Almost all visitors agreed that Michael Fagan's grave was a direct result of the Marcy-Loring military expedition of the late 1850's. As such, its story cannot be fully told without first looking at this expedition in its historical context. The expedition had grown out of the exigencies of the Mormon War of 1857-58. In the summer of 1857 newly-elected President James Buchanan had ordered that a military force be sent from Fort Leavenworth to Utah Territory. This army was to install and sustain Alfred Cumming as new governor of the territory. Brigham Young was to be deposed. Federal judges were to be protected. Above all, the Mormons were to be forced to obey the laws of the land.
When news of this presidential decision reached Salt Lake City Brigham Young declared martial law. A scorched-earth policy was adopted. Parties of armed men were sent out to harass the approaching troops. Their orders were: burn the grass; stampede the cattle; capture the supply wagons; do everthing short of open attack to impede the army's progress.
By mid-November of 1857 the harried army from Leavenworth had progressed no farther than Fort Bridger in what is now southwestern Wyoming. Here - in buildings burned to their rock foundations by the Mormons - Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston and his hundreds of ragged and frozen troops took up winter quarters. Rations were in short supply. Even with the proposed slaughter of the work oxen it was not certain that the army could survive much past late spring. One party was sent to Oregon for added supplies. Another party, under the command of Captain Randolph B. Marcy, was ordered to New Mexico.
Captain Marcy's march to the southeast was graphically described in the report of the Secretary of War for 1858:
"Captain Marcy left Fort Bridger on the 24th day of November, 1857, with a command of forty enlisted men and twenty-five mountain men, besides packers and guides. Their course lay through an almost trackless wilderness, over lofty and rugged mountains, without a pathway or human habitation to guide or direct, in the very depth of winter, through snows, for many miles together, reaching to the depth of five feet. Their beasts of burden very rapidly perished until very few were left; their supplies gave out; their luggage was abandoned. They were driven to subsist upon the carcasses of their dead horses and mules; all the men became greatly emaciated; some were frostbitten....
"After a march of fifty-one days, they emerged from the forests and found themselves at Fort Massachusetts, in New Mexico."(1)
Following a period of recuperation,the Marcy command moved south to Taos. Here the civilians of the party were paid off and dismissed. Here, too, purchases were made of provisions and freighting wagons, of horses and mules and oxen and sheep (1,500 animals in all). Guides were recruited. Mexican herdsmen were hired. Civilian teamsters were given charge of the wagons.
By early March of 1858 Captain Marcy and his train of wagons were at Fort Union, northeast of Santa Fe, with an order for mounted escort to Utah. Second Lieutenant John Dubois and a detachment of twenty-five mounted rifles were detailed for the trip. A few days later Captain Bowman arrived from Fort Massachusetts with an additional force of seventy-five privates from the Third Infantry. Counting Captain Marcy's original detail of thirty privates, this made an effective force of 139 fighting men to guard the provision train.
Before starting on the route north the expedition made a short side trip to Rayado in northern New Mexico. Here rancher Lucien Maxwell invited the men to a series of parties called bailes. "Women were plenty & quite pretty," wrote Dubois. "We had a gay enough time in spite of ten inches of snow which fell yesterday."(2) The final baile ended with a dinner of ox ribs and tortillas. The dinner lasted until 3 o'clock in the morning. Six hours later Dubois and his companions were in the saddle and enroute to Fort Bridger.
FOOTNOTES -
(1)- Randolph B. Marcy, Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border, New York Harper & Brothers, 1866).
(2)- John Van Heusen Dubois, Campaigns in the West, 1856-1861, ed. by George P. Hammond. (Tucson: Arizona Pioneers West Society, 1949).