Exhibit

Although phased out of existence in the 1890s, sutlers (or post traders) had been a part of the United States Army since the beginning of the new republic.  At military posts and with troops in the field, these civilian merchants supplied soldiers with commodities that the Army did not regularly issue.  They also sold goods to overland travelers and to local residents.  Because the sutler often held a monopoly on the soldier’s trade, however, the Army kept close watch on his enterprise in an attempt to assure fair treatment of the troops.  Yet the sutler faced numerous hazards that jeopardized his chances for economic success.  Among the most important of these pitfalls was political patronage; short-term licenses, usually for three years, made the sutler vulnerable to political whim.  Often, through no fault of his own, the sutler lost a promising position to someone with more political clout.  Other dangers included overextension of credit, competition from other merchants, destruction of property by soldiers, and the hazards associated with overland freighting, such as loss of mules or oxen, delays, storms, theft of commodities, and Indian raids.

A look at the career of William H. Moore, sutler at Fort Union, New Mexico, for almost a dozen years in the mid-nineteenth century, will underscore the perils faced by many Western sutlers and also reveal much about the services they performed for the military.  Typical of frontier entrepreneurs, Moore took advantage of any economic opportunity that came along.  But the sutlership at Fort Union was the cornerstone of his financial empire, helping him to become one of the wealthiest men in territorial New Mexico.  Because he fell victim to some of the hazards mentioned above, however, he lost his fortune and died in near obscurity in 1890, nearly two decades after being replaced as Fort Union’s sutler.

Moore’s career also is instructive, because it spanned the turbulent Civil War years and was affected by several changes in laws governing the office of sutler.  Army regulations of 1857 stipulated that sutler nominations originate with a council of administration, composed of the second -- through fourth – ranking officers at a post, with the Secretary of War either accepting or rejecting the nomination.  When war broke out in 1861, no fixed policy existed for appointing sutlers to volunteer forces.  Half of the time, they were appointed by the officer organizing the regiment; at other times they were designated by state governors, the Secretary of War, or by other military authorities.  Disgraceful conduct on the part of some of these new appointees convinced Congress in 1866 to abolish the position of sutler and to turn over to the Subsistence Department the task of supplying various commodities at cost to officers and enlisted men.  Consequently, sutlers were ordered to “clear the [military] reservations” by July 1 of the following year.

The outcry among established sutlers and their civilian clientele was so great, however, that Congress relented, enacting legislation in March 1867 that allowed the Commanding General of the Army to authorize trading establishments at military posts located between 100 degrees west longitude (roughly mid-continent) and the eastern boundary of California, not in the vicinity of urban settlements.  Thereafter, holders of this position were known as post traders.  In May 1867, General Ulysses S. Grant modified existing regulation to permit more than one trader to operate on a military reservation.  An additional law passed in 1870, and one which led to national scandal, allowing trading establishments east and west of the zone created in 1867 and gave the Secretary of War total authority over tradership appointments.  This final modification brought an end to Moore’s trading days at Fort Union.

When he received his appointment as sutler, Moore was an experienced frontier merchant.  Very little is known about his early history, however.  Born in New York between 1815 and 1820, he arrived in New Mexico at the close of the Mexican War (1848).  Shortly thereafter he established a trading post at Tecolote, a way station on the Santa Fe Trail, about 50 miles east of Santa Fe.

There Moore sold goods to local Hispanic residents, and also began trading with Comanches and other Southwestern tribes.  This commerce with Indians, in fact, may have provided the capital necessary to expand his business enterprises.  New Mexicans had been trading profitably with Comanches since the late eighteenth century.  Shortly after U.S. acquisition of the Southwest, however, James S. Calhoun, New Mexico’s first superintendent of Indian affairs, implemented a licensing system that required traders to pay a $10 fee, post a bond of as much as $5,000, and pledge not to trade in munitions of war.  Typically traders bartered bread, flour, cornmeal, sugar, onions, tobacco, and dry goods for horses, mules, buffalo robes, and meat.

By the fall of 1849, Moore was taking part in this lucrative trade, finding a ready sale in New Mexico for mules obtained from the Indians.  Two licenses he received to trade with Comanches in 1850 tell us something of his business arrangements.  Each license was good for about ten weeks and specifically prohibited Moore from trading in “ardent spirits, powder, lead, firearms, or other munitions of war.”  The license, dated June 15, makes clear that Moore employed Hispanos (Jose Maria Herrera as overseer and 23 other men) to conduct the actual trade.  In January 1851 Moore received another license to trade with the Gila Apaches, a tribe in southwestern New Mexico.  Although journeys into Indian territory were fraught with danger, they also were extremely profitable.  Rafael Chaćon, who traded with the Comanches in the 1850s, later recalled that his profits had been “four to one and even more.”

