Patrick Edward Connor Research Paper

Patrick Edward Connor commanded the Stockton Blues of the California Militia at the outbreak of the Civil War. He quickly recruited the Blues to regimental strength and was appointed colonel, 4 September 1861. The regiment and two companies of the 2d California Cavalry were immediately ordered to Utah Territory to protect the Overland Stage and Pacific Telegraph rights of way, and to act as a force of observation in order to forestall any joint activity between Mormon recalcitrants and Southern sympathizers seeking to secure the Southwest for the Confederacy. After a forced march across the blazing Nevada desert, Connor established Camp Ruby, about 70 miles southeast of Elko, and immediately set about discharging his mission, assigning troops
In March 1863 Connor was appointed Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers, and appointed to command Utah Military District, with headquarters at Fort Douglas. He thereupon led the Powder River expedition to quell the Sioux and Comanche in 1865, an action which signalled commencement of the struggle for the Bozeman Trail which raged in the watershed of the Big Horry Mountains for the next 16 years between the frontier Army and the Indians, culminating in the shocking defeat of Custer on the Little Bighorn and, in turn, the ultimate suppression of the warring Sioux and their allies. Connor's expedition is called "on the whole a dismal failure," but it did establish a short-lived peace and it did prove that the Army could not successfully' contend with Indian warriors battling desperately on ground of their own choosing (to protect their last hunting grounds) with large, ungainly columns filled with troops anxious to get home now that the war was over. During late 1865 and in 1866 Connor ranged far and wide, from Colorado to the Dakotas, commanding regiments of Galvanized Yankees, or ex-Confederate soldiers recruited in prison camps to serve in the blue-clad army against the Indians in the