Thursday, December 21, 1899. Leonard Wood goes back to Cuba.

General  and physician Leonard Wood arrived in  Cuba to serve as its Governor General.

Last edition:

Friday, December 15, 1899. British defeat at Colenso.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Battle of Colenso, Boer Armies, Boer War, British Army

Sunday, November 1, 1874. The Battle of Sunset Pass

The small unit action The Battle of Sunset Pasas occured between the 5th Cavalry, with Apache scouts, and Tonto Apaches.

The engagement was caused by the Army attempting to recover stolen stock.  Under Lt. Charles King, the unit bivouacked for the night and was ambushed when King tried to recon up a hill, leading to the wounding of Lt. King.  He was rescued by a sergeant who carried him back to the camp, but his wounds forced his early retirement from the Army several years later.  He none the less went on to serve again during the Spanish American War, and became a noted author.

His rescuer, Sgt. Bernard Taylor, would win the Medal of Honor, but died shortly after receiving it the following year from pneumonia at age 31.

Last edition: 

Tuesday, October 27, 1874. Proclaiming Thanksgiving.

Labels: 1870s, 1874, Thanksgiving, U.S. Grant

Thursday, October 12, 1899. Battle of Kraaipan and a Homecoming in Vermont.

The Boer Potchefstroom and Lichtenburg commandos attacked and captured the British garrison and railway siding at Kraaipan between Vryburg and Mafeking.

Admiral Dewey was welcomed home to his native Vermont in what was declared as Dewey Day.

Last edition:

Wednesday October 11, 1899. The Boer War Commences.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Boer War, British Army, British Empire, Cape Colony, Mining, Orange Free State, South African Republic (Transvaal), The Boer Republics, United Kingdom

Friday, September 29, 1899. Veterans of Foreign Wars established.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 29: 1899 Veterans of Foreign Wars established.

The actually history of the founding of the VFW is fairly complicated, and in reality it went from a bunch of local organizations to the national one over a period of years.

Last edition:

Sunday, September 10, 1899. The second Yakutat Bay earthquake.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Alaska, Geology

Thursday, July 6, 1899 Ordered home.

Today In Wyoming's History: July 6: 1899  The Wyoming Battalion received its orders in the Philippines to return to the U.S. Attribution:  On This Day.

Kansas state infantry, February 1899.

They were undoubtedly mighty glad to receive them as well.

The Philippine Insurrection is all but forgotten by 99% of Americans. Those who do remember it have some particular connection with it or are students of history.

They Wyoming Battalion was a battalion of infantry augmented by a battery of artillery.  The infantry was drawn from volunteers from Buffalo, Douglas, Sheridan and Evanston, commanded by Maj. Frank M. Foote of Evanston.  The artillery came from Cheyenne.  They had volunteered for action in Cuba, not the Philippines, but the U.S. Army was so small, there was no way to exploit the Navy's defeat of the Spanish Navy in the Far East other than through using volunteer troops who had not been committed to Cuba.  During their service the unit suffered high causalities, losing 3 men in combat, 12 died of disease, and 75 men became unfit for service due to wounds, illnesses and injuries. As with the remainder of the U.S. Army during the Spanish American War, many more soldiers from Wyoming died of disease and illness caused by poor sanitation and diet and inadequate medical care, and from numerous tropical diseases, than were ever felled by a foe’s bullet.

Coming before the Dick Act, these units fit into an odd category between the Regular Army, which they were not part of, and existing state militia units, which they were also not part of.  State raised, they are regarded as National Guard units today, which makes sense in that their history more closely aligns with the National Guard, and the Guard found itself doing recruiting to fill out its ranks for the Punitive Expedition, World War One, and even in the lead up to World War Two.

The Philippine Insurrection, indeed the US presence in the Philippines in general, was controversial from the onset. A strong anti-colonial impulse in the US, natural for a nation which had once been a foreign colony, had operated against going to war with Spain in the first place, as members of Congress feared that Cuba would be annexed to the US as a colony.  Preventing that from occurring had been a condition of the declaration of war, but other Spanish possessions had been omitted as they were completely out of mind.  To naval strategists, including the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, striking at Spanish possession is the Pacific and Far East made perfect sense, but to most Americans it simply wasn't something that was likely to occur. As a result of this, nothing had addressed Spain's Far Eastern territories.

Given this, the war was not universally popular from the start. The use of state troops contributed to that, as the troops had not enlisted for service in a colonial enterprise.  To address some of this, the Army, now freed of combat in Cuba, began to replace state units with regular troops.  This did not address all the problems, however, particularly as the Army began to increasingly resort to harsh measures, giving rise to atrocities.  The war was officially declared over on July 4, 1902, although in reality it continued on at least until 1915.

A good argument can be made that the Spanish American War as the US's first modern war.  It came about rapidly and haphazardly, like many wars following it did.  The long range implications of the war were not foreseen, including that the war would give rise to a long, unexpected war following it.  The initial war was popular, but as the implications of it lingered on, the war succeeding it was not.

Last edition:

Saturday, July 1, 1899. "Birth" of Indiana Jones.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, Movies, Movies In History

Friday, June 30, 1899. Safe passage for Spanish troops at Baler.

In a somewhat bizarre episode of the Spanish American War/Philippine Insurrection, on this day in 1899, the Spanish soldiers at Baler, who had held out for a year in a fortified church, were recognized as friend of the Filipino people and granted safe conduct.

A film about this event was earlier reviewed by us here:

1898:  Our Last Men In the Philippines

Baler had been under siege from June 26, 1898, until June 2, 1899, which exceeded the period of time during which Spain was at war with the United States. The troops under siege had not realized that Spain had departed, and when informed, they refused to believe it and kept fighting.  Ultimately, the besieging Filipinos became concerned for the garrison and began to supply it with food, beverages and cigarettes.  An American expedition to relieve the garrison was launched and failed.

Finally, on June 2, 1899, the garrison surrendered.

The surviving Spanish troops upon their return to Spain.

