Frontier Cavalry Trooper: The Letters of Private Eddie Matthews, 1869–1874

Introduction

xi ✯ InTroduCTIon The post-Civil War era witnessed the resumption of the U.S. Army’s role as the vanguard of the nation’s westward expansion. Acting in this role was a daunting challenge for a force whose numbers were always inadequate for the task, a reflection of the Founding Fathers’ predisposition against a large standing armycontrolledbythecentralgovernment.Thevolunteerforceraisedinresponse to the Southern rebellion swelled to more than a million men, but by the end of 1865, nearly all of the units assembled had been disbanded and mustered out, leaving the regular army at a strength of only about forty-three thousand men. Congress increased the size of the army to some fifty-four thousand men the following year in an attempt to provide enough troops to both police the Reconstruction of the South and contend with the Indian situation in the West. But in 1869, a parsimonious Congress burdened with wartime debt dealt the army a serious blow by directing it to consolidate its forty-five infantry regiments to twenty-five, while retaining ten cavalry and five artillery regiments. The army’s woes were further exacerbated by casualties, discharges, and sluggish xii introduction recruiting, all of which translated to a force that was consistently 10 percent smaller than its new official strength of 37,313. This pitifully small army was tasked with manning fortifications along both seacoasts from Maine to Texas and from Alaska to California, besides maintaining a couple hundred posts, arsenals, and camps scattered throughout the interior. Frontier garrisons, geographically isolated and composed of only one or two understrength companies, were common. Much of the transMississippi West, particularly west of the hundredth meridian, was only partially settled, with enormous tracts of land still entirely devoid of non-Indian inhabitants. The regulars, therefore, were tasked with protecting routes of travel and communication and dealing with recalcitrant tribesmen residing in the territories. Many of the men who joined the regular army in the latter 1860s were Civil War veterans who had found that military life agreed with them. A high percentage of new recruits were recent foreign immigrants, while men unable to find employment in the postwar economy constituted another large segment . Throughout the rank and file was a smattering of young, adventureseeking Americans who had not reached military age during the war, but were motivated to enlist after hearing of thrilling experiences told by their veteran relatives. Still others had encountered problems at home or with the law and sought refuge in the army. Typical of the last group, nineteen-year-old William Edward Matthews, known to family and friends as Eddie, quickly regretted his decision to enlist in September 1869. The regular army, noted for unquestioning obedience and strict discipline enforced by harsh punishment, was not the army his father had known as a member of the volunteer force during the war. However, unlike many of his contemporaries who contributed to a notoriously high desertion rate, Matthews resigned himself to abide by his oath and make the best of the experience. His parents, John and Judith Matthews, exemplified the foreign-born immigrants who came to America during the mid-nineteenth century. Both were natives of Cornwall County, England, a tin- and copper-mining region on the island’s southwestern peninsula. By the age of twenty, John, like most of the men in the area, was employed in the backbreaking, dangerous work of a miner. Not long after his marriage to Judith Newton early in 1847, he concluded that eking out an existence on a miner’s wages was an economic dead end, with hardly better prospects for his offspring. Electing to cast their fortunes in America, the Matthewses boarded a ship bound for the United introduction xiii States in March 1848, shortly after the birth of their first child, Elizabeth (“Lizzie”).1 Within two years of their arrival, the couple migrated to western Maryland’s Allegany County, where John again found familiar work in the mines. By that time, the Matthews family included a second child, Eddie, born in Frostburg on April 26, 1850. John improved his status sometime during the following decade when he became postmaster at nearby Oakland, Maryland.2 The Civil War directly impacted Allegany County in the fall of 1861, when the Third Regiment Potomac Home Brigade, Maryland Volunteers began recruiting five companies from among area residents. Despite his age—he was then forty-one—and being a father of eight, John offered...