On the anniversary of an insurrection. Where are we headed?

There will be a lot of retrospective columns appearing here and there today, although oddly, our local paper didn't have one.  Many of these, like the two I already posted, will warn that American democracy is in peril.

And indeed it is.  

On January 6, 2021 an insurrection attempting to prevent the certification of the Electoral College vote occurred resulting in the storming of the chambers of the Senate and the House for the first time since the War of 1812.   The Confederate battle flag flew in those halls, something that symbol of racist hatred had not ever managed to come close to doing in the Civil War.  Members of the national legislature and the Vice President feared for their lives while, as we now know, President Trump ignored pleas for his supporters to stand down.

We further now know, thanks to the January 6 Committee, that plans to steal the election, effectively mount a coup, in fact occurred, but they were undertaken by Donald Trump, not the Democratic Party.  The Democrats, who as we noted in an earlier recent item, had grown comfortable with forty plus years of court forced social change, and therefore non-democratic rule of a type themselves, are not wholly free of blame, but there had never been in the country's history an effort to absolutely impose the rule by a President that had twice lost the popular vote and then lost the electoral vote in his second run for office.

Moreover, there's an ongoing effort right now to put Donald Trump back in office in 2024 which is now so pronounced that he himself may no longer have that much of a choice on running.

That Trump ever was elected in the first instance is a sign of how ill American politics have become.  In any earlier time, nobody with Trump's character would ever have received the nomination of a major political party, let alone be elected. The fact that he was remains a serious sign of American decline.

A serious sign of our ongoing state of peril is that the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith, Dwight Eisenhower, and the like now is no longer committed to democracy at all on a national level.  On a local level it continues to struggle somewhat, but in places like that where I live the primary election will effectively be the general election and the only issue will be how blindly loyal to Trump and his lies a candidate is.

Some are predicting the end of American democracy.

A very erudite commentator I heard didn't predict that, but rather something like a new Compromise of 1877 coming into effect, which I think is probably a more accurate prediction of this type.  For those who do not recall that, that was the political compromise in which Republicans of the 1870s proved willing to sell their souls and their loyalty to democracy and gave up on it in the South, thereby leading to nearly a century of highly imperfect elections in the South. Some have noted, or claimed, that because of this, the US wasn't a real democracy until the 1960s, and that it threatens to become a fake one again.

I think, as noted, that there's a real chance that something like that will occur. The GOP will facture into two parties, which it nearly already has, and the Democrats will as well.  Only in the really contested regions will issues like a person's unthinking loyalty to Trump be an issue.  In areas like Wyoming, it will be assumed and not even mentioned except in the apple pie and motherhood sort of way..^[1]

That's not my prediction, however.

I'll be frank that I am extremely worried.  I think the chance that the Trumpist pull off a coup in 2024 is pretty high, and that this would in fact rocket the United States into second nation status.  Our run as the premier global democracy will be over, and historically it will have proven to be surprisingly brief.  The American Century would have been just about that, in real terms.

But in spite of that fear, I'll weigh in with some cautious optimism it won't happen.

My first prediction here is that slowly, slowly, things are turning.  The news from the January 6 Committee is getting out.  Of note, political wind sniffer Ted Cruz, whose role in trying to position himself as the Trump heir apparent post insurrection led to his post insurrection effort to affect a coup, came out on the anniversary of the event and stated:

We are approaching a solemn anniversary this week, and it is an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol, where we saw the men and women of law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage, incredible bravery, risk their lives to defend the men and women who served in this Capitol. We are grateful for that courage, we appreciate the selfless sacrifice of the men and women who keep us safe.

Those are admirable sentiments indeed, even if Cruz's own post insurrection role was despicable.  But Cruz is pretty good at switching sails rapidly, and the fact that the former primary opponent of Trump, and then Trump acolyte, suddenly is throwing rocks at insurrectionists is telling.  He knows something we don't, and the 1/6 Committee was hinting all last week that there are some real bombshells out there.

The fact that Donald Trump cancelled his planned speech for this day is telling as well. Something is coming.

So far, Trump loyalist have proven immune to the news and even Trump efforts to change the story on anything, so those who claim whatever it is won't matter have a good point.  Robert E. Lee refused to march in step after the Civil War at Washington & Lee College, James Longstreet became a Republican, and Pickett called Lee "the man who destroyed my division", none of which kept Southerners from elevating the effort to keep men enslaved into the memory of "The Lost Cause".

It took another crisis, the Spanish American War, and then a second, World War One, to really get over those events, and it's certainly not impossible we might get another one as well that would serve the same purpose.  In modern times, it seems events come much quicker.  China or Russia, for example, could easily provide the unifying emergency that puts Trump in the dust. We'll see, but if I were the Chinese, I'd be weighing my options for invading Taiwan now and trying to determine if they're better before 2024, or or after.

Anyhow, while much of what is in these electronic pages is not very optimistic, I'm going to note some predictions here and a collapse of American democracy will not be among them.

First of all, I'm going to predict that this summer, Liz Cheney prevails in the Wyoming primary over Harriet Hageman.

By that time, whatever is lurking ready to explode in the 1/6 Committee halls will be out.  Hageman so far has been able to semi camouflage her campaign's sole point being loyalty to Trump, albeit not much, but whatever it is, by that time, will be out and wholly unavoidable.  She'll be forced into determining whether Ride for the Brand is the same thing as Loyalty Is My Honor.^[2] and won't really have a good answer for that question.

Moreover, it's likely to turn out that real native Wyomingites and those immigrants from the neighboring states were never as Trumpy as the COP county committees.  Indeed, I heard one immigrant from one of our neighboring states who had been a Republican office holder refer to the local GOP as "batshit crazy" even before the election, showing how dissent was already there.  My guess is that Cheney will win, and not just by a little bit, but not as much as before.

I hope a solid Democrat runs, although I'm not optimistic about it.  Wyoming has become a one party state, and that's not a good thing

My next prediction will be that in 2024 voting for Trump won't be an issue, and it won't be an issue for one of two reasons.

The less likely reason is that he'll be indited on criminal charges.

This appears to be likely in New York, in Federal court.  Beyond that, I don't think it's unlikely that the January 6 Committee will refer over charges to the US Attorneys Office. 

That will be a nightmare for the Biden Administration, a nightmare in part inflicted by the country's utter prior failures to indite Richard Nixon, which should have happened, and to fully punish the Southern insurrectionists of 1860-65, which also should have happened. But I don't think the country will actually allow a third the King Can Do No Wrong event go by when the deposed monarch is vying for reinstatement.  If charges are referred, he'll be indited, and convicted.  By 2024 he may be in prison.

But I also don't think that's the reason he won't be running.

I don't think he'll be running for the same reason Joe Biden won't be running.

Both men are ancient.  Biden is older, and looks infirm and ill, but Trump looks bloated and like a man packing around a ton of makeup. 

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Psalm 90:10..^[3]

I'm not predicting, and certainly not wishing, any disaster upon either men, and most definately not a man made one.  Unlike the shockingly high, but still minority, percentage of Americans who now apparently feel that violence for political reasons is sometimes justified, I do not..^[4]  I'm not keen on violence of any kind.

Rather, what I'm saying is that the reality of things is that men past pretty much age 30, yes 30, can find that they have a seat on the barque over the River Styx at any time.

Now, men who have obtained threescore years and ten, or more, may be in fantastic shape.  Some have active minds and rigorous bodies.  Indeed, one fellow resident of this state I follow appears to have both.  I've seen ranchers and cowhands who still worked pretty much full days into their 70s.  There are exceptions.

But those exceptions often appear, well, exceptional. They've made the effort to be active and beyond that none of the ones that come to mind offhand, the problematic Éamon de Valera, and the exceptional Winston Churchill, aside, occupied stressful positions until they took their seats on that passage.

And even at that, the comparisons are notable.  De Valera remained thin and vigorous looking up until the end, even though he went blind.  Churchill, weight and drinking aside, remained remarkably able, although he was frankly failing towards the end.  Trump looks like a man who is about to have a heart attack or stroke any day, and the pressures upon him are about to get considerably more pronounced.  Biden looks a bit dottered in spite, no doubt, of efforts to keep him from appearing so.

So while it is a grim prediction, my guess is that the scythe that takes us all, naturally, will have taken them by then.  Biden, who has lived a tragic life in many ways, but not one of excess, will probably simply pass, Trump, who has lived a life of excess, is more likely to go by heart attack or stroke.

That would mean that in 2024, of course, Kamala Harris would be the incumbent President.  But as is so often the case with Vice Presidents, she's failed to secure a following and I doubt she would even after being the first female President. I'm not sure if she'd even run.  I do think it more likely that a less disliked female candidate, Amy Klobuchar, would run.  

I also think that Ted Cruz would run as the self-appointed political adopted son of Donald Trump, and fail to gain the nomination.  I don't think it would be impossible that Liz Cheney would secure the nomination.