The Spanish troops were lauded by Aguinaldo, but two Franciscan Priests who had been at the church, Fr. Félix Minaya and Fr. Juan López, plus a captured Yorktown seaman, George Arthur Venville, were kept as prisoners.  The priests were freed when the US occupied the town on June 3, 1900 but Venville was executed by Filipino tribesmen.

Last edition

Monday, June 26, 1899. Birth of Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia.

Labels: 1890s, 1899, 1910s, 1918, Christianity, Communism, Monarchy, Orthodox, Personalities, Protestant, religion, Russia, Russian Civil War, Russian Revolution

Tuesday, April 27, 1899. The Battle of Calumpit

The Battle of Calumpit (Filipino: Labanan sa Quingua), alternately known as the Battles of Bagbag and Pampanga Rivers) concluded with U.S. forces under Arthur MacArthur Jr. combating Filipino forces under General Antonio Luna.  U.S. forces were comprised completely of state militia units, essentially the equivalent of today's National Guard, somewhat, those being the 20th Kansas Volunteers, the Utah Volunteer Light Artillery, the1st Montana Volunteers, the1st Nebraska Volunteers and the 51st Iowa Volunteers. All were probably mustered to fight against the Spanish in Cuba, and not the Filipino's in their native land.

U.S. forces prevailed with Medals of Honor, under the original standards, going to Colonel Frederick Funston, Private (later First Lieutenant) William B. Trembley, and Private Edward White.

The Filipinos, interestingly enough, grossly over reported American losses.

A terrible tornado struck:

The Kirksville Cyclone

Portrait shows event described in Eleanor Pray's letter of April 27, 1899: 

"Yesterday morning I asked Mademoiselle [Lindholm family governess] to go to the bazaar with me to take some photos, and we took Dou Kee with us. I hired a small Korean to stand in front of a stall to be photographed. The Chinese got out like lightning for they say a camera has the evil eye. The Korean wanted also to run away when he found what was up, but the Chinese were quite willing the evil eye should be cast on him so they kept pushing him back and there he stood half scared to death. In a second after I pressed the button, there were Chinese around us ten deep all clamoring to see the picture. When the small Korean found he wasn't killed, and got five kopecks for pay, he was quite in another frame of mind." Another letter, dated May 4, 1899, also mentions this event: "The group of Koreans I took near the Bazaar. They thought I was going to shoot them and the one in the edge of the picture was clearing out for his life but couldn't resist looking back to see what happened to his friends. Before that old man could get up the deed was done and I'll warrant the whole crowd cursed me by all their gods."

A statute of Grant was unveiled in Philadelphia.

Blog MIrror: The American Springfield Krag–Jørgensen Rifle

 

The American Springfield Krag–Jørgensen Rifle

Monday, July 23, 1923. Disasters. First ascent of Clyde Peak. French Foreign Legion failure. Squamish Nation, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw amalgamation. Sigsbee funeral.

I'm often amazed, particularly in regard to weather disasters, how often headlines from 1923 read like those from 2023.

That't not to draw a conclusion that I do not intend to suggest, I m'just noting it.

Clyde Peak, left, Blackfoot Mountain, right in 1925.

Norman Clyde became the first man to climb Clyde Peak in Glacier National Park.

Clyde Peak, now. By Owen Jones - File:Red Eagle Lake.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109050999

A French Foreign Legion attack on the Moroccan town of Tagzhout Hill was unsuccessful.

The Labour Parties attempt to have the House of Commons call for an international conference was rejected by the Conservatives.

Canada's Squamish Nation, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, were politically amalgamated and adopted a democratically elected council.

The funeral of Rear Admiral Sigsbee was held.  He had been the commander of the USS Maine when it fatefully exploded in Havana.

Thursday, February 15, 1923. Forbes quits from long distance, Veterans gather, Greece compounds the injustice.

Gathering at USS Maine memorial on the 25th anniversary of its sinking.

Charles R. Forbes, the Director of the U.S. Veteran's Bureau, resigned the position from his self-appointed refuge of Europe, following suspicions that he had been selling surplus supplies at huge discounts to contractors for kickbacks.  His confrontation with Harding on the matter had resulted in a physical altercation, with Forbes reportedly begging Harding to be allowed to depart for Europe prior to resigning.

The Scottish born Forbes had lived a colorful life, having been a Marine Corps musician at age 16, an engineer, a soldier in the Army charged with desertion and ultimately discharged as a Sergeant First Class after only eight years of service, employed in the construction field, and a Lieutenant Colonel in World War One.

He'd be prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud the Federal Government and end up serving 20 months in prison.  He'd live until 1949, dying at age 74.

Greece expropriate additional dwellings from the Albanian Cham Muslims in order to free up dwelling space for expelled Greeks from Turkey, thereby compounding the injustice.

Albanians had nothing to do with Greece's situation and the event signals out how Greece, in some ways, set the table for the disaster it was experiencing.  Turkey was being barbarous to the Anatolian Greeks, but the Greeks had not been kind to the Anatolian Muslims.

And this also demonstrates how something that began in World War One with good intention, independent nation states comprised of free peoples, was morphing into expelling minorities from lands they'd occupied for eons.

Margaret Lindsey Williams, working on her portrait of President Harding.

Wednesday, February 14, 1923. Veterans, Radio Hockey, Women Marksmen, French Debt Collecting

Hollywood, California, February 14, 1923.

Some Spanish American War veterans visited Washington, D.C.  They were in a class of veterans that would increasingly be forgotten due to the swell of veteran ranks caused by World War One.

The members of George Washington University's Women's Rifle Team, located in Washington, D. C., were photographed.

Women have competed in the shooting sports forever.  Interesting to see this photograph of a group of young female marksmen in an urban environment, before firearms caused people living in cities to freak out.

Toronto's CFCA broadcast, on this Valentine's Day of 1923, the first NFL game to be subject to the same.

The game was between the Toronto St. Patrick's, now the Maple Leafs, against the Ottawa Senators, which is now defunct.  Toronto won 6 to 4.

