The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953 Page: 396

396

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Now, when General Mackenzie returned at the apex of his
career, he found Florida Sharpe a widow, and their engagement
soon followed. But this sudden happiness seemed to have given
. the final emotional fillip which unseated his reason. His old
wounds, the extreme rigors and hardships of all the years of
campaigning, the sunstroke of his childhood, the accident at
Fort Sill, and the grave worries and responsibilities of his com-
mands, all combined to take their cumulative toll of his naturally
nervous and high-strung temperament and frail physique-and
this unexpected joy must have opened the floodgates for these
lurking creditors to demand their dues. His friends noticed his
increasing irrationality and, hoping it to be but a temporary
phase, kept him secluded and under watch. But his actions
became more erratic and violent, and he was finally sent east in
December, 1883, to the Bloomingdale Asylum in New York.9
In the spring of 1884, he was quite rightly retired for disability
contracted in the line of duty. Later, he went to live with his sister
in New Brighton, Staten Island, and he died at her home in
January, 1889. He was buried in the cemetery at West Point.60
So died unnoticed this splendid cavalry leader who had done
more than any other man to rid Texas, once and for all, of the
Indian scourge which had made a shambles of its frontiers for
decades. Frail, physically weak, usually in poor health and suf-
fering intensely, he never spared himself. He was a superb ex-
ample of the miracles which a fighting heart can accomplish
over all natural handicaps.
S9Dorst, "Mackenzie," Twentieth Reunion; Parsons, Class of Fifty-Nine, Williams
College, 55-56.
soArmy and Navy Journal, XXVI (January 26, 1889), 423-424-