And a race like that is the one we will see in 2024.  A likeable female Democrat against either a stern female Republican conservative or a widely disliked, consummate Republican Senator.  The first race would be difficult to predict the outcome of. Cruz, who is easy to detest, would lose in such a race.

Either way, the Trump era will pass with Trump pretty quickly.  Political movements centered on one man fail when the man isn't there, even if they had some larger structure.  The Progressive Party died when Theodore Roosevelt left it.  In no way comparable to Roosevelt's Progressive Party, but as another example of a movement based on one man, Francoist political parties bit the dust after Franco died, in spite of having ruled Spain with no opposition for forty or so years.  Fascists remain in Italy, or rather "Neo-fascists", but they've never seriously threatened to rule the country following the demise of Mussolini.  Millions of Germans voted for Hitler, followed him into war, and joined the Nazi Party during Hitler's rule of Germany, but efforts to revive any form of Nazism following the war have been a complete failure.

Indeed, the more a movement is not only based on a man, but a demagogue, the more likely it is to pass.  Some people admire Huey Long today, but most people regard him as sort of a comic buffoon.  And when politicians finally fall from grace, finding anyone who will admit to supporting them is a difficult task.  Formerly popular causes, when they become unpopular, are ones in which, seemingly, there were never any members.

Healing from the attempted coup is going to be difficult. There can be no doubt about it.  But my guess is that the election of 2024 will play out the way noted, and the healing will begin even before that. The Mitt Romney wing of the GOP will come back out of hiding as the Trumpites deny that they ever were for the man.  The McConnell's will pick up  and move on in the direction they were always going in, and indeed already are.  

Some of the legitimate concerns of populists will be permanent insertions into the GOP, but the GOP will have to start reckoning, and soon, with the fact that it is a minority party and becoming more of one every day.   And indeed that's the ultimate irony of Trumpism.  It might just, if it keeps on, awaken a tidal ave of Democratic heavily left wing opposition that's already there but not doing much.

Wider Republicans have always known this, but have not acted wisely.  Democratic disorganization has allowed them to cower.  In reality, they're being given just a little bit of a breathing room to act.  But they obviously can't or won't as long as Trump seems to command a personality cult.

As noted, while not wishing ill on anyone, the American belief that we all live forever and in perfect health is a lie in and of itself.  Death takes everyone and nobody as old as Trump or Biden really has that much longer to live.  Nature is the ultimate arbiter of everything.  

And when that comes, naturally, as it will, and soon, maybe some of the grip of this era, will be released.  It probably will be.

The nation won't be healed overnight, but the turning of a corner has already started.  Democracy won't die, and it certainly won't die with Trump or Biden.  Having gone through this crisis the real question will be what politics will look like as we emerge from it. Will we have some version of the Compromise of 1877?  Will legitimate populist grievances be taken into account so that a new version of Trump does not arise, or so that populist do not become a dangerous underground fifth column. Will the Democratic left have had enough and use its its majority to reform the country into more of a quasi parliamentary, more democratic and less republican state?  Could all of this happen.

All questions remaining to be answered, but the death of American democracy will be one of the things that will not occur.

Footnotes.

1.  On that, it might be more akin to Republican citations to being for "family" and the like.  It may be time, when candidates start talking about issues like this, to see what their own situation is.  Are they living the "family" life themselves, for example. Do they really hunt, fish, etc., if they cite those things.

"Values" candidates are common, but the point here, are they exhibiting those values in their daily lives?

2.  Loyalty is my honor", as earlier discussed here, was the motto of the SS.

3.  Those are, of course, 70 years of age and 80 years of age.

4.  If the civil war that some are predicting comes about, well my region can count on me sitting it out.  I'm not going to take up arms to shoot at anybody in an internecine spat.  I guess that lets me know how I would have reacted if I'd been, let's say, a Texan in 1860-65.

Tuesday November 8, 1921. Dignatary.

Crow Chief Plenty Coups, (b circa 1908), a Crow leaders since 1876 when he was 28 years old, was back East in order to serve as the Native American representative at the upcoming dedication of the Tomb of the Unknowns.

The US Austrian peace treaty came into effect, officially ending the state of war between the US and Austria.  On the same day, Yugoslavian troops advanced into Albanian territory.

Tuesday, October 25, 1921. Comings and Goings.

Bat Masterson in 1911.

On this day in 1921, Bartholemew William Barclay "Bat" Masterson, of OK Corral fame, died at age 67.  He'd been working as a columnist there since 1902.

Like a lot of frontier lawmen, Masterson had a few run-ins with the law as well as enforcing it.  He was born in Quebec to an Irish Canadian family and had served in most of the classic frontier roles in the West before becoming well known due to the events in Tombstone.   His family moved to the United States while he was a child, and he grew up on a series of farms before becoming a buffalo hunter and Army scout.  He was at the famous battle of Adobe Walls in 1874.  He became a lawman in 1876 and after his famous career in Arizona he occupied that position in Colorado.  He  moved to Denver in 1882 where he was involved in various scrapes and then to New York in 1902.

Masterson was an acknowledged expert on boxing and became a columnist in New York, a position he occupied for the remainder of his life.

Masterson provides an interesting example of how we tend to compartmentalize figures by their historical period.  He was a classic Frontier figure, but lived well beyond the Frontier's close and, no doubt to himself, seemed to always be living in the present even while depictions of the gunfight would continue to be famous all through his own life.  He was outlived, FWIW, by Wyatt Earp, who died in 1929.

King Michael I of Romania was born.  He was Romania's last king, having became a king as a child due to his father abdicating following his inability to reconcile an illicit relationship with his status as king and renouncing his rights upon his own father's death in 1925.  He lost that title in 1930 when parties dissatisfied with the regency reestablished his father as monarch, but he became king again in  September 1940 when a military coup led by Ion Antonescue returned him to the position of king and removed his father.  He was 18 at the time.

He would be king when Romania declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941, but would lead the coup against the military government in 1944, combining with pro Allied officers who also no doubt saw the handwriting of the results of the war on the wall.  He was removed from power in 1948 and died in 2017, by which time he was once again allowed to live part of the year in Romania.

A terrible Categroy Six hurricane hit Tampa Florida. The storm had previously hit Cuba with minimal damage, but Florida was not so lucky.

The government issued a report on the work of government hunters/trappers.

While I know the current thing is to think, "oh, how awful that the Federal Government did that", if I'd been alive then, the life of a government hunter would have appealed to me.  Having said that, you could still homestead in 1921, and likely that would have appealed to me more.

Mrs. Ed Chambers and Mrs. Sid Hatchfield on this day in 1921.

Hatchfield had been the sheriff of Matewan County, West Viriginia and was murdered on August 1, 1921, along with his friend Chambers.  The killings were probably connected with labor problems in the mining industry.  Mrs. Chambers and Mrs. Hatchfield must have been in Washington on this date in some capacity connected with the murders of their husbands.

An American Story?

This goes to post on July 4, 2021, rather obviously.

But it's about events in the 1860s and 70s.  And maybe about today as well.

Just recently I ran across an article about an African American woman who was researching her family's history.  She was aware that she had white ancestors, and indeed nearly every African American whose family is traced back to the 19th Century does.  By the same token, while its rarely mentioned, nearly every white Southern American whose family can be traced back to the 19th Century in that region also does, making all the fighting and whatnot from 1865 forward over race really odd.  

There's a lot of interpretations on what this means, of course, with the word "rape" commonly appearing in such discussions.  This isn't gong to go into things like that.

Rather, what the article revealed is an oddly human story that probably ought to just cause everyone to pause and ponder it.

It dealt with a  man who came from a slaveholding, relatively well off, plantation owning family.  Not a massively wealthy, Gone With The Wind type situation, but relatively well off.  Not so well off that, when the Civil War came, he entered the Confederate army as an officer, however.

He did enter it, was wounded, convalesced at home, and then reenlisted and fought again.

Now, the cause of the South, anyway you look at it, was slavery. That's what the war was about.

And in his household among the slaves was a young female slave.  

When he was home convalescing.  Something happened.  Nobody noticed until he'd gone back into the Confederate army.  She was pregnant.

He was the father.

He returned from the war alive, and this story doesn't go in the direction you'd suppose.  Interracial marriage was illegal in the South (and often elsewhere as well) but he did not abandon her, or their child.  In fact, in the early 1870s when there was very briefly a brake in the prohibition on interracial marriage, they married, and they lived the rest of their lives as a married couple.

That couldn't have been easy. They lived in the South, and they must have been outcasts.  But they carried on anyhow.  When he died, he was buried in an all white cemetery. When she died some years later, she was buried in an all black cemetery.  That shows, I suppose, the attitudes of those around them.

