Mormon Battalion - Journey Begins

Journey Begins

The battalion arrived at Fort Leavenworth on 30 August. For the next two weeks, they drew their pay, received their equipment (Model 1816 smoothbore flintlock muskets and a few Harper's Ferry Model 1803 Rifles), and were more formally organized into a combat battalion. The volunteers took the army's uniform allowance in cash. To be sure the Saints benefited from the men's wages, Young sent Orson Pratt to make sure the men handed over their first pay. Young used this and the wages they earned later to buy wagon loads of supplies for the main group at wholesale prices in St. Louis, Missouri. He wrote to the enlistees, that the money was a "peculiar manifestation of the kind providence of our Heavenly Father at this time." There was little time for training and instilling discipline. Newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel James Allen became ill but ordered the battalion forward along the Santa Fe Trail to overtake Kearny's Army of the West. On 23 August, Allen died and was the first officer buried in what became Fort Leavenworth National Military Cemetery.

Captain Jefferson Hunt, commanding A Company, was the acting commander until word reached Council Grove, Kansas, that Allen had died. A few days later Lieutenant Andrew Jackson Smith, West Point Class of 1838, arrived and assumed temporary command of the battalion with the Mormons' consent. For the next several weeks, the Mormon soldiers came to hate "AJ" Smith and the assistant surgeon, Dr. George B. Sanderson, for their treatment of the men, and the long marches suffered across the dry plains of Kansas and New Mexico. The Mormon men were not accustomed to the austere military standards of the day nor to the medical treatments imposed by Dr. Sanderson, which were standard for the time. Because the elders had counseled the battalion members to avoid military medical treatment by the military, they challenged the doctor's authority and unrest arose among the men. Smith and Sanderson continued to hold the Mormon Battalion to ordinary standards of discipline, and tensions continued.