A BRIEF HISTORY 

OF FORT LEAVENWORTH 

1827-1983

Edited by Dr. John W. Partin

Combined Arms Center Command Historian

Combat Studies Institute

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027

1983
15 June 1983

FOREWORD

In spring 1827 Colonel Henry Leavenworth led an expedition up 

Missouri River, past the mouth of the Little Platte, in search of a site 

for a new fort. He selected a location on the bluffs of the west bank 

high above the river. The fort named for Colonel Leavenworth soon 

had an important role in the settlement and defense of the West. 

Today, 156 years after its founding, the physical beauty of the fort 

is undiminished: the bluffs overlooking the river, the rolling 

grassland surrounded by a ridge line on the west, and the historic 

buildings are reminders of the post's heritage. More important, Fort 

Leavenworth has occupied an integral position in the American 

defense effort over the years. And it continues to do so to this day. 

The ten essays that follow narrate the history of the fort and 

illuminate the important contributions made to this country by its 

peoples, events, and institutions. Each essay was written by a 

member of the Combat Studies Institute, the history department of 

the Command and General Staff College. These professional 

historians have contributed their efforts in the hope that this post's 

history-the important role it played in times past-will be more 

accessible.

CROSBIE E. SAINT

MAJOR GENERAL, USA

Acting Commander
CONTENTS

The First Inhabitants

by Dr. Roger J. Spiller

Exploration And Trade Under Three Flags, 1714-1827

by Dr. Robert H. Berlin

The Founding Of A Fort: Fulfilling A Need, 1827-1836

by Lieutenant Colonel Gary Bounds

Manifest Destiny, 1837-1858

by Lieutenant Colonel Phillip W. Childress

The Fort And The Town

by Dr. Lawrence A. Yates

"Bleeding" Kansas And The Civil War

by Dr. W. Glenn Robertson

The Eve Of Awakening, 1865-1881

by Major Gary H. Wade

The Fort And The New School, 1881-1916

by Captain Jonathan M. House

World War I And The Interwar Years, 1916-1939

by Major Charles E. Heller

Wars And New Challenges, 1939-1983

by Dr. John W. Partin 
THE FIRST INHABITANTS

By Dr. Roger J. Spiller

Centuries before history began, man first tracked across the Great Plains to find the place 

today called Fort Leavenworth. Perhaps as many as 15,000 years ago, early man found a wellwatered region abundant with game and wild food ready for the gathering. These men did no 

farming, but lived solely by what nature was pleased to offer them. Very like the animals they 

hunted for food, the men roamed in small groups throughout the Plains in patterns of migration, 

pausing at one spot only temporarily. During these early days, the hills overlooking the Missouri 

stood as mute sentinels while many bands of hunters passed by . The daily dramas of these men, 

their arts and rituals, even their names, are unknown to us. But they were no less real and their 

lives were no less complicated than our own. They lived in a different world, but not a simpler 

one.

More centuries passed before these early rhythms of human life changed. Elsewhere, 

culturally powerful peoples rose up. In the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys, the culture we call 

today "the Mound Builders" had evolved. The Mound Builders were less fond of migration than 

the Plainsmen to the west. They lived together in larger numbers, built extensive settlements, and 

began to farm for part of their livelihood. Their religious customs demanded that their dead be 

buried in great mounds of earth, accompanied by ornaments that were to assist them in the 

spiritual world. A new, more stable tempo of life emerged in these valleys, and gradually the 

Mound Builders' influence began to spread westward.

On the wooded, eastern rim of the Plains, men began to imitate the culture of the more 

sophisticated Mound Builders and so created a style of life that we know today as "the Woodland 

Culture." The people of the new culture also build burial mounds. Although they still hunted for 

most of their food, they were not so migratory as their ancestors, preferring instead to survive 

partly by gathering wild foods and raising corn and beans. Small villages began to appear, 

villages that perhaps were connected to one another by trade. During the era, pottery and tools 

made their first appearance in the valley. Beginning about five hundred years before the birth of 

Christ, the Woodland Culture thrived for more than 1,500 years.

While far away in Europe, Charlemagne was about to take the throne of the Holy Roman 

Empire (800 A.D.), yet another era was beginning in the eastern Plains as peoples from the north 

and the south began to move toward the lower Missouri Valley. From the north, people speaking 

Siouan languages migrated into the area, where they were joined by southerners who used the 

Caddoan style of tongue. The old and new residents of the 
eastern Plains had similar interests, however; all were drawn to the plentiful life of the valley. In 

well-seperated communities, a hardy agricultural life evolved that depended upon the farming of 

corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. The hunt was never abandoned: these villages sent out 

hunting parties that ranged against the herds of wild animals that coursed across the central

Plains. But these were expeditions; when their work was done, the hunting parties returned to 

earthen lodges made to last much longer than one season. From the blending of cultures there 

emerged the tribes whose names are familiar to us today: the Kansa, Osage, Missouri, Oto, 

Omaha, Iowa, Pawnee, and others.

For many thousands of years, these people had made their way about on foot. Sometime 

late in the 16th century, before the founding of Jamestown on the east coast, Spanish 

conquistadors in northern New Mexico introduced the horse to the native people of the region. 

One hundred and fifty years later, the culture of the horse had spread by trade and war from tribe 

to tribe to the Canadian borderlands. From this time forward, the horse and the natives of the 

Plains became inseparable. But while some of the Plainsmen forsook the more settled life for the 

high-speed, far-ranging hunt against animals such as the buffalo, the people of the eastern rim 

remained more attached to the agricultural life that had served them so well for centuries. 

Although they too launched mounted hunts over the Plains and conducted their wars and trade 

from horseback, they still did not become the colorful and extravagant Plains Indian of fact and 

legend>

Not so long after the arrival of the horse, European explorers and traders began to appear 

on the Plains. In 1541 the Spaniard Coronado may have taken one of his expeditions from New 

Mexico as far as central Kansas. His successors ranged closer to the Missouri Valley, hunting 

and trading with the tribes along the river. In the meantime, from the east came the French, who 

also meant to lay claim to these vast lands. For nearly a century, France and Spain waged an 

imperial contest for the overlordship of this region, a contest fought by means of trade, travel, and 

the establishment of posts at important points in the territory. One of these posts, Fort de 

Cavaginal, was built by the French near the present-day Fort Leavenworth in 1744. The ruins of 

the old French fort were reported years later by a American explorers, Lewis and Clark, as they 

made their war upriver.

From these early explorers and those who followed, we have our first recorded glimpses of 

the people who called the hills and prairies around Leavenworth their home. One Kansa village, 

according to Lewis and Clark, contained 128 lodges, each about sixty feet long and twenty-five 

feet wide. Each lodge sheltered several families, and for each there was a fireplace, bedding of 

skins and mats, and a simple pantry for the storage of food, cooking utensils and various 

ornaments. According to Lewis and Clark, the lodges were built close together, "allowing barely 

space sufficient to admit
a man to pass between them." Beyond these lodges were the fields of corn, beans, and 

pumpkins, stretching in all directions. Horses, mules, and dogs in great number completed the 

picture. But because these people lived the life both the hunter and the farmer, they used 

another, more temporary dwelling-the tipi-made of poles and animal skins and painted to tell 

stories to passerby.

The material life of these peoples was rich, but not as elaborate as others. The Kansa and 

Osage did not know basket work; for storage they often made trunks of buffalo hides, other skins, 

or wood. For the preparation of their food, they used simple stone or wooden mortars. As with so 

many tribes, the weapons they used for the hunt were also used for war. The Osage, for instance, 

preferred a bow of medium length and shorter arrows for greater power at short ranges. War

clubs came in several types, of which the most common was the ball-headed club. The Kansa 

and the Osage used circular shields covered over with buffalo hides that offered protection from 

other war clubs, arrows, or (it has been claimed) a bullet from a smoothbore musket.

All the tribes on the eastern rim of the Plains enjoyed their religions and devoted much of 

their time and treasure to worship. These tribes celebrated a Great Spirit known as Wakanda. 

Wakanda animated all things and beings in the universe and stood for the many mysteries that 

punctuated their existence. Thus, religion surrounded the people of this region, and as they went 

through their daily lives, they often carried along a small, so-called "medicine" bag containing 

objects that held a particular mystical significance for them. In an age when the turns of life could 

seem fickle even to the most sophisticated European, such rituals gave a measure of comfort to 

the original Plainsmen, a way of dealing with the uncertainties in one's existence.

By the time the early explorers arrived in the Missouri Valley, the appearance of the 

tribesmen had no doubt affected by the new culture of the horse and the advanced arrival of trade 

articles from white settlements in the east. Buffalo robes were perhaps more plentiful than they 

had been before the arrival of the horse, but now, in the early 19th century, they were an 

established article of dress. To these were added leather leggings and dresses and soft leather 

moccasins. In time of war, the men wore special shirts of leather, cut their hair to leave only a 

scalp lock, and if their stature within the tribe allowed it, donned headdresses of feathers.

The European explorers and traders who came to the Leavenworth area foretold a radical 

change to peoples whose patters of life for centuries had seemed nearly changeless. The Kansa 

and their kinsmen had enjoyed an epoch of regularity, comfortable and predictable, before the 

coming of the white man. They had made their peace with a nature that, if it could not be 

controlled, could at least be contended with. Then had not been forced 
to adjust to whimsical alterations in the character and tempo of their surroundings. As the white 

man began to move among them in ever-increasing numbers, the cultural versatility of the first 

inhabitants along the Missouri River would be put to its severest test.
EXPLORATION AND TRADE UNDER THREE FLAGS, 1714-1827

By Dr. Robert H. Berlin

The Missouri River is more than a body of water. It is a great and well-traveled road, a 

highway to adventure. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, French and American explorers and 

traders, in their quest for new lands and new wealth, traveled up the Missouri River. Invariably, 

they passed the future site of Fort Leavenworth.

Furs were the currency of the early American West, and two nations struggled over the fur 

trade and control of the land where it took place. Spain centered her trade in Santa Fe, New 

Mexico, while France pushed north from Louisiana (which was founded in 1699) and west from 

the Illinois country. In 1673 French explorers became the first white men to see the Missouri 

River. Another French expedition was the first of many to travel up the Missouri.

A young French officer, Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont, ascended the Missouri in 1714 to 

the mouth of the Platte River, thus becoming the first white man to travel past the future site of 

Fort Leavenworth. Bourgmont observed Indians along its banks and noted the fine fur skins of all 

kinds that they were willing to trade. Word of French travel on the Missouri reached the Spanish, 

and they hastened to prevent further incursions. A Spanish expedition left Santa Fe in 1720 and 

headed for the Missouri. Indians attacked the expedition in western Kansas; few Spaniards 

survived.

In 1723 Bourgmont and a party of forty Frenchmen left the Illinois country, journeyed along 

the Missouri, and erected a small fort in present-day western Missouri. Accompanied by over 100 

Indians, Bourgmont left the fort in July 1724 to trade with the Kansa Indians. A skilled 

frontiersman and trader, Bourgmont held councils with Indian chiefs and, though words and gifts, 

encouraged their loyalty to France. The Kansa Indians lived in a village located in what is now 

Doniphan County, Kansas, although sometime between 1724 and 1744, they moved downstream 

to a site in the Salt and Plum Creed valleys, near present-day Fort Leavenworth.

The lure of profits and adventure encouraged others to take the route Bourgmont had 

pioneered. Some went farther. The Mallet brothers, Pierre and Paul, went up the Missouri in 

1739, then headed west along the Platte River and southward until they reached Santa Fe, New 

Mexico. French frontiersmen were eager to trade with the Spanish, and the Mallet brothers 

proved the value of such trade, even though the Spanish government officially
forbade it. The French exchanged brandy, guns, and knives for Indian furs and Spanish silver. 

Desire for trade with both the Spanish and the Indians prompted the French to establish a base 

along the Missouri. The French governor of Louisiana sent a special envoy to choose the new 

post's location.

In the spring of 1744, a French engineer, the Chevalier Pierre Rene' Harpin de la Gautrais, 

traveled up the Missouri and selected the site for a military post. Located on rising ground 

overlooking the village of the Kansa Indians on Salt Creek, Fort de Cavagnial, as the fortified 

trading post was called, remained the outpost of imperial France in Kansas for twenty years. 

Named after the French governor of Louisiana, Francois-Pierre Rigaud baron de Cavagnial, 

marquis de Vardreuil, the fort was constructed in the spring and summer of 1744 and officially 

chartered on August 8, 1744. De Cavagnial never saw the fort which commemorated his name.

The fort's precise location remains a mystery. Presumably it was northwest of the present 

Fort Leavenworth. The inscription on a marker, located along Sheridan Drive above the cemetery, 

states that the site is within view of the visitor. It is difficult to be more specific. Recent 

archeological explorations have failed to locate remains of the fort. Visitors to the Fort de 

Cavagnial marker may want to estimate for themselves where Leavenworth's firts fort may have 

been.

What did the fort look like and who lived there are questions that can be answered. The fort 

was constructed of stout piles, eighty feet on the square, with bastions at each corner. Inside the 

fort were a commandant's house, a guard house, a powder house-all two stories tall-a trader's 

house, and a house for employees of the traders. These were log buildings, most covered with 

mud, and even the chimneys were made of mud-covered logs. The post's garrison consisted of a 

commandant, eight to ten soldiers, and several traders. If the French wives of a few soldiers, the 

Indian wives of the traders, and the children were counted, the post's population was close to 

forty.