CFCA would only broadcast for ten years before going out of business.

French authorities seized 85,000,000 Marks from the city hall treasury of Gelsenkirchen, and 17,000,000 from the railway station, in retaliation for the city's refusal to pay 100,000,000 Marks due to the wounding of two French officers in clashes with the police.

Wednesday, January 31, 1923. Hockey first.

For the first time in history, a National Hockey League match concluded with no penalties having been imposed.  The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Hamilton Tigers, 5 to 4.

Hockey, unlike football, is not boring.

Italy required public school students to start using the extended arm fascist salute, claimed to have been derived from Rome, but with little historical support for the proposition.

The general gesture was in vogue at the time, having been popularized in the United States as the Bellamy Salute.  It's co-opting by fascism, forever associated it with fascist movements.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr., occupying the position that his father had leading up to the Spanish American War, and his cousin had during World War One,  addressed the midyear graduating class of the Peter Force School, a school he had attended during his father's occupancy of the office. The class planted a Lombardy Poplar in memory of Quentin Roosevelt, aviator, who had died in action in World War One.

The school had been founded in 1879 and was named for a former Washington, D.C. mayor.  Many children of important personages attended the school, including the late Quentin Roosevelt and Charles Taft, the son of President Taft.

The school would not have a much longer run.  It was abandoned in 1939 and demolished in 1962 in order to make way for the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

Vice Pres. Coolidge and House Speaker Gillett exercising in House gym. Jan. 31, 1923

The Infantry Company over a Century. Part 1. The Old Army becomes the Great War Army.

A note about this entry.  Like most of the items posted on this blog that pertain to the 1890-1920 time frame, this information was gathered and posted here as part of a research project for a novel.  As such, it's a post that invites comment.  I.e., the comments are research in and of themselves and its more than a little possible that there's material here that might be in need of correction.

Company C, Wyoming National Guard (Powell Wyoming), 1916.  Note that seemingly nearly everyone in this photograph is a rifleman.  Also of note is that these Wyoming National Guardsmen, all of whom would have come from the Park County area (and therefore were probably of a fairly uniform background and ethnicity) are using bedrolls like Frontier infantrymen, rather than the M1910 haversack that was official issue at the time.

Infantry, we’re often told, is the most basic of all Army roles.  Every soldiers starts off, to some extent, as a rifleman.  But save for those who have been in the infantry, which granted is a fair number of people over time, we may very well have an wholly inaccurate concept of how an infantry company, the basic maneuver element, is made up, and what individual infantrymen do today. 

And if that's true, we certainly don't have very good idea of how that came to be.

And we’re also unlikely to appreciate how it’s changed, and changed substantially, over time.

So, we’re going to go back to our period of focus and come forward to take a look at that in a series of posts that are relevant to military history, as well as the specific focus of this blog.

Prior to the Great War, the Old Army.

U.S. Infantry in Texas early in the 20th Century.  I'm not sure of the date, but its a 20th Century photograph dating after 1903 as all of the infantrymen are carrying M1903 rifles.  It's prior to 1915, however, in that they're all wearing late 19th Century pattern campaign hats of the type that came into service in the 1880s and remained until 1911.

Much of this blog has focused on the Punitive Expedition/Border War which ran up to and continued on into World War One.  As we've noted before, that event, the Punitive Expedition, was one in which the Army began to see the introduction of a lot of new weaponry.  While that expanded the Army's capabilities, it also, at the same time, presented problems on how exactly to handle the new equipment and how its use should be organized.

Historians are fond of saying that the Punitive Expedition served the purpose of mobilizing and organizing an Army that was in now way ready to engage in a giant European war, and that is certainly true.  But the fact of the matter remains the infantry that served along the Mexican border in 1916 (the troops who went into Mexico were largely cavalry) did not serve in an Army that was organizationally similar at all to the one that went to France in 1917.

American infantrymen became riflemen with the introduction of M1855 Rifle Musket.  Prior to that, the normal long arm for a U.S. infantryman was a musket, that being a smoothbore, and accordingly short range, weapon.  Rifles had been issued before but they were normally the weapon of specialists.  Starting in 1841, however, the Army began to make use of rifle muskets which had large bores and shallow rifling, combining the best features of the rifle and the musket and addressing the shortcomings of both.  The advantages were clear and the rifle musket rapidly supplanted the musket

Civil War era drawling showing a rifleman in a pose familiar to generations of combat riflemen up to the present day.

For a long time, prior to the Great War, infantry companies were comprised entirely or nearly entirely of riflemen, with their officers and NCO's often being issued sidearms rather than longarms, depending upon their position in the company. As with the period following 1917, companies were made up of platoons, and platoons were made up of squads, so that part of it is completely familiar.  Much of the rest of it would strike a modern soldier, indeed any soldier after 1917 as odd, although it wouldn't a civilian, given as civilians have been schooled by movies to continue to think of infantry this way.  Even in movies showing modern combat, most infantrymen are shown to be riflemen.

Squads at the time, that is prior to 1917, were formed by lining men in a company up and counting them out into groups of eight men per squad.  Each squad would have a corporal in charge of it and consist of eight men, including the commanding corporal.  The corporal, in terms of authority, and in reality, was equivalent to a sergeant in the Army post 1921.  I.e., the corporal was equivalent to a modern sergeant in the Army.  He was, we'd note, a true Non Commissioned Officer.

There were usually six squads per platoon.  The squads were organized into two sections, with each section being commanded by a sergeant.  The sergeant, in that instance, held a rank that would be equivalent to the modern Staff Sergeant, although his authority may be more comparable to that of a Sergeant First Class.

The platoon was commanded by a lieutenant. One of the company's two platoons was commanded by a 1st lieutenant, who was second in command of the company, and the other by a 2nd lieutenant.  The company was commanded by a Captain, who was aided by the company Field Sergeant, who was like a First Sergeant in terms of duties and authority.  The company staff consisted of the Field Sergeant, a Staff Sergeant and a private.  The Staff Sergeant's rank is only semi comparable to that of the current Staff Sergeant, but he did outrank "buck" Sergeants.

