During the month of August, it having become evident that General Harney was reluctant to proceed to Utah, anticipating a brighter field for military distinction in Kansas, Colonel Johnston was summoned from Texas to Washington and there ordered to hasten to take command of the expedition. On the 17th of September, he left Fort Leavenworth, and by rapid travel overtook Colonel Smith while he was engaged in collecting the trains which he intended to escort to the main body. On the 27th of October, the column moved forwards. The escort had been reinforced by a squadron of dragoons from Fort Laramie, but its entire strength was less than three hundred men, a number obviously insufficient to defend a line of wagons six miles in length. An attack by the Mormons was expected every day, but none was made; and on the 3d of November, the whole army, with its munitions, supplies, and commander, was concentrated on Black's Fork. Colonel Alexander had arrived at the place of rendezvous some days previously, being no nearer Salt Lake City November 3d than he had been a month before. The country was covered with snow, winter having fairly set in among the mountains, the last pound of forage was exhausted, and the cattle and mules were little more than animated skeletons.
Colonel Johnston had already determined, while in the South Pass, that it would be impracticable to cross the Wahsatch range until spring, and shaped his arrangements accordingly. He resolved to establish winter-quarters in the vicinity of Fort Bridger, and on the 6th of November the advance towards that post commenced. The day was memorable in the history of the expedition. Sleet poured down upon the column from morning till night. On the previous evening, five hundred cattle had been stampeded by the Mormons, in consequence of which some trains were unable to move at all. After struggling along till nightfall, the regiments camped wherever they could find shelter under bluffs or among willows. That night more than five hundred animals perished from hunger and cold, and the next morning the camp was encircled by their carcasses, coated with a film of ice. It was a scene which could be paralleled only in the retreat of the French from Moscow. Had there been any doubt before concerning the practicability of an immediate advance beyond Fort Bridger, none existed any longer. It was the 16th of November when the vanguard reached that post, which the Mormons had abandoned the week before. Nearly a fortnight had been consumed in accomplishing less than thirty miles.
It is time to return to the States and record what had been transpiring there, in connection with the expedition, while the army was staggering towards its permanent winter-camp. The only one of the newly-appointed civil officials who was present with the troops was Judge Eckels, who had left his home in Indiana immediately after receiving his appointment, and started across the Plains with his own conveyance. Near Fort Laramie he was overtaken by Colonel Smith, whom he accompanied in his progress to the main body. Governor Cumming, in the mean while, dilly-dallied in the East, travelling from St. Louis to Washington and back again, begging for an increase of salary, for a sum of money to be placed at his disposal for secret service, and for transportation to the Territory,—all which requests, except the last, were denied. Towards the close of September, he arrived at Fort Leavenworth. Governor Walker had, by this time, released his hold on the dragoons, and, notwithstanding the advanced period of the season, they were preparing to march to Utah. The Governor and most of the other civil officers delayed until they started, and travelled in their company. The march was attended with the severest hardships. When they reached the Rocky Mountains, the snow lay from one to three feet deep on the loftier ridges which they were obliged to cross. The struggle with the elements, during the last two hundred miles before gaining Fort Bridger, was desperate. Nearly a third of the horses died from cold, hunger, and fatigue; everything that could be spared was thrown out to lighten the wagons, and the road was strewn with military accoutrements from the Rocky Ridge to Green River. On the 20th of November, Colonel Cooke reached the camp with a command entirely incapacitated for active service.
The place selected by Colonel Johnston for the winter-quarters of the army was on the bank of Black's Fork, about two miles above Fort Bridger, on a spot sheltered by high bluffs which rise abruptly from the bottom at a distance of five or six hundred yards from the channel of the stream. The banks of the Fork were fringed with willow brush and cottonwood trees, blasted in some places where the Mormons had attempted to deprive the troops of fuel. The trees were fortunately too green to burn, and the fire swept through acres, doing no more damage than to consume the dry leaves and char the bark. The water of the Fork, clear and pure, rippled noisily over a stony bed between two unbroken walls of ice. The civil officers of the Territory fixed their quarters in a little nook in the wood above the military camp. The Colonel, anticipating a change of encampment, determined not to construct quarters of logs or sod for the army. A new species of tent, which had just been introduced, was served out for its winter dwellings. An iron tripod supported a pole from the top of which depended a slender but strong hoop. Attached to this, the canvas sloped to the ground, forming a tent in the shape of a regular cone. The opening at the top caused a draught, by means of which a fire could be kept up beneath the tripod without choking the inmates with smoke. An Indian lodge had evidently been the model of the inventor. Most of the civil officers, however, dug square holes in the ground, over which they built log huts, plastering the cracks with mud. Their little town they named Eckelsville, after the Chief Justice. A dépôt for all the military stores was established at Fort Bridger, where a strong detachment was encamped. At the time of its occupation, the Fort consisted merely of two stone walls, one twenty, the other about ten feet in height, inclosing quadrangles fifty paces long and forty broad. These walls were built of cobble-stones cemented with mortar. Half-a-dozen cannonballs would have knocked them to pieces, although they constituted a formidable defence against infantry. When the Mormons evacuated the post, they burned all the buildings inside these quadrangles. Colonel Johnston proceeded to set up additional defences for the dépôt, and within a month two lunettes were completed with ditches and chevaux-de-frise, in each of which was mounted a piece of artillery.