I suppose the fact that their descendants today are regarded as African Americans also does. The half white, half back, children of that union were black under the strange American "one drop of blood" viewpoint, and they must have slipped into the black community where they lived.

It's an interesting story, however.  A son of a planter and a Confederate soldier develops a relationship with a black slave owned by his family, during the war, and later marries her.

Postscript.

Oddly enough, on the same day I posted this, I ran back across this being linked into one of my cousins' Facebook feeds.  A very powerful essay.

You want a Confederate Monument?  My Body is a Confederate Monument.

The American System

You know that you are listening to PBS News Hour when one of the commentators is enthusiastic about the Biden infrastructure proposal as he finds it comparable to the Whigs' American System economic policy.

Henry Clay, one of the founders of the Whig Party and the chief spokesman for its American System.

I had to look that up.

It turns out that I was slightly, and I do mean slightly, familiar with the American System, but not by that name and mostly in the form of its lingering influence on the GOP during the 1860s, 70s and 80s. And I really know nothing about Henry Clay, its chief proponent, other than that he was well known at the time. According to the Congressional website on such topics:

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."

Clay delivered a famous speech on the topic, which we won't set out here as its of epic length. You can read it, however, here:  The American System.

The American System was the main economic platform of the Whigs and it was ardently, and now ironically, opposed by the Democrats.  The Democrats were pretty much a laissez-faire party at the time and opposed to government having much of any kid of role in the economy.

The Congressional summation of the American System doesn't appear to be a fair one. The breadth of Whig support for a government role in the economy was pretty wide.  For instance, it reached down to supporting public primary education, something that wasn't universal at the time.

It was ultimately the economic policies, and the overarching issue of slavery, that did the Whigs in, causing them to collapse in the 1850s. By that time the Southern faction of the party was no longer supportive of an expansive Federal role in the economy, where as the northern "National Republican" faction was.  Slavery, of course, became a massive issue in the party.  By the mid 1850s the party was flying apart and a collection of new parties rose up to contest for its former members.  In the north the Republican Party soon emerged.  In the South, Whigs remained without a structure, but opposed succession and then went on to loosely start to form an emerging party in the Southern Congress that never fully formed due to the war ending before that could occur.  The Confederacy was, of course, nearly a one party state.

People often discuss the legacy of the Whigs, but one early legacy was that the GOP was, initially, pretty proactive in using Federal money and Federal assets in the economy. The most prominent example of that was the Transcontinental Railroad which would not have come about without a degree of government planning, favoritism, spending and intervention.  So, PBS isn't out to a left wing lunch when its commentator makes this comparison.

It's interesting too, in that may in fact be a much closer analogy to what Biden is attempting to do than the New Deal.

That doesn't mean its a good idea, or that all of it is.  But it's a very interesting historical analogy.

2020 Election Post Mortem XI. The Post Insurrection Administration and Congress.

Actions and words, we're told, have consequences. And we're told that because they do.

During Trump's rise to power and during his administration his biggest ally in the press has been Fox News, which for the most part has reliably been on Trump's side.  That started to come apart after the election during which Trump's increasingly extreme efforts to deny the reality of his loss grew, but even then they still supported him when they could conscience it.

A couple of days ago a Fox commentator, Ainsley Earhardt made this observation on her show Fox & Friends:

There are 75 million people that voted for President Trump. And they are scared. They are worried about what the future of this country looks like. They are confused and heartbroken that their candidate didn't win and they don't want to be forgotten.

She was pretty rapidly shouted down in the media.

That doesn't mean that Earhardt isn't right.  Indeed, she largely is, although the 75,000,000 figure for the brokenhearted and scared isn't correct.  Donald Trump did receive 75,000,000 votes, but some of those votes were from lukewarm supporters who won't cry over his departure now.  Quite a few conservative voters felt that Trump was the only option they had, which doesn't mean that they otherwise were his fans.  Catholic and other Apostolic Christian voters often felt they had to vote for him as, ironically, his Catholic opponent seems to stand for principals that are deeply contrary to their moral beliefs, but quite a few of them otherwise found the President to be repulsive.  And Donald Trump's actions following his November defeat have turned quite a few of his former supporters definitively away from him.

That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't have a lot of support.  The down ballot results for the GOP show that the populist wing of the Republican Party definitely had a lot of support going into the November election, although it lost some in formerly Republican Georgia as a result of Trump's behavior.  It's no doubt lost more now.

Still, Earhardt has a point.

Populist and conservative voters, and the two may overlap but are not the same, have a real reason to be scared, worried, confused and heartbroken.

And the reason for that is that Donald Trump's post election behavior has brought in a united Democratic government that's not only united by party, but united against Trumpism, and licensed for radicalism to a large degree.

In other words, since the election, Donald Trump has machinated for reasons that are difficult to discern, but which seem rooted in narcissism, to bring about the very situation which he claimed to be the one who was protecting against it.

Early after the election we did a series of "post mortems" on where it appeared things were headed, but we did note that the Georgia election would determine a lot of that.  What we didn't see was an insurrection and an administrative support for it that has caused some overseas to regard it as an attempted coup.  

And that changes everything. . . probably.

We really only have three examples of something like this, with one so old as to be probably not worth really discussing in this context. The three would be the post Revolution government of the United States, the second the post Civil War, and the third being the post Watergate.  

The post Watergate is the most analogous.

We don't remember very much of what occurred in the US after the American Congress won the war against the United Kingdom.  What we do tend to recall is the prolonged effort to work out a form of government, which was messy and which involved a lot of infighting.  We won't go into it in detail, but it's worth noting that we commonly hear about the American Revolution was that it was a "conservative revolution".

It wasn't.

The American Revolution was a radical revolution based on the concept, by its end, if the people being sovereign.  It was framed, however, by a largely common culture that had largely shared values and a preexisting governmental structure.  It's overall thesis; monarchs meant nothing and the rights of individuals as expressed through legislators was radical.  The country rejected the concept of monarchy and the rights of monarchs entirely.  It also adopted a type of nationalism that is prior sovereign had not expressed and would not for many years.  It went so far as to see the severance of the dominant church, the Church of England, which claimed apostolic succession, from its acknowledged head, an act of near schism that went along with the Revolution.

Following the Revolution the country did adopt an orderly form of democracy that we retain, with modifications, today.  But it also expelled Loyalist through community action and kept them out through legal process after the war, turning large numbers of Americans into refugees simply because they took loyalty to the legitimate government seriously.  It's not well remembered now, even though it was a dramatic hostile act at the time, and it formed the real origins of Canada, through loyalist refugee communities.

Tory Refugees by Howard Pyle for Harpers, 1901.

Following the Civil War, in contrast, the nation rejected the guidance of the Radical Republicans.  The Radical Republicans would have reformed the South by dispossessing the rebellious large property owners, vested the land in the former slaves, and would have tried significant rebels for treason.  It's often believed that President Lincoln's kindly view of his defeated countrymen kept this from happening, but I frankly doubt it.  Had Lincoln lived the shrewd lawyer and politician likely would have adopted some of the radical desired policies and indeed, the nation should have.  

Most of the Radical's policies were not, however adopted and by the 1870s, a very short time after the war, the nation was giving up on Reconstruction in general. The Compromise of 1877, which has been in the news again, was a result of that as the election of 1876, expressed its final end.  From 1865, or even earlier in some instances, the victorious Union did attempt some reforms in the South, but gaps in their enforcement caused a beaten population to revive, combined with Congress quickly readmitting the recently defeated Southern representatives to Congress.  This had resulted in a tight election in 1876 and the Southern Congressmen, writing the script for which we just witnessed again in 2021, attempted to hold up certification of the results.  

In 1876/77 the effort was much more successful than the one which was just experienced in 2021 and the Republicans compromised by promising, unofficially, to end Reconstruction and withdraw troops from the South.  During the 1865 to 1876 period real progress had actually been made on advancing the rights of blacks and poor Southerners, but it all evaporated over the coming decades and it wasn't until the 1960s that real progress would return.

There are a couple of real lessons from the post Civil War era that should be instructive here.  One is that a victorious side in a real dispute was essentially lead by those only committed in concept to a principal, that being restoration of the Union, and who were only weakly committed to the remainder of what had been fought for.  That is, while the war was over slavery, commitment to reconstruction the South was only barely there a decade after the traumatic event that brought it about.  In 1865-70 the will to really remake things was strong, but by 1871-76 that will had faded.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the failure to really overhaul the South after the Civil War is, in spite of how it might be remembered now, one of the nation's great historical failures.  From 1876 to 1900 the nation crept back into a type of virulent racism that disenfranchised blacks whose legal rights had only barely been established.  The entire civil rights movement of the 1960s would really have been completed during the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century had that not occurred, and the disastrous result of the failure to remake the nation in the late 1860s is something we are still living with today.  Indeed, had we handed the post Civil War reconstruction correctly, we might have avoided what occurred last week.