Moore also sold supplies to the Army.  Often he contracted to supply goods to Fort Union, established in July 1851 and about 24 miles northeast of Las Vegas, New Mexico, on the Santa Fe Trail.  The post was intended to protect travelers and local settlers from marauding Indians and to serve as a supply depot.  After the Civil War, the newly rebuilt post would become the largest military installation in New Mexico.

Only a few months after the founding of Fort Union, Moore supplied its quartermaster with a large number of mules and some beef cattle.  Moreover, during the decade of the 1850s, Moore and his partner, Burton L. Reese, furnished more forage to the Army than any other New Mexico contractor.  Between 1852 and 1858 they held nine corn contracts, agreeing to deliver this commodity to Forts Union, Marcy, and Stanton and to troops stationed in Albuquerque.  On occasion they also delivered hay (natural grass), purchasing both the hay and corn from small Hispanic producers.  And for nearly five years, starting in 1854, they held the contract for herding the Army’s principal herd of beef cattle in the vicinity of Fort Union.

Moore and Reese likewise furnished supplies to the Indian Department.  Late in 1856, for example, they sent a herd of more than 100 cattle to the Navajo Agency at Fort Defiance, about 230 miles directly west of Fort Union, and the following year they sold beef and corn to the Mescalero Agency near Fort Stanton in southeastern New Mexico.

Although Moore and Reese profited from these trading ventures, they also ran the risk of losing their investments during the Indian-white hostilities.  Those were years when New Mexicans and their Indian neighbors seemingly alternated trade with deadly warfare.  During the spring of 1854, Cheyenne Indians, joined by Arapahos and Kiowas, unleashed a devastating attach on northern New Mexico in retaliation for the murder of two Cheyennes.  The Indians swept through the Pecos Valley and in one week killed 21 settlers, captured 10 herderboys, and ran off a large number of horses and mules.

During this raid, a party of nine Cheyennes fell upon the ranch that Moore and Reese operated on the Pecos River, 15 miles below the village of Anton Chico, driving away a substantial number of horses, mules, and cattle.  Reese, who had charge of the ranch, set out in pursuit with some of his ranch hands but had to retreat when the raiders joined a larger band of Indians.  While Reese was absent from the ranch, however, another party of Indians made away with several saddles, blankets, overcoats, and other equipment.  Moore and Reese estimated the total value of the stolen property at $2,880 – a significant loss for any frontier entrepreneur.

Despite this setback, the partners apparently did a thriving business at their store in Tecolote, where Moore gained a reputation as a genial host.  William Kroenig, a prominent New Mexican rancher, provides the earliest known reference to Moore’s establishment in a diary he kept, describing a trip to Santa Fe in 1849:  “At Tecolote we found a Mr. Moore, who was running a store.  Here we were allowed to sleep, as this gentleman provided us with guards and herders.  All the men from the wagon train congregated in or about the store and all during the night news was passed from one to the other, and religious singing took place.  It was a pleasant night.”

In 1853 two government officials recorded their encounters with Moore.  While campaigning for election as territorial delegate to Congress, New Mexico Governor William Carr Lane spent the night at Moore’s and later, having lost the contest, again lodged with Moore on his return home to St. Louis.  That same year the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, W. W. H. Davis, stopped at Tecolote en route to Santa Fe.  In his classic ‘El Gringo: or, New Mexico and Her People’, published in 1857, Davis wrote:  “Mr. Moore, an accommodating and intelligent American, is located here, who appears to be pushing business with the usual energy of our countrymen, wherever found.”

By 1859 Moore had all the prerequisites required of a post sutler:  merchandising experience, a good reputation, first-hand relations with high-ranking Army officers, and sufficient wealth to keep a well-stocked sutler’s store.  In fact, his personal property was valued at $150,000 in the 1860 census and his real estate at $15,000.  By this time, he also had acquired a family, although his wife and five children – ages two through nine – remain shadowy figures.  It may be that Dolores Montoya, listed as residing with Moore in the 1850 census, was the mother of these children, although she does not appear in the Moore household a decade later.

Early in 1859, a council of administration nominated Moore as sutler at Fort Union, and although the Secretary of War approved this appointment in March, Moore was unable to assume his official duties until December 31, when the three-year-term of his predecessor, George M. Alexander, expired.  In March 1860, Burton Reese received an appointment as sutler at Fort Stanton.  Moore had acquired a second partner, 32-year-old William C. Mitchell, a native of Maryland.  Apparently the three men managed both sutlerships under the name William H. Moore and Company, although Reese soon left the territory for California.

