Mormon Battalion Song (I)

DESCRIPTION: "When Mormon trains were journeying through To winter quarters in Nauvoo, Five hundred men were called to go" to fight in the Mexican War. Colonel Allen leads them well; they hate Lieutenant Smith; they suffer privation; the enemy flees
AUTHOR: Eliza R. Snow (1804-1887) (source: Tyler; Cheney-MormonSongs)
EARLIEST DATE: 1881 (Tyler)
KEYWORDS: soldier hardtimes travel | Mormon Battalion
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1846 - Formation of the Mormon Battalion
FOUND IN: US(Ro)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Cheney-MormonSongs, pp. 35-40, "Mormon Battalion Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Daniel Tyler, "A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War," no publisher listed but copyrighted 1881 (available on Google Books), pp. 107-109, "The Mormom (sic.) Battalion, and First Wagon Road Over the Great American Desert" (1 text)
Roud #10816
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Lonesome Roving Wolves" (subject of the Mormon Battalion)
cf. "The Desert Route" (subject of the Mormon Battalion)
cf. "All Hail the Brave Battalion" (subject of the Mormon Battalion)
cf. "The Mormon Battalion Song (II -- In Forty-Six We Bid Adieu)" (subject of the Mormon Battalion)
cf. "On the Road to California" (subject of the Mormon Battalion)
NOTES [2060 words]: Cheney quotes a source as saying that the travels of the Mormon Battalion "was said to have been unparralleled (sic.) in recenty history in the misery it produced." Without denying that the men had a miserable time, this is emphatically an exaggeration.
Reeve/Parshall, p. 94, say that "The Mormon Battalion was a volunteer army unit of about 500 men. This unit, commanded by U.S. Army officers and otherwise consisting exclusively of Mormons, served from July 1846 to July 1847. During their enlistment, Battalion members marched about 1,900 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego, California."
The politics was interesting. The Mormons of course had much trouble with the largely Protestant population of the United States, resulting in the murder of founder Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young's decision to head for Utah. According to Reeve/Parshall, p. 94, Young decided to offer troops to the United States to try to improve relations and to raise cash for the Mormon migration. President James K. Polk, whose chief goal was to conquer California, took the troops (Wheelan, p. 213; Roberts, pp. 10-11, seems to say that Polk wanted a regiment, i.e. 800-1000 men, but all he got was a battalion -- but says on p. 14 that the Mormons would be included in a unit with only about a thousand other men, so the Army might not have wanted a full-strength regiment which would have been as strong as the rest of the unit).
Captain James Allen was sent to Mount Pisgah, Iowa, to recruit the troops, although it took Brigham Young's influence to get most of them to join (Roberts, pp. 20-21). Reeve/Parshall, p. 95, says that they eventually earned about $71,000 for the Mormon Church, which was standard army pay; Roberts, p. 15. The Mormons were mostly poor, and needed to get away from the hostile populations of orthodox Christians, so that money was a welcome help -- although the absence of so many able-bodied men made it harder for the rest of the population to move west.
Wheelan, p. 213, says that Allen managed to raise 496 officers and men; they were accompanied to Leavenworth, Kansas, by 35 women and 44 children. Some of these, however, were sent back at various stages of the journey; Roberts, p. 38-39). Roberts, p. 29, says that the deal to offer the government troops also bought the Mormons more time to rest on their migration to Great Salt Lake.
Not all were really in condition to serve; Allen complained that the battalion "was enlisted too much by families," resulting in the recruitment of many "inefficient" (usually too old or too young) men who would not be able to stay with the regiment (Roberts, p. 38)
Allen, promoted to Lieutenant Colonel (presumably of volunteers rather than regular army) died while they were still in Kansas. He sent them on their way, hoping to join them later, but did not recover (Roberts, p. 33). A temporary commander, Lieutenant Andrew Jackson Smith, took them to Santa Fe. The song is apparently correct in saying that the troops disliked Lieutenant Smith; "The Mormons... resented Smith's strict adherence to military discipline" (Reeve/Parshall, p. 95; Roberts, p. 34, reports that they were also upset that a Lieutenant was being placed over the Captains who commanded their companies. But, of course, those Captains were amateurs who needed training just like their men, and they eventually accepted the situation).
