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.
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