Mormon Battalion

The Significance of the Mormon Battalion in American History

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The Mormon Battalion was the only religious "unit" in American military history serving from July 1846 to July 1847 during the Mexican War. Since the battalion did not participate in any battle and experience combat, historians have tended to ignore its service and accomplishments. Unlike other ethnic or racial units such as the Black regiments of the Civil War or frontier army, or the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment that fought in World War II, the Mormon Battalion was uniquely different. It had a religious designation, "Mormon" Battalion. The men volunteered for religious reasons and not so much for American patriotism. Most of the men, not all, were of one religious faith. They provided funds from their salaries and allowances to assist the Mormon exodus west, such as part of their clothing allowances they provided to Brigham Young to help finance the Latter-day Saint's move to the Salt Lake Valley. The battalion was a volunteer unit of 500 soldiers, nearly all LDS men with regular army officers in command and key staff positions along with Mormon company officers. The battalion made a gruelling march from Council Bluffs, Iowa to San Diego, California, but was not the longest march in military history as often purported. The Mormon Battalion were mostly members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were fleeing religious persecution in Nauvoo, Illinois. The battalion's march and service was instrumental in helping secure new lands in several Western states, especially the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 of much of southern Arizona. The march also opened a southern wagon route to California. Veterans of the battalion played significant roles in America's westward expansion in California, Utah, Arizona and other parts of the West.

Related Topics:
Brigham Young - Council Bluffs, Iowa - San Diego, California - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - Nauvoo, Illinois - California

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The idea for a battalion consisting of all Mormons came as a result of Mormon Elder Jesse C. Little's efforts to gain assistance from the Federal government for the Mormon trek west. After several interviews with President James Polk in early June 1846, the offer to enlist some 500 men "after" the Mormons arrived in California was accepted. Yet, orders through military channels were misread and an army officer went to the Mormon camps in Iowa to enlist the men.

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The battalion was mustered into volunteer service on July 16, 1846 by Captain James Allen of the famous 1st US Dragoons. Dispatched by Colonel (later Brigadier General)Stephen Kearny, Allen met no success until Brigham Young, the presiding leader of the LDS Church gave his approval. Eventually some 500 men volunteered into this uniquely "federal" unit and not a typical militia or state volunteer organization. Several large families and many other camp followers accompanied the battalion making it appear more as a pioneer party than a military force. The Mormon Battalion would be part of the Army of the West under General Kearny, a tough and seasoned veteran, that would have two regiments of Missouri volunteers, a regiment of New York volunteers who would travel by ships to California, artillery and infantry battalions, Kearny's own 1st US Dragoons, and the battalion of Mormons.

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The battalion arrived at Fort Leavenworth on August 30, and for the next two weeks drew their equipment, Model 1816 smoothbore flintlock muskets, and a few rifles, their pay and were more formally organized into a combat battalion, yet there was little time for training and instilling discipline. Newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel James Allen took sick but ordered the battalion forward along the Santa Fe trail to overtake Kearny's Army of the West. On August 23, Allen died and was the first officer buried in what became Fort Leavenworth National Military Cemetery.

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Captain Jefferson Hunt, commanding A Company, was the acting commander until word reached them at Council Grove, Kansas, that Allen had died. A few days later Lieutenant Andrew Jackson Smith, West Point Class of 1838, arrived and assumed temporary command of the battalion with the Mormons' consent. For the next several weeks the Mormon soldiers came to hate "AJ" Smith and the assistant surgeon, Dr. George B. Sanderson, for their treatment of the men and the long marches across the dry plains of Kansas and New Mexico. These Mormon men were unaccustomed to the austere military standards of the day, and the medical treatments imposed by Dr. Sanderson, thus there arose a challenge to military authority and great unrest among the men. Smith and Sanderson were typical men of their professions of the period and had no malice against the Mormons.

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Arriving in Santa Fe in October, General Kearny had dispatched Captain, now Lieutenant Colonel, Philip St. George Cooke, West Point class of 1827, to assume command of the battalion and lead it to California. Cooke was one of the finest frontier officers of the antebellum army. In Santa Fe all the women and children, except for a very few, and many sick men were sent to Pueblo, in present-day Colorado. A total of three separate detachments left the battalion and went to Pueblo to winter. For the next four months and 1,100 miles, Cooke led the battalion across some of the most arduous terrain in North America. Most of the Mormon soldiers soon learned to respect and follow this accomplished frontier officer. Lieutenant Smith and Dr. Sanderson continued with the battalion, along with Lieutenant George Stoneman, newly graduated from West Point that spring. Eventually all three officers, Cooke, Smith and Stoneman, would have high level commands for the North during the Civil War.

