US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0032/00327.txt

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$Unique_ID{USH00327}
$Pretitle{35}
$Title{Fort Union National Monument
Part 4   Duty and the Fort}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Utley, Robert M.}
$Affiliation{National Park Service}
$Subject{fort
union
call
life
officers
years
post
service
day
fatigue}
$Volume{Handbook 35}
$Date{1962}
$Log{}
Book:        Fort Union National Monument
Author:      Utley, Robert M.
Affiliation: National Park Service
Volume:      Handbook 35
Date:        1962

Part 4   Duty and the Fort

Life at Fort Union

     Scouting, patrols, and campaigns relieved the tedium of a daily life that
varied only in minor details throughout the year.  The official routine and
the off duty pastimes at Fort Union were duplicated at every frontier station
in the West.  Life was hard, but for many who served there the hardship only
added to the nostalgia of later memories.

     Of all Fort Union residents the private soldier led the hardest life.
Many were immigrants chiefly German and Irish, only recently off the boat;
others were the dregs of eastern society, those who lacked either ability or
desire to find a better job; some were fugitives from justice, from business
failure, from a shrewish wife, or from family responsibilities; a few were
adventurers who liked soldiering.  Meager pay, monotonous fare, hard work, and
above all strict discipline made the private's lot an unenviable one. Officers
and noncommissioned officers wielded awesome authority and awarded cruel
punishment for minor infractions of the regulations.  Desertions were common,
and the deserter who failed to escape his pursuers suffered a retribution
swift and severe.

     Guard mount and the evening retreat parade, replete with field music,
gold braid, and snapping guidons roused a degree of martial ardor.  But for
the most part, the duties of the day seemed unheroic.  The men drilled,
practiced target firing, cared for weapons and horses, policed the grounds,
and performed a variety of fatigue labors.  Officers and noncommissioned
officers supervised every activity.  Lieutenants detailed as commissary and
quartermaster officers carried out the necessary function of keeping the
troops fed (beef bacon, salt pork, beans, hardtack, desiccated vegetables, and
coffee), clothed (rough, heavy woolens in all seasons), housed (communal
barracks, grass-filled mattresses, springless wooden bunks), and supplied.
Presiding over the whole from the headquarters building sat the commanding
officer, and in an adjoining office two powerful voices of his authority, the
adjutant and the sergeant major.

     A typical day in garrison, regulated by the orderly trumpeter at
headquarters, went like this:

          Reveille                      Sunrise
          Stable Call              Immediately after
          Sick Call                     7:15  a.m.
          Breakfast Call                7:20  a.m.
          Fatigue Call                  7:50  a.m.
          Grazing Call                  8:30  a.m.
          Guard Mount                   8:45  a.m.
          Water Mount                   9:30  a.m.
          Drill Mount                   10:30 a.m.
          Recall from Drill             11:30 a.m.
          Recall from Fatigue, dinner   12:00 noon
          Sergeant's Call               12:00 noon
          Fatigue Call                  12:45 p.m.
          Drill Call                    1:00  p.m.
          Recall from Drill             2:00  p.m.
          Water Call                    3:00  p.m.
          Stable Call                   4:30  p.m.
          Recall from Fatigue           5:10  p.m.
          Dress Parade and Retreat      5:45  p.m.
          Dinner                        7:00  p.m.
          Tattoo                        8:00  p.m.
          Taps                          8:30  p.m.

     With promotion slow (lieutenants with 20 years service were not
uncommon), officers jealously guarded the prerogatives of rank.  A rigid caste
system dominated human relationships.  Rank determined one's privileges,
authority, and social standing in the military community.  When an officer
reported for duty at Fort Union, for example, there might ensue a wholesale
exchange of housing.  A new officer had his choice of all quarters occupied by
officers his junior in rank.  A bachelor major might evict a captain with a
large family from a 3-room apartment, thus leaving the captain to evict some
hapless first lieutenant and his wife from a 2-room apartment.  The
lieutenant complied, however, for one day he too would wear the shoulder
straps of a captain or perhaps even the gold oak leaves of a major.

     The overriding condition of life at Fort Union, as at virtually every
western post, was monotony.  Field service occasionally relieved the boredom,
and everyone except the wives eagerly anticipated it.  But at other times the
weeks seemed endless, all the more so because of the isolation.  Las Vegas was
26 miles distant, Santa Fe almost 100.  Residents of Fort Union had thus to
entertain themselves.

     Drinking and gambling headed the list of diversions.  The post sutler's
store, with its billiard and card tables and, when regulations permitted, its
bar, was the center of this activity.  For the enlisted men, the Mexican
village of Loma Parda, 5 miles to the southwest, offered amusements to please
every appetite.  Primed with Army dollars, the town rocked with nightly
revelry and drove many a post commander to the verge of distraction.

     Also popular were hunting and fishing.  Deer and antelope roamed the
prairies surrounding Fort Union, and trout streams in the mountains beckoned
the angler.  Although enlisted men enjoyed these sports, officers were
Passionately addicted.  They lavished much time and affection on their hunting
dogs and horses and on their game rifles.