The bloody flag of treason which has spread in recent years throughout the country.

The final example we have, and the most analogous one, is the Watergate scandal.  And is lessons are the ones that should worry conservatives and populist now.

The entire Watergate break-in episode was a wholly avoidable example of stupidity by overzeals paranoids.  The nation was going to support Richard Nixon's reelection in 1972 and the Democratic Party lurching to the left in the wake of 1968 and all that had occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s was going nowhere.  But the break-in followed by Nixon's complicity in trying to cover it up brought him down and the Republicans with him.  It also swept into power Democrats who were far to the left of their predecessors.

They were there already, but they weren't in control of the overall party.  The Watergate scandal changed that.  Following Nixon's downfall Democrats swept into control of Congress, although ironically the Presidential candidate whom they chose to run in 1976, Jimmy Carter, was really a middle of the road politician.  Carter likely saved the country from going deep hard left in the 1976-1980 time frame, both by the fact that he wasn't a radical, and by the fact that he was a pretty ineffectual President.  Four years of Carter were enough to allow the Republicans to reorganize and come back with Ronald Reagan in 1980, and it also started the formation of the modern Republican Party and its bipolar personality.  Reagan was a conservative, but he stoked the flames of populism and the GOP further abandoned a long standing support of strong civil rights so that it could make headway with Southern voters who remained deeply resentful of changes brought about in their region in the 1960s and 70s.  An ineffectual management of the economy, moreover, by Nixon, Ford and Carter aided in Carter's downfall.

President Carter with Roslyn Carter and Hyman Rickover.

What that lesson tells us is that in a very brief amount of time real left wing Democrats were able to make major inroads into Government.  Some of them still remain there today.  Their period in control was actually surprisingly brief, but it was preceded by an advance in their fortunes during the 1960s and was made real by the collapse of a center right President due to scandal.  Voters were disgusted with Republicans and punished them at the ballot box in 1976.  They got over a lot of it by 1980, which is really amazing in context.

Nixon had his supporters right to the end, and even after, and even today.  But much of that support was lost pretty quickly and Gerald Ford's actions in pardoning Nixon wrecked his chances at reelection.  Democrats in Congress who were mad at what occurred lurched left.  Even during President Ford's administration he didn't attempt to stop that direction as it was unstoppable.

And that's where I suspect we are right now.

Joe Biden goes all the way back to that era, but he's really an East Cost centrist Democrat, just as Jimmy Carter was a Southern centrist Democrat.  Like Carter, however, Biden is going into office with a now invigorated Democratic left.  Right now, while he has a unified government, it's only barely so, but a lot of Republicans, just like Republicans in 1973, have become disgusted with their President.

Moreover, Donald Trump has actually managed to make Richard Nixon look good.  Nixon was paranoid but he didn't attempt to retain power and actually resigned, rather than be impeached and convicted.  He didn't have the support of his party at that time, of course, and he knew it, but Trump has rapidly lost much of his support in Congress as well and doesn't seem to acknowledge that other than to lash out at those who have left him.  Nixon's GOP, however, remained largely intact in 1976 and reorganized, with an insurgent wing that still remains, by 1980.  That new party, part establishment and part populist, just ripped apart and is only barely a single party.  There's a good chance that it will split into two.  

So, here's what I think follows.

At this point, Biden has no reason not to go as left as he wants to and there will be no real hindrance to him going as far in that direction save his own inclinations and those of Democrats who are really in tightly contested regions.  All the warnings and crises about "Socialism" and the like mean utterly nothing whatsoever right now, and they won't for the rest of the year.  Ironically, therefore, Donald Trump has brought about the very situation which he used to stoke the flames of his support.

Moreover, Biden is beholding to his party's left and has now lost the argument he had for not giving it much of what it wants.  He can't maintain that a divided government forces him to play ball with the GOP in the same way he could have before last week.  He can still make that argument, but it's much weakened as the Democrats can get their legislation through unless they themselves do not support it.

And this means that we're going to get a lot of pent up Democratic legislation. There will be new environmental regulation and it will go much further than anything prior to it. There will be gun control.  Policies favoring abortion and new categories of sexual identity are going forward.  The courts are now going to take a giant leap to the left in terms of new appointments.

The country isn't going to be completely made over, but much of it is.  And the people the country can thank or blame for that are those who stormed Congress last week.

October 15, 1878. Edison Electric LIght flips on the switch.

 A long time ago I started a series of posts that riffed off a George F. Will column, in which he stated:

In many ways, the world of 1870 was more medieval than modern. Three necessities — food, clothing, shelter — absorbed almost all consumer spending. No household was wired for electricity. Flickering light came from candles and whale oil, manufacturing power from steam engines, water wheels and horses. Urban horses, alive and dead, complicated urban sanitation. Window screens were rare, so insects commuted to and fro between animal and human waste outdoors and the dinner table. A typical North Carolina housewife in the 1880s carried water into her home eight to 10 times daily, walking 148 miles a year to tote 36 tons of it. Few children were in school after age 12.

I can't recall if I ever expanded on the whale oil lighting specifically, but I did generally, in this post here:

I don't dispute the details that Will recites here, but I do doubt the "more medieval than modern assertion.  Indeed, some of these things argue, I think, the other way around.  Still, it taps into what we're discussing here.  This is just the sort of thing that this blog exists to explore, particularly given that the time frame that Will is discussing, 1870 to 1970, fits right in with the time frame, sort of, that this blog is looking at, as earlier noted. 

Whale oil chandelier, photo from the Library of Congress.  Up until the Will entry, I'd never even considered there being such a thing as a whale oil chandelier.

What Will noted was quite true, but was this Medieval in character?  I'd assert not.  I don't really know, however.  Whaling has taken place to some extent since ancient times, but the widespread use of whale oil, I suspect, didn't come about until well after the Medieval period.  Indeed, it doesn't seem to have been done in an appreciably large manner until maybe the 17th Century, although whaling itself does go back much further than that.  Whale oil, once it became a common commodity, did see use in lamps in candles in an appreciable manner.   Starting in the 19th Century, however, kerosene began to come in.  Whale oil reached its peak in 1845 and then began to fairly rapidly decline thereafter as kerosene became more common, although whale oil would continue to see some use up until electrical generation replaced it in the early 20th Century, a fairly remarkable fact.

That post was entitled:

They could get by without electricity

Well, today is the day that started changing, in 1878.  Today is the anniversary of the Edison Electric Light Company commencing business.

To put this slightly in context, George A. Custer and the men under his immediate command at Little Big Horn had only been in their graves in Montana for two years at this point.  Most of Central Wyoming completely remained Indian territory and the big Texas and Oregon cattle drives to that region of the state hadn't yet commenced.  Rail transportation hadn't penetrated into most of Montana and was only in Southern Wyoming.

Put a slightly different way, for context, when this anniversary reached its centennial, I was in high school.

Depicting Jesse James

There is very little to admire about Jesse James, and yet Americans for generations have.

Jesse James, 1876.

James, as everyone knows, was the Missouri born leader of what was essentially a family, and indeed an ethnic, gang based in Missouri that successfully operated for a time in the Post Civil War Missouri region.  James and his siblings had been exposed to extreme violence as Confederate guerillas during the war and were endowed with the "Little Dixie" region of Missouri's views on the world, none of which would draw sympathy from many people today, but which allowed them to operate relatively safely in the region in spite of their criminal activities due to the feeling that they were, in some ways, continuing the Southern cause.  Those views didn't hold up everywhere in Missouri and they certainly didn't outside of the state, which brought the end of the gang following an extremely failed attempt to raid a bank in Northfield Minnesota.

In spite of the fact that James-Younger gang is not admirable in any sense, they've been the topic of fascination of Americans since their very own time and therefore have been the subject of numerous movies.  Indeed, there are at least twenty screen depiction of James and his gang including one television series from 1965-66.  Numerous Americans claim to be related or descendant from James no matter how dubious their claims may be and, just like for Butch Cassidy, plenty of people claim that James didn't die from a bullet to the back of the head fired by Bob Ford in 1882.  He did.

I haven't seen most of the films that portray James, but there are three that really stand out that a lot of people have seen and which are worth mentioning.  I'll deal with them here, in chronological order.

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid is a 1972 film limited to the raid on Northfield Minnesota and the events leading up to it.  It has a notable cast, including a young Robert Duvall as James and Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger.  It's a fictionalized version of the raid containing fanciful and strained elements but it's really notable for Duvall's portray of James as a homicidal maniac.  It's worth watching for that reason as Duvall, in a portrayal that perhaps could be regarded as an example of an early anti Western, portrays a really disturbing James which served to strip him from the heroic portrayal that was more common up until then.  Robertson, however, steals the show with a really eclectic portrayal of an intellectually curious Younger.

The film isn't bad in terms of material details.