The commandants controlled activities at this trading post. The fort's commandant 

regulated the fur trade between the French traders and the Indians. He also encouraged 

exploration and trade with the Spanish at Santa Fe. The commandants worked with limited 

manpower and material. Sometimes their duty could be hazardous-a drunken soldier murdered 

the post's second commandant, Lieutenant Augustin-Antoine de la Barre.

The next commandant, Louis Robineau de Portneuf, assiduously encouraged fur trade, 

both to benefit France and to further good relations with the Kansa Indians. But Portneuf and his 

men did so at some risk. For example, after spending the winter of 17851-1752 at Cavagnial, a 

ten-man trading expedition left in mid-March for Santa Fe. In Commanche country 
eight men turned back. The expedition's two leaders reached New Mexico, only to be arrested for 

spying. They were sent to Spain after narrowly escaping the death penalty. The Spanish now 

knew of Fort de Cavagnial's existence.

For the French, 1752 was not a good year at Fort de Cavagnial. The Kansa Indians moved 

away from the fort, limiting the commandant's authority over both the fur trade and the rowdy 

French voyageurs who were eager to acquire beaver pelts. The fort fell in disrepair because of 

age and storm damage. The commandant was ordered to repair the fort and charge the cost to 

the traders, but this was not feasible. Hostile Indians were also troublesome. In one case, 

Missouri Indians attempted to steal horses from the fort, but two were killed by soldiers. So far as 

is known, these were the only shots fired in anger at Fort de Cavagnial. In 1753 Indians killed four 

French soldiers who deserted from post.

This isolated frontier outpost became a casualty of the widening conflict between France 

and Great Britain. Commandant Portneuf left his post in 1753 and later led troops against the 

British during the French and Indian War. His replacement, Captain de Moncharvaux, apparently 

was unable to rebuild the fort that had been damaged by hostile weather and neglect. By 1758 

the fort was nothing more than a circle of piles enclosing some bad cabins and rude huts. By a 

secret treaty of 1762, France ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain. Two years 

later the small French garrison abandoned Fort de Cavagnial. The Royal French flag no longer 

flew at this site along the Missouri. Sometime around 1777 the Kansa Indians abandoned their 

village near the fort.

Although the Crown of Spain ruled the future site of Fort Leavenworth, the Spaniards relied 

on seasoned French frontiersmen, organized in trading companies, to explore and trade among 

the Indians along the Upper Missouri. In 1794 Jean Baptiste Truteau led an expedition which 

camped near the site of present-day Leavenworth and observed the former Kansa Indian village 

site. Several other trading expeditions traveled up the Missouri between 1795 and 1800. By the 

secret Treaty, of San Ildefonso of 1800, Spain transferred Louisiana back to France. When word 

of the change of ownership reached the United States, there was considerable alarm. Americans 

feared French control of Louisiana would damage commerce on the Mississippi River. President 

Thomas Jefferson encouraged negotiations with the French which led to a spectacular deal. The 

Louisiana Purchase of 1803 gave all of Louisiana to the United States for twelve million dollars!

To explore these vast new lands and to find a route to the Pacific Ocean, Jefferson 

selected two hardy young frontiersmen, Meriweather Lewis and William Clark. Together they led 

an expedition of forty-eight men on one of the epic journeys in the history of exploration. Leaving 

St. Louis in the spring of 1804, the expedition traveled up the Missouri in a keelboat 
and two large canoes. On July 1, 1804, the group camped on an island in the river nearly 

opposite present-day Leavenworth. One of the expedition's members, a Frenchman, had 

informed the group of the earlier existence of a French fort in the area.

Lewis and Clark, leaders of the first American expedition up the Missouri, marveled at the "high and beautiful prairie" of 

present-day Fort Leavenworth and observed the ruins of Fort de Cavagnial.

On Monday, July 2, 1804, Lewis and Clark camped opposite the old Kansa Indian village. 

Their journal informs us that "about a mile in the rear of the village was a small fort, built by the 

French on an elevation. There are now no traces of the village, but the situation of the fort may be 

recognized by some remains of chimneys, and the general outline of the fortification." The area 

impressed Lewis and Clark who observed the "high and beautiful prairie," the many pecan trees, 

and the large numbers of deer and turkeys on the river banks.

Lewis and Clark opened the way for American explorers and fur traders. In 1807 an 

expedition led by Manuel Lisa journeyed past the future site of Fort Leavenworth on the way up 

the Missouri. His party returned with a wealth of furs, which spurred many other traders and 

trappers to 
retrace the route. In 1811 Henry M. Brackenridge, an American traveler and writer, accompanied 

Lisa on a voyage up the Missouri. Brackenridge observed that the present site of Leavenworth 

"would be a delightful situation for a town." Indeed, signs of settlement were approaching.

The first U.S. military post in present Kansas was established in 1818 on an island in the 

Missouri about equidisant from Atchison and Leavenworth of today. Cantonment Martin, named 

for its senior officer, was a temporary military outpost designed to support expeditions traveling 

west. The most notable visitors to the future site of Fort Leavenworth during this period were the 

members of an Army-sponsored scientific expedition led by Major Stephen H. Long. Imagine the 

astonishment of Indians along the river when they glimpsed, for the first time, a steamboat. The 

Western Engineer, carrying the Long expedition, was designed to impress the Indians, with its 

bow painted to resemble a hugh black and scaly serpent. The vessel displayed signs of peaceand signs of war-three small brass fieldpieces. The symbols were presursors of future visitors to 

the area whose purpose is to be prepared in peace for war.

The site along the Missouri River now known as Fort Leavenworth was important in the 

struggle for empire between Britain, Spain, and France in the 18th century. French explorers, 

businessmen, and soldiers came to this site as visitors, traders, and rulers. France constructed a 

fort here sixty years before the arrival of the first American visitors, Lewis and Clark. Americans 

followed the French in pursuit of new land and the fur trade. The Missouri River served both 

nations as a highway to the West. The opening of a trail to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1820s 

encouraged trade with newly independent Mexico and brought permanent settlement to this area. 

However, long before Colonel Henry Leavenworth's name became identified with this location, 

men of three nations knew its value.
THE FOUNDING OF A FORT: FULFILLING A NEED, 1827-1836

by Lieutenant Colonel Gary Bounds

During the 1820s three circumstances on the frontier of the United States coalesced and 

created a need to protect American citizens. These included the Mexican Revolution of 1821, the 

establishment of trade between adventurous frontier businessmen and residents of northern 

Mexico, and difficulties between the Indian population and the encroaching white man. This 

interaction led to the founding of Fort Leavenworth by Colonel Henry Leavenworth in 1827. The 

fort was to protect the traders and to preserve the peace among the various Indian tribes.

Prior to 1821 Mexico had a closed economy and was prohibited from trading with its 

northern neighbor, the United States. For many years both countries knew the potential benefits 

that active trade offered. The economies of the two neighbors were complementary: Mexico had 

the raw material necessary for American expansion, and the United States produced 

manufactured goods in short supply south of the border. The 1821 Mexican Revolution ended the 

trade restrictions. Almost immediately, small groups of traders began the long trek through Indian 

lands to Mexico. Each success nurtured the nascent industry, and by 1824 a number of 

prominent Missourians had become involved in the trade. By early 1825 the increase in trade had 

led to a treaty between the U.S. Government and the Great Osage Indian Nation. This treaty, in 

turn, led to the establishment of the Santa Fe Trail, a development influenced in part by Senator 

Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Benton sought peaceful relations with the Indians to guard the 

interests of the traders and the welfare of his state. His efforts eventually led to the founding of 

Fort Leavenworth.

Even though Senator Benton favored peaceful coexistence, the number on incidents 

involving the Indians and traders increased as more Americans ventured into Mexican territory. 

The persistent attacks led Benton to demand that a fort be built on the Arkansas River, along the 

main trade route. As a result of the political pressure applied by Benton, Secretary of War James 

Barbour, in late 1826, directed the Chief of the United States Army, Major General Jacob Brown, 

to consider establishing a fort to provide security for the traders.

After due consideration, Army officials determined that a fort on the Arkansas River was 

impractical. A site nearer the starting point of the Santa Fe Trail, however, was feasible. As a 

result, the Adjutant General's 
Office issued Ordered Number 14, dated March 7, 1827, which read in part:

2. Colonel Leavenworth of the 3d Infantry, with four companies of his regiment

will ascend the Missouri and when he reaches a point on its left band near the 

mouth of Little Platte River and within a range of twenty miles above or below its 

confluence, he will select such position as in his judgment is best calculated for 

the site of a permanent cantonment. The spot being chosen, he will then 

construct with the troops of his command comfortable, though temporary 

quarters sufficient for the accommodation of four companies. This movement will 

be made as early as the convenience of the service will permit.

In early April 1827 Colonel Henry Leavenworth and a reconnaissance element left 

Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, for the confluence of the Missouri and Little Platte rivers, where he 

was to establish the cantonment. Four companies of Colonel Leavenworth's command later 

departed Jefferson Barracks to join the advance party at the actual site. The initial survey began 

in the designated area, but the colonel soon ascertained that this location, as well as most 

locations on the east bank of the river, was frequently flooded and subjected to lowland diseases. 

On May 8, 1827, Leavenworth reported to the War Department that no adequate sites existed 

near the designated area, and that he had proceeded up river approximately 20 miles, locating a 

good site on the west bank of the Missouri River. Colonel Leavenworth justified his decision to 

place the post on the west bank by stating that the elevated terrain was the healthiest in the area. 

The site he chose is located on the ridge to the north of the current post headquarters, near 

Sumner Place.

Colonel Leavenworth did not wait for War Department approval of his site. He directed that 

a number of shelters be constructed for protection in the coming winter. He also had his men 

erect a hasty stone fence on the south edge of the encampment. Remnants of this original fence, 

incorporated into a more sophisticated wall, still remain on the site.

Initially, the soldiers lived in tents that offered little protecting from the hordes of insects 

inhabiting the dense, rotting vegetation along the river's edge. In spite of Colonel Leavenworth's 

desire to build at a healthy location, many men fell sick during the first summer of the 

encampment. With the approach of winter, conditions improved somewhat, and by the end of 

October 1827, newly erected bark and log structures housed the 14 officers and 174 enlisted men 

at the cantonment, as well as the families of a few soldiers. By the end of 1827, Leavenworth had 

returned to Jefferson Barracks to resume his duties, but he was to remain influential in the events 

at Cantonment Leavenworth.

By 1828 the cantonment contained 26 officers and 291 enlisted men, as additional units of the 3d 

Infantry Regiment had moved to encampment. As the summer of 1828 progressed, the most 

deadly enemy of Cantonment Leavenworth was nature. In that year, Secretary of War Peter B. 

Porter commented in his annual report that "the future of the cantonment was in question." Too 

many people were sick with malaria. He suggested that "only the introduction of population and 

herds to destroy the vegetation would help." This bleak forecast notwithstanding, a soldiers' 

quarters, a hospital, officers' quarters, and a stable had been erected by the end of 1828. The 

residents planned to stay put, but sickness was rampant as the spring of 1829 approached. There 

had been several fatal cases of malarial fever. So on March 25, 1829, the Adjutant General's 

Office issued General Order Number 14 directing that the entire command of Cantonment 

Leavenworth be withdrawn to Jefferson Barracks. Accordingly, in May 1829 the 3d Infantry left 

Cantonment Leavenworth, and the post remained empty until next fall.

As if disease were not enough, during the spring and summer of 1829, a number of Indian 

attacks occurred along the Santa Fe Trail. As a result, the 6th Infantry was ordered to 

Cantonment Leavenworth to join a caravan of traders bound for Mexico via the Santa Fe Trail. A 

force of 180 men from the 6th Infantry Regiment accompanied the traders as far as the Arkansas 

River, where the soldiers encamped and waited for the party to return. A Mexican Army escort 

provided security for the traders on the return trip to the Arkansas River. Overall, the venture 

experienced only minor encounters with the Indians and was considered a success.

After the 6th Infantry reoccupied Cantonment Leavenworth on November 8, 1829, life for 

the troops settled into a routine of monitoring the activities of the Indian tribes and preparing for 

escort missions. The nearest "big city" was Liberty, Missouri, and with the exception of an 

occasional steamboat on the river, life was without incident. Most of the daily necessities were 

procured locally. According to William Paxton's Annals of Platte County, the cantonment 

quartermaster, during the summer of 1829, paid local merchants the following prices: "Bacon-11⁄2 

¢ per pound, Salt Pork-75 cent per hundred, Horses-$15 to $20 each, Oxen-$30 a yoke, Large 

Steers-$10 each."

In 1830, during the administration of Andrew Jackson, the Indian Removal Act forced a 

number of the eastern Indian tribes to move west. In the same year, the cantonment became Fort 

Leavenworth and assumed a larger role in keeping the peace among the various Indian tribes 

and the increasing white population. During the Pawnee-Delaware War of 1833, for example, 

representatives from both tribes and the United States Government met at Fort Leavenworth and 

negotiated a settlement.