     Reading was a favorite pastime.  The post library subscribed to such
periodical as Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.  It
also provided many of the popular paperbacked novels of the day, together with
some heavier reading for the more intellectually inclined.  Everyone thirsted
for news of the outside world and newspapers usually a month or more old, were
passed from hand to hand until read to shreds.

     The women organized social events on the slightest pretext.  Most
cherished were the times when general courts-martial convened at Fort Union,
bringing friends from other posts, but at all times the officers and their
wives were planning diversions of one kind or another.

     Formal dinners, with fine silver, china, and linen assembled from several
households and with champagne and tinned delicacies purchased at the sutler's
store, were frequent occurrences.  Much time and effort went into planning and
staging amateur theatricals called charades.  Weddings were gala affairs, with
the preparations absorbing as much enthusiasm as the ceremony and attendant
festivities themselves.

     If a regimental band happened to be stationed at the post, balls were
regular and well attended.  "The quarters at Fort Union," recalled an
officer's wife, "had an unusually wide hall which was superb for dancing, and
three rooms on each side.  We had only to notify the quartermaster that a hop
was to be given, when our barren hallway would immediately be transformed into
a beautiful ballroom, with canvas stretched tightly over the floor, flags
decorating the sides, and ceiling so charmingly draped as to make us feel
doubly patriotic."  The men turned out in dress uniforms, the women in ball
gowns fashionable when last they had been stationed in the East.  Led by the
impressively dignified bandmaster, the musicians poured forth marches waltzes,
and polkas.  Between dances, the men gathered with cups and cigars at the
punch bowl.  Often, the festivities ended only with the approach of reveille.

     Desperately and Continuously, the Army people fought to overcome the
monotony of garrison life.  Never did they entirely succeed.

The Last Years

     On Independence Day 1879, the first locomotive of the Atchison, Topeka,
and Santa Fe Railroad steamed into Watrous.  The railroad ended one era and
opened another in the Southwest.  For Fort Union the handwriting was on the
wall.  The Indians had been conquered; as an artery of commerce the Santa Fe
Trail had been replaced.  Fort Union had outlived its usefulness.

     For another 10 years, however, a garrison stagnated at the fort.  An
occasional chase after desperadoes offered the only field service, social
events the only relief from the tedium of garrison life.  The buildings
continued to deteriorate, and a Quartermaster Department that could see the
end in sight consistently refused to authorize repairs.

     At least one officer found the life rewarding.  Captain Shoemaker, now at
Fort Union nearly 30 years, could tell the young West Pointers everything
there was to know about the post.  "That very courtly old gentleman," wrote
the chaplain's daughter many years later, "could not be persuaded to ride on
the Santa Fe R. R. . . . and had not been in Las Vegas for many years.  He
preferred his seclusive life within a certain radius of the Arsenal and the
garrison, and was constantly in the saddle, a wonderful horseman, even though
in his eighties."  He finally retired in 1882 after 41 years of service, built
a house near the fort, and died 4 years later.

     In 1890 the War Department decided to abandon all the old frontier posts
that no longer served a useful purpose, and Fort Union was included on the
list.  On February 18, 1891, the Las Vegas Optic reported that "The last few
days have told a terrible tale at Fort Union.  Four days ago everything was in
running order, now everything is upside down and inside out.  The soldiers are
busy packing government and private property.  On the 21st, leaving behind a
small caretaker detail, Companies C and H, 10th Infantry, formed on the parade
ground and marched down the road to Watrous.  Here they boarded a troop train
that was to take them to Fort Wingate.  Settling in their seats, rifles slung
from overhead baggage racks, the infantrymen struck up a song: "There's a Land
that is Fairer than This."

Fort Union Today

     After abandonment, Fort Union fell into ruins.  With the roofs gone,
rain, snow, and wind ate away at the adobe walls and caused rapid
deterioration.  In the late 1930's a movement was launched to save what had
survived.  Strong popular support, spearheaded by a local group called Fort
Union, Inc., helped this movement at last to achieve its goal.  With land
deeded by the Union Land and Grazing Co., whose cattle ranges surround the
ruins, Fort Union National Monument was established as a unit of the National
Park System on April 5, 1956.

     Crews working under the supervision of archeologists of the National Park
Service immediately began a 4-year program to stabilize the ruins and halt
further deterioration.  They capped and braced the crumbling walls and sprayed
the exposed adobe with water-resistant chemicals.  Excavations yielded many
artifacts.  A visitor center and museum opened its doors on June 14, 1959.
Although most traces of the first fort, 1851-63, have vanished, visitors may
examine the ruins of the star fort and the fort begun by General Carleton in
1863.  The last consists of the Post of Fort Union, the Fort Union
Quartermaster Depot, and, on the site of the first fort, the Fort Union
Arsenal.  Extensive evidences of the Santa Fe Trail may also be observed.