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.

Lex Anteinternet: The plank in our own eye. Considering the memoria...

Lex Anteinternet: The plank in our own eye. Considering the memoria...: Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own?  And how dare you say to your broth...

After Appomattox. The Civil War's impact on Wyoming.

 

 Grand Army of the Republic memorial, Casper Wyoming.

We recently posted this item on the Civil War in Wyoming:

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming in the Civil War: I posted this item on our other blog, Lex Anteinternet, very recently for a variety of reasons: Lex Anteinternet: The Stars and Bars as ...

That's not where Wyoming's story with the Civil War ends, however.  When the guns fell silent at Appomattox (which of course didn't really end the war everywhere), changes kept on coming.  And indeed it was inevitable that they would, given the operation of Holscher's Fourth Law of History, War Changes Everything.  So here we'll look at that part of the history of our state, which again is a very significant one we've heretofore overlooked.

To a degree, with our earlier thread on the Civil War in Wyoming, we've already started to look at that to a degree.  We concluded our examination there with noting three (actually two) battles that occurred in Wyoming in the summer of 1865, just after the war ended with the last battle of that war, ironically in the west, at Palmito Ranch in May 1865.  Just two months later cavalrymen from Ohio, Kansas, and infantrymen from southern states serving as paroled Confederates, fought in central Wyoming at Platte Bridge Station. Soon thereafter Patrick Connor's troops fought in northern Wyoming at the Battle of Tongue River.  Starting shortly after that, however, these state troops were sent home and the Regular Army started coming back in.

 Aggressive campaigner in the West during the Civil War, Patrick E. Connor.

They didn't come back in to peace, however.  What began, in some ways, as a Cheyenne uprising in 1864 in reaction to Col. Chivington's attack on peaceful Black Kettle in Colorado spread to a Sioux campaign in 1865 under the leadership of Red Cloud.  But why was Red Cloud fighting the Army in 1865?  European American expansion into the Powder River Basis was the reason why.

And this came about in part as part of the increased immigration west that started with the Civil War.  In popular memory, when the Civil War broke out men left their homes to join the fight for four years.  But that's not really true.  Many men did, of course (often for shorter terms of service, however) but some men, and some families, indeed quite a few, simply picked up and moved west to remove themselves from the strife.  Men and women from all over the country found themselves on immigrant trails leading west, hoping for a new, and more peaceful life, somewhere else.  And, with men again, some just yielded to a seeming American migratory instinct and placed themselves in the west, looking for something, with that something often being gold and silver. Given all of this, just as Indian tribes were becoming increasingly militant, an increase in European Americans in the west was being experienced as well.  This was, in part, a direct result of the war.

It didn't stop with the end of the war, however.  The war had put thousands of people in motion, some through military service, and some as refugees.  Following the war most people just went home, but some had no homes to return to, or didn't wish to, and a minority of servicemen just couldn't.  So following the war war they joined the immigrant trail.  The passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 further in creased this, as people made newly mobile found the inducement of land more than amply balanced against the difficulties of travel, particularly when they'd become accustomed to that, or had their backs forced up against the wall in any event.  This yielding to a migratory impulse would impact Wyoming and the entire country for years, with in Wyoming people moving to, or more often across, the state going on for a very long time.

It's easy to disregard the war in this context, but it shouldn't be.  Contrary to what Americans generally think about their history, Americans did move prior to the Civil War, but not usually very far. Seven miles per generation is the general figure for the pre Civil War advancement of the Frontier. But the war changed that, by force in part, and in part by acclimation.  It can be argued that the United States, as a mobile society, began with the war.

Tombstone of Illinois Civil War veteran, in Casper's Highland Cemetary. Such markers are not uncommon in the cemetery, an indicator of the many men who chose not to return to their homes after the Civil War or who ultimately left them.

All of this increased European American presence in the state (aided by the advancing Union Pacific Railroad, ran right into an increased Indian militancy, as already noted, and the Army found itself confronting a more difficult situation in 1865 than it had in 1860.  Added to this, the war ended up changing over the rank and file, and the officer corps, of what had been a fairly stable career Army.  Many men who would have continued on as career enlisted men in the tiny pre war Army either left it after years of intense combat, or were casualties of the war.  The post war Army therefore had many new men in it, including oddly enough even quite a few who had not served in the Civil War, having barely missed it.  The officer corps, for its part, was now heavily dominated by men who had cut their teeth in the Civil War and had risen up to high ranks, only to be reduced in rank in many instances to fill slots in the post war Army.  Added to their numbers were officers who had not come though West Point but rather who'd been wartime commission holders who were now accepted into Regular Federal service at the insistence of Congress, which required the Army to make room for a certain number of them.

