USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. II > Part 27
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As a rule the press of Arizona has been untrammeled in its expression of opinions of men and things. One notable exception was in April, 1910, when a large part of the population of Parker gathered to expel from the town Editor Jas. J. Healy of the Parker Herald. Healy was marched into the desert several miles, interest in the trip added by several stops at telegraph poles, whereon the editor was gently drawn by the neck toward the crossarm, each time with the idea that the experience was to be his last. Healy finally was allowed to escape to Bouse, from whence he complained to the governor and district attor- ney, but seemingly with little result.
BISBEE, DOUGLAS, FLORENCE AND YUMA JOURNALS
The first paper of Bisbee was the Demoerat, a weekly edited by Frank Detheridge. Its first issue was August 9, 1888. It lasted only six months.
The Bisbee Review came into being early in the campaign of 1900, a number of Warren District democratic capitalists feeling the need of a journal to support their cause. As editor was engaged Paul Hull, a Chicago man, who for twenty-eight weeks had conducted a high-class illustrated weekly, the Arizona Graphic, at Phonix. The newspaper that he published at Bisbee was good, but the income for the first month was about $2,000 less than the outgo. IFull soon abandoned the attempt to publish a Chicago newspaper in a western mining camp and the journal thereafter had months of vicissitude. During the campaign in which Mark Smith was opposed for Congress by Governor Murphy it was split for financial reasons between the democrats and republicans, each of whom had half of the front page for editorial pabulum. Then came more
JUDGE A. H. HACKNEY Pioneer newspaper publisher of Globe
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prosperous times under G. H. and Will Kelly. Latterly the Review has pros- pered under the management of Frederic Sturdevant.
The Sentinel was established in Yuma in 1869 by a local company, with John W. Dorrington at its head. W. T. Minor, Judge W. M. Berry and Geo. E. Tyng successively edited the little journal, which still endures, issued weekly by W. H. Shorey. The newspaper establishment twice has been burned out and once was submerged in a flood. John W. Dorrington, whose ownership has extended over most of its years, has defended during the years libel suits that would have cost him $125,000 had they been successful-which they were not.
For many years Florence has been served by the Weekly Blade and Tribune, a combination of papers, for the greater time controlled or edited by Thes. F. Weedin, a pioneer printer and miner, who, under democratic auspices for several years, has been filling the position of register for the United States land office at Plænix, where the receiver is John J. Birdno, likewise an editor, taken from the tripod of the Graham Guardian of Safford. Weedin's first experience in Arizona newspaperdom was on the Florence Enterprise, getting out its first issue March 20, 1881.
Of pioneer rank also are Anson H. Smith and Kean St. Charles, whose Arizona journalistic work has been upon rival journals in Kingman. There should be special mention also of the founder of the Coconino Sun, C. M. Fun- ston, who early established in the north the grace of fine typography, continued to this day by his successor, F. S. Breen.
One of the personal pillars of Arizona journalism has been Geo. H. Kelly, now editor of the daily Douglas International, for years owner of the Solomon- ville Bulletin, one of the very best of the early weeklies. A son, Will Kelly, reared in the work, now operates the Copper Era at Clifton. At Douglas also is a second daily, the Dispatch.
The Arizona Press Association was organized February 9, 1891, with L. C. Hughes as president. The other offices were filled by John H. Marion, Geo. W. Brown, S. C. Bagg, W. L. Vail, J. W. Dorrington, N. A. Morford, John O. Dunbar and Ed. S. Gill. Two subjects especially were discussed at the first meeting, the price of legal printing, which was thereupon set by the Legislature at a high rate, and methods of combination of the newspaper men in order to get favorable consideration of the craft from the legislatures.
EDITORIAL OPTIMISM
The names of Arizona newspapers frequently have been given with keen appreciation of local conditions. For instance, a great industry is appropri- ately represented by Our Mineral Wealth and the Mohave Miner of Kingman, the Prescott Journal-Miner, the Wickenburg Miner, the Miami Silver Belt, the Tombstone Prospector, and Prescott Pick and Drill, the Pinal Drill, the Clifton Copper Era, and the Jerome Copper Belt. The Sentinel of Yuma, the Vidette of Nogales and the International of Douglas naturally are on the border, watch- ing out. The Sun is not out of place in Yuma, though another paper of the same name is published in the less-torrid Flagstaff, wherein the first journal was the Flag. The Nogales Oasis surely is an agreeable name in a desert land. The long-stilled Voice of Casa Grande might have been likened to one crying out in the wilderness. Clifton had a Weekly Clarion and Saint Johns an Apache Chief.
