The march of the Mormon Battalion to the Pacific sea in 1846-7 created
one of the most picturesque features of American history and one without
parallel in American military annals. There was incidental creation,
through Arizona, of the first southwestern wagon road. Fully as
remarkable as its travel was the constitution of the Battalion itself. It
was assembled hastily for an emergency that had to do with the seizure of
California from Mexico. Save for a few officers detailed from the regular
army, not a man had been a soldier, unless in the rude train-bands that
held annual muster in that stage of the Nation's progress, however
skilled certain members might have been in the handling of hunting arms.
Organization was a matter of only a few days before the column had been
put into motion toward the west. There was no drill worthy of the name.
There was establishment of companies simply as administrative units.
Discipline seems to have been very lax indeed, even if there were periods
in which severity of undue sort appears to have been made manifest by the
superior officers.
Still more remarkable, the rank and file glorified in being men of peace,
to whom strife was abhorrent. They were recruited from a people who had
been driven from a home of prosperity and who at the time were encamped
in most temporary fashion, awaiting the word of their leaders to pass on
to the promised western Land of Canaan. For a part of the way there went
with the Battalion parts of families, surely a very unmilitary
proceeding, but most of people, whom they were to join later on the shore
of the Great Salt Lake of which they knew so little. They were illy clad
and shod, were armed mainly with muskets of type even then obsolete, were
given wagon transportation from the odds and ends of a military post
equipment and thus were set forth upon their great adventure.
Formation of the Mormon Battalion came logically as a part of the
determination of the Mormon people to seek a new home in the West, for in
1846 there had come conclusion that no permanent peace could be known in
Illinois or in any of the nearby States, owing to religious prejudice.
The High Council had made announcement of the intention of the people to
move to some good valleys of the Rocky Mountains. President Jesse C.
Little of the newly created Eastern States Mission of the Church, was
instructed to visit Washington and to secure, if possible, governmental
assistance in the western migration. One suggestion was that the Mormons
be sent to construct a number of stockade posts along the overland route.
But, finally, after President Little had had several conferences with
President Polk, there came decision to accept enlistment of a Mormon
military command, for dispatch to the Pacific Coast. The final orders cut
down the enlistment from a proffered 2000 to 500 individuals.