William J. Fetterman
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William Judd Fetterman (1833? – December 21, 1866) was an officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War and the subsequent Red Cloud's War on the Great Plains. Fetterman and all his immediate command were killed during the Fetterman massacre.
Fetterman was probably born in New London, Connecticut, although there is some uncertainty. He enlisted in the Union army in Delaware in 1861. He served with the First Battalion of the 18th U.S. Infantry throughout the Civil War and was twice brevetted for gallant conduct, finishing the war a Lieutenant Colonel of Volunteers. After the war, he remained in the Regular Army and was assigned as a captain in the Second Battalion of the US 18th Infantry Regiment, stationed at Fort Phil Kearny in November 1866.
On December 21, 1866, a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux, including Crazy Horse, under Red Cloud attacked a wood train near the fort. Despite his unfamiliarity with frontier conditions and methods of Indian fighting, Fetterman volunteered to lead a relief party of 80 men. Ignoring orders not to venture beyond Lodge Trail Ridge, he led his troops into an ambush. He and his entire party were killed in the attack. He had allegedly once boasted that with 80 men, he could "ride through the Sioux Nation."
The Fetterman massacre, as the incident became known, was second only to the Custer's defeat in 1876. It led to the dismissal of his commanding officer, Henry B. Carrington, who was initially blamed for the disaster, but eventually exonerated.
Fetterman's grave is in the National Cemetery at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. He never married and left no heirs, so his pension was sent to his mother.
In 1867, the army named a new outpost in the Dakota Territory "Fort Fetterman" in honor of the slain officer.
[edit] References
- Brown, Dee, The Fetterman Massacre, University of Nebraska Press, 1971. ISBN 0-8032-5730-9.[[Category:People of Connecticut in the American Civil War|Fetterman, W]