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Some people still write to Arizona for the Arizona Kicker. There never was such a sheet, outside of the Detroit Free Press office, though the editor of the Tombstone Epitaph once thought the name a valuable one and tried to hold it for the outside circulation of his strictly sober and unemotional weekly. There never was a paper in Arizona that looked like the Kicker, or that had an editor of the pistol-carrying, swash-buckling type.
Outside of a sort of psychic fascination, there appears to have been no possible reason for the way in which men have plunged into the deserts and mountains of Arizona to establish newspapers. Yet there has been pride in many an Arizona hamlet, with its people gathered around the little hand press, to welcome the birth of a journalistic babe of promise that should carry afar the story of their greatness and of their hopes. Damp and limp the first copy came off the press, and with its appearance the camp forthwith stepped full- panoplied into metropolitan magnitude. The editor would not have changed jobs with Horace Greeley. There was a paper at Quijotoa, the Prospector, created February 23, 1884, by Harry Brook, one of the pioneers of Arizona newspaperdom, and later an editorial writer on the Los Angeles Times. Gay- leyville in the Chiricahua Mountains is only a memory, for it was gutted and burned by the Apaches more than thirty years ago; but it had a newspaper before then, and at the nearby more modern, yet scarcely larger, camp of Para- dise was established another. Just think of the immense optimism that named a mining camp Paradise, though it may look that way to a newspaper martyr. There have been papers at Tubac, Mineral Park, Chloride, Maxey, Naco, Con- gress Junction, Pinal, Gila Bend, Arizola, Courtland and a score of other places today of relatively small population or utterly off the map.
About sixty publications are being issued today, about a fourth of them daily. It is a notable fact that Arizona has ten members of the Associated Press taking news daily by wire, though the state's population is only about 220,000. There are eight memberships in Arkansas, population 1,574,000; two member- ships in Delaware, population 202,000; three in the District of Columbia, popu- lation 331,000; six in Idaho, population 325,000; five in North Dakota, popula- tion 571,000; and the comparison could be carried further into a half-dozen other states and would further sustain the journalistic pride of Arizona. There is little doubt that Arizonans are better patrons of the public press than almost any other people within the Union.
Major A. J. Doran, one of the earliest pioneers, has stated, with all warmth of expression, that the press has been the most potent of the factors that have worked for the civic and material uplift of Arizona. It is probable that he is right, and yet not because all Arizona papers were uplifters and reformers. Some of them bad decidedly bad policies and a few editors possibly had quit their former homes under pressure, but most of the editors of the pioneer period in Arizona were men of even more than average standing in their communities. Most of them, undoubtedly, would be out of place in the modern newspaper, where the old tramp printer, such as Bill Luddy or George MacFarlane, has been succeeded by an expert machinist, who sits before a wonderful erection of steel and piles up more composition in a night than one man used to put up
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in five, and where the perfecting press has succeded the old hand press, with its laborious output of a "token" an hour. Yet, after all, the press in Arizona remains the same in this, that it voices its community's best hopes, that it prints little of evil and much of good, and that it advocates betterment in all things material and civic.
CHAPTER XLIII ARIZONA'S WAR RECORD
Participation of the "Rough Riders" in the War With Spain-Honor to the Flag of the Arizona Squadron-Captain O'Neill and the Monument at Prescott-The First Ter- ritorial Infantry-National Guard of Arizona and Its Service on the Field.
Though itself a battle ground for centuries, and though the blood of slain thousands has sunk into its sands, much of the warlike fame of Arizona rests on its record in the war with Spain. It cannot be said that Arizona was very particularly interested in this war. It was rather remote, and the circum- stances were not such as to arouse any great patriotic fervor, but the adventur- ous spirit of the Southwest caused the offer of far more men than the quota allotted to the territory. The war was rather slow in coming. President Mckinley had used every diplomatic means to avoid it and it is probable that war would not have occurred had not the Maine been blown up in the harbor of Havana. Thereafter the jingo press simply led the Nation into a demand for war, which finally was declared April 21, 1898.
