John Walker Harrington
The following are excerpts taken directly from the 1917 article on the names of the World War I cantonment camps and their namesakes. Prominent in this article was Camp Doniphan in Oklahoma.
The thrill of great deeds of arms is in the names of the 32 cantonments where American men are being trained to follow the traditions of the forefathers, and yet to most of us some of these titles are hardly even reminiscent. Camp Grant tells its own story on an instant. But it requires a quick search of half-forgotten history when we read that one cantonment represents that intrepid leader of mysterious origin who hurled a regiment of Missourians across the then unknown desert of alkali to plant the Stars and Stripes at Sacramento. For the board of which Major Gen. Joseph E. Kuhn was the head selected not only names of men everybody would recognize; they chose some also which would make the nation remember and revive the exploits of neglected worthies.
Prominent officers of past wars, Union and Confederate leaders, are included in the new nomenclature; cognomens duplicated by those well-known men now living were omitted. As far as possible, the name selected for a camp was that of a man from the section typical of the troops there assembled. The effort was made to use names of federal commanders for camps of divisions for the Northern states and of Confederate generals for cantonments where Southern troops had been mobilized. When it was impractical to follow this rule, recourse was had to the index of officers who had served in the American revolution, in the Mexican War of 1846, or in Indian Wars, or to the records of explorers and pioneers.
So it came to pass that the board opened many a cache of glory and has caused many to recall the splendid achievements of leaders whose large part in the making of our national history had not had general public recognition.
Camp Doniphan at Fort Still, Okla., does not instantly suggest to many the career of one of the most remarkable characters in the military annals of the United States—Col. Alexander W. Doniphan. He was supposed to have been of Spanish origin, not Irish, as might be inferred from his name. The name according to tradition, was originally Don Alphonso, and was borne by an ancestor who on account of religious persecutions fled from Spain to England. The cognomen, as many transplanted ones of Latin origin often do, became modified and corrupted in the British home.
Doniphan was practicing law at Liberty, MO., when the call to take up arms against Mexico reached that region in 1846, and Col. Stephen W. Kearny was instructed to move a force to the Pacific coast and seize the Mexican settlements. Owing to dissensions which centered about Gen. Winfield Scott, then at the head of the army of the United States, no adequate plan or preparation was made for the conduct of the war, Kearny did the best he could and pressed westward, followed by fleets of prairie schooners. Doniphan assembled 900 riflemen, known later as the First Missouri cavalry, and conveyed them across the great American desert. Had they not been victors, they would have undoubtedly starved to death.
Doubtless there was never a more quixotic emprise since the beginning of time. In the hands of a leader less romantic and daring, the Doniphan Expedition would have fallen into ruin. Considering the enormous difficulties which beset it, however, it represents one of the greatest feats of American arms, despite the fact that upon this day and generation it has made no great impress. The Mexicans were so confident of capturing the Missourians that they had provided stores of cords and handcuffs in advance with which to bind their captives for a parade in the capital. Doniphan had at the most only 950 half-starved, wild-eyed followers when he attacked 4,200 Mexicans at Sacramento, and scatted them before him. His ragged, unkempt battalions hurled themselves against the enemy with such fury that for years afterwards, the Mexicans spoke of the assault made by the “hairy American devils” who fought like “fiends incarnate.”
Doniphan, although he was a man of great personal dignity, especially as one of the leaders of the American bar in the West, had in him the blood of a long line of warrior knights, and fought side by side with his men. His great labor was to hold them in control. The first of the volunteers to leap into the enemy trenches were two raw-boned Missourians, who had a quarrel the day before, which resulted in one of them calling the other a coward. To prove their courage, they ran a race to the Mexican fortifications, scaled the barriers and clubbed many of the foe to death.
On his way to the front, Doniphan encountered one of his command holding seven horses by their bridles, for, as originally planned, 108 men were assigned to this service at the rear.
“Do I have to do this?” exclaimed the dragoon. “Just stand here and hold horses?”
“You do if you have been assigned to it,” was the reply.
The man knotted the seven bridles together, threw the knot at the horses’ heads, and in a few seconds was running to the front, rifle in hand.
“I came out here to fight,” said he. “Hell! I can hold horses in Missouri!”
Doniphan subjugated the fierce Navajo, and established a government over the Mexican settlements, and was in everything the right-hand man of Kearny.
It is especially appropriate that the camp at Linda Vista, Cal., should be named for Brig. Gen. S. W. Kearny, who had so much to do with the conquest of the golden coats. It was his “army of the West,” in all only about 2,000 men, which established possession over the whole Pacific slope. With the help of such men as his nephew, Gen. Philip Kearny, and the fearless Doniphan, he was able to wage successful war far from bases of supplies and against tremendous odds. Associated with him was Capt. John C. Fremont for whom is named the camp at Palo Alto, the same gallant soldier and pathfinder who was to become so well known in political circles.
There are further suggestions of the Mexican War in the names of camps which honor the names of Gen. Zachary Taylor and Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard, the first at Louisville, KY., and the other at Alexandria, La.
Taken all in all, the titles which have been bestowed on the cantonments of the country bear witness to the many and varied achievements of the officers of the United States.
(Copyright, New York Evening Post, 1917.)