Both before and after his appointment as Fort Union’s sutler, Moore carried out small favors for the military.  On April 5, 1861, for example, Colonel Thomas T. Fauntleroy, commanding the Department of New Mexico, requested he send a reliable messenger to invite Comanche chiefs to a peace conference.  Moore willingly obliged, sending two men into Comanche territory and agreeing to pay them $100 out of his own pocket “if they do well.”

Moore performed even more valuable services during the Confederate invasion of New Mexico.  The Civil War years, in fact, were to make Moore a wealthy man; but the war itself posed a serious threat to the territory.  In its drive to expand westward, the Southern Confederacy meant to take New Mexico by force, thereby also opening the way to valuable goldfields in Colorado and California.  A small force, led by Lieutenant Colonel John R. Baylor, entered southern New Mexico in July 1861 and quickly overpowered Union troops in the Mesilla Valley.  Baylor then sent a detachment to occupy Fort Stanton.

Learning of the Confederate advance, the commanding officer at Fort Stanton abandoned the post after setting it afire.  Unfortunately for William H. Moore and Company, the Union commander also ordered the destruction of its sutler supplies to keep them from falling into enemy hands.

Meanwhile, Union officials in northern New Mexico readied the populace for the coming ordeal.  They sent spies, including some of Moore’s employees, down the Pecos River to scout for rebel troops and eventually recruited more than 2,800 volunteers to help defend the territory.  The Army also decided to transfer its major supply depot from Albuquerque to Fort Union.  As a result, Fort Union was inundated with new personnel, both military and civilian.  The number of troops stationed there jumped from 357 in May to 1,531 in September, although the figure in later months dropped to fewer than 400 men.

At the center of this activity, Moore anticipated increased sales at his sutler’s store.  Imagine his shock when he learned that another merchant, Levi Spiegelberg, had arrived at the post as sutler of the volunteer regiments, threatening to siphon away some of the profits.  Moore wasted little time in registering his protest.  In a letter to Colonel Edward R. S. Canby, then commanding the Department, Moore charged that his own warrant as sutler guaranteed to him “the sole right and privilege to suttle for all troops of the United States from time to time stationed at Fort Union for the term of three years.”  He also referred to the large investment he had made in merchandise and claimed that a good portion would be sacrificed if another sutler introduced goods onto the post.  Despite Moore’s arguments, Candy allowed Spiegelberg to continue trading with the volunteers.

Conditions in New Mexico became critical when General Henry H. Sibley arrived in mid-December 1861 at the head of three regiments of Texas-Confederate soldiers.  Their advance up the Rio Grande rekindled efforts by Union officials to recruit volunteers, organize the militia, and collect supplies from the surrounding countryside.  In February 1862 Confederate troops defeated Union forces at Valverde Ford north of Fort Craig, but on March 28 the Texans themselves met misfortune at Apache Canyon near Santa Fe.  Union troops destroyed their supply train, forcing them to evacuate the territory.

During those stormy months, Moore came to the Army’s rescue on more than one occasion.  The biggest problem the military faced was lack of funds.  New Mexicans were suspicious of government-issued certificates of indebtedness and demanded gold and silver for Army purchases.  After moving the supply depot to Fort Union, Captain John C. McFerran, the Department’ assistant quartermaster, reported that he was totally without funds and unable to purchase hay or to pay laborers required to work on fortifications.  Subsequently, Moore became McFerran’s chief source of specie (LHB note: coin money).  He turned over to McFerran every dollar he received in his store, and he gave his personal note for specie to individuals who would not take government drafts.  Canby later testified that “the personal credit of the Messrs. Moore and Mitchell stood higher with the native population of New Mexico than did that of the Gov’t.”  McFerran avowed that had it not been for Moore “who furnished us with every dollar we used at the time [of the invasion], the Department would not have been able to meet the demands upon it.”

At some point during the invasion, the Army contemplated abandoning the Fort Union depot to remove supplies from the Texans’ path, but the military lacked sufficient transportation for this maneuver.  Had officers attempted to secure civilian wagons to move supplies, McFerran claimed, their owners would have become alarmed and would have placed the wagons out of the Army’s reach.  McFerran later testified, “To avoid this, Messrs. Moore and Mitchell volunteered their services, and under plea of wanting wagons to send east for hoods, hired, in their own name, several hundreds of wagons, which they held in readiness [for the Army’s use].”

Although William H. Moore and Company earned the gratitude of the Army high command, it may not have won the affections of many enlisted men.  Everywhere in the Army, especially during the Civil War, soldiers grumbled about the sutler’s exorbitant prices and considered his store fair game.  Private Ovando Hollister describes in his diary how on two occasions in March 1862 volunteers raided the sutler’s store at Fort Union.  On the second foray, they “broke into the Sutler’s cellar and gobbled a lot of whiskey, wine, canned fruit, oysters, etc.”