Two days later, the President issued a call for 125,000 volunteers and on May 25 for 75,000 more. These were in addition to the strength of the stand- ing army, which at that time was 2,143 officers and 26,040 men. The total strength gathered approximated 275,000 men.
The act of April 22 empowered the Secretary of War to recruit from the Nation at large, troops with membership possessing special qualifications not to exceed 3,000 men in all. Under this authority were created volunteer cavalry regiments, known as the First, Second and Third United States Volun- teer Cavalry. It was assumed that their membership would be almost exclu- sively cowboy in character, every soldier a horseman and a rifleman, inured to hardship and able to take care of himself and his horse in any difficult situation.
Secretary Alger commissioned as commanders of these regiments Colonels Leonard Wood, Jay L. Torrey and Melvin Grigsby. The Second and Third regiments, which appeared to have had rather disappointing commanders, never got farther than southern concentration camps. They were recruited mainly in Montana and Wyoming and seem to have been generally of excellent enlisted personnel.
The First United States Volunteer Cavalry later became known as Roose- velt's Rough Riders. It would appear that the name grew out of an observa- tion by Roosevelt that he was to join a command of "rough riders," men who could ride bad horses, though Roosevelt himself refers to the christening of the
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Susy
Lieut. Samuel Greenwald Capt. W. O. O'Neill
Lieut. George B. Wilcox
Lieut. J. D. Carter Capt. J. L. B. Alexander
GROUP OF ROUGH RIDER OFFICERS
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regiment by the public as "for some reason or other." Within itself it was known also as "Young's Horse Marines" and as "Wood's Weary Walkers."
It should be told that when the Arizona contingent of the regiment was being raised, there was no knowledge of its ultimate destination in a military sense. The idea itself was that of Wm. O. O'Neill, better known as "Buckey." O'Neill always had had military aspirations. In 1880, when the citizens of Phœnix had organized a troop of rangers under Maj. C. H. Vail, to chase hostile Indians, O'Neill was one of his lieutenants, though to be disappointed in seeing active service. In Prescott, he was made captain of a militia com- pany. His military leaning was not because of any fondness for bloodshed. . Indeed, when his company was called out to guard the scaffold during the execution of Dilda, a murderer, he fell in a faint, suddenly struck by the horror of the scene. Later he served as adjutant general under Governor Wolfley.
O'Neill wanted to raise a full regiment of cavalry, and proceeded on that line. He took up the recruiting in the northern part of the state. The southern enlistment was looked after by his old friend, Jas. H. McClintock. The colonel was to be Alexander O. Brodie of Prescott, a graduate of West Point. Brodie had had distinguished service on the frontier as a lieutenant in the First Cavalry and had campaigned against the Apaches. He had resigned from the army to take up the work of a civil engineer. Held in the highest esteem throughout northern Arizona, he was elected recorder in Yavapai County. Also he was the first line colonel of the National Guard of Arizona.
About 1,000 recruits for the proposed regiment had been enrolled by the date of the declaration of war. The services of the regiment had been offered to the war department almost daily for weeks, in letters and telegrams, sent by Governor Myron H. McCord.
The governor accepted with pleasure the suggestion that Colonel Brodie should be the ranking officer of the proposed organization. But he did not like O'Neill, who for several years theretofore had been his active political enemy and who had scored him severely in writings in the public press. There had to be some stiff argument on this point before McCord could be shown that public duty should be placed above personal prejudice.
April 26, five days after the declaration of war, there came to the governor the formal call to arms. It was disappointing in one respect: He was advised that from Arizona would be taken only 210 men, to form a part of "a crack regiment of cavalry, that would be specially armed and equipped for special duty."
The governor promptly wired the war department nominations of Brodie as major and of O'Neill and Mcclintock as captains. Very soon thereafter were added the junior appointments. O'Neill's first lieutenant, and later his successor in troop command, was Frank Frantz, a young Prescott business man, and his second lieutenant was Robert S. Patterson, a Graham County banker. In MeClintock's troop, the lieutenants were J. L. B. Alexander, a prominent Phoenix attorney and democratic politician, who also had been an active political enemy of McCord's, and George B. Wilcox, who had had prior military service in the Fourth Cavalry and who was senior hospital steward at Fort Huachuca when Colonel Wood was surgeon at that post.
