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Fort Worth Characters
By Richard F. Selcer University of North Texas Press
Copyright © 2009 Richard F. Selcer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57441-358-8
CHAPTER 1
The Curious Story of Brevet Major Ripley Arnold
As the American frontier marched westward in the nineteenth century, a number of obscure, even junior-grade Army officers would make their marks on history. For instance, Fort Worth, Texas, was named for Major General William Jenkins Worth; Dodge City, Kansas, for Major General Grenville Dodge; and Pike's Peak, Colorado, for Lieutenant Zebulon Pike. None of these men were what might be called giants in history, yet all are remembered today because their names are attached to important landmarks.
Then there was Major Ripley A. Arnold who founded three different posts on the Texas frontier: Camp Inge, Camp Thornton, and Fort Worth. No monument marks the first two sites because they are under water (Lakes Waco and Whitney respectively), while the third site, his crowning achievement, is not even identified with its founder because Arnold graciously named it for his department commander. Thus, one of the most vibrant and booming cities in the Southwest today is named Fort Worth not Fort Arnold. Four years after founding Fort Worth, Ripley Arnold had the unique distinction of being gunned down at Fort Graham, Texas, by his own post surgeon, the only time such a thing happened in the entire history of the U.S. Army. Doctors are supposed to be healers, not killers. Arnold's untimely demise left a wife and three daughters destitute because they were not pension-eligible under the circumstances. Those same dubious circumstances also kept the Army from honoring Arnold by naming a frontier fort after him in the years following.
Ripley Allen Arnold's story begins on January 17, 1817, in Pearlington, Mississippi, where he was born to Willis H. and Nancy Chinn Arnold. On his mother's side he was related to Daniel Boone, and the blood of French Huguenots also coursed through his veins. His life was unremarkable until he got caught up in Manifest Destiny, the driving force behind westward expansion in the nineteenth century, which held it was the divine mission of this great English-speaking nation to "overspread the continent allotted [them] by Providence."
As a specimen of manhood, Ripley Arnold reportedly stood about six feet tall, with gray eyes and a pleasant face. His most notable feature was his hair, said by some sources to be auburn and by others to be red. His reddish hair has often been cited as the key to his fiery temperament, which is well documented. Throughout his life he was impulsive, proud, and had a short fuse. That combination got him in serious trouble more than once.
Unlike most Americans in the nineteenth century, Ripley Arnold had the benefits of an excellent education growing up. His father was principal of the Pearlington Academy and a big believer in schooling. He saw to it that Ripley learned more than the traditional three Rs, first at Pearlington, then at the Oxford Academy in Ohio, and finally at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Seventeen-year-old Ripley entered West Point as a member of the class of 1838. Willis Arnold was a contrarian whose Whig sympathies made him "the only man in Hancock County, Mississippi who dared to vote against General [Andrew] Jackson." Papa's well-known Whig sympathies in a Democratic-dominated state during a Democratic administration in Washington made securing one of the prized appointments to West Point for Ripley all the more remarkable.
The young man found the picky discipline and lofty academic standards of West Point onerous. He spent most of his four years among the "Immortals," those hovering near the bottom of the class academically, and piling up demerits for disciplinary infractions. During his freshman year he got into a brawl with two sophomores that escalated from fists to chairs and then knives. Arnold bested the two older boys and successfully argued his innocence on grounds of self- defense at the subsequent court-martial proceedings. Like many other cadets after 1825, he often sneaked out at night to visit nearby Benny Havens' tavern. According to legend, he shared credit with Lucius O'Brien for composing the lyrics of the famous "Benny Havens, Oh!" drinking song in 1838.
West Point cadets could receive up to 200 demerits per school year (100 per semester) before facing dismissal, and Cadet Ripley came dangerously close every year. During his senior year he was caught off post, court-martialed, and sentenced to three months' room arrest, meaning he could only leave his room for classes and official functions. Even before he had completed that punishment he was slipping away to attend an off-post birthday party in his honor. Upon returning, he found his roommate and some friends having a party in his room, so he bunked in another cadet's room that night only to be brought up on charges for the third time for being out of his room after taps, violating room arrest, and buying the jug that the others were enjoying when they were caught. He was found guilty of all charges and threatened with expulsion, but got another chance, which he also blew. Before the first month of 1838 was out, he was back in the dock yet again, this time charged with loudly quarrelling with the same cadet he blamed for telling lies about him at the last court-martial. To that charge was added leaving the grounds on the previous occasion. Young Ripley Arnold, it seemed, could not follow the rules or fit into the Academy's regimen. Once again he was found guilty and faced expulsion. To avoid that humiliation, he tendered his letter of resignation, then had a change of heart and appealed to the commandant, who chose to disregard the letter and sentence him to yet another stretch of room arrest.