Returning, however, to a more sympathetic portrayal is the sweeping 1980 The Long Riders which is really unique for casting actors who were in fact brothers to play characters in the true story who were actually brothers.  While this film is only eight years later than The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid it placed really close attention to material details and has the look and feel of mid 19th Century Missouri right.  

As noted, the film made use of actual siblings, with the Keach bothers playing the James brothers, the Caradine brothers playing the Younger brothers, the Quaids playing the Miller brothers, and the Guests playing Bob and Charley Ford.  In some odd way that makes the film feel that much more accurate.

This film starts before the Northfield Minnesota Raid and also features James Whitmore, Jr. as a Pinkerton agent.  It concludes with Ford's killing of James.

As does the 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  The awkwardly long title of the film in some ways sets this film up nicely for what it is, a beautifully filmed and very accurate movie which starts after the Northfield Minnesota Raid and deals with the gang and its central post raid figures.  Extremely moody and presented almost like a narrated book, Brad Pitt's portrayal of James as a highly intelligent, charismatic, and mentally deranged figure is brilliant.  Casely Affleck's Robert Ford is really the main focus of the film and his portrayal of James "assassin" is likewise brilliantly done.  The portrayals are so effective that they risk actually defining the real individuals, which may not be fair in context.

This film is superb on material details and it has the look and feel of mid 19th Century Missouri, and then briefly late 19th Century Colorado, just right.  The film concludes with the death of Bob Ford, showing how its focus is really on the Ford character, not on James.  In some ways its a subtle morality tale which none of the other James movies are.  If a person was going to watch just one of these films, this one would be the one to watch.

Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 2. Posts in Wyoming

Part 1 of this post was originally just a few introductory paragraphs before what was intended to be a discussion on Wyoming's posts, but it grew so large, we made it a separate entry.  Here we go on to the second part of the discussion, which was supposed to be the main point of the discussion.

The Wyoming Posts

Wyoming has had a large number of military installations over the years, but most of the posts that have existed within it are long closed, with some of them closed installations for over a century. Today, there are only three really substantial full time military posts in Wyoming, with two of those being National Guard facilities.  We'll take a look at those posts first.

Current Posts

1.  F. E. Warren A.F.B.

Ft. D. A. Russell, 1910.

Warren is named after Francis E. Warren, former Wyoming Senator and Governor and father in law to Gen. John Pershing.  He was also a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient, an award conferred on him post war.  Warren was a major Wyoming political figure during his lifetime.  The post wasn't named for him at first, however.  It was named for David A. Russell.

David A. Russell.

David A. Russell was a career officer and West Point graduate who was a casualty of the Civil War.  Russell had fought in the Mexican War and in the West at the Rogue River War, but had no direct connection with Wyoming of which I'm aware.  Russell was killed by shrapnel in September 1864 at Winchester, Virginia.

Ft. D. A. Russell was established in 1867, the same year that Russell was posthumously brevetted to Major General, and therefore just a few years after Russell's death.  It retained that name up until 1930, when President Hoover had the base renamed for the recently departed Francis E. Warren.

Francis E. Warren.

Warren was a legendary Wyoming political figure of the late 19th and early 20th Century.  He was the state's last Territorial Governor and it first State Governor.  He served in the Senate for a long time, dying in office in 1929.  He was also the recipient of the Medal of Honor for valor in action at age 19 when he was an infantryman of the 49th Massachusetts during the Civil War.  He was John J. Pershing's father in law.  The changing of the name of the post no doubt had as much to do with his long service as a politician as his military service.

The post became an Air Force Base in 1947.  It is perhaps somewhat unique for an Air Force Base as it doesn’t contain a runway.  It’s a strategic missile post.

This post, in the context of the times, provides an interesting example of a post being renamed.  For the first sixty-three years of its existence it bore the name of the unfortunate D. A. Russell, and for the next ninety it has borne the name of Francis E. Warren.  It's also interesting in that it provides an example of a post being renamed for a state political figure between World War One and World War Two.

2.  Camp Guernsey.

The heavily used National Guard training range is named after the town of Guernsey, Wyoming.  This post receives so much use that it is, for all practical purposes, a ground combat training range in constant use by the Army and the Marine Corps, as well as the National Guard.

This National Guard post went into operation in the summer of 1938 when it replaced the Pole Mountain Training Range.  The 115th Cavalry trained there in 38 and 29, and then was called into active duty in 1940.  Training resumed there after the Guard was deactivated in 1945 and has continued on every since.

Guernsey itself was named for C. A. Guernsey who was a local cattle rancher and author.  If viewed in the fashion of Ft. Laramie, therefore, Camp Guernsey was vicariously named for him.  It's interesting that unlike the numerous camps and forts established during World War One and World War Two all around the country, no effort was seemingly made to name it after a military figure, even though numerous Indian Wars battles had been fought in the state and the state had contributed men to the Spanish American War, Philippine Insurrection and World War One by that time.

Indeed, in that context, its surprising that's never been done, even though the Wyoming National Guard has now participated, in some fashion, in every war fought since statehood.

3.  Wyoming Air National Guard Base.

Static display at the gate of the Wyoming Air National Guard base in Cheyenne.

The unimaginatively named Air Guard base in Cheyenne is also heavily used and is called simply that.  It’s odd to think that this Air Guard base, which is extremely active, basically overflies Warren AFB, which as noted lacks a runway.

4.  Army National Guard Armories

At least one current National Guard Armory, the one in Douglas, was named after a long time serving National Guardsman.  Unfortunately, I've been remiss in recording his name and I wasn't able to find it when putting up this post.  I know that he'd served for a long time before World War One, served in the war, and then after the war, as the units full time enlisted man.  He was likely the only full time soldier at that post for much of that time.

The Armory in Rawlins, when it had one, was similarly named after a very long serving Guardsman, Darryl F. Acton.  Acton had been the full time enlisted man and the First Sergeant of the unit for a very long time and after his retirement it was named for him.  He outlived that designation, and therefore this entry more properly belongs below, as the Rawlins Armory was closed post Cold War when the National Guard was reduced in size. Today the Wyoming Department of Transportation occupied the building and the name no longer remains.  1st Sgt Action died in 2019.  His military service dated back to the Korean War.

Former and Closed in the 20th Century.

Not counting all of the National Guard Armories in the state, of which there a large number, including many which have been replaced or simply closed over the years, Wyoming still has a surprising number of 20th Century military post that were occupied at one time.  Many of these fit into the Frontier period with their establishment trailing on into the 20th Century, but a couple of them were World War Two installations.  We deal with them below.

1. Casper Army Air Base.  

Flag pole base of parade ground.

This enormous airfield was built during World War Two as a bomber training facility, opening in September, 1942.  It was transferred to the county following World War Two in 1949 and is now the Natrona County International Airport.  It continues to get a lot of military traffic including so much Royal Canadian Air Force traffic that I jokingly refer to it as the southernmost Canadian air force base.

A lot of the World War Two era buildings remain at this location, but almost all of them have been altered. A museum constructed in recent years, however, contains original World War Two era murals within it.

2. Douglas Prisoner of War Camp.

All that remains from the Douglas Prisoner of War Camp  of World War Two.

This World War Two POW camp held Italian and German POWs.  Only one building remains, which contains murals painted by Italian prisoners.

3. Heart Mountain Relocation Camp.

I'm not quite certain if I should regard this as a military installation or not, but given as there were troops there, I'll count it.

Heart Mountain came about when the Federal Government acted to move Japanese and Japanese American residents from the West Coast to the interior and keep them in camps.  The act was illegal, but it was done, resulting in one of the more shameful episodes in American 20th Century history.  One of the camps was Heart Mountain, which was opened in 1942 and remained open throughout the war, although Administration policies put in place in 1944 that started to allow for the return of the residents meant that by June 1945, prior to the end of the war, the population had been reduced by around 2,000 residents.  Given that over 10,000 people were interred there during the war, that meant that few had left by the war's end and in fact the last internees left the camp in November, 1945.  Given everything that occurred during the war return to their homes proved extremely difficult in many instances.

The state's reputation has been given a black mark by the existence of the camp even though the state didn't cause it to come into existence.  The state did enact discriminatory laws, however, during the war aimed at it residents, who were legal residents of the US or US citizens, so the state doesn't deserve a pass on it either.  The state definitely wanted the internees to leave once they could.

The land for the camp belonged to the Bureau of Reclamation prior to the war and when the camp closed it reverted to that ownership.  In the 1990s efforts were made to preserve what little remained of it and a state interpretive center was opened in 2011.

It's interesting to note that in recollections by the internees Heart Mountain is fairly uniformly regarded as a horrible place, whereas generally the entire Park County region it is in is regarded as one of the nicest places in the state.  This demonstrates how conditions define views.  The structures at the camp were regarded as temporary and were basically tar paper shacks, something that would be difficult to live in a Park County winter even if a person wasn't a prisoner.