Expansion of the post continued in the years that followed. In 1834 a 
stone building was erected, and although modified over the years, it still stands as the oldest 

building on the post. Today Sumner Place, or "The Rookery," stands near the site of the original 

encampment. Between 1827 and Between 1827 and 1836, Cantonment Leavenworth, and later 

Fort Leavenworth, witnessed a number of military unit changes. Elements of the 3d Infantry 

Regiment-Colonel Leavenworth's command occupied the post until May 1829-were followed by 

elements of the 6th Infantry Regiment. After September 1834, the 6th Infantry was replaced by 

the 1st Dragoons, the first cavalry unit in the U.S.Army. Their creation was, in all likelihood, an 

indication of the fort's increased role in promoting peace on the Plains. In May 1835 Colonel 

Henry Dodge, with three companies of the 1st Dragoons, left Fort Leavenworth on an expedition 

west over the Plains. He reportedly went as far as the Rocky Mountains, via the Platte River, on a 

course that later became part of the Oregon Trail. He returned by way of the Arkansas River and 

the Santa Fe Trail. Citizens around the fort greatly disapproved of this action because they felt it 

left them unprotected, virtually at the mercy of the Indians.
Fort Leavenworth has always been an active post, but it was especially so during its early 

years. It served as a jumping off place for traders, its troops were instrumental in maintaining the 

peace among the Indians, and the escort missions contributed immensely to the development of 

the economy of the early frontier. The presence of the U.S. Army brought the white man farther 

west as settlements sprang up in areas near military posts. Fort Leavenworth was founded in 

response to a specific need-protection of the traders on the Santa Fe Trail. It not only met this 

need but also many additional challenges of an expanding country.
MANIFEST DESTINY, 1837-1858

By Lieutenant Colonel Phillip W. Childress

During the 1830s and 1840s, Fort Leavenworth worked hard to fulfill the missions for which 

it was founded. The main tasks assigned to the fort's personnel were keeping the peace between 

the Indians and frontier settlers, escorting migrants as they followed their hopes and dreams 

westward, and exploring the new frontiers of the rapidly expanding United States of American.

As greater numbers of Indians were forced westward from their native lands east of the 

Mississippi River and as more whites migrated westward in search of their promised land, the 

soldiers at Fort Leavenworth acquired more responsibilities. The expanded mission required 

improvements in land and waterway lines linking the fort with the East and the vast, unsettled 

West. In May 1836 Congress appropriated $100,000 for the construction of a roadway between 

Fort Snelling, in present-day Minnesota, and Fort Towson, in what later became Oklahoma 

Territory. By 1844 the section of road completed between Leavenworth and military posts to the 

south allowed the units at Fort Leavenworth to move troops and supplies rapidly to meet the 

growing demands of frontier defense.

By 1838 dredging operations had improved the navigability of the Missouri River from St. 

Louis to Leavenworth. As steamboat traffic increased, the bluffs around Fort Leavenworth 

became the linkup point for thousands of settlers and their supplies in the journey westward. Fort 

Leavenworth was quickly becoming the "gateway to the West."

In the 1840s, challenges other than peacekeeping and exploration faced the soldiers 

garrisoned at Fort Leavenworth. In 1843 Jacob Snively, a store clerk from Nacogdoches, Texas, 

acquired a commission from the governor of the newly independent Texas Republic to recruit and 

maintain a group of "soldiers of fortune" to raid, harass, and plunder Mexican supply wagons. The 

threat from the Texans became so acute that Mexican officials requested that the United States 

government provide military forces to protect the traders and to control the outlaws.

The War Department honored the Mexican request and directed Colonel Stephen W. 

Kearny, Commander of Fort Leavenworth, to provide a military force sufficient to patrol the 

American side of the border. Kearny gave this mission to Captain Philip St. George Cooke, who 

departed Fort Leavenworth on May 27, 1843, with four companies of Dragoons to protect the 

Mexican caravans and to subdue the Texas marauders.

Cooke's detachment caught up with Snively's ruffians on the south bank 
of the Arkansas River and immediately demanded to know their intentions. After examining 

Snively's commission, Cooke determined it to be nothing more than a license to steal and 

ordered Snively obeyed Cooke's demands by surrendering his weapons and returning peacefully 

to Texas. This resolute action forestalled a possible war between the United States and Mexico. 

The Mexican dictator, Santa Anna, called Captains Cooke's action "the first act of good faith ever 

shown by the United States to Mexico."

The peace with Mexico was short-lived. A burning desire by the United States to expand its 

domain from "sea to shining sea," coupled with Mexico's staunch determination not to recognize 

Texas' independence and, after 1845, its statehood, made war inevitable. Fort Leavenworth 

played an important role in the Mexican War, a war that propelled the fort into national 

prominence. It would never again be an obscure frontier post.

When the war came in 1846, the United States Army was not prepared to support Manifest 

Destiny. American fighting forces consisted of only eight regiments of infantry, four regiments of 

artillery, and two companies of cavalry, a total of 8,600 officers and men. Fortunately for the Army 

and the nation, the Mexican Army was in worse shape.

To presecute the Mexican War, Congress authorized President James K. Polk to raise a force of 

50,000 volunteers to be trained, equipped, and organized into three armies. One of these armies, 

the Army of the West, under the command of Colonel Kearny, was headquartered at Fort 

Leavenworth.

Kearny's army consisted of approximately 1,700 soldiers, including 300 regulars of the 

First Dragoons and 860 Missouri Mounted Volunteers. The volunteers were not expert soldiers, 

but hearty country boys accustomed to the hardships and rigors of frontier life. Most were expert 

horsemen and superb marksmen. Historian G.F. Ruxton characterized the troops assembled at 

Fort Leavenworth as "the dirtiest, rowdiest crew I had ever seen gathered together." 

Nevertheless, with good leadership by men like Colonels Stephen Kearny, Alexander Doniphan, 

and Sterling Price, they got the job done.

As the Army of the West gathered at Fort Leavenworth, the post took on a renewed sense 

of urgency and a visible dedication to its mission: organizing units, training recruits, and 

stockpiling war supplies. Steamboat traffic increased markedly as war materials arrived on the 

fort's docks on the Missouri River. The enormous amounts of wagon traffic required seventy-five 

miles of new roadway west of Independence.

Kearny's wartime mission was to march over the Santa Fe Trail, conquer New Mexico, 

then continue westward to California and assist military forces fighting there. To do these tasks, 

Kearny organized three 
expeditions. He led the main expeditionary force to conquer Santa Fe. Colonel Doniphan invaded 

and conquered the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Finally, Colonel Price and his small force 

followed Kearny to reinforce Santa Fe.

During the Mexican War, Fort Leavenworth served as departure point for three major expeditions. Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, 

the fort commander, performed an instrumental role in this war by leading an Army of 1,700 men that occupied Santa Fe and 

captured San Diego and Los Angeles.
Kearny and his force of Dragoons and Missouri Volunteers departed Fort Leavenworth for 

New Mexico on June 26, 1846. A huge crowd of Army families and local well-wishers turned out 

to see the army off. It was an impressive force consisting of more than 100 wagons, 500 pack 

mules, 1,550 covered wagons, and a large herd of beef cattle. For the first time, soldiers at Fort 

Leavenworth took up the cudgel of war against a foreign foe.

For the most part, Kearny's "road to war" was uneventful. The main enemy of this army 

proved to be the oppressive heat, which killed sixty artillery horses and disabled several soldiers. 

At Fort Bent on the Santa Fe Trail, Kearny met with James W. Magoffin, as an advanced scout 

for his army, to attempt to persuade the Mexicans at Santa Fe to surrender without a fight. Using 

money and some subtle advice, Magoffin succeeded and Santa Fe fell without bloodshed. The 

city-a small, filthy village of mud houses-was certainly not the prize envisioned by Kearny's 

warriors. Its outstanding decorative feature was a string of Indian ears stretched between the 

pillars of the governor's mansion.

After the conquest of Santa Fe, Kearny left a small garrison to govern the town while he 

continued to California. He routed the Mexican defenders at San Pasqual Pass and then 

continued on to San Diego, which we seized in December 1846. There he linked up with 

Commodore Robert F. Stockton's forces, and their combined armies marched to and secured Los 

Angeles. With the war in California virtually over, Kearny returned to Fort Leavenworth, arriving 

on August 22, 1847.

The second and most famous expedition to operate out of Fort Leavenworth during the 

Mexican War was Colonel Alexander W. Doniphan's. Doniphan, known as the "best criminal 

lawyer in the West," enlisted as a private in the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers and was later 

elected colonel of the regiment by his troops. Doniphan organized and trained his 1,000 troops at 

Fort Leavenworth and departed in December 1846 for the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Although 

Doniphan knew little about the art of military science, he was a superb leader, and his forces 

defeated superior Mexican units at Brazito and Sacramento and seized the key towns of 

Chihuahua and Saltillo, accomplishing his mission. Doniphan returned to Fort Leavenworth when 

his soldiers' one-year enlistment expired.

At Fort Leavenworth, Doniphan received a hero's welcome. The women of Independence, 

Missouri, placed a laurel wreath upon his head with the blessings of a "gift of Beauty to Valor." As 

a military operation, "Doniphan's Expedition" was quite a feat. He had marched a total of 3,600 

miles and defeated the enemy in every engagement. Henry Shindler, in his unpublished "History 

of Fort Leavenworth," praised Doniphan's efforts: "In results, considering numbers in men and 

cost in money, Doniphan's expedition has no parallel in modern or ancient military history."

Three Mexican War expeditions originated at Fort Leavenworth.
The third and final expedition from Fort Leavenworth during the war was led by Colonel 

Sterling Price, a congressman from Missouri appointed by President James K. Polk to command 

the Second Missouri Regiment of Mounted Infantry. He assembled a force of 1,200 men, 

including a Mormon Battalion from Council Bluffs, and departed Fort Leavenworth on August 12, 

1846. Price's force was to serve as an army of occupation in New Mexico. Price faced two major 

problems: marauding Indians and undisciplined troops who were driven to unsoldierly acts by the 

boredom of their duties and the Spartan life in New Mexico. Using draconian measures, Price 

solved both problems rather rapidly.

Fort Leavenworth also played a crucial role throughout the war as a major supply and 

replacement depot. It outfitted several military expeditions and was generally the hub of activity 

for forces deploying to California and Mexico. Although the post commander made every effort to 

accommodate his tenant units, not all logistical support provided by the installation was 

satisfactory. In October 1847, a battalion of Missouri Mounted Volunteers, commanded by Major 

William Gilpin, arrived at the post for training and outfitting for war. Gilpin became dissatisfied with 

what he considered an unnecessary delay in providing supplies and trasportation to his forces. 

So in a fit of anger, he challenged the post commander, Colonel Clifton Wharton, to a duel. 

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and the duel was canceled. Nevertheless, Gilpin got everyone's 

attention and was soon on his way to the war with 15 wagons of ammunition, 200 wagons of 

supplies, and 500 head of beef cattle.

A decade after the Mexican War, the soldiers at Fort Leavenworth became involved in 

another kind of encounter, this one with Brigham Young's Mormons in Utah. As the Mormons 

pushed westward in search of a land where they could practice their religion free from 

persecution, certain allegations were leveled against their conduct and their unique-some said 

unorthodox-way of life. The allegations, few of which were ever substantiated, included charges 

of debauchery, inciting Indian uprisings, and harassing federal officials in Utah. Some of the 

charges were called to the attention of President James Buchanan, reinforcing his belief that 

Brigham Young had to be replaced as territorial governor. Buchanan was especially disturbed by 

"the incompatibility of Brigham Young's triple role as Governor of the Utah Territory, 

superintendent of Indian affairs, and head of the Church of Latter Day Saints." Young disagreed 

with this assessment and emphasized that he would give up his duties as governor of Utah only if 

God directed it.

In March 1857, President Buchanan brought the situation to a head by selecting Alfred 

Cummings, the ex-mayor of Augusta, Georgia, to be governor of Utah. To ensure the safe 

installation of Cummings to the position, the president directed that a military force be organized 

at Fort Leavenworth to implement his policy. Ultimately, the command of this force went to 

Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, who would later lose his life leading the Confederate Army at 

Shiloh.

Colonel Johnston departed Fort Leavenworth for Utah with a force of two regiments of infantry 

and a battery of artillery. After wintering at Fort Bridger, Johnston's forces arrived in Salt Lake 

City in June, only to find that a peaceful solution to the situation was being worked out. Young 

relinquished his claim to the governorship of Utah, and Cummings reported to the Army that 

many of the charges leveled against the Mormons were exaggerated and false.

When Fort Leavenworth was not fighting the Mexicans, dealing with the Mormons, placating the 

Indians, and protecting the westward movement of settlers, daily life at the post continued in 

somewhat dull, routine fashion. During their off-duty time, soldiers pitched horseshoes, played 

poker, and, for a few theatrically inclined souls, participated in the Thespian Society. The highlight 

of the soldiers' social calendar was the annual Enlisted Man's Ball, complete with supplies and 

decorations from Weston. This evening of gaiety had one major problem, however, and that was 

the lack of women to serve as dance partners for the soldiers. Consequently, the troops had no 

choice except to dance with each other, a situation totally unacceptable to the rugged 

frontiersmen of the day. Any woman lucky, or unlucky, enough to find her way to Fort 

Leavenworth was soon besieged by a multitude of suitors. White domestics serving the officers' 
wives provided the prime source of spouses for the soldiers. To retain their hired help, officers' 

wives often selected the ugliest girls available for employment as maids. Even this strategem did 

not always work. An officer's wife at Fort Leavenworth during this period wrote of her servant: 

"The girl was almost a grenadier in looks and manner, and although not absolutely hideous, was 

so far from pleasing that we were confident of retaining her services.... She had not been at the 

fort three days before the man who laid our carpets proposed to her."

Occasionally, unusual events temporarily displaced the drudgery of routine post activities. In 

1853, for example, two enterprising inventors requested permission to demonstrate the latest in 

technology to the Army and the surrounding community. Although Fort Leavenworth was not then 

the center for integrating new weaponry and other advanced technology into the Army as it is 

today, the two contraptions were harbingers of things to come.

The first inventor, a determined genius named "Windwagon" Thomas, offered a wind-powered 

schooner. The commander of Fort Leavenworth, however, was not particularly interested in 

Thomas' invention, although some local entrepreneurs were certainly willing to view his wares. 