Sergeants were, rather obviously, a really big deal.

Spanish American War volunteers carrying .45-70 trapdoor Springfield single shot rifles and wearing blue wool uniforms.

While this structure would more or less exist going far back into the 19th Century, the Army had undergone a reorganization following the Spanish American War which brought to an end some of the remnants of of the Frontier Army in some ways and which pointed to the future, while at the same time much of the Army in 1910 would have remained perfectly recognizable to an old soldier, on the verge of retirement, who had entered it thirty years earlier in 1880.*  This was reflected by an overhaul of enlisted ranks in 1902 which brought in new classifications and which did away with old ones, and as part of that insignia which we can recognize today, for enlisted troops, over 100 years later.  Gone were the huge inverted stripes of the Frontier era and, replacing them, were much smaller insignia whose stripes pointed skyward. The new insignia, reflecting the arrival of smokeless powder which had caused the Army to start to emphasize concealment in uniforms for the first time, were not only much smaller, but they blended in. . .somewhat, with the uniform itself.

New York National Guardsmen boarding trains for border service during the Punitive Expedition.  They are still carrying their equipment in bed rolls rather than the M1910 Haversack.

The basic enlisted pattern of ranks that came into existence in 1902 continued on through 1921, when thing were much reorganized.  But the basic structure of the Rifle Company itself was about to change dramatically, in part due to advancements in small arms which were impacting the nearly universal identify of the infantryman as a rifleman.

Colorado National Guardsman with M1895 machinegun in 1914, at Ludlow Colorado.

Automatic weapons were coming into service, but how to use and issue them wasn't clear at first.  The U.S. Army first encountered them in the Spanish American War, which coincidentally overlapped with the Boer War which is where the British Army first encountered and used them.  The US adopted its first machinegun in 1895.  The 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, which fought as dismounted cavalry in Cuba during the Spanish American War, used them in support of their assault of Kettle Hill, although theirs were privately purchased by unit supporters who had donated them to the unit.   The Spanish American and and Boer Wars proved their utility however and various models came after that.  They were, however, not assigned out at the squad level, but were retained in a separate company and assigned out by higher headquarters as needed.  There was, in other words, no organic automatic weapon at the company level, and certainly not at the squad level.

African American infantryman in 1898, carrying the then new Krag M1986 rifle.  This soldiers is wearing the blue service uniform which, at that time, was being phased out in favor of a khaki service uniform.  Most of the Army had not received the new uniform at this time and, in combat in  Cuba, most wore cotton duck stable clothing that was purchased for the war.  Some soldiers did deploy, however, with blue wool uniforms.  In the field, this soldier would have worn leggings, which he is not in this photograph.

There also weren't a lot of them.  Running up to World War One the Army issued new tables of organization for National Guard units, anticipating large formations such as divisions.  Even at that point, however, there were no automatic weapons at the company level at all.  The infantry regiment table provided for a Machine Gun Company which had a grand total of four automatic rifles. 

M1909 "Machine Rifle".  It was a variant of the Hotchkiss machinegun of the period and was acquired by the Army in very low quantities.

Just four.

Most men in a Rifle Company were just that, riflemen.  Automatic weapons were issued to special sections as noted.  Rifle grenadiers didn't exist.  Most of the infantry, therefore that served along the border with Mexico was leg infantry, carrying M1903 Springfield rifles, and of generally low rank.**

New York National Guardsmen in Texas during the Punitive Expedition.

That was about to change.

Well, some of it was about to change.  Some of it, not so much.

So, in 1916, anyhow, where we we at.  A company had about 100 men, commanded by a captain who had a very small staff.  The entire company, for that matter, had an economy of staff.  Most of the men were privates, almost all of which were riflemen, and most of who's direct authority figure, if you will, was a corporal. There were few sergeants in the company, and those who were there were pretty powerful men, in context.  There were some men around with special skills as well, such as buglers, farriers, and cooks.  Cooks were a specialty and the cook was an NCO himself, showing how important he was.  Even infantry had a small number of horses for officers and potentially for messengers, which is why there were farriers.  And automatic weapons had started to show up, but not as weapons assigned to the company itself, and not in large numbers.

A career soldier could expect himself, irrespective of the accuracy of the expectation, to spend his entire career in this sort of organization, and many men in fact had.  Some men spent entire careers as privates. Sergeants were men who had really advanced in the Army, even if they retired with only three stripes.  Corporals had achieved a measure of success.  Most of the men lived in common with each other in barracks.  Only NCO's might expect a measure of privacy.  Only sergeants might hope to marry.

Machine gun troops of the Punitive Expedition equipped with M1904 Maxim machinegun and carrying M1911 sidearms.

That, of course, was the Regular Army.  The National Guard was organized in the same fashion, but there was more variance in it.  Guardsmen volunteered for their own reasons and had no hope of retirement, as it wasn't available to them.  Some were well heeled, some were not, but they were largely armed and equipped in the same manner, although they received new material only after the Army had received a full measure of it first. Their uniforms and weapons could lag behind those of the Regular Army's.  And some units who had sponsors could be surprisingly well equipped, some having automatic weapons that were privately purchased for the unit and which did not fit into any sort of regular TO&E.

And then came the Great War.

Footnotes:

*Thirty years was the Army retirement period at the time.

**We've dealt with the weapons of the period separately, but in the 1900 to 1916 time frame, the Army adopted a new rifle to replace a nearly new rifle, with the M1903 replacing the M1896 Krag-Jorgensen, which was only seven years old at the time.  While M1896 rifles remained in service inventories up into World War Two, to some degree, is field replacement was amazingly rapid and by World War One there were no Regular Army or National Guard units carrying them.  