4.  Ft. Mackenzie.  

Infantry at Ft. Mackenzie, August 14, 1909.

Established in 1899, this post was named for Indian War commander Ranald S. Mackenzie who is famous for the Dull Knife battle as well as his campaigns in the Southwest. This post was disestablished in 1918, with the grounds transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service in 1921, but an ongoing military presence continued on until after World War Two in the form of a Remount station.  So it didn’t really completely end as a post but simply converted to an auxiliary of Ft. Robinson, Nebraska.

A veteran's hospital today, Ft. Mackenzie is well preserved.

This post, considered a pork barrel project at the time it was established, is one that  had a long association with the military horse in that the remount aspects of this post were a major give and take for the town.  The area where the post was located, Sheridan, had a substantial English ranching connection and a lot of high quality horse breeding occurred there.  Polo was introduced there and it remains in the form of the Big Horn Polo Club.  As noted, even after the post closed the Army remained in the form of an ongoing Remount program for years, even though the troops associated with it were technically serving on a distant assignment from Ft. Robinson.  Given this, the lack of importance the fort is generally viewed with really is not fair.

Ranald S. "Bad Hand" Mackenzie.  Mackenzie lost two fingers during the Civil War which is the probable reason for his nickname.

Ranald Mackenzie was a famous and tragic U.S. Army commander.  An 1862 graduate of West Point, he was a brilliant commander and was breveted to general in 1866.  Following the Civil War he distinguished himself in the post Civil War Indian Wars.  Even by the 1870s, however, he was showing signs of mental instability and was discharged from the service in 1884.  While his decline was commonly attributed to falling from a Wagon while stationed at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, there's fairly good reason to believe that it was due to the progress of syphilis.  The decline of his fame was such that his death was little noted in the press, even though he'd been a very well known and followed commander only a decade before, but he was sufficiently well remembered to be honored in the form of the name of this post.

Some years ago I posted photos of Ft. Mackenzie on another site, where they'd be of interest.  I just recently moved those over to one of our companion blogs, and therefore, while it may burden this thread a bit, I'm reposting them here as well:

Ft. Ranald Mackenzie (Sheridan Wyoming Veterans Hospital)

5. Pole Mountain.  

Pole Mountain was an Army and a National Guard training range located at Pole Mountain, Albany County.  The range was used by both the Army and the Wyoming National Guard in the 20s and the 30s until Camp Guernsey was opened just prior to World War Two.  It’s National Forest today.

It was a cavalry training range during its existence, due to the presence of cavalry at Ft. Warren and in the Wyoming National Guard during that period.  The nearby presence of the Union Pacific Railroad allowed troops to be deposited at the area by train or to ride there from Ft. Warren.

6. Ft. Yellowstone.  

Fort Yellowstone in 1910.

Named after Yellowstone National Park, which it served, the post was established in 1886 for the purpose of administering the National Park, which was a task originally assigned to the Army.  Gen. Philip Sheridan dispatched the original cavalry detachment there which accordingly named the post Camp Sheridan, giving us an example of the naming of a Wyoming post after the living honoree, although only barely, as Sheridan was to die the following year at age 57.  The post was renamed Fort Yellowstone when it was given permanent status in 1891.  The Army occupied the post until 1918 when it was turned over to the National Park Service which had taken over the duties of park administration.

Today its Mammoth Hot Springs in the park.  Many of the original buildings remain.

This post had to offer its troops some of the best duty of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

7. Ft. Washakie.  

Large stable at Ft. Washakie which is now used for other purposes.

This post was named after Chief Washakie of the Shoshone was living at the time and in fact outlived the post, dying at about age 100.

Visit of President Arthur to Ft. Washakie, 1883.

The area has a somewhat complicated history in regard to the establishments of military installations.  The first post established there was Camp Augur, which was a subpost of Ft. Bridger.  It was established in 1869.  Augur was a Mexican war and Civil War general who was the head of the Department of the Platte at the time, giving us another example of the naming of an installation after a living figure, although it was a camp, not a fort.  While Camp Augur is regarded as the predecessor of Ft. Washakie, it was actually located where Lander Wyoming is located today.  It's purpose was to protect the Shoshones at the Wind River Indian Reservation and it was located at the Indian Agency headquarters.  In 1870 the camp was renamed Camp Brown, in honor of Cpt. Frederick Brown who was killed at the Fetterman Fight.

In 1871 the agency headquarters were moved fifteen miles to the north and the Army post went with it.  In 1878 the post was renamed Ft. Washakie.  The town that developed there is the seat of government for the Wind River Reservation and many of the military buildings remain in use.  

This post was one of two (the other being D. A. Russell) which at which the 9th Cavalry was stationed in the state for a time.

This post is unusual in that it was named after an American Indian, and a living one at that. It's occasionally claimed that it provides the only example of this being done, but that is disputed.

Former and closed in the 19th Century.  

Map by William Henry Jackson depicting Pony Express stations.  This is posted here as many of the same stations were used by the Army during the Civil War as small military posts.

This list will be incomplete.  There were many, many, temporary camps, stations and installations in Wyoming during the frontier period, many of which simply bore the name of where they were.  Indeed, my house is quite near one whose exact location is unknown.  Some of these which are remembered are because they were more established than the others or they're associated with a specific event.

On this, there's a couple of things we should note.

One is the presence of "stations".  During the Civil War the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas Cavalry, and to an extent the 1st U.S. Volunteers, the latter of which were "galvanized Yankees" who were mostly from Tennessee in Wyoming's case, established a network of stations along the Oregon Trail to protect it and the telegraph line that had gone in.  Many of these were existing civilian locations that were thought deserving of protection in any event, but not all of them were. And not all of the existing civilian stations received an Army garrison.  This was a change in strategic thinking as it allowed patrols to be shorter and forced Indian parties that might have some destructive intent to deal with a much more extant military presence, even if the number of soldiers at any one station was often very small.  The strategy was quite effective.

Not all of the locations for these stations is presently known today. I’m presently within a few miles of three of them, two of which have known locations and one of which doesn’t, but is probably within several hundred yards of my house.

During the same period, and before, the Army also established a lot of camps, quite a few of which were very temporary in nature. Even ones that featured log structures were often only occupied fairly briefly.  These bases served campaigns in vast contested territories and had the chance of becoming permanent in some instances, although many did not.

1.  Camp Augur and Camp Brown.

See Ft. Washakie

2.  Fort Bernard

I'll abstain going into depth on this post, as it was a private American Fur Company trading post near Ft. Laramie.  This trading post had a surprisingly long life, existing from 1845 to 1866, when it burned down.

3.  Fort Bridger

Ft. Bridger is named for its founder Jim Bridger, who founded it as a trading post in 1842.  The post seems to have been sold by a partner of Bridger's to Mormon interests in 1855 during a period of time during which Bridger, who did not get along well with the Mormons, was absent.

Frontiersman Jim Bridger.  Bridger was a long lived individual for the dangerous life he lead.  Born in Virginia and orphaned in Missouri at age 13, he lived to age 77 and died on his farm in Kansas.  He was married three times due the deaths of his spouses, with each of his wives being a Native American.  His last was a daughter of Chief Washakie.  Of his several children, only one outlived him.

The post was burned in 1857 by the Mormons during the Mormon War in order to keep it out of U.S. Army hands, but they wintered there and rebuilt the fort as an Army post in 1858.  The Army thereafter occupied it against both of its prior owners until abandoning it in 1878. The Army then reestablished it in 1880, and then closed it again in 1890.

This post was one of the numerous frontier posts established by civilians who named them after themselves.  Occupied prior to the Civil War, the Army of that period simply retained the prior name.

2.  Ft. Caspar.  

This post amed for Lt. Caspar Collins who was killed at a battle with the Cheyenne at that location in 1865, prior to which it was Platte Bridge Station.

The post location was at a point on the North Platte River that could be forded and it had been used as a temporary military camp prior to Platte Bridge Station prior to the Civil War.  In 1849 a ferry was established on the location by the Mormon church.  French Canadian entrepreneurs established a bridge there shortly afterwards, and a trading post along with it.  When the telegraph line was put through the area, Western Union established a telegraph station there.  In 1861 the Army posted troops at the location, given its obvious importance,  naming the station after the Bridge.  In 1865 a battle was fought across the river from the location in which Lt. Caspar Collins was killed leading a relief party attempting to get to an Army wagon train that was some miles distant and being besieged.  The Army then named the post after the late Lt. Collins.

Statue of Collins in Casper, Wyoming.

The location was not named “Ft. Collins”, however, as the lieutenant’s father already had a post named after him, Ft. Collins, which is in northern Colorado.  Lt. Collins himself was a member of the 11th Ohio Cavalry which was stationed in Wyoming during the Civil War.  His actual post was Sweetwater Station and he just happened to be at Platte Bridge Station when the nearby Battle of Red Buttes developed and he volunteered to lead the relief party.  The post was closed as a result of Red Cloud’s War after which the Sioux burned it down.  It’s been rebuilt as a very nice city park and historical site.