Thomas' wagon was twenty-five feet long with four twelve-foot wheels. The power source, a 

single sail, was attached to a seven-foot mast. Thomas claimed that a fleet of these boats would 

revolutionize the freight shipping industry and provide and efficient method of transporting goods 

along the Sante Fe Trail. After a disastrous demonstration ride, Thomas' prospective partners 

had quickly become "Doubting Thomases." They called off the deal and ushered Thomas out of 

town. Windwagon Thomas wandered westward, woefully without a windfall.

The second technological "marvel" more directly involved the Army at Fort Leavenworth. In 1853 

an unknown inventor appeared at Fort Leavenworth with a muzzle-loading cannon which, 

according to his instructions, could be fired from the back of a pack mule. To fire this "selfpropelled" artillery piece, the gunner had merely to point the posterior of the mule in the direction 

of the enemy and light the fuse. Of course, the most astute military mind could readily discern the 

implications of this new device as a "quantum jump" in mobile artillery.

Amidst considerable skepticism on the post commander's part, an agreement was struck to allow 

the "ordnance expert" to demonstrate his weapon on the bluff overlooking the Missouri River. An 

army mule served as the firing platform. The contractor attached the gun to the poor creature's 

back, postioned his tail toward the Big Muddy, and loaded the cannon. The post commander and 

his officer watched apprehensively as the fuse was lighted. The mule, aggravated by the 

sputtering noise emitted by the burning fuse at his rump, spun around for a better look. In so 

doing, he pointed the muzzle of the cannon in the direction of the spectators. They immediately 

took a reactive posture of self-defense. When the gun fired, the mule and cannon crashed down 

the bluff and into the river. After dusting himself off and regaining his composure, the post 

commander informed the "ordnance expert" that there were still some "bugs" in the weapon 

system, and he declared it unsuitable for adoption by the Army. Historical records make no 

mention of the actions, if any, taken to recover the cannon and its firing platform.

By the mid-1850s, Fort Leavenworth was firmly established as a vital part of the nation's defense 

establishment. With the Mexicans and Mormons subdued, the Indians temporarily pacified, and 

the settlers happily traversing the roads westward, the soldiers at Fort Leavenworth turned their 

attention to exploration and administration of the newly acquired territories. The post depot and 

cavalry station provided supplies and mounts for many of the more westward military 

establishments. Mule skinners, guides, trappers, wagon masters, and frontier drifters passed 

through the post. The sounds of the steamboats on the Missouri River could be heard around the 

clock as they discharged their cargoes at the levee. This peaceful life of dedicated service to a 

growing nation was soon shattered, however, by the clarion call to arm as the Civil War 

approached.

THE FORT AND THE TOWN

By Dr. Lawrence A. Yates

In the spring of 1854, a group of men met in Weston, Missouri, to select a name for the town they 

planned to establish on land just south of Fort Leavenworth. One among the group proposed that 
the town be called Douglas, in tribute to Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the author of the 

Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that opened the Kansas Territory to white settlement. Others 

demurred. If the town hoped to prosper, they countered, it must capitalize on both its proximity to 

Fort Leavenworth, which had the reputation for occupying the "most desirable location" on the 

Missouri River. Only by identifying the town with the fort could the assembled promoters 

realistically expect to stimulate the sale of lots and attract large numbers of settlers to the area. In 

the face of such compelling calculations, sentiment yielded quickly to self-interest. At the close of 

the discussion, the group reached a unanimous decision: the town in Kansas would be called 

Leavenworth City.

The founders of Leavenworth rightly assumed that the military installation nearby would play a 

prominent role in the development of their town. What they did not foresee were certain 

circumstances in which the fort would very nearly become the unwilling agent of the town's 

undoing. At the time the Kansas Territory was opened to white settlement in May 1854, the future 

site of Leavenworth City belonged by treaty to the Delaware Indians. Until Congress approved 

ratification of a new treaty relocating the Indians, white men could settle on Delaware land but 

could not register a legal claim to it. To protect their unregistered claims and to promote 

settlement of the Leavenworth area, the city fathers formed an association, the Town Company. 

This was a sound business move, but one that soon aroused Delaware suspicions. Led to believe 

that the Town Company was plotting a wholesale land grab in violation of their treaty rights, the 

Indians, through their government agent, protested vigorously to Washington. The federal 

government proved accommodating and, to the consternation of compant promoters and those 

officers at the fort who held shares in the association, ordered the military to clear white settlers 

from the land in question. The Town Company appealed to the Army, which, with no small stake 

in the development of Leavenworth City and the surrounding area, agreed to delay execution of 

the order until company officials had had sufficient time to convince the Indians of their honest 

intentions. The matter was then settled with dispatch. The Delaware, once assured that their 

treaty rights would be respected, relented. Catastrophe for the young town had been averted.

The unpleasantness with the Delaware Indians, however, seemed but a mere distraction when 

compared with another, more ominous problem that beset not only the Leavenworth area, but all 

of Kansas. The years following the opening of the territory saw Kansas plagued by violence and 

political turmoil from which neither the city nor the fort was immune. The cause of this upheaval 

was slavery; more precisely, whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state or a free 

state. The outcome was by no means certain in 1854, the year the Kansas-Nebraska Act left 

determination of this divisive issue to the people of the territory. With the proclamation of "popular 

sovereignty," both Free Soil and proslavery advocates poured into Kansas, seeking to inundate 

the territory with enough legitimate (and, in too many cases, bogus) settlers to create a majority 

for their respective side. Most of the settlers entering Kansas preferred to resolve the issue 

peacefully, through the ballot box. More radical elements and "border ruffians," however, 

employed force and intimidation to further their cause. The violence, once begun, could not be 

controlled, and soon the eyes of an anxious nation focused on the tragedy of "Bleeding" Kansas.

Leavenworth City fortunately escaped the more sanguinary episodes of "Bleeding" Kansas.
In the midst of hangings, hachetings, and shootings, not to mention routine property destruction 

and electoral irregularities, Fort Leavenworth stood as the lone haven of peace and order in the 

territory. The officers in command, wary of involvement in political affairs, sought to keep their 

troops aloof from the deepening conflict. The depth of this sentiment was revealed early on when, 

in 1954, the fort commandant protested Congress' decision to locate the seat of the territorial 

government on post. (As it turned out, the territorial governor vacated Fort Leavenworth after only 

fifty days, lured by better accommodations to nearby Shawnee Mission.) When, as it often 

happened, Washington directed the military to separate the warring factions and to impose law 

and order, the officers at the fort carried out their orders reluctantly and, in at least one case, with 

a virtual apology to the offending party. To those in command, some forms of military intervention 

were clearly more unpalatable than others. Officers were particularly loath to deploy their troops 

against American citizens. On the other hand, supervising territorial elections, a task the military 

assumed in the late 1850s, posed a much lower risk of armed confrontation. And always 

throughout this turbulent period, Fort Leavenworth's gates were open to families from 

Leavenworth City seeking sanctuary whenever political tension in town reached a dangerous 

level.

An Englishman visiting western Kansas in 1856 described Leavenworth City as an armed camp 

in which "riot and savage turmoil" inteferred with honest pursuits. (To find civilization, he 

intimated, one need journey to the Sioux reservation.) There is much evidence to support this 

unflattering portrait of a violent prairie community. The town certainly had its share of brawls and 

shootings, usually in or near the Planter's Hotel, the premier hotel in the territory. But other 

contemporary accounts paint a different picture-a picture of a relatively peaceful community in 

which Free Soil and prosavery advocates coexisted, striving to separate politics from business 

and to subordinate the former to the latter. The proximity of the fort certainly served as a restraint 

on excessive violence. So, too, did the prevailing sentiment, first subscribed to by the town 

fathers, that politics should not be allowed to undermine the quest to build Leavenworth into the 

queen city of the prairie; nor should political passions be allowed to disrupt normal social activity, 

so vital to the health and vigor of the town and its inhabitants. It was not an easy goal to attain. In 

perhaps the town's most celebrated shooting during this period, a Free Soiler, Cole McCrea, 

killed a proslavery man, Malcolm Clark, in an argument over a land claim, testimony to the fact 

that economics and ideology were not always mutually exclusive. Still, Leavenworth City retained 

a reputation for probity and business opportunity, a fact that played no small part in the town's 

growth and prosperity in the pre-Civil War years.

Between 1854 and 1860, Leavenworth City survived political turmoil, disease, harsh weather, 

grasshoppers, fire, and recession to expand from an encampment of four tents, a lumber mill, and 

a newspaper published under an elm tree, to the largest town between St. Louis and San 

Francisco, with a population of about 8,000 by the end of the decade. This remarkable record of 

growth can be attributed to several factors, including a favorable location on the Missouri River 

and along major transportation routes to the western frontier, and the business acumen and 

enterprising spirit of the town's inhabitants. But above all else, the town owed its success to the 

Army post nearby. To an extent not equaled by any other urban community in the area, 

Leavenworth City depended upon military spending as the key to its prosperity.
Even the Planter's Hotel, the premier hotel in Leavenworth and the surrounding area, was not immune to the violence of 

"Bleeding" Kansas.

Fort Leavenworth dominated the economic life of Leavenworth City in a variety of way. Soldiers 

who before 1854 had spent many an off-duty hour across the Missouri border in Weston proved 

eager to spend their pay in retail stores, saloons, and brothels closer to post. The fort itself, as the 

quartermaster center for all Army installations west of the Missouri, provided a ready market for 

stock, grain, and goods raised or produced in and around Leavenworth City. The Army also 

subsidized a local steam ferry company, contracted with the town's housing and construction 

firms, and relied on local merchants to outfit military expeditions. Most important, the fort played a 

decisive role in the development of Leavenworth's most lucrative enterprise, freighting. Access to 

military roads radiating from the fort and the letting of government contracts to local businessmen 

turned Leavenworth City into a major transshipping point on the prairie. Between 1855 and 1860, 

Fort Leavenworth granted a virtual monopoly on the hauling of military goods to Russell, Majors, 

and Waddell, a mutimillion-dollar freighting outfit known as the "Empire on Wheels." By employing 

thousands of teamsters, by stimulating ancillary enterprises, and by investing heavily in the town, 

Russell, Majors, and Waddell, with its headquarters in Leavenworth, became the single most 

important, privately owned contributor to the town's economic progress.

Bird's Eye View of the City of Leavenworth, Kansas, 1869

The dream of Leavenworth promoters that their town would one day emerge as the most 

prominent commercial metropolis west of St. Louis was never realized. Kansas City, Missouri, 

laid legitimate claim to that status in the decade following the Civil War. Yet, despite this and 

other setbacks to is hopes and expectations, the town of Leavenworth survived. It stands today a 
pleasant and enterprising community, although one known less for its very real charm and appeal 

than for the federal penitentiary and the Army post located at its northern edge. Fort Leavenworth 

continues to play a vital role in the economic, social, and cultural development of this city. This 

continuing interaction serves as a reminder that, without the military installation nearby, the town 

of Leavenworth would have had a history very different from what we know today.

"BLEEDING" KANSAS AND THE CIVIL WAR 

By Dr. W. Glenn Robertson 

By 1854 Fort Leavenworth was no longer the last outpost of civilization on the way west. The 

founding of Fort Riley, some 150 miles nearer the Rockies, meant that the post on the Missouri 

no longer provided immediate response to Indian raids on travelers crossing the Plains. Indeed, a 

proposal was made to abandon Fort Leavenworth and several other posts in light of the 

advancing frontier. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, however, decided that the fort's role as a 

depot and transportation center justified its continued occupation.

Fort Leavenworth's importance lay in its strategic location on the Missoure River near the eastern 

terminus of both the Santa Fe and Oregon trails. Throughout the 1850s the fort was the depot 

where supplies were transferred from steamboats to ox-drawn wagons for the remainder of their 

journey to such distant southwester garrisons as those at El Paso, Albuquerque, and Fort Union. 

Upon completion of a military road to Fort Riley, that garrison also became a regular recipient of 

freight from the Fort Leavenworth warehouses. The valley of Corral Creek just south of the post 

provided a lush pasture for the thousands of oxen and mules that furnished the motive power for 

the contractor's wagon fleets. By 1858 the Leavenworth based firm of Russell, Majors, and 

Waddell had absorbed its competitors and had become the recognized leader in transporting 

Army goods across the Plains.

Although the frontier was no longer just beyond Fort Leavenworth's boundaries, the post 

continued to be the starting point for several major military expeditions during the years just prior 

to the Civil War. In the summer of 1855 a large expedition headed by Brevet Brigadier General 

William S. Harney gathered at Fort Leavenworth before marching northwest to campaign against 

the Sioux in present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. Several captured Indian leaders were 

incarcerated on post ofr a year before their release in 1856. The following year, 1857, Colonel 

Edwin Vose Sumner departed Fort Leavenworth in the spring with detachments of the 1st Cavalry 

and 2d Dragoons in an effort to pacify hostile bands of Cheyenne raiding between the Platte and 

Arkansas rivers. A few months later an even larger foorce assembled at the post in preparation 

for a march int Utah to restore the government's authority over its Mormon inhabitants. Ultimately 

led by Brevet Brigadier General Albert Sidney Johnston, this expedition received both supplies 

and reinforcements from Fort Leavenworth in 1858. That same year a large troop movement to 

the Pacific coast staged through the fort.

While troops from Fort Leavenworth ranged across the Plains to the Great Salt Lake and beyond, 

the fort on the banks of the Missouri played an equally important role in turbulent events taking 

place much nearer at hand. After passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854, Kansas 

Territory became the site of a violent struggle between proslavery and antislavery factions. The 

town of Leavenworth, which sprang up just south of the fort, was initially dominated by proslavery 

groups, like the nearby river towns of Kickapoo and Atchison. Free states concentrated to the 

west, with their headquarters at Lawrence. Proslavery residents of Missouri contributed to the 

turmoil by entering Kansas to influence local elections. As the nearest outpost of the federal 

government, Fort Leavenworth frequently was called upon to preserve the peace.

