Frontier Crossroads: Fort Davis and the West

Chapter Six: RETURN TO THE FRONTIER

chapter six RETURNTOTHE FRONTIER The return of the regular army brought order—federal-government style—to the Trans-Pecos. Although traditional histories sometimes reviled Reconstruction’s impact on Texas, non-Indians of the Fort Davis region found that economic opportunities and greater security accompanied the renewed military presence. But changes in the old routine were also apparent. Whereas Washington Seawell’s controversial tenure during the 1850s had provided a semblance of command stability to Fort Davis, over the next decade and a half the post had no fewer than six permanent and thirteen temporary commanders. The troops stationed there also shifted about more frequently. Soldiers from a single regiment, the Eighth Infantry, had formed the permanent garrison from the fort’s inception to 1861; between 1867 and 1882, however, members of six different regiments guarded the post on the Limpia (see table 6.1 and appendix 1). The soldiers at Fort Davis after the Civil War differed significantly from their antebellum predecessors. Whereas the typical soldier had once been a white emigrant from Ireland or the Germanies, he was now black, probably a former slave, and had been born in the upper South or a border state. Analysis of the enlisted personnel enumerated in the 1870 and 1880 censuses, for example, reveals that nearly 25 percent of all troops stationed at Davis had been born in Kentucky; another 16 percent hailed from Virginia. Collectively, 88 percent of garrison members were natives of slave states. Only six men listed as “soldier” had been born abroad, listing Mexico (three), Canada, Jamaica, and Bombay as their places of birth. At age thirty-nine, Henry Wiley, a Kentuckian, was the oldest enlisted man on post in 1870; he was married to forty-year-old Jane Wiley, who had been born in Maryland. Their eight-year-old child, Laura, had been born in Louisiana. In 1880, John Thomas and Edward Berry, both of whom lived in the barracks and were forty-two years old, tied for the honor.1 Considerable debate accompanied the arrival of black troops in West Texas. Black soldiers were “of little or no use on the Texas Frontier,” claimed Lt. Col. John S. Mason, acting inspector general of the Department of Texas. Brig. Gen. Edward O. C. Ord, department commander from 1875 to 1880, asserted that “a feeling of hostility” marred relations between black regulars and Hispanic civilians. Others resorted to the racial stereotypes of the day. “Every fellow seemed to be an expert on the banjo or violin,” wrote one, and “they all carried a razor about their person as their favorite weapon of defense.”2 Racial tensions occasionally exploded. In the early morning of November 21, 1872, the sound of glass breaking in her bedroom window awakened Mrs. Frederic Kendall, wife of a Twenty-fifth Infantry lieutenant who was on temporary assignment elsewhere. Mrs. Kendall raised the curtain to find Cpl. Daniel Talliferro, Ninth Cavalry, trying to force his way into the RETURN TO THE FRONTIER 71 TABLE 6.1 Permanent Commanders at Fort Davis, 1867–82 Name Rank Unit Dates of command Wesley Merritt Lt. Col. Ninth Cavalry July 1–Nov. 29, 1867 June 1, 1868–Sept. 3, 1869 Edward Hatch Col. Ninth Cavalry Nov. 26, 1869–Dec. 15, 1870 William R. Shafter Lt. Col. Twenty-fourth Infantry May 18–June 18, 1871 July 9–Oct. 5, 1871 Nov. 1–12, 1871 Jan. 1–May 26, 1872 George L. Andrews Col. Twenty-fifth Infantry May 26– July 31, 1872 Aug. 8, 1872–Mar. 4, 1873 Sept. 8, 1874–Apr. 25, 1876 Nov. 26, 1876–Aug. 30, 1878 Louis H. Carpenter Capt. and Bvt. Col. Tenth Cavalry Aug. 30, 1878–May 29, 1879 June 13–July 27, 1879 Sept. 14–Oct. 20, 1879 Napoleon B. McLaughlin Maj. Tenth Cavalry Oct. 20, 1878–June18, 1880 Oct. 15, 1880–Mar. 12, 1881 William R. Shafter Col. First Infantry Mar. 12, 1881–May 13, 1882 Adapted from Greene, Historic Resource Study, 344–49. house. Shouting a frantic warning, Mrs. Kendall seized a revolver and killed the intruder with a bullet through the head. News of the incident spread like wildfire, for threats by a black enlisted man upon a white officer’s wife challenged the foundations of military society. George L. Andrews, the bespectacled post commander and himself colonel of the all-black Twenty-fifth Infantry, complained to department headquarters that such incidents were becoming more frequent...