The work of unloading the trains commenced, and after careful computation the Chief Commissary determined, that, by an abridgment of the ration, diminishing the daily issue of flour, and issuing bacon only once a week, his supplies would last until the first of June. All the beef cattle intended for the use of the army having been intercepted by the Cheyennes, it became necessary to kill those draught oxen for beef, which had survived the march. Shambles were erected, to which the poor half-starved animals were driven by hundreds to be butchered. The flesh was jerked and stored carefully in cabins built for the purpose.
The business of loading the trains had been carelessly performed at Fort Leavenworth. In this respect the quartermaster who superintended the work might have learned a lesson from the experience of the British in the Crimea. But, unwilling to take the trouble to assign to each train a proportionate quantity of all the articles to be transported, he had packed one after another with just such things as lay most conveniently at hand. The consequence was, that in the wagons which were burned were contained all the mechanics' implements, stationery, and horse-medicines, although the loss of the latter was not to be regretted. The rest of their contents was mostly flour and bacon. Had the Mormons burned the next three trains upon the road, they would have destroyed all the clothing intended for the expedition. As it was, upon searching those trains, only one hundred and fifty pairs of boots and shoes and six hundred pairs of stockings were found provided for an army of two thousand men, and some of the soldiers already had nothing but moccasins to cover their feet, with the thermometer at 16 degrees below zero,—while there were found one thousand leather neck-stocks and three thousand bed-sacks, articles totally useless. "How not to do it" had evidently been the motto of the Quarter-master's Department. The ample supplies of some articles were rendered unavailable by deficiencies in other articles equally necessary. In some of its arrangements it seemed to have proceeded on the presumption that there would be an armed collision, while in others the probability of such an event was entirely disregarded. One wagon was loaded wholly with boiling-kettles, but there was no brine to boil, and at the close of November not a pound of salt remained in the camp.
One of the first and most important of Colonel Johnston's duties was to provide for the keeping, during the winter, of the mules and horses which survived. On Black's Fork there was no grass for their support. It had either been burned by the Mormons or consumed by their cavalry. He decided to send them all to Henry's Fork, thirty-five miles south of Fort Bridger, where he had at one time designed to encamp with the whole army. The regiment of dragoons was detailed to guard them. A supply of fresh animals for transportation in the spring was his next care. The settlements in New Mexico are less than seven hundred miles distant from Fort Bridger, and to them he resolved to apply. Captain Marcy was the officer selected to lead in the arduous expedition. He had been previously distinguished in the service by a thorough exploration of the Red River of Louisiana. Accompanied by only thirty-five picked men, all volunteers, and by two guides, he started for Taos, November 27th,—an undertaking from which, at that season of the year, the most experienced mountaineers would have shrunk. A party was dispatched at the same time to the Flathead country, in Oregon and Washington Territories, to procure horses to remount the dragoons, and to induce the traders in that region to drive cattle down to Fort Bridger for sale.
On the day of Captain Marcy's departure, Governor Cumming issued a proclamation, declaring the Territory to be in a state of rebellion, and commanding the traitors to lay down their arms and return to their homes. It announced, also, that proceedings would be instituted against the offenders, in a court to be organized in the county by Judge Eckels, which would supersede the necessity of appointing a military commission for that purpose. This document was sent to Salt Lake City by a Mormon prisoner who was released for the purpose. The Governor sent also, by the same messenger, a letter to Brigham Young, in which there were expressions that indicated a disposition to temporize.
The whole camp, at this time, was a scene of confusion and bustle. Some of the stragglers around the tents were Indians belonging to a band of Pah-Utahs, among whom Dr. Hurt, already mentioned as the only Federal officer who did not abandon the Territory in the spring of 1857, had established a farm upon the banks of the Spanish Fork, which rises among the snows of Mount Nebo, and flows into Lake Utah from the East. Shortly after the issue of Brigham Young's proclamation of September 15th, the Mormons resolved to take the Doctor prisoner. No official was ever more obnoxious to the Church than he; for by his authority over the tribes he had been able to counteract in great measure the influences by which Young had endeavored to alienate both Snakes and Utahs from the control of the United States. On the 27th of September, two bands of mounted men moved towards the farm from the neighboring towns of Springville and Payson. Warned by the faithful Indians of his danger, the Doctor fled to the mountains, and twenty Pah-Utahs and Uinta-Utahs escorted him to the South Pass, where he joined Colonel Johnston on the 23d of October. It was an act of devotion which has rarely been excelled in Indian history. The sufferings of his naked escort on the journey were severe. They crossed the Green River Mountains, breaking the crust of the snow and leading their animals, being reduced at the time to tallow and roots for their own sustenance. On the advance of the army towards Fort Bridger, they accompanied its march.
Another class of stragglers, and one most dangerous to the peace of the camp, was composed of the thousand teamsters who were discharged from employment on the supply-trains. Many of these men belonged to the scum of the great Western cities,—a class more dangerous, because more intelligent and reckless, than the same class of population in New York. Others had sought to reach California, not anticipating a state of hostilities which would bar their way. Now, thrown out of employment, with slender means, a great number became desperate. Hundreds attempted to return to the States on foot, some of whom died on the way,—and nine-tenths of them would have perished, had they encountered the storms of the preceding winter among the mountains. But the majority hung around the camp. To some of these the Quartermaster was able to furnish work, but he was obviously incapable of affording this assistance to all. Thefts and assaults became frequent, and promised to multiply as the season advanced. To remedy this trouble, Colonel Johnston assumed the responsibility of organizing a volunteer battalion. The term of service for which the men enlisted was nine months. For their pay they were to depend on the action of Congress. The four companies which the battalion comprised selected for their commander an officer from the regular army, Captain Bee, of the Tenth Infantry.