The Army had gone into the Civil War as a very small institution, but one that had quite a bit of Frontier experience and which was very rough and ready.  After half a decade of modern war in the East, the Army that emerged in the 1865 to 1866 time frame quickly evolved from a Frontier force with experience into one that was almost entirely new and somewhat green.  The battles of the immediate post war period sometimes demonstrate this.  The Fetterman Fight in December 1866 epitomized this.  Troops from Ft. Phil Kearney, which was commanded by a pre war lawyer turned wartime officer, Col. Carrington, found themselves badly lead by former Lt. Colonel, now Captain, William J. Fetterman who failed to appreciate that fighting the Sioux was going to be different than fighting Confederates.  This lead, of course, to the destruction of his command in the worst Frontier Army disaster of the immediate post war period, which wouldn't be eclipsed until former General, now Lt. Colonel, George A. Custer lead his troops into a worst disaster in 1876 in Montana.

Monument to the troops of William J. Fetterman's detail.

The Army, practically a new Army, did learn how to engage in its new role, but it wasn't as quick or proficient as it as might generally be believed.  Red Cloud actually managed to win his war in 1868, giving us the only example of a Plains Indian War in which the native combatants emerged with a wartime victory.  A war weary and distracted United States yielded to the Sioux in this singular example in Wyoming, making this Wyoming experience unique, albeit temporary.  Hardly noticed is that the 1868 victory came only a few years before the campaigns of the 1876, which would see a spectacular Sioux battlefield victory but which would result in the ultimate Sioux and Cheyenne defeat.

 Red Cloud

Part of this story, of course, is that Col. Chivington's attack on the Cheyenne in 1864 caused a war with the Cheyenne that was fought in Wyoming and Nebraska.  The Cheyenne were Sioux allies and would fight with the Sioux into the 1870s before they experienced the same results.  In some ways, the Wyoming Indian Wars of the late Civil War period were more dominated by the Cheyenne than the Sioux, while the larger Sioux wold dominate the wars from 1866 on.

The collapse of the Indian effort was a feature of Wyoming's history and Wyoming featured prominently in the campaigns on the Northern Plains.  And of course a result of that collapse was a vast expansion of the reservation system in the West.  That expansion would see the Cheyenne and Sioux, who had entered Wyoming in the first half of the 19th Century taken back out and removed as a demographic in Wyoming.  The Crow, who had ranged into and contested for Wyoming as well would also find themselves outside of the state, although only barely given their reservation in southern Montana (the Cheyenne also have one of their reservations in southern Montana near the Wyoming border).  The Wind River Reservation was established at the request of the Shoshone in 1868 (again, a unique Wyoming fact, given that it was unusual for an Indian tribe to ask for a Reservation).  The Arapaho's, a small tribe allied to the Sioux and  Cheyenne (and who had members of their tribe at Sand Creek at the time of Chivington's attack) came on to the reservation in 1878 as a result of the increasingly desperate straits the collapse of Indian efforts following 1876 entailed.

It would be a stretch, of course, to say that the Indian Wars of the 1866 to 1890 time frame are all the result of Civil War, but not much of a stretch.  Some of this strife would have happened anyhow, but it cannot be denied that the tribes were activated and made militant by the events of the Civil War and that the increase of European American immigration into the West which the war fueled played a major part in making that strife what it was.  Likewise, the Army effort was heavily impacted by the loss of the pre war soldiers who knew Frontier campaigning.

Part of the influx of immigration into Wyoming which hasn't been addressed, and which has to be addressed as a separate topic, is that of post war cattlemen. This was, in fact, a direct result of the Civil War.

Wyoming had seen very little in the way of agriculture prior to the Civil War.  Small agricultural units did pop up around the advancing Union Pacific to serve it, but they weren't much.  Prior to that, farming had been introduced by Mexican immigrant labor around Ft. Laramie, when the "Mexican Hills" were farmed by families that had come up after the Mexican War to work on the new buildings at the fort.  The war changed all of this.

During the Civil War enormous herds of feral cattle had grown up in Texas, as those cattle were simply abandoned by those who owned them as they went away to Confederate service.  After the war, these wild cattle were basically free for the taking, or rather for the taking for those who would expend the effort.  Without a market however, they were of very low value.

 Branding cattle in Texas, approximately in the 1860s.

The East provided that market, and it was a market for beef. Prior to the 1865, the United States was really a pork eating nation, not a beef eating one.  Cattle in Texas were raised in the Mexican market fashion, for their hides.  Meat was only a locally consumed byproduct.  The expansion of rail into the West, however, which had commenced before the war and which continued on during it, brought railhead within long distance trailing of Texas herds, and that meant that they could now be driving, as difficult as that was, to railheads for shipment to the hungry East.

It's already been addressed here, but nearly as soon as it became evident that money could be made driving cattle to railheads in Kansas, it became evident that the cattle industry could expand into the plains regions of the West profitably.  This took off rapidly and Wyoming the cattle industry was reaching far up into Wyoming by the mid 1870s, although with difficulty.  Following the collapse of Indian resistance in the late 1870s, the door was open and it really took off in the 1880s.