In terms of handguns, of which the US used a lot, in 1916 the Army was acquiring a newly adopted automatic pistol, the M1911.  Sizable quantities had been acquired but stocks of M1909 double action .45 revolvers remained in use. The M1909, for that matter, had been pushed into service due to the inadequacies of the M1892, which was chambered in .38.  The M1892 had proven so inadequate in combat that old stocks of .45 M1873 revolvers were issued for field use until M1909s were adopted and fielded.  Given this confusion, and rapid replacement of one revolver by another in 1916, there weren't enough M1911s around, and some soldiers went into Mexico with M1909s.

Related threads:

The Punitive Expedition and technology. A 20th Century Expedition.

Military Installation Names. What they were, and are, and how they got there. Part 3.

We've just done two posts in this three part series on the naming of military posts, starting off with the controversy, although there doesn't seem to be that much of of a controversy, over the suggestion that military posts in the South named after Confederate generals ought to be renamed.

We eclectically started off our post on Southern Posts with this entry, which wasn't in the South.

Camp Cody, New Mexico. This camp was named after a figure associated with Wyoming, but not from Wyoming, Buffalo Bill Cody.  It operated from 1917 to 1919.

Why did we do that?

Well, at that time this series was conceived of as a single post.  But by the time we had all the text we were interested in posting, the post was so long, as Part 2 no doubt shows, that it no longer made much sense to do so. But it still makes sense to ask the questions we intended to, and those had to do with why posts were named what they were.

It probably shouldn't surprise anyone, but there are Army Regulations. . . now, for  naming posts. The more surprising things is that this hasn't always been the case.  The Army's Center For Military History sums up the story, which they likely are asked about a fair amount, particularly now, this way:

Naming Army Installations 

The naming of posts started as a tradition when the Army was young. In the Continental Army, many posts and camps were named by the commander or supervising engineer for high ranking officers, including those still living; for example, Fort Washington on the New York and Fort Lee on the New Jersey sides of the Hudson in 1776, Fort Putnam at West Point, or Fort Mifflin below Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. Forts were also named for fallen heroes, such as Fort Mercer, built in 1777, on the New Jersey side of the Delaware opposite Fort Mifflin, named in honor of Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer who fell at Princeton in January of that year. 

For much of the Army's history in the 19th Century, the naming of posts was still mainly a local prerogative. For example, War Department General Order Number 79, dated 8 November 1878, left the naming of installations to the commander of the regional Military Division in which the installation was located. Although not always, the names of installations usually reflected a local influence, such as Fort Apache in Arizona, established in 1871, and the Chickamauga Post in Georgia, established in 1902. In the 1890s, the then Quartermaster General, Maj. Gen. Richard N. Batchelder, recommended that the War Department assume responsibility for naming installations, but that did not become policy until World War I when the massive general mobilization saw the establishment of numerous installations of various sizes and functions. The names usually, but not always, reflected some regional connection to its location, and usually with a historic military figure significant to the area: for example, Camp Lee near Richmond, Virginia, and changing the name of the Chickamauga Post in Georgia to Fort Oglethorpe. 

In the years between the World Wars, it became the common practice for the War Department to entertain recommended names for posts from installation commanders, corps and branch commanders, and the Historical Section Army War College, as well as from outside the Army. Public opinion and political Influence sometime weighed heavily on the decisions. For an example of the latter, when in 1928 the Army renamed Fort George G. Meade in Maryland as Fort Leonard Wood, the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress held up the Army's appropriation bill until the service agreed to restore the name of the Pennsylvania-born general. The regional connection, however, cannot be overemphasized. Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, for example, was originally named Camp Alfred Vail, in honor of the Army's then chief Signal Officer, when the installation was established as a Signal Corps training facility in 1917, but changed to Fort Monmouth, for the 1778 battle fought nearby, when it became a permanent installation in the 1920s. 

The War Department better defined the criteria when it established the policy for "naming military reservations in honor of deceased distinguished officers regardless of the arm or service in which they have served" in a memorandum dated 20 November 1939. 

Shortly after World War II, in 1946, the Army established the Army Memorialization Board. Governed by Army Regulation (AR) 15-190, Boards, Commissions, and Committees: Department of the Army Memorialization Board, it assumed responsibility for deciding on the names of posts and other memorial programs and the criteria for naming them. The regulation stated that all those individuals memorialized must be deceased and fall within one of five categories: 

(1) a national hero of absolute preeminence by virtue of high position,
(2) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility (Army and above) and whose death was a result of battle wounds,
(3) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds,
(4) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was a result of battle wounds, and
(5) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds.

On 8 December 1958 , AR 1-30, Administration: Department of the Army Memorialization Program superseded AR 15-190 , and removed responsibility for naming installations from the Memorialization Board and transferred it to Headquarters, Department of the Army. In turn, AR 1-33, Administration: Memorial Programs superseded AR 1-30 on 1 February 1972. This revision retained the same memorialization criteria and categories as the previous regulation, but added a list of appropriate memorialization projects for each category. For example, it would be appropriate to name a large military installation after a person in category two, while it would be appropriate to name a building or a street after a person in category five. The final decision on naming a post was still made by the Headquarters, Department of the Army. The 15 January 1981 revision of AR 1-33 named the Army Chief of Staff as the responsible individual for the naming of installations. 

The current AR 1-33 became effective on 30 June 2006, and redefined and expanded the categories of individuals to be memorialized, and listed appropriate memorialization programs for each category. The naming of installations is now the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary of Army (Manpower and Reserve Affairs). The Director of the Installation Management Agency is responsible for the naming of streets, buildings, and facilities on all military installations except medical installations, where the Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Command has the approval authority, and on the United States Military Academy, where the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy has the approval authority.

This post here, of course, started off with the topic of the Confederate named posts, and the Congressional Research Service recently issued this short synopsis of the Confederate posts and military installation names in general, about which it must have been receiving inquiries from members of Congress.

