The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 96, July 1992 - April, 1993 Page: 10
681 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
quarters, such as they were. The pay raise of 1854 improved the sol-
diers condition by four dollars per month and added longevity pay as
an incentive for career soldiers. The post-Civil War pay increases did
not narrow the gap between civilian and soldier pay at Fort Inge, with
the private making thirteen dollars, the sergeant twenty-two dollars
while a semiskilled laborer made seventy-five dollars and the civilian
clerk at post headquarters received one hundred dollars per month."
Considering the serious challenge to morale from discipline prob-
lems, low pay, high desertion rates, and isolation, it is remarkable that
these soldiers performed as well as they did. Although frontier soldiers
came from all walks of life and social stations, from crowded cities to
rural farms, they were most often of the working class. Fully one-third
or more of the frontier army were foreigners. The garrison of Fort
Inge in 1850 contained 6o percent foreigners. Thirty-eight of the sixty-
one soldiers in Company C, Second Dragoons, were foreign born. Of
this 1850 garrison, 31 percent were Irish, 18 percent German, and 13
percent English or Scots. The Fort Inge garrison of a decade later, in
186o, contained 51 percent foreign soldiers: 21 percent Irish, 18 per-
cent German, 7 percent French, and 3 percent Scots. The modern
United States Army, as an institution, served as an important instru-
ment of political reform for the civil rights movement, just as it has in
the past and continues to be for minority integration and equal oppor-
tunity. Similar to this broader societal role the army served as an agent
of socialization for many nineteenth-century foreign males, giving
them immediate employment at a standard wage, language instruction,
and a cultural integration that displaced their old norms and values for
the new. At the end of an enlistment the immigrant soldier often re-
mained on the frontier, becoming a part of the civilian settlement.20
The ultimate function of the army as an institution, however, is not
about being the instrument of domestic political goals, social experi-
ments, or even of assimilation. It is about combat and the profession of
arms. This was particularly true for the frontier garrison of Fort Inge.
Although there were centralized schools of instruction for the infan-
try and cavalry, these institutions focused on traditional large-unit or
"'Soldier pay figures are from Utley, Frontiersmen in Blue, 36, Coffman, The Old Army, 152,
346-347, and Utley, Frontier Regulars, 23. Sources on pre-Civil War civilian labor prices are
Lt George H. Steuart to Headquarters, San Antonio, Aug. 12, 1851, Quartermaster, Letters
Received, RG 92 (NA), and Reading Black's diary entries, for example, Aug. 14, 1854, Sept 6,
1854, or Dec. 9, 1855, from Black, The Life and Dzary ofReading W Black, 52, 54 Civilian wages
for the 1868-1869 period are from Post Returns, Fort Inge, Sept.-Dec. 1868, Jan 1869.
20United States Seventh Census (1850), Bexar County, Texas, Population Schedules, Fort
Inge (National Archives Microfilm Publication 432, Roll 9o8, Washington, D.C., 1964); United
States Eighth Census (186o), Uvalde County, Texas, Population Schedules, Fort Inge (National
Archives Microfilm Publication 653, Roll 1307, Vol. 2); Coffman, The Old Army, 143-144;
Utley, Frontier Regulars, 24
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 96, July 1992 - April, 1993, periodical, 1993; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101215/m1/36/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.