The story of the early cattle industry is a complicated one, but one of the prominent but lesser noted aspects of it is the extent to which it reflected Southern livestock raising practice.  In the Antebellum South, and indeed well after it, cattle had been turned out into the woods, which while owned were largely unexploited.  This meant that cattle were effectively grazed in "commons" by men who necessarily had to be mounted.  Following the Southern defeat in the war, the use of the wooded commons became increasingly restricted as the timber lands owners, often of the planter class, actively acted to deprive Southern yeomen of the use of them.  Already having suffered the impacts of defeat, some of these men simply took off and went where cattle were otherwise raised, such as in Texas or ultimately elsewhere in the West, taking their mounted lives and practices with them.  This reflected itself in the practices of the cattle industry, even though it is difficult to find the stories of individual cowboys who reflect this. But, for that matter, the stories of individual Mexican cowboys, or black cowboys, who made up 1/3d of that class, is also difficult to find.

Which brings us to another aspect of this story, the addition of African Americans to the Wyoming demographic.  They did not come in huge numbers, but they did come, and even ended up being incorporated into Wyoming's civic life very quickly.  At least one black juror served in a capitol murder jury early in the 20th Century, a remarkable fact for the United States that time, and Casper elected a black Civil War veteran as its mayor during the 1890s.

Something often omitted, oddly, in the popular recollection of the early cattle industry is that this is an economic story. That is, the cattle industry was and is an industry, not some sort of exotic hobby.  The cattle industry in the West differed markedly from cattle raising efforts east of the Mississippi as those efforts, prior to the Civil War, had been much less market oriented for practical reasons.  Most meat was butchered and consumed locally, as there there was no practical means of preservation other than salting or corning (and hence the widespread consumption of bacon, ham, corned beef, and sausages in that era).

I note this as one of the hugely significant aspect of the Civil War is that it accelerated, partially through political actions, the industrialization of the United States, and that had a big impact on the early history of Wyoming.  Indeed, while very poorly understood, that impact still lives on today, although its ironically contested by the same forces that brought it about.

The Civil War did not cause the Industrial Revolution in the United States. That had been ongoing for quite some time.  However, the Industrial Revolution had not come to all o the United States prior to the war, and that impacted the war and its results.  Industrialization had occurred much more significantly in the North.  The South provided 25% of the nation's exports prior to the war, but nearly 100% of that 25% were agricultural products.  The South, famously, had no arms industry at all when it chose to take on the North, which had a significant one.

This is not to say, as is sometimes implied, that everyone in the North was working in a factory.  That view was somewhat popular in the South at the time, which is one of the things that gave Southerners false comport, feeling as they did that a bunch of pasty faced factory workers would not be able to take on the hardy yeoman of the South.  In fact, most Northerners were from farms as well and many were also Yeoman.  One of the rude shocks of the war that the South experienced was to learn that, as they did for example taking on the Michigan Brigade early in the war where they were stunned to find that Michigan's troops weren't bothered by the rain.

The industrialization of the North, however, is important to this story as industry had widely developed and was supported politically in the North. While a majority of Northerners were yeomen, as in the South, Yeoman in the North had not retained a huge cultural identity as they did in the South.  Southerners were not only mostly yeomen, in outlook they were hostile to industry.  This wasn't the case in the North.  Because the Democratic Party identified with the  South, and the political class in the South was Democratic, and because the Whigs had folded into the Republican Party in the North, this impacted politics.

The GOP of this period, and all the way through World War One, is an interesting mix of views that are sometimes difficult to reconcile. Basically, however, the GOP inherited the pro industry view of northern Whigs, while also having what we'd regard today as strong pro civil rights platform. The party was simultaneously radical and conservative, depending upon which aspect  of its politics you are looking at.  What this meant in practical terms, however, is that the party tended towards strongly supporting government support of business, while also being strongly supportive of individual rights.

The Civil War caused the fortunes of the Democratic Party to fall enormously, and the early history of Wyoming as well as most of the rest of the West was marked by the Republican Party being the dominant political party.  That party favored industry and it favored government support of industry, which directly impacted Wyoming.  The GOP favored retention of the public domain by the Federal government for direct claim by homesteaders and mineral entrants, something that the states had not done so generously. The GOP sponsored railroad through the granting land to them.  The GOP backed land grant universities. The GOP dominated the early political history of Wyoming, and it was both pro civil rights and pro business.  Wyoming, by extension, reflected those values, being remarkably progressive at least as to black residents and through also being a backer of women's rights in the context of the 19th Century. That latter movement, notably, had grown directly out of the the abolition movement.

