."

The staff, separate from the line, experienced few changes under the 1866 act and subsequent acts. In fact, the department chiefs (all but two of whom were brigadier generals) were a power unto themselves, protecting and enhancing their turf, cultivating congressional committees, and recognizing no other authority than the secretary of war, to whom they reported directly without officially acknowledging the existence of a commanding general.

The staff consisted of the Adjutant General's Department, which processed and dispatched commands and kept the archives; the Inspector General's Department, which kept tabs on the army leadership as well as arms, clothing, quarters, and all other matters essential to an army's functioning; the Judge Advocate General's Department, which reviewed the operation of military courts and advised the secretary on all legal matters; the Quartermaster General's Department, which had charge of housing, supplies, and transportation both of personnel and materiel; the Subsistence Department, charged with feeding the army; the Medical Department, responsible for health and hygiene of the army; the Pay Department, whose paymasters circulated among the posts dispensing pay; the Corps of Engineers, which constructed works and mapped the country; the Ordnance Department, which armed the troops; and the Signal Corps, which experimented with flags, telegraphy, meteorology, and other means of communication.

The staff chiefs also had subordinates assigned to the lower division and department commands. These officers reported to their respective line commanders, but their principal loyalty was to their staff chief in Washington. In the lower commands, therefore, the line general, contending with mixed loyalties, often lacked the power to control his own logistics — a crippling effect in field operations.

Despite isolation from the staff departments and arrogation of the power to order troop and personnel assignments to the secretary of war, the commanding general still exercised large influence on subordinate commands. This was especially true during the tenure of William T. Sherman, who served from 1869 to 1883. Such was his wartime stature and friendship with subordinate generals that he exerted immense influence on their thinking and actions while constantly feuding with the secretary of war.

Sherman explained his dilemma in a letter to Sheridan in 1872:

As you say [General John] Pope ought not to fuss about Staff. He has a staff and I have none. He can give an order and enforce its execution, and I can not give an order. ... I am sometimes consulted, but my inferiors in rank can take my advice or not as they please, whilst I possess no military status. I will endeavor to help department and division commanders in the maintenance of discipline; and in preserving the semblance of an army. Maybe after General Grant's reelection he may feel disposed to give us some of his sympathy and help. But I know that leading politicians are jealous of military fame and will secretly aid to destroy General Grant, so as to prove that military men do not make good Presidents.

So disgusted with his status did Sherman become that in 1874, over the vigorous protests of Sheridan, he moved his headquarters to St. Louis and essentially abdicated command. With the impeachment and ouster of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876, however, the new secretary, Alfonso Taft, persuaded Sherman to return to Washington and granted him authority over the adjutant general and the inspector general. Subsequent secretaries continued the system.

Two divisions and seven departments made up the organization of the army in the American West. The Military Division of the Missouri, commanded from his Chicago headquarters by Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan, encompassed the plains and mountains east of the continental divide.

The division was organized into four departments: the Department of Dakota, headquartered in St. Paul (Minnesota, Dakota, and Montana); the Department of the Platte, headquartered in Omaha (Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, and part of Dakota and Montana); the Department of the Missouri, headquartered at Fort Leavenworth (Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico); and the Department of Texas, headquartered in San Antonio (Texas and the Indian Territory).

The Division on the Pacific, headquartered in San Francisco, comprised all the territory west of the continental divide. While Sheridan enjoyed a long tenure, the Division of the Pacific had a succession of leaders, notably John M. Schofield and Irvin McDowell. The Division of the Pacific embraced the Department of California, also headquartered in San Francisco (California and Nevada); the Department of the Columbia, headquartered at Portland, Oregon (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska); and the Department of Arizona, headquartered at Prescott (Arizona).

Pay and promotion preoccupied the officer corps. In each session of Congress, members sought and sometimes succeeded in reducing officer pay. Worse than low pay was no pay. At midnight on March 3, 1877, the congressional session expired before appropriations could be made for the army. Not until a special session opened on October 15 was a bill passed and pay restored.

Commented the Army and Navy Journal: "On the postponement of the extra session of Congress to the 15th of October the officers of the Army and Navy may say to the Administration, as the frogs did to the boy in the fable, 'this may be fun for you, but it is death to us.'"

The promotion system rewarded some officers and penalized others. Strict seniority governed promotion from lieutenant through colonel. Junior officers assigned to their regiment advanced from lieutenant to captain only when senior officers transferred or died. This meant that in regiments with a high turnover a lieutenant might reach captain quickly, whereas in regiments with low turnover a lieutenant might serve in grade for years — as many as twenty — before donning a captain's shoulder straps. In 1876 the Battle of the Little Bighorn removed so many officers from the Seventh Cavalry's rolls that promotion came quickly.

Promotion from major through colonel occurred within the arm (infantry, cavalry, artillery); so when a major's vacancy occurred in one of the cavalry regiments, the senior captain of cavalry moved up to major in the regiment where the vacancy existed. The system prevailed through the grade of colonel.

All general officers were appointed by the president, often without regard to seniority. A vacancy in a general officer's grade triggered a storm of influence-peddling as candidates, including colonels, mustered all the influence that they could find from friends in the army or in Congress or even from prominent civilians. The system, of course, led to rivalries, sometimes bitter, among colonels and generals.

Despite the enmity between staff and line, line officers, confronted with the prospect of years in the same grade and life in an isolated frontier post, mustered all the influence that they could find to wangle a staff appointment. Staff officers lived a much more comfortable and stable life than line officers, for a staff assignment meant living in or near a city and avoiding repeated transfers.