Oregon Trail Memorials, Ft. Caspar Wyoming

This is an Oregon Trail memorial at Ft. Casper Wyoming. I somewhat wonder if the medallion on this one came from an older monument, as the medallion is a very common site along the trail on older memorials. At some point prior to World War Two a significant effort was made to place such memorials commemorating the trail, which in many locations had become state highways.

This is an even older Oregon Trail Memorial, also located at Ft. Caspar. As can be seen from the monument, it was placed in 1914. During this period, traveling on the trial itself was very common, as nearly every stretch of it was some sort of local road. Indeed, in some parts of Wyoming, this is still the case.

Once again, these monuments probably really do not belong here, but they are strongly associated with the history of Western movement, which involved a lot of sacrifice of all sorts by all involved.

This post has the distinction of being the first post in Wyoming to be named after a soldier who died in an Indian Wars engagement, signalling what would be a major change in naming conventions that was just beginning.

3.  Cheyenne Depot (Camp Carlin).

I'm going to leave this photograph as the description for this one, as its about all I know about a post that I would have regarded as an auxiliary to Ft. D. A. Russell.

3.  Deer Creek Station

Deer Creek Station was an Army station on the Oregon Trail that is near the present town of Glenrock.  Named simply for its location, its associated with a battle that took place on May 20, 1865 which was actually a series of engagements in the general area of the post.  In those actions groups of soldiers were attacked by more numerous parties of Indians but were able to hold off the attacks due to their superior arms.  Like Ft. Caspar, this post was abandoned at the end of Red Cloud's War and it was burned by Indians in August, 1866.

I just recently posted an item on this on one or our companion blogs, and hence will include that post here:

Deer Creek Station, Glenrock Wyoming.

In the last couple of days I've put up some photos of Frontier Era Army posts in the state which were taken years ago. All of those were originally posted elsewhere, but a change in how Photobucket operated made them difficult to view, and I was left wondering why I hadn't blogged those photos.  I know the reason why, actually.  It used to be hard to upload lots of photos onto Blogger.  That's changed.

Anyhow, this photograph is new.  This is the former location of Deer Creek Station.

The sign itself isn't placed on the exact location, actually.  It's near it, more or less, but really a couple of miles away.  I'd guess it may be 1 mile to 2 miles from the original post.  Anyhow, the sign does a good job of giving the history of the post, which started off as a civilian trading post in 1857 and which was occupied during the Civil War by state troops sent to police the frontier.  This post, like a collection of others, was burned by the Indians following the abandonment of the fort in 1866.

3. Ft. Fetterman.

Ft. Fetterman today.

This post was named after the officer of that name killed at “The Fetterman Fight” at a time at which his reputation was not yet tarnished, a process that was at least partially aided by the long efforts of his former commander, Col. Carrington, which is not to say that the fading of Fetterman's star wasn't deserved.

The post was built in 1867 just after the conclusion of Red Cloud's War in which Fetterman had lost his life.  It was a major post during its existence, although something about it caused it to have the highest insanity rate in the Frontier Army.  At the height of its importance it was a major staging area for the Powder River Campaign of 1876 which would see the Battle of the Rosebud as its major battle, and which occurred just south of Little Big Horn a few days prior to that battle.  Following the decline of Indian combat, it was abandoned as unneeded in 1882.  Most of the buildings were carted off following the posts closure and were used for the construction of a nearby and fairly infamous town that no longer exists.

4. Ft. Halleck 

Ft. Halleck was a large post established on the Overland Trail near Elk Mountain in 1862.  It was built to protect that trail, but it was abandoned, in spite of its size, in 1866 when Ft. Sanders was built near Laramie. By that time the Union Pacific Railroad had passed through the area which altered the strategic nature of patrolling this stretch of Wyoming, given as that could now be done with the assistance of rail.

Gen. Henry Halleck with an extraordinarily unusual kepi or forage cap.

The post was named after Gen. Henry Halleck who was living at the time.  He was a career soldier whose career was interrupted by an additional career of being a lawyer.  He had a mixed military record, but was good in subordinate commands and brought a spirit of professionalism to the Army.  He died in 1874 at age 56.

5. Ft. Phil Kearny.

Principally recalled for the disaster of the Fetterman Fight, and the somewhat redeeming battle of the Wagon Box fight, this post was named after Phil Kearny, a Union general who died at the Second Battle of Bull Run. This post was originally named Ft. Carrington by Col. Carrington, it’s first commander who never outlived the disgrace of the defeat of the Fetterman Fight. The post was burned to the ground by the Cheyenne following Red Cloud’s War.

The post proved to be poorly located and consumed a gigantic quantity of wood, which was one of its downsides.  Col. Carrington's career as an Army officer (he'd been a pre Civil War lawyer) was ruined by the events of the Fetterman battle, although he personally managed to escape being court martialed, an event that happened with blistering frequency in the 19th Century Army and which Grant had sought to do after the disaster.

The wealthy, eclectic Phil Kearny, who served in two American wars and two French ones, and who was married twice and divorced once.

Phil Kearny, we might note, was an unusual Army officer in that he was born into a wealthy family and inherited his family's wealth after his parents passed away while he was young. Raised by grandparents, he had always wished for a military career but went to law school and became a lawyer at his grandparents insistence.  He practiced law for four years but, upon the death of his grandfather, he received a commission in the Army and shortly went to France to study cavalry tactics at the famous French cavalry school, the Saumur.  While a student there, he actually went to Algeria with the French forces and served as a cavalryman, seeing combat, with the French.

Kearny thereafter lived an odd and adventurous life, twice resigning from the U.S. Army due to a lack of action going on within it, and then rejoining it.  He served in the Mexican War and the Civil War, in which he was killed, but he served with the French forces a second time as well, fighting with them against the Austrians.

Perhaps that all explains why this post in Wyoming was named after him.  Another already had existed, and ceased to exist, also named in his honor, outside of Washington D. C.  Neither post had long existences.

The naming of both posts, however, also shows how people should be considered in the context of their times, while also keeping in mind that absolute truths are universal.  Obviously Kearny's Army contemporaries admired him, and he was no doubt supremely interesting to be around.  He was highly educated and wealthy, with a taste for adventure.  He'd also served in two wars for a foreign power, one of which was a naked colonial enterprise.  We wouldn't admire that latter item today, but at least as late as the 1980s there were Americans who seriously entertained, and even served, in foreign wars that were comparable to some extent.

Ft. Phil Kearny was really unusual, we might note, in that it actually had a log post wall around it.  Frontier forts are commonly depicted that way in film, but few really were built in that fashion. This one was.  Today the location of the former fort is a nice State of Wyoming Park.

I photographed Ft. Phil Keany for another site some years ago, and I just reposted those photographs on our companion blog.  Given that, I'm reposting them here as they may be of interest.

Ft. Phil Kearny

5.  Ft. Laramie.  

Named for its location on the Laramie River this post started off as a civilian trading post named Fort William.  William Sublette founded the post in 1833/1834 and the post was initially named after him.  In 1841 the post was sold to the American Fur Company in 1841 and renamed Fort John in honor of John B. Sarpy, a partner in that company.  In 1849, following the end of the Mexican War, it was purchased by the U.S. Army and renamed Ft. Laramie, reflecting the fact that the post was routinely called Fort John on the Laramie River.  Laramie of the name was a French fur trapper who had the misfortune of disappearing in the location.  Jacques LaRamy, (by some spellings) donated his name, by that method, to the state and as a result the fort, two towns, a river, a county, a mountain range, and a geologic event are all named for him.

 Ruin of cement building at Ft. Laramie.  Ft. Laramie was unusual for its era in that cement buildings were actually constructed on its grounds in the 1840s.

The post was a major Army post for decades and one of the most significant in the region.  It's importance declined, however, after the transcontinental railroad became fully established and then the end of active Indian campaigns in Wyoming further decreased its role.  The post was abandoned in 1889 and decommissioned in 1890.  Even though the Army removed fixtures of use in 1890 and locals further stripped the post after it was closed, the base was so well established that much of it remained when it was made a National Historic Site in 1931.

In terms of names, it's one of two posts in Wyoming that were basically named after thier locations, although in this case the name was simply inherited from prior use.  If a person views Fort Laramie as having been called that as a contraction of Fort John on the Laramie River, that's the case.  Of course, by extension, as noted, Jacques La Ramee (another spelling) contributed his name.  La Ramee was a Quebecois Metis who disappeared in the area in 1821 at age 37.  His death has been attributed to falling through ice and from an Arapaho raid, but nobody really knows what happened to him.

6. Ft. McKinney

The first Ft. McKinney, or Cantonment Reno, today.