The acceleration of the fortunes of industry during the war, and the decline of the Democratic party which had backed a more agrarian view of the economy, also meant that the entire country progressed into a more industrial era at a more rapid pace than it otherwise would have.  The region of the United States that remained resistant to that evolution remained the South, and as late as the 1930s the Southern Agrarians would push back against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal with their manifesto I'll Take My Stand. That was well after the era we are discussing, of course, but it is the case that the fortunes of industry advanced remarkably for at least a couple of decades after the Civil War, during that same period of time during which the  Wyoming Territory was created, and Wyoming became a state.  Wyoming itself did not participate in heavy industry, but almost from its onset as a territory, in spite of it being primarily agricultural, it looked towards mineral development very favorably, and that mineral development could only have taken place in the context of a large national industrial economy.

Also in the context of politics, Wyoming's early political history featured many individuals who had been Union soldiers during the Civil War.  Francis E. Warren provides a prominent example, as he not only had been a Civil War era solider, he had been  a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Not too surprisingly, almost all of the Wyoming's early politicians were immigrants to the state, and a fair number of those men had served in the Union's forces during the war.  Confederates were notably absent in this category.

 

Francis E. Warren wearing his Congressional Medal of Honor.

All this goes, in part, to the fact that the settlement of Wyoming and its obtaining of statehood in 1890 is itself a direct byproduct of the war.  Without the cattle industry's expansion in the 1880s, which really started in Texas in the late 1860s, it just wouldn't have happened in the same manner or nearly so quickly.  If pre war trends had continued, its hard to see the same event taking place in 1890, and foreseeing a different future in which statehood came about in the 20th Century is more likely.  Indeed, Wyoming itself wasn't recognized as a territory until 1868, and its doubtful that would have occurred at the same pace, if at all.  The Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s probably wouldn't have occurred as well, and it's possible that Indian fortunes would have played out more favorably than they did.

 

Ft. Caspar Cemetery.

Wyoming in the Civil War

I posted this item on our other blog, Lex Anteinternet, very recently for a variety of reasons:

Lex Anteinternet: The Stars and Bars as viewed from outside the Sout...: As everyone is well aware, there's been a controversy over the Confederate battle flag, the Stars and Bars, brought about by the recent ...

In doing this, it occurred to me to link this item over here, as I mentioned Wyoming's role in the Civil War in the post. 

Now, given that I've started this sidebar in this fashion, this will be a bit of an odd one, in that it has commentary inserted in it.  Nonetheless, this is an important story that I've omitted, and should not have.  As this blog isn't updated daily, like it once was, omitting a story like this is a defect that is easy to carry forward, but I really should remedy it, particularly as we're coming up on one of the seminal events of that story, the Battle of Platte Bridge Station.

But, before we do, some added commentary.

In recent years I've seen something around here that I never saw when I was young, which is the flying of the Stars and Bars by some people here locally.  People who do this are, as a rule, people who have moved in, and I think the battle jack of the Confederacy has some relevance to them, that it does not to those of us who are from here.  Indeed, for Wyomingites, the Confederate battle jack can be offensive.  We don't associate it with regional pride the way some people do, but rather with a foreign otherness of which we were not part. This, in no small part, has to do with our regional history, which is not Confederate.

So to that story.

Wyoming didn't exist as political entity until 1868, but the land which became Wyoming certainly did.  Residents of what became the state wouldn't have conceived of it a geopolitical entity during the war, but the region that became the state definitely participated in it. Wyoming was active during the war.

When the Civil War broke out a large part of the Army was located in the American West engaged in guarding the frontier, principally against Native Americans but also against border incursions and threats from the south and potentially from the north. The big exception would have been coast artillery, which was the glamour branch of the Army, concentrated as it was in ports, which typically featured major cities.

 Ft. Laramie in 1858, by which time it had been a U.S. Army post for nine years.  Almost all of the structures seen in this photographs were built by the Army, even though the post was purchased as an existing establishment.  The large building in the center of this photo, Old Bedlam, is the oldest structure in Wyoming.

The Army entered Wyoming for the first time in a series of exploratory expeditions, but for our purposes, it's first significant presence came when it purchased in June of 1849.  Purchasing the long existing fur trading post served the purpose of guarding the Oregon Trail (by whatever name a person might choose to call it).  While we'd consider it today perhaps the easternmost of the classic frontier era Wyoming posts, it was a major post on the trail for those who had struggled across the Nebraska plains, and it served to allow pioneers to restock for the long trail ahead.  Heading out from Ft. Laramie there were basically no more Army installations until pioneers reached what is now southeastern Wyoming.  All posts on the trail were, which were exceedingly few in number, were garrisoned by regulars of the U.S. Army.

Ft. Bridger in 1858, the year the Army first occupied what had been a civilian trading establishment in southwestern Wyoming.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861 the Federal government largely withdrew the Regular Army from the Frontier, although contrary to what is sometimes asserted a few troops remained.  Added to this massive change was the fact that not only did the Army leave, for the most part, the West, but the officer corps of the Army suffered a partial breakdown as officers with Southern sympathies were allowed to depart their Federal service without hindrance, an act that may have been gentlemanly, but which did not serve the interest of the country well.  This left policing the Frontier, or protecting immigrants and other interests, or however a person might conceive of it, to the Western states, where they existed, or to other means where they did not.