"When he learned of Colonel Allen's death, [Stephen W.] Kearny had sent Colonel Philip St. George Cooke back to Santa Fe to take charge of the Mormon Battalion, an assignment that Cooke described as 'turning a very sharp corner indeed.' Cooke, a regular Army officer, found the Mormons obedient but undisciplined: 'They exhibit great heedlessness and ignorance -- and some obstinacy' (Wheelan, p. 215. This let Smith run the commissary, where he didn't have as many conflicts with the men. Lieutenant George Stoneman, who later became a Civil War general though not a particularly successful one, was quartermaster; Roberts, p. 41; Warner, p. 481).
Thus both Smith and Cooke found the Mormons hard to control. Cooke, for instance, could not get them to abandon their wagons, so they were forced to seek a road to California south of the mountains. The route they found would later become a major path to California, but at the time, it was isolated, and just bringing their wagons didn't mean the men had supplies; they ended up on short rations (Wheelan, p. 215) and at times had no water (Wheelan, p. 216), though they did have fiddlers who played for dances.
Their lack of discipline very likely means that they would not have done well in combat. Cooke's bulletin to his troops upon arriving at San Diego was interesting: Thus volunteers, you have exhibited some high and essential qualities of veterans. But much remains undone. Soon, you will turn your attention to the drill, to system and order, to forms also, which are all necessary to the soldier" (Roberts, p. 64).
Fortunately, they never had to fight. They never saw the Mexicans; they were heading for Tucson when the Mexicans abandoned it (Wheelan, p. 216 -- a foolish move, since, according to Roberts, p. 48, the Mexicans had some two hundred men there; that should have been enough to hold off four hundred ill-fed, ill-disciplined religious nuts pretending to be soldiers. But they had negotiated with Cooke, and it sounds as if he bluffed them out). "[T]he Battalion fought only one battle, with wild bulls, near the San Pedro river in what would become Arizona" (Reeve/Parshall, p. 95). This became the subject of the song "The Bull Fight on the San Pedro." It was apparently a fairly desperate fight, which demonstrated the disobedience of the Mormons: Cooke had ordered them to march with their weapons unloaded, but they had prepared their guns when they saw the bulls (Roberts, p. 46). Roberts claims the animals were very hard to kill and had to be hit many times, which is probably true in a few cases, but I suspect the main problem -- as with most untrained soldiers in this period -- was that they couldn't shoot accurately; with officers still thinking in terms of smoothbore muskets that had little ability to hit what they were aimed at, marksmanship was not a skill that was much stressed at this time.
They reached San Diego on January 29, 1847 and stayed there until their enlistments ended. The officers on the spot tried to get them to sign up for another term, but most refused; the battalion was reorganized as a single company, with the equivalent of four companies packing up and heading home. It is interesting to note that Sergeant Tyler, the author of the first major book about the battalion, was one of the leaders in arguing that they should go home (Roberts, pp. 74-75). So they headed for Salt Lake (meaning that they went back by a different route than the one they came), though a great many of them ended up staying in the gold rush area around San Francisco rather than making the difficult trip over the Rockies (Roberts, pp. 75-76; in the following pages he describes how Mormons were involved in the discovery of the gold beds). Those that did return were able to bring seeds of certain crop species that did well in the Salt Lake area (Roberts, p. 79).
Total losses in the battalion were 22 dead, of disease, which wasn't a particularly high rate of loss for armies in the field at this time, though apparently the trek through the southern desert was very uncomfortable.
Colonel Cooke claimed their total distance traveled was two thousand miles, and "History will search in vain for an equal march of infantry" (Roberts, p. 1). I guess neither Roberts nor Cooke had ever heard of Alexander the Great.