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Approaching Tucson, in future Arizona, the battalion nearly had a battle with a small detachment of provisional Mexican soldiers in December 1846, but as the battalion approached the Mexicans fled. The local Indian tribes along the march route were very helpful and charitable to these American soldiers. Mormon soldiers learned many pioneer methods of irrigation from the Indian peoples and employed them later in Utah and other areas.

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The Mormon Battalion arrived in San Diego, California on January 29, 1847 after a march of some 1,900 miles from Iowa. For the next five months until their discharge on July 16, 1847 in Los Angeles, the battalion trained and also performed occupation duties in several locations in southern California. Many of the men helped in civil works projects. One significant project the Mormons built was Fort Moore erected in present-day downtown Los Angeles, perhaps one of the first US military installations in California. Some 23 Mormon men died from disease or other natural causes during their service. About 80 of the men re-enlisted for another six months of service.

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A few discharged veterans worked in the Sacramento, area for James Marshall at Sutter's Mill. Henry Bigler and Azariah Smith recorded the actual date, January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered. This gold find started the major gold rush the next year, the most significant immigration event in American history.

Related Topics:
Sacramento - Sutter's Mill - Gold rush

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THE MORMON BATTALION

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IN THE DESERT SOUTHWEST

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By Kent Duryee

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The Mormon Battalion, a force of some six hundred recruited by the United States Army in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, became witnesses, if not prime movers, of many historical events during the westward expansion of the United States between 1846 and 1855.

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The story of the battalion (originally comprising more than five hundred men plus thirty four women and fifty one children), its formation and its difficult journey west is not widely known. However, the battalion's march through New Mexico, Arizona and California, across the Chihuahuan, Sonoran and California deserts, was an integral part of the history of America?s "Manifest Destiny."

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While not the first "white" people to travel the route, the battalion, en route to a rendezvous with General Stephen Watts Kearney in San Diego, was the first group to bring wagons west across the deserts, and it is given credit for forging the first east-to-west road through the region. The route travelled ? overlapping the one travelled by Father Kino and Juan Bautista de Anza from Tubac, Arizona, to California ? became a route for thousands of pioneers, treasure seekers and others who would follow the lure of California and gold. Further, the battalion proved the importance of this lower, warmer route, which could be travelled year-round. The road, through a region annexed by the United States with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, would become part of the route of John Butterfield?s Southern Overland Mail Route.

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Not only was the battalion instrumental in the incorporation of the Southwest into the boundaries of the United States, members of the group were also the first to find the remains of the Donner Party disaster; they discovered the grisly truth of the tragedy and buried the remains of the victims. Battalion members were also present on the banks of the rivers of central California when gold was discovered. Battalion members established the Spanish Trail and the Salt Lake Cutoff of the California Trail as wagon roads instead of pack trails.

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Understanding the Mormon Battalion's place in Southwest history requires a glimpse of events unfolding in the United States during the first half of the 19th century. Before it became a state in 1850, California was populated primarily by three groups: Native Indians, Hispanics and a few Yankees. The whites found their way to California through various means, including sailors who deserted trading ships, trappers who came by foot, or travelers who sailed around South America?s Tierra del Fuego.

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Yankee trading ships called at southern California ports as part of their route along the west coast, where they loaded cattle hides for export to the Eastern Seaboard and to Europe. One port was located at what is now Dana Point in Orange County, California. The loading process was described by Richard Henry Dana in his classic Two Years Before the Mast: "Hides were literally thrown from the bluffs down to the beach and were then taken by skiff to the vessel waiting off shore." Dana Point is named for the author.

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Meanwhile, Joseph Smith had founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in western New York state during the late 1820's. Searching for someplace to practice their religion free of persecution, Smith and his followers moved westward and established the city of Nauvoo, Illinois. Near here, Smith was murdered in 1844. Members of his church, now in the thousands, realized that they would have to move farther west, beyond the boundaries of the United States, to practice their religion. Stranded on the frontier of a young nation, with no resources or capital, and facing the ill will of the nation, their future looked bleak.

