Monday, October 30, 1911. Mistakes were made.

The government of the Qing Dynasty acknowledged errors, doing so in the name of the then five year old Emperor, Pu Yi.

The tragedy of his life had begun.

The events in China were on the front page of the Cheyenne newspaper.

Along with a familiar complaint about conservation.

The aftermath of the train wreck at Rock River was also front page news, as was the recall of a Signal Corps unit from the Mexican Border.

An ad showed what time of year it was.

Last edition:

Sunday, October 29, 1911. Train wreck at Rock River.

Labels: 1900s, 1901, 1904, 1908, 1910s, 1911, 2010s, 2016, Advertising, Art, Chinese 1911 Revolution, Food, Newspapers, Personalities, Racism, Railroads, The Press, Wyoming (Rock River)

Sunday, October 29, 1876. California Joe Milner murdered.

Moses Embree "California Joe" Milner was shot in the back by Tom Newcomb at Ft. Robinson in what was apparently the terminal episode in a feud between the two men over who was responsible for the murder of John Richard and his nephew, Alfred Pallardie at a Sioux camp.  Newcomb blamed Milner and Milner blamed Newcomb.  

Milner was from Kentucky originally but had been in various Western locations since age 14.  He'd serviced as a scout for Custer and Crook.  He was 47 years old.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 28, 1876. He wants a change too.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Ethnicities, Racism, Reconstruction

Wednesday, October 23, 1901. A howling wilderness. Ordering atrocity.

Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith directed Major Littleton Waller of the U.S. Marines to lead a battalion of 300 men to take control of Samar Island, and, further, to turn Samar into "a howling wilderness" and "to kill everyone over ten" .

Smith in 1901.

"I wish you to kill and burn, and the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States."

Waller would be court martialed for the death of eleven Filipinos in 1902, at which time Smith's order was revealed.  He was subsequently court martialed as well, but ultimately allowed to retire.

Smith was an old soldier at this time, being 61 years of age.  He volunteered to serve again in 1918 but was rejected due to this event.  He died in 1918.  He was twice wounded during the Civil War.

Waller

Waller was acquitted in his court martial.  He retired in 1920 and a U.S. Navy vessel was named for him in the 1940s.

Member of Parliament Winston Churchill denounced the British involvement in the Boer War.

Yale conferred an honorary Doctor of Law degree upon Theodore Roosevelt, who had in fact studied law but who had not completed his studies.

Last edition:

Tuesday, October 22, 1901. Handcock and Morant arrested.

Labels: 1900s, 1901, Australian Army, Boer War, British Army, Crime, Second International Conference of American States

Saturday, October 21, 1876. Battle of Cedar Creek.

The Battle of Cedar Creek broke out after Sitting Bull and Nelson Miles met and failed to reach an agreement, which in the case of Miles, amounted to the total surrender of Sitting Bull.  The talks are famously depicted in the film Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

There were divisions in Sitting Bull's camp by this time, with some of his followers wishing to return to the reservation.  Sitting Bull was adamant that they not do so.  His position with Miles was that the Army should leave Sioux territory.  In his camp he threatened to kill departing subordinates.

In the fight, the Sioux broke and fled up to 40 or so miles.  Miles captured quantities of Sioux supplies.  Sitting Bull lost followers who soon surrendered to Miles and after the battle he made up his mind to retreat into Canada.  Miles prepared for a winter campaign.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 18, 1876. Law and Order in the State of South CarolinaLabels: 1870s, 1876, Racism, Reconstruction, South Carolina, U.S. Grant

Sunday, October 15, 1876. More action at Spring Creek.

The Army was engaged in combat again with the Sioux at Spring Creek in Montana. A. reinforced U.S. Army supply train led by Lt. Col. Elwell S. Otis fought a 12-hour infantry and fire battle against 400 to 500 Sioux..  An attempt to broker a ceasefire between the parties had failed.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 14, 1876. Construction starts at Cantonment Reno.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, 1878, Army, Blog Mirror, Frontier Wyoming, Great Sioux War, Powder River Basin, Red Cloud's War, This Day In Wyoming's History, Wyoming, Wyoming (Cantonment Reno), Wyoming (Ft. Reno), Wyoming (Johnson County) 1877

Saturday, October 14, 1876. Construction starts at Cantonment Reno.

Construction of Cantonment Reno commenced, after the location of the post having been established two days prior.

Cantonment Reno (Ft. McKinney)

This is really interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it shows a real change in the Army's strategy for defeating the Sioux.  Ever since the end of Red Cloud's War in the 1860s the Army had not maintained a post in the Powder River Basin.  Indeed, Cantonment Reno is just a couple of miles away from where Ft. Reno had been.  Ft. Reno, Ft. Caspar and Ft. Phil Kearney had all been abandoned after that successful Sioux campaign, ceding hundreds of square miles to Sioux and Cheyenne control. Red Cloud had been enormously successful.

But now the Army was back, and a post like Cantonment Reno was a major interdicting presence on the southeastern edge of the Basin.  

Red Cloud's War had concluded in 1868.  The Sioux and Cheyenne dominance in the Powder River Basin had been brief.

Last edition:

Thursday, October 12, 1876 . Cantonment Reno established.