Wyoming, of course, was not a state. But to the south Colorado was, and Colorado immediately set out raising state troops who in turn actually did do some fighting, in New Mexico, against Confederate forces.  Nebraska was a territory and raised some troops to contribute to the war effort, and Utah, which had an existing military history of service in the Mexican War, but also of rebellion in the Mormon War, also did.  Wyoming, with virtually no European population to speak of, did not and could not have, and of course it wasn't a political entity. But the long Oregon trail needed protection.

This fell to state and territorial troops from other regions, and these forces dramatically altered the military presence in the state. Whereas the U.S. Army had been content to police the Oregon Trail with very few troops who covered massive distances, the forces that came in from the states with state troops, or territorial troops, during the Civil War did not take this approach at all.  Soon an entire chain of posts were constructed every few miles along the Oregon Trail so that small bodies of men were basically always a half day or perhaps a full days ride from each other.  On much of the Oregon Trail these posts came to be manned by the 11th Ohio and the 11th Kansas Cavalry, troops raised to fight in the Civil War against Confederate forces but sent instead to Frontier West.

Platte Bridge Station.  The location of a private trading post and toll bridge prior to the war, it became one of a collection of closely linked Army "stations" during the Civil War.  The reconstructed fort is on the edge of Casper Wyoming today.

Added to these were posts under the command of the Department of Utah under Gen. Patrick Connor, who commanded a force made up of troops as far away as California but as close as Utah and Idaho. 

Connor was a very active campaigner during the Civil War and constructed a post in the Powder River Basin, along the Bozeman Trail, a very early effort of that type.  He was aggressive, but not always discerning, and at least a couple of his battles, that at Bear River and the one in Wyoming at Tongue River are pretty questionable.  They prefigured the battles of the later Indian Wars, perhaps, so they are significant for that, amongst other reasons.

 

Where Ft. Reno once was.

The Battle of Tongue River, part of the Powder River Expedition, is also an immediate post Civil WAr battle (Bear River, in Idaho, was fought in 1863).  And in this fashion it is also signficant.

 

A flooded Tongue River battleground, as photographed several years ago.

For almost all of the Civil War state forces patrolled long lonely stretches of trails, and telegraph wires, far from the battlegrounds in the bloody east.  The duty was lonely, alien, extremely dangerous, and often done on very meager rations.  Troops feared stepping outside their isolated posts as it could easily mean death, and during the long Wyoming winters this was all the more the case.  Very few significant battles were fought, but quite a few lonely small actions were.  The state troops on the Oregon Trail were supplemented with Galvanized Yankees, Confederates who opted for Federal service rather than stay in prisoner of war camps, as the war went on, and interestingly there seems to have been little strain between the men as they all endured this duty.

Late in the war, for whatever reason, the commanders of some of these state forces started taking their troops to the field. Connor certainly did, launching the Powder River Expedition against the Cheyenne in the summer of 1865.  Prior to that, however, in November 1864, Colorado and New Mexico troops under the command of Colorado's John M. Chivington, who had previously performed admirably at the Battle of Glorietta Pass,  brutally and without cause attacked a Cheyenne band at Sand Creek outside of Denver Colorado.  A true massacre, Black Kettle's band was at peace with the United States and wholly unwarranted. The attack set the Plains aflame as the Cheyenne fled north, and at war, with the result being that what is now Wyoming was everywhere at war.  They were soon joined by Cheyennes who had remained in the north, and the late Army campaigns of 1865 resulted. They were not successful.

Indeed, in July 1865 the Cheyenne would succeed in defeating the 11th Kansas in what was regarded as two battles but which are really just one, the Battles of Platte Bridge Station and Red Buttes.  The battle, which was caused when a small wagon detail commanded by a solder of the Regular Army refused to head warnings given by troopers of the 11th Kansas, was pretty much a complete route, leading to the destruction of the wagon detail and the force sent to relieve it.  Only the native reluctance to storm an Army post, together with the expeditious deployment of a mountain howitzer, kept Platte Bridge Station from being overrun.  Connor's Powder River Expedition, in turn, would fail to determine the contest.  By that time, of course, the Civil War was over, and the duties that Galvanized Yankees, Kansas and Ohio Cavalrymen, and volunteers from California, Utah and Idaho had taken up during the war were turned back over to the Regular Army. 

The Regular Army, in turn, would find the task of dealing with the Frontier after the Civil War more difficult than it had been before.  In many of the immediate post Civil War battles the returned U.S. Army would do no better than state militiamen had.  During the war, the native population had learned that European American troops were not invincible.