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April 27, only a day after the call came, the time mainly consumed in physical examinations and with forced rejections of about two-thirds of the applicants, the first of the southern Arizona contingent, twenty-eight strong, left for the rendezvous at Whipple Barracks, probably the first movement of organized volunteers to the front. It was deplored at the time that many cow- boys, just the timber needed to rely upon, failed to pass the tests set by the medical officers.
STARTING FOR THE FRONT
The scenes of parting were affecting in the extreme. The troop had been given God-speed by Governor McCord, in his chambers at the temporary capitol, in a speech that brought tears to the eyes of nearly all. At the depot had been gathered practically all of the population of the city, so massed that the little column, flower-laden, could scarcely break its way through to the train. The last straw, as the train slowly moved out, was the singing, by the massed church choirs of the city and a chorus of normal school girls, of "God Be With You Till We Meet Again."
Further detachments from the north and south, summoned by telegraphic orders, came into Whipple for several days thereafter, until the last possible man had been enlisted in the two troops. The muster-in at Fort Whipple was made by Second Lieut. Hershell N. Tupes of the regular army. This muster proved erroneous in some points and was duplicated on May 15 by Lieutenant Tupes, who traveled to San Antonio for the purpose. Thus it follows that the Arizona contingent is not given its true credit for seniority in the records of the war department. There were busy days at Whipple Barracks, for Major Brodie was anxious to be off. The last man had hardly had his physical exam- ination when the squadron, on May 4, started for the regimental rendezvous in Texas. Entrainment was at Prescott. The squadron was marched from Whip- ple to the Courthouse Plaza, where there was brief ceremonial.
The command had been routed around through Oklahoma, via the Santa Fé, but opportune washouts caused the selection of a more direct route over the Southern Pacific, through El Paso. Colonel Wood already was on the ground with his adjutant. Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt had remained behind at Washington to hurry up the shipment of war munitions. Aided by his full knowledge of departmental procedure, this he did with wonderful success, securing tentage, saddles, arms and everything else that was necessary. The regiment itself was favored over all other volunteer commands that went to Cuba in being armed with Krag-Jorgensen carbines, of a type that had lately been given the mounted troops of the regular establishment. These carbines, using smokeless powder and with high muzzle velocity and low trajectory, placed the regiment at least on an equality with the Mauser-armed Spanish.
At San Antonio there was much work of drilling, of mounting and of equipping, and in this the Arizona squadron grew to full appreciation of the ability and knowledge of Major Brodie. The regiment, as organized in Texas, comprised twenty-seven officers and 994 enlisted men. To secure the full formation of twelve troops, there was somewhat of a shake-up and the two troops from Arizona with strength of 107 men each, were called upon to give thirty-seven men each to a third organization, lettered as "C." Lieutenant
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Alexander was promoted to the command of this. Second Lieutenant Patter- son was made his first lieutenant, and Hal Sayre of Colorado, son of a high army officer, was made second lieutenant. In Patterson's place in O'Neill's troop was promoted Quartermaster Sergeant J. D. Carter of Prescott. In Troop B, Wilcox was moved up to first lieutenant and First Sergeant T. H. Rynning secured promotion to shoulder straps. Rynning was a skilled officer, who had had service up to the grade of first sergeant in the Eighth United States Cavalry. Special mention should also be made of First Sergeant W. W. Greenwood of Troop A, an old soldier, and of First Sergeant Wm. A. Davidson of Troop B. The latter, like Rynning, had been a first sergeant of regular cavalry. Troop B was rich in soldiers of experience, including its quarter- master sergeant, Stephen A. Pate, who later died at Fort Bayard, after service in the Philippines, from the result of a gunshot wound through the lung, re- ceived in the Cuban campaign, Sergeant Elmer Hawley, who was an old Fourth Cavalry regular and Sergeant John E. Campbell. Campbell, who lately died at the Soldiers' Home in Sawtelle, California, was a soldier of rare ability, whom lack of education alone kept to the rank of a non-commissioned officer. Later he had distinguished service in the Philippines as first sergeant in the Thirty-fourth United States Volunteer Infantry.