Yet young Ripley's most troubling breaches of Academy discipline were not for missing curfew or slipping off post but for being unable to control his temper. He had a notoriously short fuse. According to West Point lore, he fought a duel with another, unnamed cadet at Benny Havens' tavern. The outcome of the duel is not recorded, nor is there any record of disciplinary action being taken. If no harm was done, it could have been hushed up by his fellow cadets or simply dismissed as one of those "affairs of honor" between Southern gentlemen, of whom West Point had more than its fair share during the antebellum years.
Ripley Arnold is Exhibit A against the argument that U.S. Military Academy discipline has always been exceedingly strict and unforgiving. Cadet Arnold managed to graduate with his class on July 1, 1838, after finishing his senior year with 199 demerits, one short of the fatal number. He did much better in the classroom, ranking twenty-fifth out of forty-four graduates in the class of '38, twenty-three spots behind future star of the class, noted Confederate General Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard. Arnold's middling ranking earned him assignment to the infantry, not as good as the engineers but better than the mounted branch. If he were going to make a career in the military, it would have to be in combat or the supply branches (quartermaster and commissary). His relatively low standing secured him a spot in the infantry, since the engineer and cavalry arms were reserved for higher-ranking graduates.
As a newly minted second lieutenant, effective July 1, 1838, he was ordered to Florida to join the Second Seminole War in progress. Before reporting for duty, however, he went home to Mississippi where he conducted a whirlwind courtship of fourteen-year-old Catherine Bryant, a soldier's daughter. When her father refused to give his blessing to the union, they eloped in the middle of the night. Thomas Bryant, who had been an Army surgeon, never completely forgave Arnold for whisking away his daughter, but in time he gave up thoughts of plugging his son-in-law.
After reporting to his command in Florida, Arnold requested and was granted a transfer to the Second Dragoons, a regiment authorized by Congress barely two years before. He arrived in the middle of the Second Seminole War, which had erupted in 1835 when the U.S. government tried to move the Seminoles en masse across the Mississippi to the Indian Territory. Many of the Indians retreated into the Florida Everglades where they held out for the next seven years, although they were eventually defeated by the merciless operations of Colonel William Jenkins Worth. It was the first time, but it would not be the last, that Ripley Arnold's path crossed Worth's, and it was always fortuitous for him.
The Seminole Wars were not fought by large units fighting set-piece battles. Rather, they were fought by small, semi-independent units scattered across a sprawling war zone. It required a lot of self-reliance and initiative on the part of junior officers who might spend weeks out in the field on "detached service." Arnold was attached to Company K of the Second Dragoons, and his exemplary conduct caught the eye of his superiors. He led by example and drove his men hard. A career that had gotten off to a very rocky start at West Point was looking up. As a freshly minted lieutenant, he was already leading troops in combat and winning the approval of his superiors. True, the Florida swamps were a miserable place to live, but such was a soldier's life, and Catherine was living close enough, right across the state line in Georgia, that he could visit her on leave occasionally. It was while she was living there that their first child was born before the end of 1838, a boy whom they named Willis after his father. The timing of Willis' birth, only a few months after Ripley and Catherine were married, suggests another reason why they chose to elope rather than have a traditional ceremony.
The Second Dragoons pulled out of Florida in June 1839 and nobody was happier to leave than Lieutenant Arnold. Despite his relative youth and junior rank, the Army considered him a comer. He was placed on detached service and sent to a number of northern cities to recruit while the rest of the regiment rested and refitted. The cushy urban postings meant he could bring Catherine to live with him—at least until he was ordered back to Florida with the regiment in the late fall. On his return to the war, he found himself serving under Colonel David Twiggs, a well-regarded combat officer at this point in his career, later to be remembered as the biggest traitor to the U.S. Army since Benedict Arnold (no relation to Ripley). Second in command was Lieutenant Colonel William S. Harney, destined for fame in the Mexican and Mormon wars and infamy in the Civil War. Lieutenant Arnold's fellow company officers were Hamilton Merrill and William J. Hardee, former West Point classmates. While dozens of soldiers, including Twiggs himself, fell sick in the malarial swamps, Arnold's health bore up remarkably well. Apparently he fortified himself with alcohol, beginning a heavy drinking habit that followed him the rest of his life but made him, if anything, less sympathetic of others with the same problem.