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Due to stereotypes and misunderstandings, the government of the United States considered the Mormons a hostile force. With tensions rising between the United States and Mexico over claims to Texas and the Southwest, President Polk eyed the Mormons, who called themselves "Saints," as a threat to the continued westward expansion of the nation. He was ready to intercept them should they attempt to cross the Rocky Mountains.

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The Mormon leadership, notably Brigham Young, sent letters to Stephen A. Douglas and other members of Congress to persuade the government that there was no plan on the Mormons' part to ally with other nations against the United States. Simultaneously, the Mormon leadership began to lay plans to obtain government patronage while journeying west. Eventually, the decision was made by the United States to invade California. Polk issued an order that a battalion of men be drawn from the Mormon emigrants in Iowa, a move calculated not only to allay fears of Mormon secession, but also to bolster the pathetic state of Kearney's Army of the West.

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This was welcome news. The Saints could emigrate west, out of the United States, with financing generated from the battalion of men, literally at the expense of the U. S. government, and they could reinforce Kearney's Army of the West. Brigham Young said, "The enlistment of the Mormon Battalion in the service of the United States, though looked upon by many with astonishment and some with fear, has proved a great blessing to this community. It was indeed the temporal salvation of our camp."

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Mormon troops set out on their journey from Iowa at the end of July, 1846. Most left their wives and children behind at Council Bluffs. Some women and children, however, did accompany the battalion. It turned into a fearsome, six-month journey. Twenty five army wagons and twelve privately owned wagons began the trip. Five army wagons and three private wagons reached San Diego.

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Some members of the battalion kept journals of the travels, and today we are left with many accounts of their westward journey.

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Daniel Tyler, whose chronicles became the first officially published diary of the battalion's journey across the country, told of the passage through Box Canyon, in the Anza-Borrego region: "As we travelled up the dry bed, the chasm became more contracted until we found ourselves in a passage at least a foot narrower than our wagons. Nearly all of our road tools, such as picks, shovels, spades, etc., had been lost in the boat disaster . The principal ones remaining were a few axes...a small crow bar, and perhaps a spade or two. These were brought into requisition, the commander taking an axe and assisting the pioneers. Considerable was done before the wagons arrived... The passage was hewn out and the remaining wagons got through about sundown, by unloading and lifting through all but two light ones, which were hauled by the mules."

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At one particular spot, the trail that the battalion hacked through the rocks of Box Canyon is still plainly visible. (The route taken by Butterfield?s stagecoaches just uphill from the original Mormon trail is also still visible.)

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Melissa Burton Couray, another chronicler, described the battalion's arrival at Palm Spring, just southeast of Vallecito in the Anza-Borrego region: "January 18, 1847. The men were so used up from thirst, fatigue, and hunger there was no talking. Some could not speak at all; tongues were swollen and dark. Sixteen more mules gave out. Each man was down to his last four ounces of flour; there had been no sugar or coffee for weeks. Only five government wagons and three private wagons remained... When they arrived at Vallecito Creek, they rested and washed clothes and cleaned their guns. An Indian from a nearby village brought a letter from the alcalde in San Diego welcoming the Battalion to California. In the early evening there was singing and fiddling with a little dancing."

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The time the battalion spent in the desert was without a doubt some of the most gruelling of the trip. Had not the battalion crossed the region in January, when the weather was relatively cool, history may well have been very different.

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Over the course of almost one thousand five hundred miles and three years, in spite of historic accomplishments and near brushes with hostility, the Mormons never engaged in battle. They never fired a hostile shot. On January 29, 1847, ten days after they hacked their way through Box Canyon, they reached San Diego. Included among the men arriving in the small village of San Diego were four women and one child who had made the entire trip from Iowa to California.

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Tyler said: "Travelling in sight of the ocean, the clear bright sunshine, with the mildness of the atmosphere, combined to increase the enjoyment of the scene before us... The birds sang sweetly and all nature seemed to smile and join in praise to the Giver of all good; but the crowning satisfaction of all to us was that we had succeeded in making the great national highway across the American desert, nearly filled our mission, and hoped soon to join our families and the Saints, for whom, as well as our country, we were living martyrs."

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