The.WildFrontier.Cavalry

For a Presidia Tour of Abraham Lincoln Just Click above

FORT LAIRAME

The annexation of Texas and the acquisition of the Southwest following the war against Mexico posed significant challenges for the United States army in the west. Previously, idealistic policy-makers had assumed that expansion would occur from east to west, in a gradual, predictable process. To protect this westward movement, the army had attempted to establish military posts at strategic points. Indians would be relocated west of these garrisons. Separating the two groups might limit the opportunity for mischief on both sides. Some had even envisioned a north/south military road dividing the two peoples, further reducing the potential for conflict.
practice, the War Department had never fully implemented these plans. The army never had enough troops to be everywhere at once, and political and economic pressures rather than sound military principles often dictated the location of frontier posts. In any event, the new western realities shattered traditional thinking.

Lured by the discovery of gold in California, tens of thousands of civilians rushed west, ruining any hopes of an orderly American occupation of the newly acquired territories. And in Texas, the army had to position its troops not only to face Indians from the west and north, but to protect the international border with Mexico. Furthermore, the Lone Star state's ownership of its public lands prevented the federal government from establishing large Indian reservations in the western part of the state, save for an unsuccessful attempt to carve out two enclaves on the Brazos River between 1854-1859

In the absence of a comprehensive national strategy, the first two commanders of what evolved into the military Department of Texas, Maj. Gen. William J. Worth (1848-49) and Maj. Gen. George Mercer Brooke, vice Brig Gen., (1849-51), began the work of confirming United States authority along the southern and western frontiers of Texas. Along the lower Rio Grande, Forts Polk and Brown had been established during the war against Mexico; to these, Brooke added Ringgold Barracks, Fort McIntosh, and Fort Duncan.

To protect the western frontier, Forts Inge, Lincoln, Martin Scott, Croghan, Gates, Graham, and Worth were erected on Brooke's watch. Following the general's death in 1851, his successor, Brevet Maj. Gen. Persifor F. Smith, added Forts Ewell and Merrill in South Texas. Pushing the military line further west, Smith authorized construction of Forts Clark, Terrett, Mason, McKavett, Chadbourne, Phantom Hill, and Belknap. To help plug gaps in the northwest, Camp Cooper was erected in 1856. A double line of forts now protected Texas' southern and western frontiers.

On paper, the scheme looked grand indeed. Posts would be located in areas where there was access to good water, forage, and construction materials. The troops themselves would do much of the building, thus holding construction costs to a minimum. Since Indians almost never attacked the forts, no defensive walls were necessary. Infantry based on the outer cordon of the Worth-Brooke-Smith defensive line would alert mounted troops, stationed in the inner line to reduce the high costs of their upkeep, of the presence of Indians or outlaws in their midst

In reality, the forts were too far apart and their garrisons too small (in 1860, for instance, the fourteen military posts in Texas had an average strength of just less than ninety men each) to completely patrol the immensity of the Lone Star state. As one traveler put it upon observing a frontier garrison, "a parade of the entire force would sometimes diminish our feeling of security." Finding Indians deemed hostile by the government was difficult enough; forcing them to fight often seemed impossible to soldiers bewildered by their enemies' mobility, knowledge of the terrain, and tactical sagacity. Some posts were poorly situated; inadequate water supplies at Phantom Hill and Belknap, for example, forced their abandonment

Furthermore, the plans provided no protection for the tenuous overland routes to Chihuahua, Santa Fe, and California. To shield these vital lines, Fort Bliss, first established in 1849, was reactivated five years later. Fort Davis (1854), Fort Lancaster (1855), Camp Hudson (1856), Camp Verde (1856), Fort Quitman (1858), and Fort Stockton (1859) followed thereafter.

Soldiers at the forts did much of the building, saving on construction costs.

Posts in the central hill country region made use of abundant limestone, those in the north often were built of less-permanent picket construction-vertical posts set in a trench with spaces between filled with mud, lime and wood chips, as shown.

NEED SOME GRUB ON THE TRIAL

CLICK ABOVE