That should as a conclusion to this story, that of Wyoming during the Civil War, but to leave off where we started, what we also learn from that is that the Confederate battle jack, which we see occasionally flying here now by folks who are no doubt from somewhere else, doesn't really have a place in our history directly.  The sons of the South who had started off fighting under it, or under one of the numerous other Confederate flags, ended up here in service to Old Glory, no matter how reluctant their service may have been. Other troops who served here during the war had patriotically enlisted to fight the South, or to serve on the Frontier.  And of course to the native combatants no distinction between North and South would have been recognized at all.

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Fact and Fiction; 150 Years Ago--Texas not Wyoming

150 Years Ago-Texas not Wyoming.

Some Gave All: Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg Penn...

While the Indian Wars smouldering in Wyoming, and state volunteer units were patrolling the Oregon Trail:

Some Gave All: Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg Penn...: The photographs below are of the Gettysburg National Military Park. I only recently saw the park, and as I was traveling for business, I...

Interesting to place in prospective in regards to scale. The Civil War years were bloody ones on the Frontier, but the blood spilled in the war in the East was truly massive.  While battles occurred in the West, and in Wyoming, throughout the Civil War, they were often on the level of skirmishes compared to the ones being fought in the East.  This is not to reduce the scale of the conflict in the West, or the nature of it, but rather, it places it in context.  Indeed, those state and paroled troops serving in the West were there as the regular Federal troops were serving in the East, alongside of thousands upon thousands of other state troops.

April 12

1844   Texas became a US territory.

1861     The Civil War began as Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The Civil War would have a major impact on the policing of the West, and on Western immigration.  Very soon after the commencement of the war, Regular Army units were withdrawn from the Frontier, at the very same moment when emigration to California and Oregon, and other points West, increased.  This heightened tensions with Native tribes, which in turn caused the Federal Government to increasingly rely upon various state units raised for Civil War for Frontier duty.  Ultimately, the Federal Government would also deploy "Galvanized Yankees", i.e, southern POWs paroled upon volunteering for Frontier service.  All of this was played out in Wyoming, as well as the rest of the West.

1870  Sioux reservation in South Dakota created.

1889  Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show departs New York for Paris.

1892  An invader by the name of Dowling, having escaped the TA at night on the 11th, reached Douglas, over 100 miles away, and sent a telegraph to Gov. Barber that the invaders were in trouble.  Barber had been in on the plot and participated to the extent that he was not going to activate the Guard to intervene.  Barber asked for the President to intervene, claiming "An insurrection exists in Johnson County. . . "  The telegram to the President did not get through, however, and he then began to telegram Senators Warren and Carey.  Carey spoke to the President, after being reached, that evening and President Harrison ordered Gen. Brooke in Omaha to send troops.  Troops at Ft. McKinney were ordered to move and departed in the middle of the night.  During the day, the besiegers constructed and began to use an hastily fortified wagon to move their lines closer to the ranch house and barn.

1905  Wyoming Wool Growers Association founded.

1916  A clash occurs between US Regulars and Mexican Carranzaistas at Parrel.

The Punitive Expedition: The Battle of Parral. April 12, 1916

 Corporal Richard Tannous, 13th Cavalry, wounded at Parral.

U.S. cavalry under Major Frank Tompkins, who had been at Columbus the day it was raided and who had first lead U.S. troops across the border, entered Parral Mexico. At this point, the Punitive Expedition reached its deepest point in Mexico.

The entry was met with hostility right from the onset.  Warned by an officer of Carranzas that his Constitutionalist troops fire on American forces, Tompkins immediately started to withdraw them  During the withdraw, with hostile Mexican demonstrators jeering the U.S. forces, Mexican troops fired on the American forces and a battle ensued.  While Mexican forces started the battle, it was lopsided with the Mexicans suffering about sixty deaths to an American two.  Tompkins withdrew his troops from the town under fire and sought to take them to Santa Cruz de Villegas, a fortified town better suited for a defense.  There Tompkins sent dispatch riders for reinforcements which soon arrived in the form of more cavalrymen of the all black 10th Cavalry Regiment. 

This marked the high water mark of the Punitive Expedition.

LoC caption:  "Removing Sgt. Benjamin McGhee of the 13th Cavalry who was badly wounded at Parral, Mexico."

Casper Daily Press: April 12, 1916
 

1919  April 12, 1919. Turmoil.

Villers Carbonnel, France.  Formerly a village of 500 souls.  April 12, 1919.

Scenes like the one above may explain French discontent with the Peace, as reported by the Casper Daily News.

Bolshevik sympathy was reported as the cause of the recent mutiny or near mutiny in the 339th Infantry's Company I, fighting in northern Russia. That may seem extreme but in fact there was some truth to it. The Michigan contingent to the unit had been drawn from National Guardsmen who included a fair number of immigrants from Finland who held fairly left wing views going into service and who were, in fact, becoming somewhat confused over their role in Russia, and loosing sympathy with it. Of course, simply wondering why they were fighting and dying in a cause that they hadn't really signed on for had something to do with that as well.

Speaking of Bolsheviks, plenty was going on in Bavaria, as the paper noted.  On this day the German Communist Party seized control of the Bavarian government, displacing the anarchist who had taken over a couple of days prior.