Upon his arrival in Kansas on October 7, 1854, Territorial Governor Andrew H. Reeder opened an 

office at Fort Leavenworth, making the post the first territorial capital. The fort's tenure as the seat 

of government was brief, however, as Reeder and hos entourage departed for Shawnee Mission 

on November 24, 1854. During the following year the war of words between the factions 

escalated into more serious acts of violence, as both sides heavily armed themselves. Fort 

Leavenworth played little role in the struggle during 1855, since most of its garrison was 

campaigning on the Plains with General Harney. In October 1855 Colonel Sumner and most of 

the 1st Cavalry Regiment took up residence at the post and soon became embroiled in the 

controversy. Territorial Governor Wilson Shannon, who had replaced Reeder, called upon 
Sumner in December to support him with troops in a confrontation with free staters at Lawrence. 

Unwilling to become involved without orders from the War Department, Sumner refused 

Shannon's request, and the governor had to arrange a truce between the contending parties 

alone.

The violence in "Bleeding" Kansas reached its peak in 1856. Having received orders to support 

the governor with force if necessary, Sumner used Fort Leavenworth units to assist civil 

authorities in carrying out their duties. In April 1856 a detail from the post accompanied the sheriff 

of Douglas County on his unsuccessful attempt to arrest members of the antislavery faction in 

Lawrence. Two months later Sumner himself led a detachment into the camp of John Brown and 

freed several proslavery men being held prisoner there. Yet Sumner's garrison at Fort 

Leavenworth was too small to disarm the thousand of armed men roaming eastern Kansas, and 

the toll of death and destruction continued to mount. Sumner himself was not in sympathy with 

the proslavery attitude of most of the civil authorities, but his orders from Secretary of War 

Jefferson Davis to support them were clear. Those orders required Sumner and troops from Fort 

Leavenworth to disperse the illegal free-state legislature at Topeka on July 4, 1856, a task that 

Sumner called "the most disagreeable duty of my whole life."

Sumner's sentiments soon became known in Washington, where it was decided he needed 

closer supervision. As a result, the headquarters of the Department of the West temporarily was 

transferred to Fort Leavenworth from St. Louis in July 1856, with Brevet Major General Persifor F. 

Smith in command. During Smith's tenure, which lasted until April 1857, the violence in Kansas 

continued, unchecked by the handful of troops patrolling from Fort Leavenworth. The soldiers 

could do no more than protect the territorial legislature while it met at Lecompton and provide 

escort for the newest territorial governor, John W. Geary. By spring 1857 even this minimal 

service was no longer available from Fort Leavenworth, as Geary discovered when he appealed 

for protection. Civil strife in Kansas had once again taken second place to campaigning on the 

Plains.

As the decade of the 1850s came to a close, free-state elements gradually gained control of 

Kansas, and the turmoil subsided momentarily. Fort Leavenworth continued to be the departure 

point both for punitive expeditions against the Plains Indians as well as regularly scheduled 

supply trains destined for Army posts in the distant southwest. The increased activity at the fort 

led to the construction of additional stables, barracks, and officers' quarters by workmen imported 

from the East. In 1858 an ordnance depot was established at Fort Leavenworth. Two years later 

the ordnance depot had become an arsenal covering 138 acres, with its own imposing set of 

stone buildings. In somewhat modified form, these buildings are the present-day Sherman and 

Sheridan halls.

The Fort Leavenworth Arsenal with a rear view of present-day Sherman Hall.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Fort Leavenworth's arsenal and large stocks of military 

supplies made the post a valuable prize to Confederate sympathizers just across the river in 

Missouri. Fearing that his small command would be insufficient to protect the government 

property, the post commander, Captain William Steele, in April 1861 accepted the services of 

three small militia companies from the town of Leavenworth. Steele's plight was recognized by his 

superiors in St. Louis, who ordered Colonel D. S. Miles to bring several companies of infantry 

from Fort Kearny to augment the Fort Leavenworth garrison. Upon his arrival on April 29, 1861, 
Miles assumed command of the post and quickly discharged the local volunteers, believing his 

force to be sufficient to hold the post "against any rabble or detached secessionists" in the 

vicinity. Having secured Fort Leavenworth for the Union, Captain Steele resigned his commision 

in May and joined the Confederate Army, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general.

The part played by Fort Leavenworth in the Civil War was important but generally unexciting. In 

June 1861 the post again became the headquarters of the Department of the West, but only for a 

brief time. More important, the post served as an enrolling center and training camp for Kansas 

volunteer units. All or part of six cavalry regiments and four infantry regiments were organized 

and equipped at Fort Leavenworth or nearby Camps Lincoln and Lyon before joining the Union 

armies in field service. By summer 1862 al units of the Regular Army had departed, and the post 

was garrisoned by volunteer troops from Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Colorado until the end 

of the war. For five months in 1862 and all of 1864, it served as the headquarters of the 

Department of Kansas, first under Brigadier General James G. Blunt and later under Major 

General Samuel R. Curtis. Although troops stationed at Fort Leavenworth periodically chased 

guerrilla bands marauding nearby, they usually arrived too late to punish the raiders. The most 

famous raid, W. C. Quantrill's assault on Lawrence in August 1863, found the fort's garrison 

totally without mounted troops, although some Ohio cavalrymen temporarily at the post were 

hastily mounted, armed, and sent in fruitless pursuit.

Large-scale military operations did not occur near Fort Leavenworth until the fall of 1864, when 

Confederate Major General Sterling Price invaded Missouri with 12,000 men. Forced out of the 

eastern part of the state by superior federal forces, Price turned westward toward Kansas City 

and Leavenworth. From his headquarters at Fort Leavenworth, Major General Curtis marshaled 

his units into the Army of the Border which took position southeast of Kansas City. Earthworks 

were hastily constructed at both Fort Leavenworth and the nearby town to provide a last-ditch 

defense, but they proved to be unnecessary as Curtis, aided by troops from the Department of 

Missouri, defeated Price on October 23, 1864, at the battle of Westport. Fort Leavenworth, which 

had provided most of the weapons for the Kansas militia that took part in the campaign, was no 

longer in danger; Price's retreat ended the Confederate threat to the Kansas frontier.

THE EVE OF AWAKENING, 1865-1881 

By Major Gary H. Wade 

The "sixteen years between the Civil War's end and the founding of the 'School of Application.'" 

Colonel George C. Reinhardt wrote in the March 1954 Military Review, "were utterly without 

excitement at Fort Leavenworth." Despite Colonel Reinhardt's characterization, Leavenworth in 

this period served the Army in many ways: as the headquarters for the Department of the 

Missouri, as an important supply depot, and as the home of the military prison. It further served 

as a rest and recreation center for the soldiers returning from the Plains.
First and foremost during this period, the fort housed the headquarters of the Department of the 

Missouri. This department had administrative and supply responsibilities for Illinois, Missouri, 

Kansas, the territories of Colorado and New Mexico, the Indian Territory, Forts Bliss and Eliot, 

and the post at San Elizario in Texas. The headquarters itself had shifted for years between St. 

Louis and Fort Leavenworth. In 1869 Major General J. M. Schofield, Department Commander, 

moved the headquarters temporarily from Fort Leavenworth to St. Louis to make room at the post 

for the Seventh Cavalry.

On April 15, 1870, Major General John Pope, the new department commander, returned the 

headquarters to Fort Leavenworth, where it remained until 1890 when again it was moved to St. 

Louis. General Pope requested $350,000 to build additional quarters to meet the increased 

number of officers and staff personnel. To support this request, General William T. Sherman, 

Commanding General, U.S. Army, informed the Senate that "Fort Leavenworth is the most 

valuable military reservation in the west." Because the fort housed a depot and headquarters of a 

department, General Sherman asserted that it "should have barracks for a battalion of infantry, a 

regiment of cavalry, and suitable buildings for headquarters." "Though the amount asked for may 

seem large," General Sherman contended, "it is in fact small as compared to the sums expended 

on our seacoast forts, which are not half as important for the immediate use of the Army." The 

Senate appropriated $200,000, but the House refused any appropriation at all. The War 

Department, however, did allot $50,000 for officer quarters. The post remained crowded, and little 

construction occurred during the 1870s.

The more compact Fort Leavenworth of the 1870s would nevertheless be recognizable to a 

modern visitor. During this period, some interesting construction did take place; numbers 24 and 

26 Sumner, field officers' quarters, were built with bathrooms instead of privies. By 1878 the post 

had two churches: St. Ignatius Catholic Church was built in 1871 (and subsequently rebuilt in 

1889) and Memorial Chapel was completed in 1878. Part of what is now the Disciplinary Barracks 

housed the workshops and the clothing, subsistence and general equipment warehouses of the 

quartermaster and commissary depots. The depots have been characterized as the "Chief supply 

depot for the posts on the Plains." In 1866, for example, the Washington Depot shipped over 946 

tons of quartermaster stores, 970 Army wagons, and 40 traveling forges to Fort Leavenworth 

storage facilities. The quartermaster depot was also the site of a Signal Service weather 

observatory, an element of whatlater became the United States Weather Service. The United 

States Arsenal, until 1875, occupied present-day Sherman and Sheridan halls. The railroad and 

wagon bridges across the Missouri River were completed in 1871.

In 1871 Fort Leavenworth was also the headquarters of the 5th Infantry Regiment commanded by 

Colonel Nelson A. Miles (later major general commanding the Department of the Missouri). The 

regimental strength at the fort was 21 officers and 363 enlisted men. Five out of the ten 

companies in the regiment were scattered among posts farther west, while one company of the 

3d U.S. Infantry was stationed at Fort Leavenworth with the 5th Infantry. The 7th Cavalry 

continued to spend winters at Fort Leavenworth during much of the 1870s. For the most part, 

these soldiers spent their time in target practice or routine garrison activities such as transporting 

water that had to be "hauled in quantity" to tanks outside quarters and barracks.
One famous unit, the Tenth Cavalry, had its origins at Fort Leavenworth shortly after the Civil 

War. As a result of an 1866 congressional act, General Ulysses S. Grant directed the 

organization of two cavalry regiments composed of black troops. Accordingly, General William T. 

Sherman, Commander of the Department of the Missouri, selected Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson 

to organize the Tenth Calvarly at Fort Leavenworth. By summer 1867 Colonel Grierson had 

recruited 37 white officers and 702 black soldiers. The Commander of Fort Leavenworth, Brevet 

Major General William Hoffman, made the unit's stay uncomfortable, so Colonel Grierson moved 

regimental headquarters to Fort Riley that summer to improve living conditions. Fort Leavenworth 

would not become home for the Tenth Cavalry headquarters again until 1931.

The establishment of the military prison enlivened the fort's routine in this period. Military 

offenders had previously been confined in twenty-one different military stockades and eleven 

civilian penitentiaries in various states. Punishment varied from institution to institution and 

included flogging, use of ball and chain shacklings, tatooing or branding, and solitary 

confinement. Early in the 1870s these punishments, except solitary confinement, were banned 

throughout the Army. But the 346 military prisoners in the civilian jails, however, suffered 

punishments prohibited by the Army. Major Thomas F. Barr (later brigadier general and known as 

the father of the U.S. Military Prison) advocated reform of the penal system. Based on Major 

Barr's proposal, a board of officers recommended that the U.S. Army adopt the British military 

prison system, whereby military prisoners would be consolidated at one location. An 1873 law 

authorized a military prison to be built at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois. The Ordnance Department 

and Secretary of War William W. Belkap objected to the location, citing security reasons and 

stating that prisoner labor was ill-suited for munitions work. The secretary of war countered with 

the suggestion of Fort Leavenworth as the site for the military prison.

On May 21, 1872, Congress approved moving the prison site to Fort Leavenworth and 

subsequently appropriated a total of $125,900, in Jule 1874 and March 1875, to establish the 

prison. A survey of Fort Leavenworth revealed that the prison should be located on the grounds 

and buildings occupied by the Quartermaster Department on the north side of the post. 

Accordingly, the Quartermaster Department moved its supply depot to the site of the arsenal, 

which in turn transferred all its ordnance property to Rock Island Arsenal. Completion of a 

wooden fence around the old quartermaster site in summer 1875 enabled the prison to open, and 

by the next year the guard force numbered 75 and the prison population 332.
The prison supplemented the stores of the Quartermaster Department by making military items. 

The 1874 law provided for the production of Army shoes by prison labor. Early success had led, 

after 1877, to the production not only of shoes, boots, and chairs, but eventually of harnesses, 

kettles, pans, and other articles for Army use. The prison became a vocational training center as 

well as providing the Army with government-produced as opposed to procured goods.

The establishment of the prison did not detract from the social and domestic lives of the other 

residents; rather it added to it. The prisoners opened a rock quarry (its stones was used in 

construction of the prison wall), thus providing new building material and labor to enhance the 

facilities and appearances of the post. And life, for the most part, went on as before, with routime 

garrison duties occupying most of the soldiers' duty hours. Social activities, such as band 

concerts, hops, church, and other gatherings, were also very much a part of life at Fort 

Leavenworth, then as now. General Nelson A. Miles, long-time commander of the 5th Infantry 

Regiment and later post commander, said of this period, "When the larger garrison was gathered 

at the post it offered an opportunity for social civilities and recreation, as well as the amusements 

incident to refined society."