Confederate Names and Military Installations  

Updated June 16, 2020  

On June 8, 2020, an Army spokesperson made a statement that the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy are “open to a bi-partisan discussion” on renaming the Army's 10 installations named after Confederate leaders. This statement follows the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger’s message (MARADMIN 331/20) on June 5, 2020, instructing commanders to “identify and remove” displays of the Confederate battle flag on Marine bases. Gen. Berger's order was signed following a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on February 11 regarding the rise of white supremacy in the ranks. A 2019 Military Times survey found that “36 percent of troops who responded have seen evidence of white supremacist and racist ideologies in the military, a significant rise from the year before, when only 22 percent reported the same in the 2018 poll.” In addition to some Department of Defense (DOD) officials, certain Members of Congress have expressed interest in renaming military installations named after Confederate leaders. There is also interest in the DOD’s selection and approval process for naming military installations.  

U.S. Military Bases Named in Honor of Confederate Military Leaders  

There are 10 major military installations named after Confederate Civil War commanders located in the former states of the Confederacy. These installations are all owned by the U.S. Army. They are: Fort Rucker (after Col. Edmund W. Rucker, who was given the honorary title of “General”) in Alabama; Fort Benning (Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning) and Fort Gordon (Maj. Gen. John Brown Gordon) in Georgia; Camp Beauregard (Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant “P.G.T.” Beauregard) and Fort Polk (Gen. Leonidas Polk) in Louisiana; Fort Bragg (Gen. Braxton Bragg) in North Carolina; Fort Hood (Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood) in Texas; and Fort A.P. Hill (Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell “A.P.” Hill), Fort Lee (Gen. Robert E. Lee) and Fort Pickett (Maj. Gen. George Edward Pickett) in Virginia. 

Naming Policy by Military Service  

Currently, DOD does not have a department-wide review process to evaluate the naming of military installations. Each military service has its own naming criteria and approval process summarized below.  

Army 

In general, the naming of Army installations is the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary of Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs (ASA (M&RA)), However, the Secretary of the Army retains final approval authority for the Army Memorial Program—a program that oversees the naming of all Army real property. For the Army, the naming of a U.S. Army installation after a deceased individual is considered a memorialization, while naming an installation after a living individual is termed a dedication. The Army maintains separate criteria for memorialization and dedication of Army real property. The regulation that sets these criteria is Army Regulation (AR) 1-33, The Army Memorial Program (October 2018). In addition to dedicating and memorializing installations after people, the Army can also name an installation after an event. AR 1-33 provides a separate set of criteria for this “naming” and is defined as “the non-permanent naming of Army real property after famous battles and events.”  

Navy

OPNAV INSTRUCTION 5030.12H(October 2017) explains the U.S. Navy’s policy and procedures for the naming of streets, facilities and structures. According to this instruction, “names selected should honor deceased members of the Navy.” It may also be appropriate to honor deceased persons other than Navy personnel who have made significant contributions to the benefit of the Navy. This instruction is applicable to naming a structure or building that is identified by a real property unique identifier or a street. Naming designations of internal portions of buildings or spaces can be assigned at the discretion of the local installation commander. The spokesman for the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday announced on June 9, that Adm. Gilday directed his staff to draft an order that will ban the Confederate battle flag from all public spaces and work areas on Navy bases, ships, subs, and aircraft.  

Marine Corps 

The Manual for the Marine Corps Historical Program addresses the Commemorative Naming Program and specifies that “property may be named for individuals highly regarded within the Marine Corps and/or local communities. Names of deceased Marines, or members of other military organizations who died while serving with or in support of Marine Corps units, will be considered first.”A Marine Corps Installations Command Policy Letter 3-15 offers guidance for Marine Corps Installations Command. 

Air Force Air Force

 Manual 36-2806, Awards and Memorialization Program (2019), sets Air Force policy for the Air Force’s memorialization program. The manual states “The memorialization program is designed to provide enduring honor and tribute to living and deceased military members and civilians with records of outstanding and honorable service through the naming of Air Force installations, streets, buildings, and interior spaces of buildings.” Chapter 4 of the manual provides naming criteria and approval authorities for Air Force installations, and states: “When naming an Air Force installation ensure only the most deserving individuals are selected for memorialization. Selections should bring honor to the Air Force and reflect the goodwill of the local community.”  

Author Information 

Barbara Salazar Torreon Senior Research Librarian

Well, there you have it. From that you can take it to be the case that the Army wouldn't be naming any posts after Confederate rebels today as they wouldn't meet the first two criteria.  I.e., no Confederate figure is a "national hero", in spite of what some in the South may have viewed over the last century about figures like Robert E. Lee, and in spite of the treatment those same figures were given by the Army in the early and mid 20th Century, and the second criteria implicitly presumes that they were in the U.S. service, which none of the Confederate figures was at the time of their famous or infamous service.

Camp Wheeler, Georgia, named after Joseph Wheeler and which was used in World War One and World War Two.  The land was returned to its owners following the Second World War.  Camp Wheeler is arguably the only former military post that would meet the current rules, as while Wheeler had been a Confederate General in the Civil War, he was also a Maj. Gen. in the U.S. Army during the Spanish American War.  Wheeler is associated with Georgia, but was actually from Connecticut.

None of which means that the post would be, or should be, renamed, although we addressed that topic in our first post in which we concluded that they  largely should be.

As the Army's Center for Military History item notes, early on posts were named as a matter of local prerogative.  When we looked at the Wyoming posts names, an interesting added part of the picture comes to light.  When the U.S. first established any military presence in Wyoming at all, it was acquiring existing facilities and simply keeping their names. Ft. Laramie was the first permanent U.S. post in what would become Wyoming and the Army simply bought Ft. Laramie and kept the name.  Jaques LaRamy wasn't an American military figure and wasn't an American at all.   This didn't seem to figure into the Army's naming conventions at all at the time.  Other forts occupied prior to the Civil War went the same way, in part.

Having said that, on some occasions the office establishing a camp was naming it after himself, or in quite a few instances, a commander who was up his chain of command.  A person can look at that more than one way, rather obviously, but both were common.

When the Civil War hit, in Wyoming, the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas came into the state, and they established the practice of occupying established "stations" of a civilian nature and building posts at them.  Sometimes they observed the pre war naming convention, but more often they simply named the station after where they were.  

