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.

Thursday, August 31, 1876. Notes from the Horsemeat March.

Long marches in frequent rain-storms, with cold nights and heavy dews, made things very hard. The soldiers had little hope of success. There was only enough coffee for about five days. Bread and salt would last less than two days. No one knew how far it was to the Black Hills. Our Native American scouts, who knew the land, left to deliver messages. Under these bad conditions, the soldiers moved south on September 6. They marched 30 miles over rough land. They camped by bad water holes with no wood for fires. On September 7, they marched another 30 miles over similar land. The camp was just as bad. Many soldiers were sick or hurt. They had to use nine stretchers. Many horses were left behind. Men kept struggling into camp until 10 P.M. On this day, the men started killing abandoned horses for food. Sick and tired infantrymen were carried on mules. But only a few who needed help could be carried.

Dr. Bennett A. Clements, surgeon with Crook.

Muster roles and what they revealed for Co. K, 2nd Cav, on this day:

Analysis of Historic Occupancy

Last edition:

Wednesday, August 30, 1876. Murad V deposed.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, American Centennial, Democracy, James Garfield, Monarchy, Ottoman Empire, Parliamentary democracy

Monday, August 28, 1876. Creating Ft. Keogh.

The order for the creation and development of Ft. Keogh, Montana, was signed.

It was named, of course, for Myles Keogh who was killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 26, 1876. Reinforcements from Texas.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, 1890s, 1892, 1893, Army, Great Sioux War, Indian Wars, Infantry, Northern Plains Region, Personalities, South Dakota, Texas

Saturday, August 26, 1876. Reinforcements from Texas.

The first reinforcements from the Department of Texas for the Great Sioux War arrived on the Northern Plains.

The units were two companies under Captain Sanderson who assumed command  at the Cheyenne River Agency, Dakota Territory (Fort Bennett).

Sanderson retired retired early on April 2, 1892, and died less than a year later in 1893.  He's not a well known frontier Army officer, but he must have been in ill health.

Last edition:

Friday, August 25, 1876. Beginning of the Horsemeat March. Labels: 1870s, 1876, Army, cavalry, George Crook, Great Sioux War, Horsemeat March, Infantry, Montana, Powder River (the river)

Friday, August 25, 1876. Beginning of the Horsemeat March.

The Horsemeat March began as Gen. Crook left the Powder River for the Little Missouri with only fifteen days rations for his command of  1,500 cavalry, 450 infantry, and 300 Indian and white scouts.

Last edition:

Wednesday, August 23, 1876. Treaty No. 6 signed at Fort Carlton, Saskatchewan

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Canada, First Nations, Native Americans, Saskatchewan

Wednesday, August 18, 1976. Panmunjom axe murder incident (Korean: 판문점 도끼 살인 사건).

A border incident on the Korean DMZ occured in which North Korean soldiers rushed American and South Korean troops and killed two Americans with primitive weapons.  

The tree being cut down two days later as part of Operation Paul Bunyan, a US show of force resulting from the incident.

South Africa announced a multiracial government was be created for South West Africa as it moved towards independence as Namibia.  South Africa had been holding on to the territory under the cover of a British League of Nations Mandate following World War One.

Catholic Priest the Reverend Roman Kotlarz was beaten to death by the Polish secret police.

Last edition:

Monday, August 16, 1976. Hey, ho, let's go.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, Education, football, Japan (Tokyo), Music, New Zealand, Rock Music, Sports