Officers who had led the Volunteer Army during the Civil War found themselves commanding a far different enlisted complement. The Regular Army could not recruit the motivated young men who had rushed to save the Union. Recruits came from every background, beginning with a lower order of intelligence. As Brigadier General Edward O. C. Ord observed in 1872, while the government had developed a greatly improved rifle, "I rather think we have a much less intelligent soldier to handle it." Some were fugitives from justice, others from a shrewish wife, still others from poverty, and many were hopeless drunks (as were some of their officers). Most listed their occupation as "unskilled laborer." The "foreign paupers" decried by a New York newspaper were a burden to the army but included some (mainly Irish and German) who rose to be first-rate noncommissioned officers. Not to be discounted, in addition, were the young men who sought adventure and proved to be good soldiers.

The army suffered a high desertion rate and a low reenlistment rate. This dismal record was attributed to various causes. Execrable living conditions at the frontier posts were one. "Fatigue" labor substituting for soldiering was another. Tyrannical noncommissioned officers accounted for many desertions. Each year 20 to 40 percent of the enlisted ranks deserted, died, or were discharged. The consequence was an army of untrained and inexperienced soldiers.

One exception was the four black regiments. The army offered stable employment to a downtrodden people as well as a uniform that civilian blacks could look up to. These regiments boasted high reenlistment rates and low desertion rates. They suffered discrimination from the high command and passed years in the most undesirable parts of the West. Yet most made good soldiers. The only drawback was their inability to do paperwork, throwing most of that chore on their officers.

The postwar army benefited from greatly improved arms. The rifled musket of Civil War times was altered to receive metallic cartridges. No longer did soldiers have to load their weapons with the awkward, time-consuming paper cartridge and ramrod. Metallic cartridges, quickly slipped into the breach, permitted greater rapidity of fire, greater accuracy, and greater velocity and fire power. The cavalry also rode with metallic ammunition, although they failed to decide between two contenders: the old single-shot Sharps and the Spencer, a seven-shot repeater loaded from a tube drilled into the stock. Some regiments carried a mix of the two, as well as pistols. Not until the early 1870s did metallic cartridges appear for pistols. Until then troopers used the cap-and-ball six-shooter of Civil War times.

In 1872 Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry headed a panel of officers charged with selecting a single rifle and carbine for issue to the troops. They chose the single-shot 1873 Springfield rifle and carbine, .45 caliber, that loaded from the breech. Officers complained that the rapid-fire Winchester failed to be included, especially after George Armstrong Custer's disaster dramatized the superiority of the Winchester in the hands of the Sioux. But the Ordnance Department refused, on the grounds that the Winchester had far less range and penetrating power than the Springfield.

The Terry board did not consider sidearms. By 1873, however, the Colt six-shooter had emerged as the favorite, although a Remington .44 caliber and a Smith and Wesson, as altered by Major George W. Schofield, attained some popularity.

Cavalrymen were also issued a saber. It made a fine ornament on dress parade but was almost never carried in the field. It was cumbersome, noisy, and useless to horsemen, who never got close enough to an Indian to use it.

Artillery took the form of Gatling guns and Hotchkiss howitzers. The Gatling fired 350 rounds a minute from ten revolving barrels. Standard infantry ammunition was fed through a hopper. Most officers considered the Gatling useless. It quickly overheated and jammed with black powder refuse. Also, the Gatling was difficult to transport in rough country and slowed the march of any command that took it. More effective was the light mountain howitzer, a steel-tubed two-pounder that could readily be transported and fired rapidly at ranges up to four thousand yards.

Soldiers went west after the war clad in the huge stocks of clothing left over from the war: dark blue blouses and light blue trousers trimmed with the color of their arm of the service — blue for infantry, yellow for cavalry, and red for artillery. Although the quartermaster general wished to rid his warehouses of surplus clothing, he dealt with constant complaints from the men who had to wear them. They particularly abhorred the ungainly high-crowned hat with a wide brim turned up on one side and decorated with an ostrich feather. The French-style kepi offered little protection from the elements but was the preferred headgear in garrison. The Civil War clothing also suffered from improper fitting, leaving the wearer to have it tailored at his own expense. Civil War contractors, moreover, had turned out shoddy clothing that deteriorated under frontier conditions. All uniforms were wool, hot in the summer and cold in the winter.

Civil War stocks were not exhausted until the late 1880s, but certain sizes ran short, leading the army to adopt new uniform regulations in 1872. Reflecting Prussian influence as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, the new uniforms produced a far more handsome soldier. Spiked helmets with horsehair plumes and large amounts of gold braid and brass buttons characterized dress uniforms, while undress proved more satisfactory.

Still, in the field, officers and men dressed as they pleased. In 1876 a reporter described the appearance of the Fifth Cavalry at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, on the way to join General Crook's column:

They came along in thorough fighting trim. ... To the fastidious eye ... there was something quite shocking in the disregard of the regulation uniform ... and the only things in their dress which marked them as soldiers were their striped pants and knee boots. ... Their blue Navy shirts, broad brimmed hats, belts stuffed with cartridges, and loose handkerchiefs knotted about the neck, gave them a wild bushwhacker appearance which was in amusing contrast with their polished and gentlemanly manners.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Commanders"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Robert M. Utley.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

1 The Postwar U.S. Army 3

2 Christopher C. Augur 17

3 George Crook 35

4 Oliver O. Howard 67

5 Nelson A. Miles 91

6 Edward O. C. Ord 127

7 John Pope 151

8 Alfred H. Terry 177

9 Evaluating the Commanders 202

Notes 213

Bibliography 227

Index 231

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