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Frederick Benteen and Fort Damn Shame
Frederick Benteen and Fort Damn Shame
BY HAROLD SCHINDLER
He is unmistakable, even in a crowd; that Dutch/English face, boyish despite its fifty-three years largely spent in the out-of-doors, sets Frederick William Benteen apart. There he sits on Officer's Circle at Fort Douglas,1 flanked by nearly a score of officers from every branch of the U S military—Indian Scouts, infantry, artillery, cavalry—none seemingly identifiable but himself and one other, 2d Lt. Richard W. Young, a Salt Lake native.2
But what was Benteen, that old war horse, doing at Fort Douglas?
Benteen was the toughest frontier officer in the cavalry. Holding the rank of major, but with the authority of a brevet (temporary) colonel, he was, after "gallant and meritorious services" at the Indian battles of Little Bighorn and Canyon Creek,3 breveted to brigadier general, the only officer so honored for the Little Bighorn. He was a good soldier, Benteen. He was dearly fond of fishing ("I saw him wade over his boot tops many times into the cold water to get mountain trout," one of his troopers recalled in later years) And he loved baseball with an extraordinary passion.
As a matter of fact, most men in his H Company were members of the "Benteen baseball and gymnasium club." The Benteen Nine team, it seems, was a ringer; it regularly shellacked army competition. For instance, in June 1875 the Benteens played the Fort Randall First Infantry The final score was Benteens, 54; Randalls, 5.4
Benteen's courage was legendary. Anyone who has read of the Little Bighorn massacre is familiar with the story of the feisty officer, an old Briar pipe clenched firmly in his teeth, striding among the besieged Seventh Cavalry troops pinned down in a small depression atop the bluffs of the Little Bighorn by Indian snipers, all the while offering words of encouragement to the demoralized soldiers. George B. Herendeen, a civilian scout, said of the captain, "I think in desperate fighting Benteen is one of the bravest men I ever saw. . . . All the time he was going about through the bullets, encouraging the soldiers to stand up to their work, and not let Indians whip them."5 One of the officers, Lt. Charles A. Varnum, would later say that Benteen was "the only man I ever saw who did not dodge when the bullets flew. . . . "6 At one point a hostile shot blew the heel from his boot Still he made no effort to take cover.
Both before and after Little Bighorn, Benteen was no admirer of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer; he considered Custer an arrogant, boastful loudmouth and was not in the least shy in sharing this opinion with others As a result, Benteen was ostracized by members of the "Custer crowd"—who, unfortunately, included many high-ranking officers.
Charles K. Mills, Benteen's biographer, describes his face as "large, round and smooth-shaven. (He grew a scraggly moustache from time to time but never sported a beard.) This, coupled with his large, round, blue eyes, gave him a distinctive cherubic appearance. One reporter who described him in 1879 remarked that he might have been mistaken for an overgrown drummer boy Benteen was tall (5'10/2M) and broad-shouldered. He had a large torso, long muscular arms, and huge hands. As subsequent events proved, he was formidable in combat, including the hand-to-hand variety. Physically, Frederick W. Benteen was impressive."7 And like most frontier soldiers, he enjoyed an occasional drink.
In 1886 Benteen, with his bottle, found his way into Utah Territory and a minor fiasco.
That year, the Utes on the Uintah Reservation were becoming restless because, as historian Mills expressed it, "of alleged inequities at the agency and smoldering resentment over their forced removal from Colorado six years before." Brig. Gen. George Crook responded by ordering Benteen to command two troops of the Ninth Cavalry on a forced march to Fort Bridger; from there to proceed to the Ute Reservation and build an army post to be known as Fort Duchesne.8
Crook had been widely criticized for the way he conducted a fight at Rosebud Creek in mid-June 1876 against the same Indians who rubbed out Custer a week later at the Little Bighorn. The affair had earned him the nickname "Rosebud George,"9 and Crook was more than a little sensitive about anything or anyone reminding him of it He had also been savaged in the press and in some military quarters for his inaction after the Rosebud fight, having spent the next three weeks comfortably hunting and fishing on Goose Creek, in what Ben Arnold, a frontiersman hired for courier service, called "criminal inertia."10 Crook may in some measure have felt a responsibility for Custer's fate. That would go far in explaining his impatient, cantankerous, and harsh attitude toward Benteen in ordering a forced march.
On the day Benteen arrived with his troops at the site location, Crook departed there for his headquarters in Omaha and left the major in charge of constructing the "fort" at a point three miles above the junction of the Duchesne and Uintah rivers. But Benteen found no lumber, no nails, no plans. To say that he was furious and frustrated would be putting it mildly.