The dragoons found themselves chasing elusive Indians through the swamps fruitlessly trying to catch phantoms. After weeks of this, they staggered back to camp to rest and regroup. Ripley Arnold would remain in this war zone for two miserable years. He grew so lonely that he brought Catherine and Willis to join him, and the couple was in Florida when their second child, a daughter whom they named Florida Belle, was born there in 1840. Catherine Arnold was also getting a crash course in Army life. Having hitched her star to a shavetail lieutenant, she was forced to grow up fast. Barely seventeen, she already had two infant children. Following her husband from post to post for the next thirteen years would test not just the bonds of marriage but her mental toughness and physical stamina as well. Meanwhile, Ripley Arnold's career was progressing nicely. On February 1, 1841, less than three years removed from West Point, he was promoted to first lieutenant. It was a small but significant step in his career because it was the first rank he had earned in the field.
In the spring of 1842 the war climaxed when Colonel Worth launched a major offensive against the last remaining Seminole chief, Halleck Tustenuggee, who led a band of 114 followers. Company K was part of the attacking force when they cornered Tustenuggee's band on April 19 on one of the high grounds that dotted the Everglades known as the Big Hummock of Pilaklikaha. The fact that the foe was faceless, the engagements small-scale, and the battles fought in obscure places whose names did not exactly roll off the tongue made the Seminole War a forgotten conflict even while it was going on. The Battle of Big Hummock of Pilaklikaha was typical. The numbers on the two sides did not number more than a couple of hundred with Tustenuggee probably not commanding more than fifty or sixty. The fighting in the jungle-like conditions was close and personal, the sort of battle where colonels led charges. William Worth placed himself at the head of Company K before they charged and was in the thick of the fighting. The dragoons comported themselves well, helping to rout the enemy after some fierce hand-to-hand fighting. Arnold at one point was cut off from the rest of the company with nine of his men, but they held on until help arrived. Colonel Worth was impressed enough with Arnold's performance to cite him for "gallant conduct" in his report and promote the shavetail lieutenant to brevet captain on the spot. Tustenuggee surrendered and was shipped off to the Indian Territory, and General Worth declared the war over on August 14, 1842. Unlike seventy-four of his fellow officers, including thirteen West Point graduates, Arnold was alive and well. Just as important, he had covered himself with glory. The "brevet" before his captain's rank was military vernacular for a battlefield promotion, which carried no weight in the War Department but meant everything in the field. Ripley Arnold was one of only four officers from the classes of 1837–1839, eighty-two men in all, to receive a brevet promotion during the Second Seminole War.
Meanwhile, back home in Pearlington, Willis Arnold was doing everything he could to boost his son's rise through the ranks. In June 1840 he wrote a letter to Senator John Henderson of Mississippi asking that Ripley be promoted to captain and reassigned to the Quartermaster's Department. Papa pointed out that not only could his son "render more service to the U.S. in the Quarter Master's [sic] Department," but that the increase in pay would "the better enable him to support his family." Willis concluded, "I am emboldened to ask your influence and aid in promoting to the first vacancy of Captaincy this son of mine as he has determined to devote himself entirely to the service of his country in the profession of Arms." Henderson forwarded the request to the War Department, eliciting this response from the Secretary of War: "I have the honor to inform you that the claims of that gentleman [Willis Arnold] will be respectfully considered when a vacancy of that grade shall occur." Ripley got his coveted promotion in the next year, but it had nothing to do with his father's lobbying.
Not long after the Battle of Big Hummock, Chief Halleck Tustenuggee surrendered, bringing the curtain down on the Second Seminole War, but as U.S. troops withdrew from Florida, the dragoons were the last to pull out. The regiment was broken up into small units and scattered across the West. Arnold and Company K ended up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where they spent the next year. Catherine and the children pulled up stakes again and joined him at his latest post. It was there that their third child, a daughter whom they named Kate, was born in January 1843. Baton Rouge was a tough frontier town, but Catherine and the children were not there long enough to put down roots. Captain Arnold was on the move again.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fort Worth Characters by Richard F. Selcer. Copyright © 2009 Richard F. Selcer. Excerpted by permission of University of North Texas Press.
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