When O'Neill was killed, John C. Greenway was transferred from Troop G to be first lieutenant under Frantz. Greenway then hailed from Hot Springs, Arkansas, but later came to Arizona as manager of mines at Bisbee. Sergeant Sam Greenwald of Troop A was commissioned as a second lieutenant just be- fore the muster-ont of the regiment.
Under the final organization, Troops A, B and C, with Troop D of Oklahoma, Capt. R. D. Houston, constituted the First Squadron, under Major Brodie. Under this readjustment, the original local subdivision of the troops was very much broken up, and into the Arizona squadron were placed a considerable number of new recruits, who came from almost anywhere except Arizona. Thus were gained, however, a considerable number of eastern college men of excep- tionally high character, who were soon taken into the fullest comradeship by the men from the Southwest. Several of these new comrades later secured com- missioned and non-commissioned rank.
It was at San Antonio that the regiment first learned of its popular designa- tion of "Rough Riders." Assuredly a lot of rough riding there was done, for the regiment was equipped fully with horses, which afterwards proved to have been unnecessary. These horses were purchased as broken, but many were right from the ranges. It was no unusual sight, when the Arizona squadron reined into line for three or four horses to bolt wildly out and start "bucking," in defiance of all military rules and regulations. It is not remembered that any of the men were dismounted thereby, though they complained bitterly that their MeClellan saddles had no horns.
The term "Rough Rider" in the popular mind usually is associated with a khaki uniform, a hat turned up on the side and a polka dot handkerchief. The regimental service uniform, till after the return from the Cuban cam- paign, really was of brown duck, the ordinary fatigue clothing of the regular army. When double sewed, it was all that could have been desired, cool, strong and neutral-colored.
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It was in San Antonio also that the regiment had fastened upon it the war song, later generally recognized as especially its own. San Antonio had a fine military band, led by corpulent Karl Beck, whose greatest joy was to come to the camp at the fair grounds, take station before the Colonel's tent, and noisily execute some stirring, warlike composition just about the time the Colonel and his officers were in serious consultation. Beck's favorite tune, probably be- cause he saw it pleased the soldiery, was, "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." The song, with its doggerel wording, went with the regiment eastward, and when the vessel that bore the Rough Riders was towed into the bay from its berth beside the wharf at Tampa, past two score of other army transports, every band on the vessels passed successively "played the regiment out" with the same tune. In Cuba, the Spaniards gained a very erroneous impression concerning the patriotic music of the invaders, for they distinguished "The Hot Time" as "El Himno Nacional de los Yanquis."
The Arizona squadron led the regiment out of San Antonio, entraining May 29. There had been rumors, with seemingly good foundation, that the war department proposed to land the Rough Riders on the southwestern coast of Cuba, there to join Cuban troops and to march eastward to form a junction with the main invading force. With all due consideration of the Cuban army, this rumor luckily proved untrue. Instead of Galveston, the destination was Tampa, Florida. Incidentally, this port was probably the worst that could have been chosen anywhere in the United States outside of Florida, and its selection is assumed to have been due to the influence of a skillful railroad lobby at Washington. The port was to be reached by a railway with but a single track and there was only one wharf from which to load.
Tampa was reached June 4, after a leisurely trip over southern railroads, whereon the employees seemed willing, but rather out of the habit of rushing. One such experience was at Tallahassee, where the horses had to be watered, and where only one cattle chute was available for their unloading. There being no watering trough near the railroad, the horses were all driven up into the old town and given a drink around the historic capitol of Florida, in zinc and wooden tubs brought out by the negro servants of the interested and most cordial local residents.
At Tampa, camp was made in the pines, and the regiment was assigned to the First Cavalry Brigade of the Fifth Army Corps. This brigade was com- manded by Brigadier General S. M. B. Young, later retired as lieutenant general from command of the United States army. The Rough Riders were accepted at the start as available and efficient, as was shown in their assign- ment to a brigade wherein the other fractions were the First and Tenth regi- ments of cavalry, organizations of the highest standing within the army. The stay in Tampa was of only ten days. The camp, with the men quartered in light shelter tents, was made quickly and in good order. Drilling was with especial attention to battle formations.
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