As Mills explains it, the situation became a fiasco. Necessary supplies were unavailable and delayed, forcing the command to live in tents until almostJanuary 1887 All the essentials were slow in arriving and then only at inflated prices. Never one to mince words, Benteen was sorely put out by the apparent incompetence of the military supply system, which was enough to drive a man to drink. And, whatever else was in short supply at the fort site, whiskey was not. The Post Trader had an abundant inventory.
Benteen's problems began multiplying in September of '86, about a month after he first rode in. A wagon train from Fort Bridger had finally made it to Duchesne and brought with it Lt. and Mrs. Harry Bailey and Lt Harry G Trout, a West Pointer newly assigned to Duchesne's cavalry unit. Benteen ordered a tent erected for the Baileys After the usual welcoming chitchat among the Baileys, Trout, and others of the garrison (a second officer's wife was also present), Major Benteen, according to Capt. J. A. Olmstead, excused himself, stepped around the corner of the wall tent, "not going more than 10 feet away from where the ladies were sitting, and urinated on the tent, so that we all heard it."11
In the days and weeks to follow, Benteen spent more and more time drinking at the Post Trader's store On the night of October 10 he got into an argument and, after falling into the mud in his tipsy condition, was escorted to his tent by ajunior officer A month later Benteen again became embroiled in a dispute, this time with an employee of the Post Trader and, one thing leading to another, he also began squabbling with a visiting sheriff. Sterling Cotton, the sheriff, took umbrage when Benteen called him a "God damned Mormon," to which Cotton responded, 'You are a God damned liar, and you ain't no gentleman, or you would not talk to me that way." The quarrel almost ended in a fistfight.12
All this was prelude to Gen George Crook's next move, which was to send an investigator to determine what was delaying construction of the fort. Crook likely was under pressure from Lt. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, commander in chief of the U. S. Army in Washington, to determine why Fort Duchesne was still in tents four months after it had been designated a permanent post.13 Benteen, it was said, believed there was conniving among the civilians to swindle the government. The major referred to his station as "Fort DuShame" while others called it "Fort Damn Shame."14
The investigating officer, Maj. Robert Hall, spent a day "looking around," then left without questioning Benteen. But when his official report was filed, it dumped the blame squarely on the post commander, alleging that Benteen was "frequently unfit for duty through excessive use of intoxicating liquors. . . . "15 In mid-December, Benteen was relieved of command and ordered to face court martial on charges that included the incident with the Baileys at the tent and the two occasions at the Post Trader's. The following January a story appeared in the Kansas City Times,16 supposedly written by an unidentified enlisted man from Fort Leavenworth. It spelled out at length and in detail Benteen's view of the problems at Duchesne. Not surprisingly, Benteen was suspected of writing the letter, though he denied any knowledge of it.17 Since the article cast Crook in a bad light, the general was, understandably, incensed over it—so much so, that he tacked another charge onto Benteen's indictment, that of "conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman," in his abrasion with the sheriff the previous November.18
During the seventeen days of proceedings at Fort Duchesne, Benteen argued that his problems with Fort Duchesne were not a result of his drunkenness but rather that he was "too deucedly sober." He concluded by saying, "Now . . . with my locks snowy white, gotten in the service of my country, it isjust a little severe to be court-martialed for not falling in line with a Post Trader & Contractor."19 Nevertheless, the court found him guilty of three counts of drunkenness and of "conduct unbecoming an officer." He was sentenced to be dismissed from the service.
So Maj. Frederick W. Benteen, Ninth U.S. Cavalry, on March 9, 1887, left for Fort Douglas to sit out the review process on his case The Tribune took notice of his arrival in Salt Lake City with this brief mention:
As it happened, 2d Lt. Richard W. Young, a fresh-faced alumnus of West Point, had managed to be assigned to Fort Douglas in September 1886, a maneuver that had the Tribune sputtering over "a spy" at the fort and howling gross outrage and shame.21 Nevertheless, that is how Lieutenant Young of the Fourth Artillery and Major Benteen of the Ninth Cavalry, awaiting word concerning his career, came to share a group portrait with what appears to be the other officers at Fort Douglas that day in 1887.
When General Sheridan reviewed and endorsed the findings of Benteen's court-martial, he recommended "remission of sentence,"22 based on Benteen's service record Accordingly, in view of the officer's long and honorable service, his reputation for bravery, and his soldierly qualities, President Grover Cleveland mitigated the sentence to suspension of rank and duty for one year at half pay.
On July 7, 1888, Benteen took a medical discharge and retired to Atlanta, Georgia He died June 22, 1898, and was buried in Westview Cemetery In November 1902 his body was moved to Arlington National Cemetery, his final resting place.
NOTES
Mr Schindler, retired staff writer for the Salt Lake Tribune and former member of the Advisory Board of Editors for Utah Historical Quarterly, lives in Salt Lake City Aversion of this article was published in the Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday Magazine, July 20, 1997.