Still, they apparently had an influence on history. They had, in effect, surveyed a route to the sea south of the main peaks of the Rockies, and made some improvements, cutting trails wide enough for a wagon and starting wells (Roberts, pp. 57-62). It looked like a good route for a transcontinental railroad, and the American government pushed through the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 to give it control of the land (Roberts, p. 50).
It is perhaps just as well that the battalion didn't fight under Cooke. Although his career was distinguished overall, his Civil War service was unexceptional. In 1862, he led a cavalry division in the Peninsular Campaign, and at the Battle of Gaines's Mill, some of his troops made a completely useless charge against infantry and were slaughtered, although there is disagreement about whether he was responsible (Sears, p. 245). After the campaign, he was transferred to non-combat duties, and he never served actively again (Warner, p. 90). Stoneman and Smith both rose higher; Stoneman commanded an infantry corps at Fredericksburg, then the Federal Cavalry at Chancellorsville (Warner, p. 481), without distinction. Smith (1815-1897) didn't rise in the ranks as quickly (he didn't make it to major general until 1864), but he commanded a corps at Nashville in 1864 and Mobile in 1865 (Warner, p. 454); the Mormons may not have liked him, but I would say he had the best record of their three regular officers.
In a great irony, when relations between the Mormons and the American government became so bad that the government sent an expedition to try to control the Mormons, Colonel Cooke was one of the senior officers on the American side (Warner, p. 90).
After the first Mormon Battalion disbanded, there was apparently a Federal attempt to recruit another. But, this time, Brigham Young wasn't interested, so it didn't happen (Roberts, p. 91).
It appears the men of the battalion eventually started staging reunions. At least, Bushman's photo section has an image of several dozen men and it claims are the Mormon Battalion. But all of them appear to be quite old -- the youngest at least in their fifties, and most in their sixties or seventies. So I would guess it was a reunion photo taken perhaps around the 1880s.
Reeve/Parshall have a biography of Eliza R. Snow on pp. 200-201. She was hailed as the "mother of this people." Born in Massachusetts, raised in Ohio, she was one of those who took part in the Mormon peregrinations that eventually took her to Utah. She, and certain other relatives, converted to Mormonism in 1830. She was one of Joseph Smith's wives, and later one of Brigham Young's. She occasionally served as a teacher, and is credited with more than 500 poems. Bushman, p. 64, says "Eliza R. Snow, Zion's most prominent woman poet and the Relief Society head, as genteel and refined an eastern lady as could be imagined, plurally married first Joseph Smith, then Brigham Young. She never regretted her marriages...."
Reeve/Parshall mention two books about the Battalion: David L. Bigler and Will Bagley, Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives, Arthur H. Clark, 2000, and Norma B. Ricketts, The Mormon Battalion: U.S. Army of the West, 1846-1847, Utah State University Press, 1996. In addition, General Cooke wrote several volumes about his experience in the West; The Conquest of New Mexico and California (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1878; available on Google Books) treats of his experience with the Mormon Battalion. There is also the Tyler volume which contains this poem, but despite its claim to be concise, it is almost 400 pages, and the wording is so nineteenth-century-convoluted that I found it close to unreadable.
There is also, of course, the Roberts book cited here -- but I don't recommend it; it is short (120 pages, but in large type with excessive space between lines; my wild guess would be 50 pages in an ordinary book), not especially well researched (basically just paraphrases Tyler's account and Cooke's book), and far too complimentary to the Mormons. Roberts (1857-1933) was an important Mormon apologist; born Henry Roberts, he took the first name "Brigham" in honor of Brigham Young (Reeve/Parshall, p. 171). He had a number of conflicts with the LDS hierarchy (Reeve/Parshall, p. 172) but also wrote important theological works. Curiously, although he took three wives (Bushman, p. 78), he also tried unsuccessfully to include women's suffrage in the Utah constitution (Reeve/Parshall, p. 172). Elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1898, he was denied his seat because of his multiple wives (Bushman, p. 78). A strange character.... - RBW
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