A little closer to home, tragedy struck in Fremont County when Harry Kynes from Shoshoni, only recently returned to the United States, died of what was undoubtedly the Spanish Flu.

Also closer to home, the news had now broken that Col. Cavendar's death was a suicide, as we earlier related, and was in the news again.  

We discussed the sad tale of Col. Cavendar here earlier.  His death was first reported as a heroic sacrifice, and then it was discussed as a scandalous example of mistreatment of National Guard officers.   

The weekly The Judge was looking at baseball.

The magazine The Judge used a play on words on its cover, relating labor strikes, which had been much in the news, with striking out in baseball.

The Saturday Evening post was looking at Spring.

Tacoma Washing, April 12, 1919.

And Tacoma was photographed.

And so one really eventful week drew to a close.  Communist revolution in Bavaria, a mutiny in the American Army in Russia, the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, Japanese troops firing on Korean civilians. .. it must of been frightening to pick up the paper.

1920  The Rock Springs Hide & Fur Company  was destroyed by fire.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1934  Harry Sinclair purchased Parco.

1945  Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga., at age 63. Vice President Harry S Truman became president.

1967  A tornado, possibly one of several, hit ground near Veteran.

1984  Buffalo's Main Street historic district added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

2013  Soldiers of the Wyoming Army National Guard's 133d Engineering Company deploy to Bahrain.

2016   Lex Anteinternet: Marathon, Peabody and the airlines

And the news came today that Marathon has found a buyer for its Wyoming assets, the  topic we first touched upon here:

Lex Anteinternet: Marathon, Peabody and the airlines: This past week the state received the bad news that Marathon Oil Company, formerly Ohio Oil Company, which was once headquartered in Casper...

The buyer is Merit Energy.

All in all, this is good news for the state.  Merit's had along presence here and is a substantial operation, so  this would indicate that they are doing well and banking on the future of the petroleum industry in the state.

April 6

1808   John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company.

1830  Mexico halts American immigration into Texas. Attribution:  On This Day.

1860   First west bound Pony Express arrives at Fort Laramie. 

1862  John Wesley Powell, after whom Powell is named and who would become a noted post Civil War explorer, lost his right arm in the Battle of Shiloh.

1866  The Grand Army of the Republic, the veterans organization of Union soldiers, founded.  There are at least two GAR memorials in Wyoming, with one being located in Casper and another being located in Big Horn.

1880 Cowboy hopeful Charles Russell arrived in Utica Montana.

1887  Cheyenne & Burlington Railroad Company filed articles of incorporation as a foreign corporation.  The railroad is a predecessor of the Burlington Northern.. Attribution:  On This Day.

1892  Special train carrying the "Invaders", hired gunmen and representatives of large cattle interests, arrives in Casper and discharges its passengers under darkness, at about 4:00 AM.  The chartered train arrived with its window shades drawn, but the secrecy associated with it only encouraged rumors as to its cargo.  They traveled a few miles north of Casper and assembled at Casper Creek at about 9:00 AM.  Delays soon set in, with horses breaking fee and requiring hours to be rounded up.  Some horses were never found and the men whose mounts those were rode in wagons.  As it had snowed, traveling by wagon proved slow. The party made 20 miles that day.

For perspective, a typical long day for an Oregon Trail party was about 30 miles in a day, although many were shorter. The cavalry of the period typically made 30 miles a day, although they could go further.

1916  The Casper Daily Press for April 6, 1916

This evening issue is inserted here not for what is on the front  page, but for what isn't.

For the first time since the Columbus Raid, the Punitive Expedition didn't make the front page for the Casper Daily Press.

1917     Congress approved a declaration of war against Germany at 3:08 a.m.

 The Cheyenne State Leader for April 6, 1917: Duels of Nations and Duels of Indiviuals
 

The news was all about duels.

The United States had entered the duel with Germany.

Villa was moving in his duel with Carranza.

And a farmer died in a duel with a cowboy near Sheridan.

And the Wyoming National Guard's Second Battalion had been called fully back into service.

The Laramie Boomerang for April 6, 1917: Wilson Signs Measure

 

1920  Work began on the Standard Oil Refinery in Laramie.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1960.   Esther Morris statue dedicated in Statuary Hall, U.S. Capitol.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1999 A 4.6 magnitude earthquake occurred about 35 from Rawlins, WY.

April 2

 1792   Congress passed the Coinage Act, which authorized establishment of the U.S. Mint.

1866   U.S. President Andrew Johnson declares the Civil War to be over.

1870  An Indian attack on the Sweetwater killed six settlers.

1881  Big Nose George Parrot sentenced to death.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1890  Mail service, on a three times a week basis, established between Laramie and Keystone.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1892  George Dunning, an intimate of the conspirators associated with the invasion of Johnson County, returned from Idaho to Cheyenne at the behest of H. B. Ijams, secretary of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, to participate in the raid, although he professed disapproval.  He drew a .45-90 Winchester from a Cheyenne store where accounts had been set up to arm the invaders. While the plot did not yet have the endorsement of the WSGA, it was well advanced by WSGA officials at the time.