1870s, 1876, Army, Blog Mirror, Frontier Wyoming, Great Sioux War, This Day In Wyoming's History, Wyoming, Wyoming (Johnson County)

Thursday, October 12, 1876 . Cantonment Reno established.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 12:  1876  Cantonment Reno established.

 Where Ft. Reno was, today.

Last edition:

Wednesday, October 11, 1876. Battle of Cedar Creek.

Labels: 1860s, 1864, 1870s, 1876, Army, Civil War, Great Sioux War, Indian Wars, Montana, Nelson Miles, Sioux, Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake)

Wednesday, October 11, 1876. Battle of Cedar Creek.

The Battle of Cedar Creek¹ (Big Dry Creek, Big Dry River) occured in Montana Territory when Sioux warriors attacked a supply train supplying the troops of Nelson Miles which had established winter quarters.

The attack was a failure but would result in a second attack on October 15,  Between that time, however, Miles attempted to reach a settlement with Sitting Bull.

Footnotes

1.  Not, of course, the Battle of Cedar Creek of October 19, 1864, during the Civil War.

Last edition:

Monday, October 9,1876. Long distance and critical intelligence.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Army, Great Sioux War, technology, telephone, Yellowtone River

Monday, October 9,1876. Long distance and critical intelligence.

Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson made the first long distance telephone call, the same being between Boston and Cambridge.

The Army received intelligence that the Sioux were approaching the Yellowstone River.

Last edition:

October 6, 1876. American Library Association founded.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Professional Organizations, The written word

Thursday, September 28, 1876. Return of the 7th Cavalry.

The Seventh Cavalry returned to Fort Abraham Lincoln.

It had fought just one battle during the Yellowstone Expedition, Little Big Horn.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 26, 1876. Ceding the Black Hills.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Aircraft, Apache People, Black Hills, Cheyenne people, Germany, Great Sioux War, Indian Wars, Industry, Personalities, Sioux, Washington DC

Tuesday, September 19, 1876. The start of Ben Hur.

A nocturnal train ride with former Civil War subordinate Capt. Robert Ingersol caused Gen. Lew Wallace to begin his intense study for a book that would end up being Ben Hur, which in turn would make the Civil War general and New Mexico Territorial Governor a wealthy man.

Ingersol was an atheist and Wallace was more or less an indifferent agnostic at the time.  About the train ride, he's later state:

It is possible to fix the hour and place of the first thought of a book precisely enough; that was a night in 1876. I had been listening to discussion which involved such elemental points as God, heaven, life hereafter, Jesus Christ, and His divinity. Trudging on in the dark, alone except as one’s thoughts may be company, good or bad, a sense of the importance of the theme struck me for the first time with a force both singular and persistent. “My ignorance of it was painfully a spot of deeper darkness in the darkness. I was ashamed of myself, and make haste now to declare that the mortification of pride I then endured, or if it be preferred, the punishment of spirit, ended in a resolution to study the whole matter, if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another.

Research for the book caused Wallace to deepen a Christian faith he'd been indifferent to, although he never joined any one Protestant sect.

Wallace is an interesting figure.  He first entered military service during the Mexican War.  He met and married his wife, the daughter of his Mexican War commander, shortly after the war.  Like Wallace, she was a writer and was published before he was.  Between the Mexican War and Civil War he practiced law.  He only briefly practiced law after the war.

He and his wife Susan only had one child, which was unusual for the time.

Last edition:

Monday, September 18, 1876. Frank and Jesse James escape Minnesota.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Crime, Minnesota, Northfield Minnesota Raid, The James Gang, Weather

Sunday Morning Scene. Dominionism and the Department of Defense.

The following was posted by Assistant Secretary of Defense, Sean Parnell:

Sean Parnell

@SeanParnellASW

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. SEND ME!’” — Isaiah 6:8

Frankly, this is a shocking association of the US military with religion.
I've warned here that the US is in the thick of an Administration that features individuals in it who who hold minoritarian Evangelical views well outside the mainstream of Christianity, and further that were introduced rather late in Christian history.  Unfortunately, the United States, which is a Protestant country, is basically the epicenter of such views and many Protestants don't realize their views are not held by most of the globes Christians, most of whom are Apostolic Christians.

Included in that set of views, for some, is the concept that Christians can help bring about the Second Coming and, in some quarters, that the United States is a nation directly charged with a Devine Mission.

The military is definitely suffering right now, with some elements of the Navy having morale problems and a war going on which the administration repeatedly claims we've won, but which drags on.  The current hope is that economic sanctions will bring Iran to its knees but none of the predictions about the war have proven correct so far.  

Not one.

One way to definitely end the war would be to commit ground troops.  It'd also be a bloody mess.

These recruiting blurbs do not indicate a commitment to inserting ground troops, but they do demonstrate a frightening mix of religion with foreign policy.  We are not Crusaders and frankly Crusaders would have regarded American Evangelicals as weird heretics.  The fact that the government sends out a message like this should be alarming, and it should be offensive to Christians, Muslims and Jews, all of whom regard Isaiah as a prophet.

Indeed, when Isaiah spoke those words, he wasn't asking to be sent into combat.  He was being sent as a prophet.

The military should never be committed to an immoral cause, but we should not imagine that every time it has been committed the commitment met Christian standards.  None of the military actions taken during the Second Trump Administration do.  They most particularly do not under the reconsideration of the Just War Theory made by Pope Leo.

What Parnell did here is wrong on so many levels.  Christians should be horrified.