Occasionally, sergeants traveled on official business, escorting prisoners to state penitentiaries or to the U.S. Military Prison at Fort Leavenworth, or delivering insane soldiers to the government hospital in Washington, D.C. These tasks fell frequently to the four companies of the 25th Infantry that served at Fort Snelling, Minn., headquarters of the Department of Dakota from 1882 to 1888. Sergeants of the 25th supervised parties of recruits en route from headquarters to their regiments. Since the 25th was the only black regiment serving in the department at the time, most recruits in the sergeants' charge were white. Sergeants also traveled to small towns in Minnesota and Dakota Territory to pick up deserters in the custody of local officials.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

After they left the Army, the black Regulars lived and died as quietly as they had before they enlisted. Most found unskilled or semi-skilled jobs; a fortunate few kept on working for the federal government, in a post office or national cemetery. Pensions helped some who could prove that they had been injured in the line of duty, but Congress did not grant 'Indian wars' veterans a service pension until 1917. Even then, eligibility depended on whether a man's regiment had taken part in a particular campaign in certain states and territories at a specific time. Troopers of the 9th Cavalry who served in New Mexico Territory from 1876 to 1881 had no status as 'Indian campaigners.' The 1917 pension act included only the men of Company D, for their brief role in the Ute War of 1879. Infantrymen who served along the Rio Grande valley throughout the 1870s received no recognition at all. Not until 1927 did Congress pass an inclusive service pension for veterans of the peacetime Army.

Wherever they lived and however poor they were, most veterans seem to have received decent funerals. Well into the 20th century, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) played an important part. When David Morgan, a veteran of the 24th Infantry, died in 1917 'wholly without means,' the Brownsville, Texas, post of the GAR and Army officers at Fort Brown bore the expenses. In Sioux City, Iowa, George Brummsick's Masonic lodge brothers buried him 'in the Grand Army lots.' The Bureau of Pensions settled undertakers' accounts, too. Whether through the offices of the federal government, a fraternal order or their neighbors' charity, black veterans could be fairly sure of a respectable burial. But black newspapers did not feature their obituaries. Few Americans, black or white, noticed the Regular Army in peacetime. There was a brief surge of interest during the Spanish-American War, as several thousand black Americans joined state and federal regiments, but public attention soon lapsed.

During the years after the Civil War, though, the black Regulars — fewer than 20,000 men in all — made a place for themselves in the Army. Those who recalled their service in letters to the veterans' newspaper Winners of the West told a story that Frederic Remington and John Ford had made familiar to millions. Scott Lovelace summarized the 10th Cavalry's activities during the late 1870s as 'chasing the redskins to help blaze a right of way for the settlers of the wild west.' Another 10th Cavalry veteran, George W. Ford, reflected: 'Our sacrifices and hardships opened up a great empire to civilization.'

Although the black Regulars faced racial prejudice from individuals both outside the Army and within it, the Army itself needed their services and could not afford to discriminate against them in matters of food, housing, clothing and equipment. However poor these might be, they were the same that white troops received. The U.S. Army was one of the most impartial institutions of its day, and it attracted men whose ability and endurance assured their regiments' survival and a place, however small, for black Americans in the nation's public life.

For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today!

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to