One recreational event occurred in 1868 that epitomized the "social civilities" of the period. The 

officers held a "slow" mule race over a mile-long track, riding old, worn, not to mention stubborn, 

freight mules for a fifty-dollar purse. The last one to finish was the winner, but none of the officers 

wanted the distinction so it was a hard-ridden race. General George Armstrong Custer entered a 

"70 year old" mule named Hyankedank. General Sherman also tranined a mule, but decided 

against riding in the race for fear that a wag might write of the occasion and that this unflattering 

account might gain wide currency. The name of the winning mule is lost to history, but that such a 

race took place indicates the sheer variety of the social activities at the fort during this period.
Dances, concerts, and amateur theatricals helped to overcome the monotony of garrison life. One 

historian of the fort, Henry Shindler, has characterized the 1870s as "undoubtedly the gayest and 

most brilliant in the history of the post." The Shermans, Senator James G. Blaine (later secretary 

of state and a presidential candidate) and his family, and other personages frequently visited and 

often remained for months as guests of their friends. Captain Charles H. Hoyt, an officer of the 

Quartermaster Department and cousin of General Sherman, for example, acted as host for the 

Shermans when they stayed at the post. Many members of General pop's staff, and the general 

himself, entertained lavishly and brought here the social leaders of nearby cities and towns. 

There was also excitement in 1876 when Chief Joseph and about 300 of his Nez Perce were 

confined at the race track on the fort until they were resettled a year later in the Indian Territory. 

But for the most part, according to contemporary diaries, time was spent going to dances, band 

concerts, and church. The relatively unhurried life at the fort during the 1870s would be 

challenged by an intellectual awadening in the next decade.

THE FORT AND THE NEW SCHOOL, 1881-1916 

By Captain Jonathan M. House

In 1881 the Commanding General of the Army, William, T. Sherman, created the institution that 

eventually established Fort Leavenworth's modern reputation-the School of Application for 

Infantry and Cavalry, forerunner of the Command and General Staff College.

Thoughtful Army officers had sought such a school for years because of the poor state of 

professional training in the officer corps. The majority of Army officers had been commissioned 

directly from civilian life, Civil War volunteer units, or the enlisted ranks. Even graduates of the 

U.S. Military Academy stagnated intellectually during service in small, isolated posts. Army 

officers became experts in small unit administration and operations necessary at such posts, but 

had little grasp of large unit tactics, strategy, or even English composition. Thus, some type of 

post-commissioning training was necessary to prepare the Army for future wars. Although artillery 

officers already had a school at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, Leavenworth was selected as the site 

to train the far more numerous officers of infantry and cavalry.

Establishment of the School of Application also gave purpose to existing plans to concentrate the 

scattered units of the Army's Department of the Missouri. Four companies of infantry, four troops 

of cavalry, and a battery of light artillery moved to Fort Leavenworth during 1881-1882 to provide 

models for instruction in the correct use of all three combat arms-infantry, cavalry, and artillery. 

Indicative of the disjointed and dispersed nature of the frontier Army, no two of these nine 

company-sized units belonged to the same regiment. Nor were these troops always available for 

officer training: in 1885 and again in 1890, the Fort Leavenworth garrison was abruptly 

dispatched in response to Indian threats. Because many of the school's faculty came from these 

units, instruction suffered. Finally, in 1894 the headquarters and nine companies of the 20th 

Infantry Regiment, plus four troops ofthe 6th Cavalry Regiment, moved to Fort Leavenworth, 

where they provided a stable garrison until the Spanish-American War in 1898. At the same time, 
the War Department authorized enough full-time instructors to reduce the school's dependence 

on the garrison officers. The result was a considerable expansion in the size of Fort Leavenworth.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Infantry and Cavalry School, as the School of Application was renamed in 

1886, made slow progress in its mission of educating officers. Every two years, one junior officer 

from each cavalry and infantry regiment went to the'schdol. Many commanders did not 

understand the purpose of the schol and therfore sent their least motivated and qualified officers. 

Not only were such officers reluctant to study, but they required a great deal of remedial 

instruction. Thus, the first year of each two-year course was taken up with the study of geometry, 

grammar, penmanship, and general history. The remaining year focused upon the rudiments of 

tactics, communications, field fortifications, and military law.

Finally in 1888, the school's third commandant, Colonel Alexander McCook, abolished all 

remedial studies and reemphasized practical, problem solving work. During the following decade, 

Leavenworth developed into a sophisticated school for training junior officers. Two gifted 

instructors Arthur L. Wagner and Eben Swift-led the Army in the development of both training 

techniques and the military doctrine to support that training. Wagner served as an instructor for 

most of the period from 1886 to 1903.

The old post headquarters building became the first home of the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry. The Mid-America 

Recreation Center now occupies this site, on the southwest corner of the main parade ground.

During this time he produced three classic textbooks on tactics, replacing the European texts 

previously used at the school. Between 1893 and 1897, Eben Swift developed standard formats 

for officers to use in writing various orders in the field. These formats, which have since become 

basic to Army operations, ensured that each order was complete and easily understood. 

Together, Wagner and Swift also developed the flexible map exercises and "war game" 

simulations that enabled Leavenworth students to solve tactical problems without the great 

expense of actually moving troops on the ground. The student officers did not spend all their time 

in the classroom, however. Wagner and Swift emphasized the constant study of actual terrain, 

and so the students spent long days on horseback, riding about the Leavenworth area, solving 

various tactical problems.

The facilities of the school developed along with the quality of instruction. During the 1880s, 

classes were held in a building located on the southwest corner of the main parade ground. This 

building, which was on the site of what is now the Mid-America Recreation Center, had been built 

to house the post headquarters. In 1890 the headquarters of the Department of the Missouri 

moved to St. Louis. The U.S. Infantry and Cavalry School inherited the department's 

headquarters building, a renovated warehouse renamed Sherman Hall in honor of the school's 

founder. In 1895 the Ordnance Depot Quartermaster vacated the adjacent and matching building, 

which was taken over by the school and renamed Sheridan Hall. Not until 1904 was Grant Hall, 

with its distinctive bell tower and sally port, constructed to connect the other two buildings. The 

post as a whole grew as well; for example, a steam-driven streetcar line was installed in 1888, 

connecting the town with the fort. The line was electrified in 1914.
In 1904 the construction of Grant Hall, with its distinctive bell tower, connected Sherman and Sheridan halls, completing the 

facilities of the Army Service Schools. Today, this historic building houses the Combined Arms Combat Developments Activity.

By 1898 the Infantry and Cavalry School had become a significant factor in the development of 

theory and practice within the U.S. Army. Still, the graduates of this school were too few and too 

junior to have an immediate impact on the rest of the officer corps. The Spanish-American War 

and the Philippine Insurrection that followed interrupted instruction for four years, 1898-1902. The 

student officers returned to their regiments, the garrison deployed overseas, and by April 24, 

1898, only thirty-nine soldiers remained at Fort Leavenworth. Thereafter, the fort was only a brief 

stopping point for troops in transit, although two regiments of the expanding U.S. Army (the 32d 

and 44th U.S. Volunteer Infantry) were organized at Fort Leavenworth during the summer of 

1899.

While the school grew in the 1890s, the Fort Leavenworth Military Prison suffered a temporary 

decline. An act of Congress converted the prison into a civilian penitentiary in 1895, forcing the 

Army to return to a system of dispersed prisons on different Army posts. It took ten years, 1896-

1906, to build a new federal penitentiary building before the old one could be returned to the 

Army. In turn, the military prison had to renovated in 1908-1910, practically all the work being 

done by prisoners. By act of Congress in 1915, the military prison was redesignated the U.S. 

Disciplinary Barracks.

Although the United States won the Spanish-American War, the conflict demonstrated two major 

deficiencies in officer education. First, the great expansion of the U.S. Army produced an influx of 

hundreds of new lieutenants who had little or no military training. More important, however, the 

United States needed general staff officers, experts who could plan a national mobilization and 

organize and administer the large units that such a mobilization would require.

Elihu Root became secretary of war in 1899 and rapidly realized the need for both a General Staff 

and a system of officer education. In 1901 he established a hierarchy of officer schools, with Fort 

Leavenworth becoming the most important rung in this hierarchy. Between 1902 and 1910, the 

"Army Service Schools" at Fort Leavenworth expanded to include four schools for junior officers, 

based on the pre-1898 model of the Infantry and Cavalry School. That school itself was 

reestablished as a one-year course in 1902 and renamed the School of the Line in 1907. The 

other three schools were the Signal and Field Engineer schools and the Army Field Service and 

Correspondence School for Medical Officers. In addition, the best students from the School of the 

Line (and occasionally from other such schools) were selected for a second year of study at the

Army Staff College, also located at Fort Leavenworth.

The dominant personality in these schools was Major John F. Morrison, who taught at Fort 

Leavenworth from 1906 to 1912. Morrison completely reorganized the curriculum to teach tactics 

and staff procedures in a systematic, progressive manner. In addition to Morrison, the Army 

Service Schools during this period included a galaxy of students and instructors who later shaped 

the U.S. Army, including George C. Marshall, William Mitchell, and Douglas MacArthur.

In 1916 the Army Service Schools were again closed, as first the Mexican crisis and then the 

United States entry into World War I required the services of all available officers. Yet by 1916, 

the high quality of instruction had made these schools the voice of Army doctrine and staff 

procedures. Although fewer than 700 officers had graduated from the schools between 1904 and 
1916, these graduates dominated the staffs of the American Expeditionary Force in France during 

1917-1918. Twenty-three out of twenty-six divisions in France had Leavenworth-trained chiefs of 

staff, while five out twenty-six had Leavenworth products as commanders. The corps and field 

army staffs of the AEF were even more heavily under the intellectual influence of Leavenworth. 

Fort Leavenworth had clearly become a key in the development of Army doctrine and leadership.

While the Army Service Schools flourished, the garrison at Fort Leavenworth was considerably 

smaller than before 1898. In February 1913 virtually all troop units were ordered out of 

Leavenworth as part of a war scare on the Mexican border. In 1916 the four remaining troops of 

the 5th Cavalry Regiment also left to participate in the Mexican expedition against Pancho Villa. 

These departures not only reduced the size of Fort Leavenworth, but also made practical 

execises in the Service Schools more difficult and less realistic.

WORLD WAR I AND THE INTERWAR YEARS, 1916-1939 

By Major Charles E. Heller

Fort Leavenworth inhabitants ushered in 1916 with the traditional round of parties, followed the 

next morning by the formal New Year's Day reception at the homes of the post commander and 

the commandant of the Leavenworth schools. Although some wives complained, the social life at 

Fort Leavenworth did not appear as demanding as at other large posts. In fact, the leisurely pace 

of life at the fort had not changed markedly from the nineteenth century. Much of the flavor of the 

old Army still existed at this post on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River.

The students attending either the School of the Line or the General Staff School might have had a 

different opinion of the pace of life at the fort. The officers coming here placed a tremendous 

amount of pressure on themselves and took their studies very seriously. In the spring of 1916, for 

example, Fort Leavenworth buzzed with gossip concerning the courts-martial of three School of 

the Line students. The men were accused of preparing a map sketch for an engineering course 

prior to the time scheduled for the practical exercise. During the trial, a medical report on one of 

the students gave a good indication of how the pressure affected individuals both physically and 

mentally. One student in question developed insomnia and lost weight. He became constipated, 

nervous, irritable, and extremely depressed. He need not have worried for he stood fifth in 

engineering and sixteenth overall in class standing. In all likelihood the officer would have been 

selected to attend the General Staff School.

In 1916 the men selected to attend the General Staff School found their plans abruptly changed. 

Problems on the border with Mexico led President Woodrow Wilson to order partial mobilization 

of the Regular Army and selected National Guard units. In May 1916 the Leavenworth schools 

were closed by a War Department order and most of the officers rejoined their regiments. The 

schools were to remain closed for the next three years.

A year later, in April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. With the schools closed, 

Fort Leavenworth became involved in the frantic efforts to mobilize an Army for the war in 

Europe. That same April the first three-month course began for provisional second lieutenants. 

Activity on this Army reservation increased dramatically with the arrival of these ninety-day 

wonders. In addition to these eager young officer candidates, the Signal School raised to 350 the 

number of Reserve officers being trained, Fort Leavenworth probably had the best training 

facilities for men of this branch of service.

Fort Leavenworth also became an induction center for the thousands of selective service 

inductees and federalized National Guardsmen. The local guardsmen from the city of 

Leavenworth, Company E, 3d Kansas Infantry, were mustered into federal service at the fort as 

Company E of the 139th Infantry, 35th Division, prior to being shipped to Fort Sill for training.

Wartime Fort Leavenworth abounded with activity. On the slopes of the main parade grounds, 

clusters of khaki uniformed men studied the terrain and sketched topographical maps. On the 

north end of the western parade ground, cavalry troops wheeled and charged again and again, 

raising thick clouds of pale Kansas dust. Nearby other horsemen practiced the use of sabers on 

straw enemy infantry. Signal men strung wire, sometimes digging furiously to bury it beneath the 
sun-baked soil. On the gentle sloping hill to the north of Merritt Lake, student officers engages in 

the preparation of trenches behind rows of barbed wire strung on sharpened stakes.

Although many men passed through Fort Leavenworth during the war, the post's most important 

contributions to the war effort occurred prior to the outbreak of hostilities. As the American 

Expeditionary Force (AEF) grew in size, the Leavenworth-trained officers were essential to the 

operational success of the Army in France. Colonel George C. Marshall (later general and Army 

chief of staff) wrote his wife that all the "Leavenworth men" were in France, former students and 

instructors alike. The education they received at the post, which seemed so far away in time and 

place, now paid dividends. In October 1918, Colonel John McAuley Palmer attended a briefing 

near the front. Later he recalled, "Except for an ominous rumble to the north of us I might have 

thought that we were back at Leavenworth ... the technique and the talk were just the same." 