1902  Ester Hobart Morris died in Cheyenne.

1909.  The Spring Creek Raid marks the last open attack in a long running range war in Wyoming, and concludes the era of private warfare in the state.  In the Spring  Creek Raid a collection of Big Horn County cattleman attacked sheepman Joe Allemand and killed him, and then burned his sheepwagon.  This was one of a series of such raids that had occurred since sheep were introduced into Wyoming in the 1890s.  The brutality of the assault shocked area residents, who for the first time supported legal efforts to prosecute the perpetrators in the Big Horn Basin, which previously had not been the case.  The tide had effectively shifted some years earlier in much of the state, as the willingness to prosecute and execute assassin Tom Horn in 1903 had demonstrated.

News traveling more slowly in those days, news of the attack was first published in Natrona County Wyoming on April 6, 1909.

The Spring Creek Raid.

Students of Wyoming's history are well familiar with the story of the Spring Creek Raid, which occurred on April 2, 1909, on the Nowood River outside of Tensleep, Wyoming.  The tragedy has been the subject of at least three well known books, including the excellent A Vast Amount of Trouble, Goodbye Judge Lynch, and Tensleep and No Rest, the first two by lawyer and historian John W. Davis and the third, and earlier work, by Jack Gage, a former Governor of Wyoming.

The raid is justifiably famous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it may be the sheepman murder that most closely fits the way that we imagine the cattlemen v. sheepmen war of the late 19th and early 20th Century being.  Of course, the fact that it was an outright cold blooded killing no doubt causes it to be well remembered as well.  And then that the killings actually resulted in a trial which convicted the assassins is also worth remembering, as it demonstrated the turn of the tide of the public view on such matters.

The Wyoming historical marker sign that describes the killings does a good job of it, with perhaps the only thing omitted is that one of the ambushing party was armed with a semi automatic Remington Model 8 in .35 Remington, a very distinct arm for the time.  In basic terms, the raid occurred as several men connected with cattle raising in the area decided to enforce the "Deadline", a topographic feature of the Big Horn Mountains which meant it was a literal dead line.

The .35 Remington turned out to be critical in the story of the raid as it was an unusual cartridge for what was, at the time, an unusual arm.  The Remington 08 had only been introduced in 1905 and was a semi automatic rifle in an era in which the lever action predominated.  A lot of .35 Remington cartridges were left at the scene of the murders and investigation very rapidly revealed that a Farney Cole had left his Remington 08 at the home of Bill Keyes, which was quite near the location of the assault.  One of the assailants, George Saban, was known to not carry a gun and was also known to have been at the Saban residence the day of the assault.  Subsequent investigation matched other cartridges found on the location to rifles and pistols known to have been carried by the attackers.

Arrests soon followed and five of the assailants were ultimately charged with murder.  Two turned states' evidence.  The trials were not consolidated and only Herbert Brink's case went to trial.  To the surprise of some, he was convicted by the jury.  Due to prior trials for the killing of sheepmen being both unsuccessful and unpopular, Wyoming took the step of deploying National Guardsmen to Basin to provide security for the trial, which proved unnecessary.  The conviction was the first one in the area for a cattleman v. sheepman murder( Tom Horn had earlier been convicted for the 1903 killing of Willie Nickell, but that killing took place in southern Wyoming.

The killings were, quite rankly, uniquely cold blooded and gruesome, involving shooting into the wagons and setting them on fire.  Because of that, and the Brink conviction, the remaining four charged men plead guilty, rather than face trial.  Two plead guilty to arson, and two to second degree murder.

All were sentenced together, and Brink was sentenced to death.  His sentence was commuted, however, and he was released from prison, together with another one of the party, in 1914.  Another, George Saban, who was deeply affected by his conviction, escaped while out of the penitentiary and under guard, after being allowed to stay over in Basin in order to allegedly conduct some of his affairs.  His escape was successful and he disappeared from the face of the earth.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

1916   The Punitive Expedition: Sunday State Leader. April 2, 1916
 

1917  President Wilson asks Congress for a Declaration of War against Germany.

 Woodrow Wilson addresses a Joint Session of Congress and ask for a Declaration of War Against Germany
 

Woodrow Wilson went before a special joint session of Congress on this day in 1917 to ask for a Declaration of War against Germany.

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the 1st day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the at tempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people can not be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last, I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we can not make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the Navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation....

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs.

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted [Zimmermann] note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us -- however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship -- exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy, who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few.

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts -- for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

Congress did not vote on the matter on that day.

The Wyoming Tribune: Prelude to The Declaration of War. April 2, 1917

 

1948  A fire destroys 30 Laramie businesses.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.