1 Jess McCall, director/curator of the Fort Douglas Museum, was instrumental in pinpointing the precise location of the setting as the porch of Building No. 7 on Officer's Circle. Aside from 2d Lt. Richard W Young of Salt Lake City and Benteen, the other eighteen officers remain unidentified, although it is likely that the commanding officer, Lt. Col. Nathan Osborne, is among those in the photograph.
2 Young, a grandson of Brigham Young and eldest son of Joseph A. and Margaret Whitehead Young, was the second Utahn to graduate from West Point Upon graduation, he was assigned to the Fifth U.S Artillery at Governor's Island, New York; having also obtained a law degree, he was in 1885 named ActingJudge Advocate of the Department of the East The following year he was ordered to duty with a light battery stationed at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor, but when one of his West Point classmates was assigned to the light battery stationed at Fort Douglas, the two officers managed a switch, and Young was appointed by Lt Gen Philip H Sheridan to the Utah post in the fall of 1886 Orson F Whitney, History of Utah, vol 4 (Salt Lake City: George Q Cannon and Sons), p 561.
3 Francis B Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, From Its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903 (1903; reprint ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), vol 1, p 212.
4 Harry H Anderson "The Benteen Baseball Club: Sports Enthusiasts of the Seventh Cavalry," Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 20 (1970): 82-85 Company H was stationed variously at Nashville, Tenn.; Fort Randall, Dakota Territory (inJuly 1875 the soldiers took baseball equipment along while campaigning in the Black Hills); and Forts Rice and Lincoln on the Missouri River. A number of players were in the Little Bighorn fight in 1876.
5 New York Herald, July 8, 1876.
6 Charles K Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets: The Army Career of Frederick William Benteen, 1834-1898. (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1985), p. 271.
7 Ibid., p. 18.
8 Ibid., pp 342-45.
9 Ibid., pp 343-44.
10 Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), p 329.
11 Frederick William Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, 1887 National Archives, Old Army Branch RR2327, as quoted in ibid., pp 34-35, and in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p 346.
12 Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, as quoted in Connell, Son of the Morning Star, p 35, and in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p 349 The shouting match ended when Lt George R Burnett intervened.
13 Earlier in the year, Sheridan had relieved Crook of command of the Department of Arizona for his perceived mishandling of the Apache campaign, transferring him to the Department of the Platte See Dan L Thrapp, Conquest ofApacheria (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), p 349.
14 Stephen PerryJocelyn II, Mostly Alkali (Caldwell: Caxton, 1953), p 308.
15 Benteen called the report "infamous." See Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, as quoted in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p. 351.
16 Kansas City Times, January 3, 1887.
17 This was not the first time Benteen had been involved in unsigned newspaper articles He infuriated Custer when he acknowledged writing a letter critical of Custer's actions at the battle of the Washita in November 1868 Addressed to an old comrade-in-arms, the account found its way into the columns of the Missouri Democrat, February 8, 1869, and subsequently was reprinted in the New York Times, February 14, 1869.
18 Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, as quoted in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p 358.
19 Ibid, p 363.
20 Salt Lake Tribune, March 12, 1887.
21 "We venture die assertion that The Tribune has but mildly voiced the sentiment of every officer at Fort Douglas and of every loyal man in Utah The [Salt Lake] Herald affects to talk about there being merely a religious difference of opinion between Lieutenant Young and the soldiers at Fort Douglas This is mere childish evasion The matter is not one of religion at all, but of allegiance to the Government of the United States Lieutenant Young is in no sense a citizen of the United States Though educated at the National Military School, and though under every obligation which can be drawn around a soldier of the Republic, he holds in his soul, a command from the First Presidency of the Mormon Church as more binding than any possible command of the Government could be He is in full sympathy with an alien power here which teaches its subjects to defy the laws, and while the motives of the authorities in sending him here may have been good, at the same time the assignment was a gross wrong and insult to the soldiers at the camp and to the Americans of the Territory. . . .Why should this man be sent here where he can not help but be a constant irritant, and where he will be looked upon perpetually as a spy? To give this officer a command in the Federal Army at Douglas is a gross outrage and shame." Salt Lake Tribune, September 3, 1886 The Tribune's fears proved unfounded Lt Young resigned his commission, effective April 12, 1889, to open a law practice in Salt Lake City A detailed biographical sketch of Richard Whitehead Young can be found in Whitney, History of Utah,volA, pp 560-564.
22 Although a champion of Custer, whom he wholeheartedly supported as the consummate Indian fighter, Sheridan also had a strong fondness for Benteen and once complimented him for commanding "the best squadron of mounted cavalry I ever saw." Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, pp 154, 364.