General of the Armies John J. Pershing, in acknowledgement of the value of the Leavenworth 

schools, ordered the established of a School of the Line and Staff School in France.

At the conclusion of the war in France, Fort Leavenworth became a separation station for 

thousands of midwestern boys returning home. While for many posts the end of the conflict 

marked the end of their contribution to the Army, this was not so for Fort Leavenworth. The end of 

World War I marked a new era for Fort Leavenworth and officer education.

On September 25, 1919, War Department Order 112 reopened the schools under the supervision 

of the Army's chief of staff. The following year the National Defense Act formally established a 

progressive Army educational system that included the Fort Leavenworth schools. The Army 

could now draw on its own experience in modern war to enhance the teaching at Leavenworth. 

Also because of the experience of the war, students, especially those who served in France, 

discarded the traditional negative attitude toward classroom instruction.

Several visitors to the fort in the postwar period reinforced the growing admiration for the schools. 

General Pershing, during a visit in 1920, reflected that a significant number of AEF officers who 

excelled during the conflict were graduates of Leavenworth. French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, 

paying a visit a year later, also praised the fort as the "cradle of the Staff of the American Army."

The same year Foch spoke, the post saw perhaps its greatest period of physical growth. In 1921, 

to accommodate, students who were older and had larger families than the prewar classes, the 

stately brick regimental barracks, built from 1902 to 1903 on Pope and Doniphan avenues, were 

converted to apartments. The need for family housing was so great that the quarters were 

occupied prior to the installation of kitchens. For a time families ate in a consolidated mess hall 

until electric ranges were installed in their quarters.

Other facilities were constructed to enhance the life at Leavenworth. In 1922 an imposing 

structure on Kearny war dedicated. It housed the post office on the first floor and the local 

Masonic Lodge on the floors above. The Army YMCA building on the corner of Pope and 

McClellan avenues had an auditorium and swimming pool. To enhance the beauty of the post, 

another lake, Smith, was created to the east of Grant Avenue.

In 1923 an airfield was established under the jurisdiction of the Disciplinary Barracks. Several 

years later, the airfield was expanded under the direction of Major William Sherman. The original 

1,800-foot strip was joined by another runway so planes could land or take off in any direction. 

Corregated steel hangers were constructed, and the operation was placed under the Command 

and General Staff School.

Still the main emphasis on the post was on the education of officers. In 1922 the Army War 

College assumed the functions of the General Staff School. As a result, the School of the Line 

became the Command and General Staff School. Due to a critical shortage of school-trained 

officers, the course became one year in duration. The school would train officers in the use of 

combined arms in the division and corps and the command and staff functions for division and 

corps as they related to tactics and logistics.

At the same time the Army began to place a greater emphasis on Reserve Components' 

education. In 1922 a special course began for senior organized Reserve Corps and National 

Guard officers. The scheduling of the course allowed for the students to participate with the 

Command and General Staff class in a general terrain exercise. Every summer, teams of 

Leavenworth instructors visited various Reserve Components' encampments. With the 

establishment of a Publication Division in 1921, Fort Leavenworth began nonresident 

correspondence courses, primarily for the Reserve Components.
Students in residence devoted a significant amount of time to their studies. The typical school 

routine began with a morning of conferences and lectures. After lunch, if there were no map, field, 

or terrain exercises, students spent their time in individual study. Many of the men continued to 

study far into the night. One such individual who did so, George S. Patton, Jr., became an honor 

graduate in the 1923-1924 class.

Competition, which was always keen at Leavenworth, was particularly intense when Patton was a 

student. He wrote his wife, who had remained in Massachusetts, that despite the commandant's 

constant rejoinder not to wory, he studied from 2:30 to 6:00 p.m. and then went back to his books 

from 7:15 to 11:45 p.m. Patton once found himself before an academic board to answer a charge 

of using an unauthorized study aid. One of his classmates notices Patton studying under a 

strange blue light and reported him. Upon questioning, an embarrassed Patton admitted he 

bought the light because it supposedly restored hair.

Patton did save some time for leisure activities. He and many of his classmates relaxed by riding 

and playing polo. Fort Leavenworth, especially in the late 1920s and into the 1930s, had a 

reputation of being a "horsey" post. The indoor riding hall and stables loomed as important 

buildings at the fort. Headquarters Troop and the 1st Squadron of the famous black 10th Cavalry 

performed numerous ceremonial duties for visiting dignitaries. Every Sunday polo matches were 

held on the field to the south of the quarters on Doniphan. The most exciting and colorful of the 

matches were those between Fort Leavenworth and teams from Fort Riley and Fort Sill.

The Fort Leavenworth Hunt, founded in 1926, added to the color of the post. On Sunday and 

twice a week "pink"-coated riders rode to the sound of the hounds. Breakfast on Sunday was held 

at the Hunt Lodge.

There were other activities on post that reflected an interest in horseflesh. Both the Boy and Girl 

Scouts had a well-organized mounted troop. Each spring a "Race Meet and Horse Show" drew 

hundreds of spectators to the post. The Leavenworth community, during the 1930s, participated 

in the American Royal Livestock Show held annually in Kansas City.

While Kansas City and the surrounding area reeled under the depression and drought, these 

natural and man-made calamities had little impact on the fort until 1933. In April 1933 the post 

headquarters became the Headquarters of the Missouri-Kansas District of the Civilian 

Conservation Corps (CCC), responsible for the administration and supply of CCC companies. 

Fort Leavenworth also became the site of a reconditioning camp for CCC enrollees. Officers and 

men from the 17th Infantry stationed at the post were detailed to the camp. Over 30,000 young 

men passed through Leavenworth during the life of the CCC. The company assigned to the post 

worked on soil erosion and planted thousands of trees and shrubs through-enrollees. Officers and 

men from the 17th Infantry stationed at the post were detailed to the camp. Over 30,000 young 

men passed through Leavenworth during the life of the CCC. The company assigned to the post 

worked on soil erosion and planted thousands of trees and shrubs throughout the reservation. 

The local CCC company also constructed the stone gate at the main entrance and landscaped 

Grant Avenue.

Leavenworth had a reputation of being a "horsey" post. Here, in 1938, Brigadier General (later Lieutenant 

General) Lesley J. McNair (left) posed with Masters of the Foxhounds Colonel (later Major General) Fredrick 

Gilbreath and Colonel Paul Davidson on the north side of the main parade ground.
In September 1929 the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at the north end of Grant Avenue was leased 

to the Justice Department. Guards and military prisoners were sent to Alcatraz, Governor's 

Island, and other posts while 130 civilian prisoners were transferred to Fort Leavenworth.

Still the main emphasis of post activity continued to be the Command and General Staff School. 

In 1928 a new two-year course began. Conferences and lectures accounted for forty-five percent 

of the course and the balance in tactical exercises and map problems. The curriculum remained 

basically unchanged until 1935. That year the possibility of another war, which might require a 

large number of Leavenworth-trained officers, caused a return to the one-year course. The 

leading emphasis shifted more toward general staff duties, because of a lowering of the average 

rank of students and a realistic assumption that relatively few graduates would be assigned to 

high command positions.

Little changed on the post in the remaining years of the 1930s. Post construction continued. The 

post exchange, housed in the former trolley station, had a wing added in 1937. Fuller Hall, 

formerly a stable, was remodeled that year to accommodate the school bookstore, post exchange 

offices, and offices for the chaplains. Another remodeled stable, an old stone structure on Hasting 

Road, became the Girl Scout House. Dedication, in 1938, of the War Department Theater on 

Grant Avenue brought to the post an excellent facility for movies and also a stage for 

performances by the post theater group and glee club. Graduation ceremonies from the 

Command and General Staff School were held that year at the theater.

The following year not only marked the final year of the decade but the end of another chapter in 

the history of Fort Leavenworth. A new commandant, Brigadier General Lesley J. McNair, who 

became a key architect in structuring the Army for World War II, assumed his duties at Fort 

Leavenworth in March 1939. Two hundred and twenty-eight students graduated that June, the 

last class of the peacetime Army. On September 12, 1939, a garden party reception for the new 

class opened the academic year. Only three days later President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared 

a state of national emergency. As a result, the War Department ordered the course compressed 

and graduation advanced to February 1940. General McNair, with war clouds gathering, looked 

for ways, even with the shortened class year, to increase the scope of the instruction at the 

school to prepare these men for war. Once more Leavenworth men would be tested in battle.

WARS AND NEW CHALLENGES,

1939 - 1983 

By Dr. John W. Partin 

From 1939 to the present, the United States has fought three major wars. In these crises, as well 

as during the heightened tension of the Cold War years, Fort Leavenworth has had a central role 

in the American defense effort. The fort, still primarily known as the home of the Command and 

General Staff College, has played an important part in devising combat and trainging 

developments, concepts and doctrine, and force structure. Moreover, Fort Leavenworth continues 
as the home of the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the maximum security prison for the 

Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

The increasing international tension of the late 1930s, culminating in the outbreak of World War II 

in September 1939, affected the pace at the fort, which had been described just two years earlier 

as a "quiet, leisurely post of the old Army." The rapid expansion of the Army in 1939 meant that 

the War Department desperately needed trained officers to assume staff and command positions. 

Instead of closing the Command and General Staff School as had been done during the SpanishAmerican War and World War I, the Army directed the school commandant, Brigadier, General 

Lesley J. McNair, to shorten the academic year drastically and to expand the number of students 

in each class.

Accordingly, school leaders graduated the 1939-1940 academic class four months early on 

February 1. The next class did not start until December 1940, following ten months of discussions 

among War Department and Fort Leavenworth officials that resulted in a curriculum revision and 

in the initiation of a ten-week special wartime course. These officials reasoned that the majority of 

officers needed to be trained for staff work and not for command positions, thus facilitating the 

drastic reduction in the length of the course. Besides increasing the hours of daily instruction, 

school leaders streamlined courses by including only the most essential materials. Moreover, 

student officers arrived with knowledge of their next assignment; therefore, they took only classes 

pertaining to their specialty. The shift to wartime classes was successfully made in late 1940, one 

year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The size of the classes eventually expanded over tenfold 

- the first in December 1940 had 97 students, while the twelfth special class had 1.080 officer 

students.

The March 1942 reorganization of the Army compelled school officials to adjust the wartime 

curriculum to meet the needs of the three new commands the Army Ground Forces, the Services 

of Supply (later renamed Army Service Forces), and the Army Air Forces. By early 1943, the 

school awarded diplomas for one of three fields of specialization - ground, air, or service. Later 

during the war, the school authorities further divided the curriculum so that officer students 

obtained ever greater specialization. The Army Ground Forces course, for example, was divided 

into such specialties as infantry, armor, and antiaircraft. In the new service courses, those 

students who would be assigned to the Army Service Forces concentrated on logistics and supply 

problems.

In addition to these changes, school officials developed new courses to meet the demands of 

total war. The New Division Course was a four-week class for commanders and their staff officers 

prior to being assigned to newly organized divisions. It facilitated staff cohesion in the new 

divisions because these officers attended classes designed to acquaint them with the latest War 

Department policy and doctrine. Other new offerings included a civilian orientation course for 

national defense workers, a special Army-Navy Staff College course to improve inter service 

cooperation, and courses for Latin American military officers. Finally, in November 1944 the 

school commandant, Major General Karl Truesdell, established an advance general staff class for 

lieutenant colonels and higher grade officers; this course provided select officers with more 

demanding work in staff procedures at the corps and higher levels.

To accommodate the students in the special wartime classes and other courses, classroom 

facilities were expanded considerably. Gruber Hall, a former riding arena; Muir Hall, one-time 
stable; Andrew Hall, a gymnasium; and Pope Hall, a recreation building, all were converted for 

classroom use during the war. And the school authorities put these and other facilities to good 

use - by the time that the students in the twenty-seventh, and last, General Staff Course 

graduated on May 31, 1946, more than 19,000 officers had earned diplomas for special wartime 

course.

Other installations on the fort also contributed to the war effort. The induction station processed 

318,000 soldiers from 1940 to 1946; over 400,000 men went through the fort's reception station; 

and the separation center discharged 147,000 soldiers.

During the war the United States Disciplinary Barracks greatly expanded its inmate capacity to 

meet the spate of prisoners, a consequence of the huge increase in the size of the armed force. 

The Army initially had to regain control of the facility from the Department of Justice, which had 

operated it as a civilian prison since 1929. On December 16, 1940, the Justice Department 

completed the transfer of the last civilian inmates to federal penitentiaries, but relinquishing full 

control of the prison to Fort Leavenworth officials. By mid-1944 the Disciplinary Barracks regularly 

housed 3,000 inmates, far exceeding its 16,000-prisoner capacity; the overcrowding necessitated 

the opening of three branch prisons in July of that year. By October 1945 the military prisoner 

population had soared to 34,766, the most ever, and to keep pace the Disciplinary Barracks had 

ten branches scattered throughout the country. Thousands of prisoners were also incarcerated in 

overseas detention centers. To reduce the number of inmates, the Disciplinary Barracks system 

established nine rehabilitation centers, and from 1942 through 1946, 17,450 men, guilty of minor 

offenses, were returned to duty. The Disciplinary Barracks had one other wartime responsibility: 

in July and August 1945, fourteen Germans, who had murdered fellow prisoners of war in 

detention camps, were executed at the fort.

In all, Fort Leavenworth had made many adjustments during the war years. Not only had the fort 

helped to mold the military leaders of World War II - Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. 