The Civil War was a great national shock and following it hte officer corps of the Army was made up of veterans of that war, many of whom had held much higher ranks during the ar than they did after it.  Even as the war was raging the Army started to name new posts after U.S. Army senior officer who had lost their lives during the war or, in some cases, very soon after it.  Wyoming posts like Ft. Buford and Ft. Sanders (the same post) or Ft. Phil Kearny provide such examples.

During the Civil War the Indian Wars heated up massively as Indians tribes, either intentionally or due to circumstances engaged non Indians with increasing frequency.  At the time, and for many years thereafter, this was attributed to Indian opportunism but a careful look at the era would lead a person to question that.*  The war resulted in the withdrawal of the Army from the Frontier to a large extent, although it should be noted that the military presence on the Frontier was very small to start with and the distance between the prewar Frontier forts was massive in extent, so the extent to which that alone was responsible for the uptick in conflicts, as some have asserted, is questionable.

The war directly caused a big upswing in European migration on the transcontinental trails across the West which arrived at the same time in which Indians tribes noticed and became increasingly concerned over the character of European American presence in the upper West.  Prior European Americans had been small in number and were often fairly feral in their nature.  The new migrants were largely passing through but they were also largely of the yeomanry class whose view of hte land was markedly different, and they were also descendant in large numbers of prior American populations that had a history of conflict with Indians.  Simultaneously miners began to penetrate the West in numbers for the first time. Towns, and even cities, began to be built which was a notable and dangerous new development for Indians and finally the railroad began to penetrate as well.  All of this made an already touchy situation explosive.

As did events like the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864 during which Colorado militia attacked a Cheyenne band with no real cause. This put the Cheyenne to flight and also to war, with that war spreading north very rapidly into Wyoming.  In turn, Sioux bands allied with the Cheyenne could not help but note was occurring generally.

All of this meant that even as the Civil War was being fought the Plains Indians Wars were igniting, meaning that as early as 1865, if not earlier, the Army was naming posts after Army figures who had been killed in combat with Indians.  Ft. Caspar was one of the first such examples, but it would soon be joined by Ft. Fetterman and Ft. Brown.  Civil War figures were not replaced by Indian War figures, however, with the seminal name of Abraham Lincoln being given to the post of that name in 1872.**

This loose practice kept up as the Army approached World War One.  Camp Cody, featured above, was named for example at the time of the Punitive Expedition.  Other posts incorporated varied names.

Camp Furlong, Columbus, New Mexico.  1916.  I don't know who this post was named for, as there's little easy to find information on that.  However, it's worth noting that this post in 1912 was established at time at which Wesley J. Furlong, a black recipient of the Medal of Honor from the Civil War, was still living.

Camp Stewart, not Stuart.  I'm not sure which military figure this post was named for, but it was not J. E. B. Stuart. It may have been named for Brig. Gen. Daniel Stewart, whom Ft. Stewart, Georgia, was also named for. That Stewat was a general in the Revolutionary War. Of note, teh Amy chose not to retain this name with this post 

When the US ran up to entry in the Great War, the naming conventions, but not regulations, tighted up considerable.  As the CMH item notes, the practice became to name military posts after generals of historical importance and preferentially with a connection to the region of the post.  Unnamed as a policy, it very clearly became the practice to name Southern posts after Confederate generals even to the extent of naming some after figures of some infamy or who were even of questionable military competence.***

The fact that even figures who were not only rebels, but in some occasions associated with the worst of the Confederate cause and also those who were not bright shining military lights really tells us something about the extent to which the Lost Cause mythology had seized and altered the common historical understanding of the Civil War.  It also says something about the extent to which the Army, faced with the largest war it had been in since the Civil War, looked back on that war for guidance.  Seemingly it was also the only thing that compared to what it was now in.

It was the only thing that it had been in for nearly eighty years in which Southern military figures, save for Joseph Wheeler, had really shined in an obvious fashion. There's been a lot of notable figures of the Indian Wars since 1865 and the Spanish American War contributed additional names to the Army's heroic list. These names were not forgotten, but the policy of local attribution meant that they largely were absent from the South. They were used, and sometimes more than once.  Frederick Funston, only recently departed and expected to have lead the American Army in France if war came, was a hero of the Spanish American War who died shortly before the war. Two Camp Funston's were named for him thereafter, for example.

Camp Funston, Leon Springs, Texas.

Camp Funston, Kansas.

In Michigan, which was his home, George Armstrong Custer of Little Big Horn fame, or infamy, found his name attached to the World War One training post there, Camp Custer, which survives today as Ft. Custer, a Michigan National Guard training range.

Camp Custer, 1918.  This post remained in service after the war and was designated a permanent base and therefore a "fort" in 1940.  After World War Two it went into use as a Marine Corps and Navy Reserve post but reverted to the Army at the start of the Korean War.  It was turned over to the state of Michigan as a National Guard training range in 1968, but interestingly it still sees some Navy Reserve use.

So the naming conventions remained loose during the Great War but there was obviously an unofficial policy of naming posts after a military figure with a local connection, and in the case of the South, that meant, in the minds of Army leaders, picking Confederate generals' names.  To put it fairly, however, they didn't seem to be under any mental reservation about that.  Indeed, during the war the widow of at least one Confederate general, and one of the problematic ones at that, was honored, and therefore the general himself vicariously honored, at the post.

The 82nd Division  honoring the widow of John Brown Gordon at the first Camp Gordon.

What black soldiers thought of this seems unrecorded, or at least I haven't run across their thoughts. They were obviously aware of it and indeed as many black soldiers hailed from the South they saw service in some of these posts.  Indeed, it's worth noting that black combat soldiers were more likely, as a class, to see combat in World War One than World War Two.  While the services were segregated at the time, save for the Marine Corps which didn't allow blacks to enter their service at all until mid World War Two, the Great War did not see an effort to preclude black troops from the front lines to the same extent that was done in the Second World War and there were a variety of black National Guard units that saw service in the war.****  Some of those units would have trained at these posts.