There were two posts named this, both named after  2nd Lt. John McKinney, who went down in a hail of hostile gunfire in the Dull Knife Battle in 1877.  Given that he was a young officer at the time, he is somebody that I don't know anything else about.  He was assigned to the 4th Cavalry and was likely fairly new to the Army at the time.

The first post named after McKinney had been first named Cantonment Reno, which was established in 1876 as a staging area during the Powder River Expedition.  As a Cantonment the post, which was the second one located at that spot in the Powder River Basin was the second one in that location named Reno, as will be seen below.  It was renamed and repurposed as a fort the following year after McKinney's death, but the location proved to be a poor one for a sustained presence due to the lack of resources most of the year and the decision was made to move the garrison across the Powder River Basin in 1878. When the new garrison was built, it retained the name of the prior one, which of course had only recently been named. The new Ft. McKinney was manned until 1894 when it was closed.  In 1903 the grounds were turned over to the State of Wyoming and they are used today as the state's veteran's home.

Ft. McKinney played a notable role in Wyoming's history when cavalry form the location was dispatched to intervene in the Johnson County War.

Cantonment Reno is one of those locations I've photographed for another reason, and I just reposted those photographs on our companion blog.  Given that, I'll repost that item here:

Cantonment Reno (Ft. McKinney)

7. Ft. Reno.

This post is mentioned immediately above and, as noted, the name was used twice, making it have an odd legacy with Ft. McKinney, which one of the Reno posts became, as that name was also used twice.

Jesse L. Reno.

Both Reno installations were named after Maj. Gen. Jesse Lee Reno, a Union officer killed early in the Civil War.  He was not related in any fashion to Marcus Reno of Little Big Horn fame.  He was born in what was then Wheeling Virginia, and which became Wheeling, West Virginia, during the Civil War, making him an officer who hailed from a state that was severed in two by the Civil War.  He'd graduated from West Point prior to the Mexican War and had served continually, earning a reputation of being a "soldier's soldier".  He was killed by friendly fire while in advance of his troops reconnoitering the area, when one of his own soldiers mistook him for a Confederate.

The location of Ft. Reno today.

The first Ft. Reno had originally been called Ft. Connor as it was established by Patrick Connor, a regional commander in Wyoming during the Civil War.  It was renamed for Reno after only bearing the name Ft. Connor in October and November 1865, the month of its establishment.  Like Ft. Phil Kearny, it was unusually for a Wyoming post as it had actual walls, which most frontier posts did not.

Patrick Connor

Patrick Connor, who first established the post and whom it was first name for, was a firebrand from Ireland who served a stint in the U.S. Army as an enlisted man before becoming a citizen in 1845.  As a private he saw frontier duty and fought in the Seminole War.  He served again in the Mexican War and was commissioned, resigning in 1847 due to rheumatism, at which time he was only 27.  He was a California Ranger after that and a California volunteer at the start of the Civil War.  His Civil War service was all on the frontier and was extremely active, although it was marked by actions that were rash and not always directed at the Indian parties that he was seeking to combat.  His headquarters were in Salt Lake City where he remained after being discharged from the service in 1866.  Unlike some of his contemporaries, his military service does not seem to have worn on him and he lived until age 71, dying in Salt Lake City.

Ft. Reno was abandoned as part of the settlement of Red Cloud's War in 1868 and torched, like numerous other abandoned forts, by the victorious Indians.  In 1876 the Army reoccupied the area and established Cantonment Reno, being forced to locate that post several miles to the south of the old fort as it had been so destroyed and decayed as to be unusable.  Cantonment Reno operated as a supply base for the Powder River Expedition and it was it that was renamed Ft. McKinney in 1877.

8. Ft. Sanders

Ft. Sanders was surprisingly a Civil War contemporary of the other Civil War era forts and posts noted here. The post is generally obscure, even though it had a longer life than its contemporaries.

Not much remains of Ft. Sanders today.

Ft. Sanders was established near where Laramie now is in 1866 to guard the Overland Trail, but its location meant that it was located on the path of the Transcontinental Railroad and therefore its purpose converted to guarding it fairly quickly.  It soon bordered Laramie, which was established in 1869 with the establishment of the railroad.  It started to become redundant with the establishment of Ft. D. A. Russell, but it was none the less manned until 1882.

William P. Sanders

The post was named after Gen. William P. Sanders who was killed at the Siege of Knoxville, although that was its second name. Sanders was a West Point graduate who had barely graduated as the Superintendent of West Point at the time, Robert E. Lee, recommended his dismissal.  The Secretary of War at the time, Jefferson Davis, who was also his cousin, intervened and saved Sanders career.  He was killed in action in Kentucky at age 30, in 1863.  A position in the campaign in which he was killed was also named Ft. Sanders.

John Buford

This post was originally Ft. John Buford, who died of illness also in 1863. Buford, like Sanders, had southern connection and was also from Kentucky, and has also remained loyal to the Union.  Prior to the war he had seen frontier service as a dragoon and his military career had a lasting legacy in teh U.S. Army as he is associated with the development of bugle calls.  He died of typhus while serving in the field.

M8 Buford

Buford remains remembered in the Army and the M8 light tank, that was adopted but not put into service, was named after him.  He also had a fort named after him in what is now North Dakota which was manned from 1872 until 1895.  The town of Buford, Wyoming, is likewise named after him.  His legacy is oddly cut short, much like his life, in the things that were named after him.

9. Ft. Fred Steele. 

Named for Frederick Steele who rose to the rank of Maj. Gen. during the Civil War but who died as the result of an accident while experiencing ill health in 1868.  Somewhat fittingly, this is now the most depressing historical site in the state.

Ft. Fred Steele was built in 1868 specifically to provide security to the transcontinental railroad and, after its construction, was part of a three fort network, including Ft. Sanders and Ft. D.A. Russell that served that purpose.  The garrison of the fort in fact did use the railroad for transportation when needed, and its location, that was highly isolated, but at the same time centrally located on the rail line, made such deployments ideal.  The post dispatched troops as needed as far away as Chicago and deployed to put down the the anti Chinese riots in Rock Springs when that occured.  The garrison fought a major engagement in the White River War in 1879 at Milk Creek, Utah, that went very badly leading to the unit being besieged for a period of days necessitating additional deployments from the post and Ft. D.A. Russell.  The post was no longer necessary by the mid 1880s and it was abandoned in 1886.

Fred Steele himself was a career officer who had served in the Mexican War and the Civil War with distinction.  He saw immediate service in Texas and the Northwest following the Civil War but took medical leave in 1867.  He died due to an apoplectic fit that caused him to fall from a buggy in 1868.  The post, therefore, was named for him the very year he died.

10. Ft. Supply, 

Ft. Supply will be mentioned here, but as it was a private Latter Day Saints fort, and never an Army post, we'll just do that.  It was built in 1853 in what is now Uinta County and abandoned along with Ft. Bridger in 1857 during the Mormon War. Unlike Ft. Bridger, the Army did not rebuild it but only occupied the position briefly.

11. Sweetwater Station.  

Sign at the Sweetwater Station rest stop.

Sweetwater Station was one of the numerous stations occupied by the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas Cavalry during the Civil War, during that period of time in which they patrolled the Oregon and Overland Trails. This station was a significant one on the Oregon Trail.  Lt. Caspar Collins, who died at the Battle of Platte Bridge Station, was actually stationed at Sweetwater Station.

Perhaps somewhat fittingly, the location today remains a rest stop on the highway.

The station was on the Sweetwater River and was named after it.

12. Richard’s (Reshaw's) Bridge.

Reconstruction of Reshaw's Bridge in Evansville, Wyoming.

This station was informally but not officially named for the bridge and trading post owned by the individual of that name and had an occasional military presence dating back to November, 1855 when troops were first stationed there and the post was named Ft. Clay.  That following March the post was renamed Camp Davis and then abandoned that November after having been occupied for one year.  The post was occupied again in 1858 during the Mormon War, this time as Camp Payne, but then once again abandoned in 1859.

Mausoleum containing bodies of soldiers and a woman found while constructing Evansville water tower. The bodies are almost certainly associated with one of the various post that were at this location.

Richard was Quebecois and therefore the pronunciation of this name in the French lead to the phonetic "Reshaw".  The bridge was an important one in Central Wyoming on the Oregon Trail but it drew competition from Guinard's bridge, owned by fellow Quebecois, which was opened in 1859.  The Mormon ferry was located at that location as well. Because of this the importance of Reshaw's Bridge declined and the Army did not reestablish a regular garrison at the bridge when the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas occupied the stations during the Civil War.  It was important during the 1850s, however, and the Army garrisoned it successively each time there was a need to, renaming the garrison three times.

So there we have the Wyoming installations.  What does that tell us about how the Army named its installations over the years?  We'll look at that next.

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Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 1. Named for Confederate Generals