Marshall, Omar N. Bradley, Henry H. Arnold, Matthew B. Ridgway, Mark Clark, and many others 

had graduated from the staff school before the war - but the special wartime courses trained 

thousands of officers for responsible staff positions.

Although thes special classes provided the expertise needed in war, Army leaders knew that the 

postwar officer corps required richer educational opportunities. Three separate review boards met 

during th eyears between World War II and the Korean War, resulting in a fundamental 

reorganization of the Army education system. Collectively, the 1946 War Department Military 

Education Board, the 1948 Wood Board (named for its chairman, Colonel Stuart Wood), and the 

1949 Department of the Army Board on the Educational System for Officers recorded the goals of 

the Fort Leavenworth school, whose name was offically changed to the Command and General 

Staff College in May 1947. College officals raised educational standards and expanded course 

offerings so that officer graduates now were able to preform in a variety of staff positions. One 

area that received special attention was atomic warfare. Another new departure for college 

instructors involved writing doctrine; the Department of Analysis and Research, created in 

Novemeber 1946, wrote new editions of Army field manuals.

Besides the changes in curriculum, the college developed a sizable foreign officers program. Ever 

since 1894, when Henri C. LeComte of the Swiss Army matriculated at Fort Leavenworth, the 

schools have had foreign officers as students. By 1951 ten percent of the class, about 60 

students, came from foreign countries.

The years before the Korean War also witnessed reversal of the policy for race relations. The 

increasing demands by blacks for civil rights and equal treatment exploded at the fort on May 2-3, 

1947, when a riot erupted in the Disciplinary Barracks. About 8:00 p.m. on May 2, the trouble 

started over segregated facilities in the prison's mess hall. Prison guards used fire hoses and tear 

gas to quell the rioters. Because of demands by blacks for equal treatment, as well as for other 

reasons, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order in 1948 that ended segregation in 

the armed forces.

During the Korean War to the present, the Command and General Staff College has entered a 

period of continual reappraisal. Indeed, change has become one of the few constants at the 

college, as revisions to the curriculum, educational philosophy, and instructional methods have 

become commonplace. Because the Eisenhower administration adopted the doctrine of massive 

retaliation as a cornerstone of its defense policy, Major General Garrison Davidson, the college 
commandant, significantly increased classroom time spent on nuclear warfare. While the number 

of classroom hours devoted to nuclear warfare increased throughout the decade, Major General 

McGarr, commandant from 1956 to 1960, also gave prominence to limited warfare, a reflection of 

the views of Army Chief of Staff General Maxwell D. Taylor.

General McGarr likewise reformed the college's educational philosophy and instructional 

methods. Eschewing what he considered the too limited goals of post-World War II instruction, 

General McGarr sought to go beyond merely training students in doctrine and set out to make 

Leavenworth graduates "military problem solvers." To do this, he changed the teaching methods -

expanding the number of courses and placing more emphasis upon applying principles and 

doctrine. In short, Fort Leavenworth leaders hoped to graduate Army officers who were capable 

of performing well in any circumstance. The modern facilities of the new academic building, J. 

Franklin Bell Hall, which was dedicated in January 1959, afforded the instructors greater 

opportunity to implement General McGarr's reforms. Located on historic Arsenal Hill, overlooking 

the Missouri River Valley, Bell Hall offered a picturesque setting as well.

The decade after the Korean War saw great change for other installations on the post. The 

Disciplinary Barracks expanded its efforts to rehabilitate military inmates. In 1954 the prison 

obtained the use of barracks outside its walls and converted them into the Local Parolee Unit. In 

addition to sports and recreational activities, prison officials stressed educational and vocational 

training programs as a means of rehabilitating prisoners. This goal of rehabilitation has been 

carried forward to the present day. Since 1960 the Disciplinary Barracks has, for instance, offered 

an Associate in Arts degree in conjunction with Highland (Kansas) Junior College.

In December 1957 the Army established at the fort the Midwest Relay Center. Its automatic 

switching equipment was capable of transmitting messages worldwide, a service preformed today 

by the U.S. Army Communications Command of Fort Leavenworth. Almost one hundred years 

after construction of Fort Sully (defensive earthworks erected during the Civil War), the Army 

placed a Nike Hercules Delta Battery on the same hill in April 1960. Designed to defend Kansas 

City from aerial attack, the battery was declared obsolete by the Army in 1969. In addition to 

these developments, Fort Leavenworth officials declared the new Munson Army Hospital fully 

operational on February 27, 1961. Seven months later, on September 26, Secretary of the Interior 

Stewart L. Udall officially designated the fort as a "Registered National Landmark."

During the 1960s Fort Leavenworth officials reoriented the school system as a result of revised 

doctrine, the Vietnam War, and new educational goals. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, many 

Army leaders - including General Maxwell D. Taylor, Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, the 

Army's Chief of Research and Development, and General Bruce C. Clarke, commander of the 

Continental Army Command - had concluded that the Army must be prepared to fight in any 

contingency, ranging from limited counterinsurgency campaigns to nuclear war. In 1961 Major 

General Harold K. Johnson, the college commandant, directed a significant reorientation of the 

curriculum to reflect new emphasis on "flexible response." While America became deeply 

involveed in the Vietnam War, classroom instruction in counterinsurgency and "flexible response" 

received greater attention. As the size of the Army grew in response to the war so did the number 

of students attending the college. The number of Regular officers graduating fro the CGSC rose 

from 703 in 1967 to 1,268 in 1972.

During the Vietnam War years, the college embarked on a new era, reversing the post-World War 

II trend that had stressed "training" rather than "education" of the officer students. For the most 
part during the two decades following World War II, college leaders had given more weight to 

"training" officers. This meant instructing students in staff procedures, functions, and techniques, 

along with the role of the combined combat arms. "Education" of students, the development of 

analytical prowess, was generally a secondary goal. < philosophical and curriculum its change 

radically college the did Schools Officer Army Review to Board of Department report 1966 until 

not but 1950s late in spectrum side ?educational? back pendulum swing tried had McGarr 

General> 

This board - known as the Haines Board for its president, Lieutenant General Ralph E. Haines, Jr. 

- advocated revision of the college's mission and curriculum so that Fort Leavenworth graduates 

would be conversant with staff procedures and operational concepts far beyond brigade and 

corps levels. Accordingly, college authorities initiated a professional electives program that 

consisted of courses designed to broaden the officers' understanding of defense policies, 

domestic politics, and international affairs.

The impetus for change accelerated during the 1970s. In fall 1971 a Special Ad Hoc Committee, 

with Deputy Commandant Brigadier General James M. Gibson and Dr. Ivan J. Birrer, the 

college's educational advisor, as members, recommended a new curriculum program. Based on 

the committee's report, the first half of the academic year consisted of a "core" curriculum, 

stressing such traditional fields of study as staff orders and procedures and the fundamentals of 

tactics and logistics. The second half was comprised of a wide selection of electives. These 

electives, which built upon the core curriculum, offered the students the opportunity for advanced 

study in such topics as military intelligence, high-level staff procedures, management, tactics, 

logistics, and security assistance.

At this juncture in 1973, when the curriculum had already been changed to meet new 

circumstances, several factors coallasced to cause yet another reorientation of the post's 

mission. The end of the Vietnam War, the lessons of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the advent 

of the volunteer Army, all had an effect on the fort as did Operation STEADFAST and the Officer 

Personnel Management System. A fundamental reorganization of the Army, Operation 

STEADFAST created the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and the Forces Command 

from the old Combat Developments Command and the Continental Army Command. The same 

year, the Combined Arms Center (CAC) was also established at Fort Leavenworth as a principle 

element of TRADOC. CAC had the college and the Combined Arms Combat Developments 

Agency (CACDA) as its two subordinate units. CACDA performed an integral role in the combat 

developments process - the development of new equipment and organizational structures needed 

to execute Army doctrine. To do this, CACDA produced the studies and concepts that were the 

basis of new doctrine and field manuals. Fortunately, the CACDA staff could build upon the 

efforts of the Combined Arms Group, which had been created at Fort Leavenworth in 1962. 

Subordinate to the old Combat Developments Command, the Combined Arms Group had 

determined future requirements for material and force structures. It was essentially a forerunner 

of CACDA.

Operation STEADFAST lodged additional responsibilities in the college. Reversing the 1962 

decision to remove doctrine and the writing of field manuals from the, Army school system, 

STEADFAST, again made the college a major participant in this area. Army officials reasoned 

that college instructors were the most conversant with the latest developments in their fields of 

expertise and were, therefore, the best qualified to write doctrinal literature. By January 1976 

college instructors were busy writing twenty field Manuals, one Army training program publication, 

seven training circulars and two TRADOC bulletins. At the same time, the staff reviewed, 

manuals written by other TRADOC schools and agencies.

The end of American involvement in the Vietnam War coincided with renewed interest in 

conventional warfare, especially in Europe and Southwest Asia. The October 1973 Arab-Israeli 

War demonstrated the extraordinary violence and voracious appetite of sophisticated weaponry in 

modern battle. The war emphasized again the importance of combined arms warfare, because no 

single branch could succeed alone in battle.

More electives in the college curriculum meshed nicely with the newly revised Officer Personnel 

Management System. The choice of electives permitted the students to expand on the material in 

the core curriculum and to improve their primary and secondary specialties. Likewise, in 1974 

Congress finally approved the Master of Military Art and Science (MMAS) program, which the 
college had begun some twelve years earlier. Formal approval of the MMAS degree meant that 

the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools could grant accreditation to 

the, graduate program. As of June 1983 the college had awarded 611 MMAS degrees to, both 

U.S. and Allied officers.

Another important responsibility of CAC was training developments activities, which consisted of 

instruction in how to use and integrate new or improved doctrine, techniques, devices, and 

equipment. In 1976 TRADOC directed Major General (later Lieutenant General) J. R. Thurman, 

CAC Commander, to enhance the training developments process at Fort Leavenworth. Major 

General Thurman created a separate organization responsible for such activities in December 

1976. The Combined Arms Training Developments Activity (CATRADA) developed and 

monitored training devices, battle simulations, training and doctrinal literature, and the Army 

Training and Evaluation Programs. In essence, this activity formulated all training requirements 

necessary for incorporating latest doctrine, organizations, materiel, and concepts into the Army 

schoolsystem and field units.

For a time, CATRADA also managed the CAC portion of the Army Training Literature Program, to 

include writing and reviewing doctrine, field manuals, and training circulars. In 1978 Lieutenant 

General Thurman shifted the doctrinal literature program to the Combined Arms Combat 

Development Activity. Two years later the college again assumed responsibility for doctrinal 

literature, because the new CAC Commander, Lieutenant General William R. Richardson, 

decided that writing doctrine belonged in the college, where the exchange between the faculty 

and students might best benefit revision of field manuals and other training literature.

The Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth underwent another major reorganization in 

1982. In August General Glenn K. Otis, Commander of the Training and Doctrine Command, took 

steps to improve the quality of analytical support provided the Army. As a consequence, the 

Combined Arms Operations Research Activity (CAORA) was created at Fort Leavenworth on 

October 1, 1982. The upshot of this organization was the consolidation of all systems analysis 

expertise in CAORA. Thus, CAORA designs and develops TRADOC battle scenerios and makes 

software modifications for battlefield simulations used by arms staff from platoon through corps 

levels.

At the same time, Lieutenant General Jack N. Merritt, CAC Commander directed the 

consolidation of CATRADA with CGSC. The three training directorates were assigned to the 

college on December 1, 1982. Lieutenant General Merritt thereby enhanced the college's 

capability to influence the direction and development of curriculum at the combined arms branch 

schools and to evaluate training programs used by the field units. The college also became 

responsible for developing and monitoring training at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, 

California, and became the "proponent" for Specialty Code 54, which included officers educated 

for operations, plans, training, and force development staff positions.

In addition to the training responsibilities, the college inaugurated two new programs in the early 

1980s that had far-reaching implications for its educational philosophy. On April 6, 1981, the pilot 

class of the Combined Arms and Services Staff School (CAS3) course met at the fort. This course 

was designed to train officers, primarily captains, in how to function effectively as staff officers in 

the field. The pilot program was completed successfully in 1982. Following the 1985 completion 

of the planned addition to Bell Hall, the Combined Arms and Service Staff School will teach 4,500 

students each year. From that time on, all officers selected for CGSC will have already had staff 

training, reducing the need for such instruction at the college. Accordingly, college authorities 

have begaun to revise the curriculum so that students have more time available for advanced 

instruction in tactics, logistics, corps operations, battle exercises, and their individual areas of 

concentration.

On December 28, 1982, General Otis approved a one-year extension to the Command and 

General Staff College course for select students. The purpose of this Advanced Military Studies 

Program was to provide a more substantive education for superior students in the art of war, 

especially at the tactical and operational levels. The pilot course, with fourteen students, began in 

June 1983. Participants in the program are officers with specialties in operations, logistics, or 

military intelligence, who have shown extraordinary potential for future leadership in command or 

staff positions.
The Command and General Staff College has matured considerably in its 102-year existence. 

The goal of the college, however, has remained the same - to educate officers for any duty they 

might be called upon to inform. Likewise, the fort has grown remarkably in its 156 years of service 

to the United States. Known first and foremost as the home of the college, Fort Leavenworth also

continues to have very important responsibilities for Army doctrine, for combat developments, for 

housing and rehabilitating military prisoners, and for designing and modifying battlefield 

simulations and other war-gaming models. Today, the fort stands at the center of the Army, and 

its influence and authority reach far beyond the banks of the Missouri River, a testimony to the 

ddedicated people who have served here so well.