National Guardsmen of the 370th Infantry of Illinois, which had black officers and enlisted men.  Black officers were very unusual, but once again this was a feature of a few such units in World War One.  The 370th had an all black officer corps, the only such unit to have that feature.

It should have been noted that there were ways around naming posts after Confederate officers, if the Army had chosen to do them.  For one thing, they could simply have been named for their locations, which would have been easy enough. As has been already pointed out in Part 2 of this series, that's exactly how Wyoming's two National Guard training ranges were named, even though by the time the second one, Camp Guernsey, was being established, there was clearly a Wyoming personality, Jay L. Torrey, whose name was available for use.*****Another option, in some instances, would have been to use the names of Southern figures from the Revolution or the War of 1812, although that would have perhaps simply served to remind Southerners that names of Confederate generals were being excluded.  Finally, while it would be controversial today, names of Indian War figures were available, but that would have had to have been done without regard to their place of origin and, as odd as it may seem, the Plains Indian Wars were closer in time to World War One for the most part than the Civil War such that many of the participants in those wars remained alive, with some Army officers, such as Pershing, having served in them.

Whatever the situation may have been during World War One, it's harder to justify the ongoing practice of naming Southern posts after Confederate figures after 1918.  By that time, the new war had produced more than its share of well known national heroic figures.  Nonetheless, the practice continued all the way through World War Two. The reason it did is truly an example of institutional racism.  By that time, no matter what the majority view of the country may have been, the Army basically accepted the Lost Cause thesis and had made up, in its mind, with the rebellious Southern officers of the 1860s and accepted them as their own.  Indeed, as an example of that, John J. Pershing and his aid, George Marshall, visited the tomb of J. E. B. Stuart at VMI in 1920, honoring the rebel cavalryman by their presence.  During the same time frame the Army actually became more prejudiced in its view towards its black soldiers, not less, and when the Second World War Came the Army acted to exclude existing black Regular Army formations from combat in spite of their World War One examples.  Half of the Army posts now subject to controversial Confederate names were named during the Second World War, not the First.

Segregation in the Army came to an end in the Truman Administration and it was Missouri born Truman who first used the Regular Army in support of desegregation in the South.  Blacks were conscripted in a fashion roughly analogous with whites during the Korean War and combat units in that war were desegregated.  This has been true, of course, ever since.  Also under Truman, official naming conventions in the Army, already set out above, but repeated here, came into existance in 1946, providing:

(1) a national hero of absolute preeminence by virtue of high position,(2) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility (Army and above) and whose death was a result of battle wounds,(3) an individual who held a position of high and extensive responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds,(4) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was a result of battle wounds, and(5) an individual who performed an act of heroism or who held a position of high responsibility and whose death was not a result of battle wounds.

And that is where we are now.

As noted above, none of the Southern posts named after Confederates would meet these criteria now, but then not all of the remaining posts named after others would as well.  At least Michigan's Fort Custer is probably named after an individual who is as despised by a significant number of Americans as the Southern posts are.  So renaming them merely because they don't meet the current criteria likely wouldn't be in order.  Renaming them because of who they are named after, however, very well might be.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Prior posts in this series:

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

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

*I'm not saying that such a careful look has in fact taken place.

**Ft. Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota, was the location from which the 7th Cavalry dispatched in 1876 in their message to gather the Sioux from the plains. The campaign would result in the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

***The universal military quality of Southern officers is a myth of the Lost Cause Era.  In truth, the South has an inordinate number of marginal or even incompetent officers.

****The story of segregation in the Armed Forces is a little more complicated than it might at first seem, and has been dealt with here in earlier posts, specifically:

Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation

That post deals with the Army and the Navy, in spite of its caption.

As noted in that post, during the Revolution blacks were actually common in the Continental Army and it wasn't until after the Revolution that Congress banned their entry into the Army.  Even with an official prohibition, actually enforcing the ban seems to have been loosely enforced at first.  Only as the 19th Century progressed towards the Civil War were blacks actually excluded from the Army, but that day did arrive. During the Civil War the ban was reversed and the segregated Army came in, which remained all the way until just prior to the Korean War.

The Navy in contrast wasn't segregated until the late 19th Century, reflecting the fact that the Navy recruited from ports in the wood and sail era.  During that time it was more concerned about bringing in experienced sailors than anything else and it accordingly disregarded race and even nationality in recruiting enlisted men.  Only when the steel Navy came in post Civil War did that change and the Navy officially segregated in 1893, although officially enforcing that policy on a preexisting structure also took some time.  This change reflected a change in recruitment in which mechanical and technical skills now took precedence over sailing skills, and the Navy was now recruiting largely from the interior of the country.

The Marine Corps had barred entry of blacks from the very beginning as it strictly limited its recruiting to whites.  This was for a peculiar reason, however.  The logic of its first commanders was focused on the mutiny suppression role that Marines fulfilled and they therefore tried to make the makeup of the Marine Corps reflect the largest national demographic out of a fear that allowing in minorities would cause conflicts in loyalties should mutinies occur.  Interestingly enough, the one real mutiny, although it is not called that, which the Navy experienced didn't occur until the early 1970s at which time the black commanding officer of the vessel had to be ordered to stand down in his plan to arm his Marines and storm the parts of the ship held by protesting black sailors so, while the event occured two centuries later, ethnic loyalties did't play a part in that event when it really came.  The Marine Corps allowed blacks into the service during World War Two and was integrated along with the Army and Navy in 1948. The Air Force had already taken the step in 1946 upon its coming into existence and was never officially segregated, although as it was formed out of the segregated Army, it took it until 1949 to really desegregate.

*****Torrey was a legislator and rancher who had lead the formation and recruitment of the 2nd Volunteer Cavalry during the Spanish American War.  That unit failed to see action, but it was sufficiently well remembered that a Rough Rider was adopted as the unit patch for Wyoming National Guardsmen at some point and while different patches have come in, in recent years, for some units, it's still the default patch for the Wyoming Army National Guard.  It's fairly surprising that Camp Guernsey wasn't named Camp Torrey.