Honoring The Buffalo Soldiers (February/March 1992 | Volume: 43, Issue: 1)

Honoring The Buffalo Soldiers

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Authors: Roger J. Spiller

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February/March 1992 | Volume 43, Issue 1

Ordinarily streets and buildings on Army posts are history lessons. The Army is an institution that capitalizes upon its past, using its physical surroundings to commemorate its forebears and convey to its present members a sense of continuity and place. Over the years the Army’s custom of naming everything nameable has ensured that every road and most buildings speak to the inhabitants of these posts in subtle and constant tones. In this respect Fort Leavenworth is no different from any other post, but this is an old place, one that lays a special claim to the Army’s affections. Established in 1827, it is the oldest fort in continuous service west of the Missouri River, which courses below the bluffs where it stands. In 1881 the Army’s “university,” the Command and General Staff College, opened its first classes. Today few officers manage a career in the Army without seeing Fort Leavenworth. The place is frequently referred to as “the heart and soul of the American Army.”

So when Colin Powell was stationed at Fort Leavenworth as a brigadier general in 1982, he understood the historical significance of the place. He knew, too, that it was here in 1866 that the 10th Cavalry Regiment was raised, organized, and first trained while a new sister regiment, the 9th Cavalry, was being established in New Orleans. Together these two regiments, composed of African-Americans, came to be known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

Out for a run one day, Powell came by two gravel alleyways named after the 9th and 10th Cavalries. ”I wonder if that’s all there is,” he thought. So began a remarkable campaign that will culminate in the dedication of a monument to the 9th and 10th on a site at Fort Leavenworth where the 10th first made its home. On July 25,1992, a new bronze statue of a mounted cavalry trooper will be unveiled. Flags will fly and bands will play and speeches will be made. And it will be a far happier day than the one when the Buffalo Soldiers stood their first reveille. As was the case with the 1st Kansas Colored, Leavenworth was not the most pleasant location to raise a regiment of black troops.

Concerned about a new restiveness among the Plains Indians and the demands of policing Reconstruction, Congress passed the Army Reorganization Act in 1866, authorizing the creation of ten new regiments of cavalry, five new artillery regiments, and fortyfive new infantry regiments. Two of the cavalry regiments and four of the infantry regiments were to be made up of black soldiers and officered by whites—the first all-black units on the 1992 rolls of the permanent military establishment of the United States.

Some white officers refused to serve with black troops. Custer turned down a lieutenant colonelcy in the 10th in favor of the 7th Cavalry. The 10th got a better officer anyway. Benjamin Grierson was a former music teacher from Illinois who was afraid of