Last in Their Class. James Robbins
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to disputes, which were sometimes violent. Drinking was also a popular pastime, mostly whiskey and brandy. Until 1830, troops were issued a whiskey ration, and afterwards were given the cash equivalent. Sutlers sometimes sold whiskey beyond the ration as well, and there were taverns near the forts where soldiers could visit for libations. Revelries (“frolicking”) could last until dawn and become quite clamorous. Camp followers constituted another amusement, and women would pitch their tents outside the garrisons with no need for advertisement. Some officers tried to combat this by inviting them to make camp inside the fort, where they could be watched, but most simply ran the women off.
Desertion was a perennial problem. On average there were around 620 desertions per year in these days, which was about 12 percent of the enlisted strength, and the number rose to over 900 in 1829.11 In some parts of the country a soldier could make a dollar per day as a laborer, which was six times his Army pay and a tremendous inducement. The Army paid a bounty to civilians who returned deserters, which led some enterprising soldiers to go over the hill and have a friend turn them in, with whom they would split the reward.12 Congress outlawed the death penalty for desertion in May 1830, and the spring of that year was rife with flight. “If matters go on in this way much longer we shall be left without any men,” Heintzelman remarked. “All a man has to do is to make the attempt, he is almost certain to succeed.”13 It was almost impossible to apprehend a clever fugitive, who had only to wait in the woods for a chance to cross over to Canada. Sometimes deserters would send letters explaining themselves, seeking assurances that they would not be punished if they returned. Other times they would wander back after a few days on their own, to be disciplined at the discretion of the commanding officer. Some left and came back many times. Hunting down the runaways became another amusement, and was enjoyed particularly by the other enlisted men. President Jackson signed an order giving free pardon to all deserters, releasing all those confined for desertion, and discharging those who so desired, with the provision that they could not rejoin the Army again. This did not solve the problem.
Yet desertion, for all its stigma, was a useful safety valve. It removed the soldiers most dissatisfied with Army life, usually in their first year of enlistment, and left behind those better able to adapt. In the winter, however—with fewer distractions, the stresses of cold weather, claustrophobic conditions, and no possibility of flight—the atmosphere at a frontier post could get vicious. The period of isolation at West Point in the winter months was good training for the frontier, but did not fully replicate the brutality of the cold, or the depth and persistence of the snow. Furthermore, when the cadets “mutinied” at West Point, it was something of a game. On the frontier, mutiny was played for keeps.
On Christmas Day 1829, the Fort Mackinac post commander, Colonel Cutler, took two of his senior officers to dine in the nearby village. Ten minutes after they left, a group of two dozen men gathered on the parade ground. Kirby, the officer of the day, ordered them to disperse. As he gave the order, three soldiers rushed him, falling onto the lieutenant with murderous force. Other officers ran out of their quarters and came to Kirby’s relief, whereupon the assembled men retired to their quarters. After an investigation, the ringleaders, nine members of Smith’s company, were confined. Kirby was outraged. On his own initiative, he had four men flogged that very day and two others whipped later. Inflicting corporal punishment on soldiers was risky. Aside from being painful, it was humiliating, and it courted retribution. An English visitor to the United States observed at the time that “the American peasant, though a brave and hardy man, and expert in the use of the rifle and musket, is naturally the worst soldier in the world as regards obedience and discipline. He has been brought up to believe himself equal to the officers who command him.”14 Soldiers were not above leveling the field; for example, in June 1830 an officer was shot and killed at Green Bay by a soldier after minor punishment for neglect of duty.
Beyond the humiliation, flogging was illegal and had been since 1812. Kirby was brought before a court martial in Detroit in July, presided over by Colonel Cutler. He was found guilty and sentenced to dismissal, but the court recommended that the president remit the sentence given the circumstances. After all, the soldiers tried to kill him. Kirby was ordered to New York to report to General Scott and await disposition. President Jackson, who had protested against the 1812 law and been infamous for harsh discipline while a commander, had changed his views on corporal punishment by the time he reached the White House. In General Order 28 of 1829 he cautioned against mistreatment of soldiers, who feel protected by the law, and “still less [punishments] should be suffered to be inflicted by an officer, whose duty it is to be the soldier’s protector.”15 Jackson did not sympathize with the young officer and he let the sentence stand. Kirby was dismissed from the Army on October 6, 1830.16
NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO THE West Point cemetery, on an empty stretch of grass behind a tall hedge, stands a solitary monument of white Italian marble. Four upright cannon decorate the corners of an oblong square stone, supporting a platform adorned with stars, on which stands a wreathed fasces with an eagle perched on top. On the southward face of the stone are carved eight names. The inscription reads:
TO COMMEMORATE
THE BATTLE OF THE 28TH DEC
1835
BETWEEN A DETACHMENT OF
108 U.S. TROOPS
AND
THE SEMINOLE INDIANS
OF FLORIDA
IN WHICH
ALL OF THE DETACHMENT
SAVE THREE
FELL WITHOUT AN ATTEMPT
TO RETREAT
The monument was erected in 1845 and originally stood prominently on the banks of the Hudson, clearly visible from the Academy across the Plain and from any vessels passing on the river, a mute and graceful reminder of the opening shots of a seven-year conflict that today rarely makes the list of America’s forgotten wars.
Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock was with the first column to arrive at the battlefield, weeks after the action had taken place. He described it as “one of the most appalling scenes that can be imagined.” Clusters of bodies, “mostly mere skeletons but with much of the clothing left on them,” lay at the ambush site, along the road, and in a nearby redoubt the men had fashioned for their last stand. They lay “in precisely the same position they must have occupied during the fight, their heads next to the logs over which they had delivered their fire, their bodies stretched, with striking regularity, parallel to each other.”1 Hitchcock, like many others present, had friends among the dead, and the skin had dried hard and smooth like parchment, easing the process of identification. They buried their comrades in mass graves, marking that of the officers with an upturned cannon the Seminoles had thrown into a swamp.
The massacre stunned the nation. Two companies of soldiers, well armed, with artillery support, were cut off and annihilated by tribesmen whom most people considered half naked savages. The Army had never suffered so serious a defeat in any previous encounter with Indians. Memorial poems were written in honor of the fallen, and volunteer militia companies formed and moved south.2 When news of the massacre reached New York in January, diarist and former New York City mayor Philip Hone noted that the Seminole victory would not have the effect that the Indians anticipated. “This very battle in which temporary success has been won by their savage arms will be the ultimate cause of their destruction,” he wrote. “Humanity may deplore the fate of the red men, philanthropists talk as they will about equal rights and the oppression of power, but it is inevitable. . . . After some hard service and destruction of the lives and properties of the whites, the Indians will be exterminated.”3
THE SECOND SEMINOLE WAR was the result of an attempt to move the Indians of Florida west to live alongside the Creeks and other