Buffalo Soldiers

Origins

About 180,000 Black men served in the Union Army during the Civil War. When the war ended, Congress decided to keep some of them in the peacetime United States Army. An act of July 1866 created six regiments of Black enlisted men, the first in the Regular Army: the 9th and 10th Cavalry and four infantry regiments that were combined in 1869 into the 24th and 25th Infantry. The name "Buffalo Soldiers" is by tradition said to have been given by Plains peoples, perhaps because of the soldiers' dark curly hair or their toughness. The soldiers took it as a compliment, and the 10th Cavalry later put a buffalo on its crest.

Organization & Training

Enlisted men were Black, but almost all officers were white. Some, like Colonel Benjamin Grierson of the 10th Cavalry and Colonel Edward Hatch of the 9th, stood up for their men. Others refused to serve with them. Henry O. Flipper, the first Black graduate of West Point, joined the 10th Cavalry in 1877, and Charles Young later served with the 9th and 10th. Many recruits had been enslaved and could not read, so chaplains ran schools at the posts. The regiments were often given worn-out horses and equipment and sent to the harshest posts in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Even so, their desertion rates were lower than those of many white units.

Weapons & Equipment

Early on the regiments made do with Civil War surplus, including percussion revolvers such as the Colt 1860 Army and Spencer carbines such as the M1865 Spencer Rifle. From the 1870s the cavalry carried the Springfield "trapdoor" carbine and the Colt Single Action Army revolver, along with the Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber, though sabers were often left behind on campaign. In the 1890s the Army adopted the Krag-Jørgensen rifle and carbine, which the regiments carried in Cuba, and after 1903 the M1903 Springfield.

Notable Actions

Their service was the working frontier. For roughly thirty years the regiments built and repaired forts, strung telegraph lines, mapped water holes, escorted wagon trains and guarded the mail. They also fought. The 10th Cavalry took part in the Red River War of 1874-75 against the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne. The 9th and 10th spent 1879-80 chasing the Apache leader Victorio across New Mexico, Texas and into Mexico, and the 10th served in the campaign against Geronimo in the 1880s. Eighteen Buffalo Soldiers are usually counted as earning the Medal of Honor in the Indian Wars, including Sergeant Emanuel Stance of the 9th Cavalry in 1870.

In 1898 all four regiments fought in Cuba in the Spanish-American War. The 9th and 10th Cavalry fought alongside Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders at Kettle Hill and San Juan Heights, and the 24th and 25th Infantry fought at San Juan and El Caney. The regiments then served in the Philippines and on the Mexican border, where troopers of the 10th fought Mexican government forces at Carrizal in June 1916 during the Punitive Expedition.

Legacy

Segregation outlasted their frontier fame. President Truman ordered the armed forces desegregated in 1948, and the last all-Black regiments were broken up in the early 1950s. Interest in the Buffalo Soldiers grew in later decades. In 1992 a monument to them was dedicated at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a project championed by General Colin Powell. They are remembered as professional soldiers who served a nation that served them poorly, and set records anyway.

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