Once the Confederate threat was over, Moore and Mitchell continued to advance large sums of money to cover military expenditures while at the same time expanding their own commercial enterprise.  During the war years, the Army began rebuilding Fort Union on a site northeast of the old post.  By 1865, when young William Ryus worked for Moore, the sutler’s store at the new location was an impressive sight.  Ryus later recalled that the store was “built like a fort,” with 150-foot-long walls of adobe brick forming a square with an open plaza in the center, where “wagons drove in to unload and reload.”

While Moore directed operations in New Mexico, Mitchell resided in St. Louis to oversee the purchasing of supplies, sometimes traveling to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, on business.  On at least one occasion Mitchell met briefly with Abraham Lincoln, introducing a young and awed employee, James E. Farmer, to the ill-fated President.

Freighting across the Plains was big business and required financial acumen on the part of both partners, to be successful.  And, indeed, Moore and Mitchell conducted business on an impressive scale.  In the spring of 1866, they hauled across the Plains in their own wagon train merchandise valued at more than $50,000.  The following year, in seeking reappointment as post trader at Fort Union, Moore estimated that the firm had $100,000 worth of goods on hand, $75,000 in goods on the road, and buildings worth more than $25,000.  Significantly, he estimated that the trade with freighters and others not in the employ of the Army amounted to $75,000 per year.

Moore may have inflated his figures to strengthen his case, however, for in 1870 Mitchell told a representative of R. G. Dun & Co. (forerunner of Dun & Bradstreet) that the storehouse and buildings at Fort Union had cost the firm $10,000.  It is impossible to estimate reliably the extent of Moore’s wealth.  One contemporary called him a millionaire; another said that in the mid-1860s his enterprises brought in an annual profit of $100,000 and that his daily sales at Fort Union often reached $2,000.  William Ryus in his memoirs avowed that when he worked at Fort Union, the sutler’s store was stocked with merchandise worth between $350,000 and $500,000.  And R. G. Dun & Co. noted in 1867 that Moore probably had made in profit not less than $50,000 in the previous year.  Although these figures cannot be verified, we do know that the Santa Fe press listed Moore as New Mexico’s largest taxpayer in 1867 and the third largest in 1868.

Moore’s longtime bookkeeper, Henry V. Harris, later testified that 1863 and 1864 were the most profitable years for William H. Moore and Company.  During that time, Fort Union was a bustling military community.  Between 300 and 500 troops regularly garrisoned the post, while the quartermaster’s department employed nearly 400 civilians – all seemingly eager to sample the sutler’s wares.

Moore’s store offered a glittering array of merchandise; almost anything was available for the customer whose credit was good.  A surviving ledger shows that officers purchased a wide variety of alcoholic beverages and other delicacies: wine, whiskey, brandy, port, and champagne as well as canned oysters, sardines, roast lamb, chicken, tomatoes, peaches, strawberries, and blackberries.  Family men charged to their accounts women’s shoes, hoop skirts, hairpins, children’s hats and shoes, toys table linen, flatware, cooking utensils, dishes of all kinds, and a variety of cloth and sewing materials.  Unfortunately, the ledger contains no accounts for enlisted men, although they probably purchased some of the same items that officers and civilians purchased: tobacco, cheese and crackers, candy, apples, soap, paper, needles, canned fruit at $1.50 per can, and whiskey at $1.50 to $2.50 per bottle.

Even though the post council of administration fixed the prices of these commodities, two different Army inspectors – one in 1862 and another in 1865 – complained that Moore’s prices were exorbitant.  When a new council of administration subsequently set the price of some goods below their actual cost, the post commander, Christopher “Kit” Carson, detailed a lieutenant to rectify this mistake.  As a result of the lieutenant’s investigation, the firm was allowed a profit of 331/3 percent, to be added to the total cost of the items delivered to the post.

Army regulations of 1861 forbade sutlers from selling on credit to an enlisted man goods that cost more than one-third of his monthly pay, although Moore on occasion exceeded this limit.  The same regulations allowed Moore to sit at the pay table to collect the amount soldiers owed to his firm.  And as a favor to Moore, the quartermaster’s department paid its civilian employees at Fort Union through his store, further assisting him in collecting from his customers.  In fact, Moore and Company served as the garrison’s unofficial bank – cashing checks, lending money, and holding savings.  For the privilege of conducting business on the reservation, Moore probably was assessed a tax of as much as ten cents a month for every officer and soldier at the post, as authorized by Army regulations, although there is no evidence that the tax was actually collected.  This money was to go into a post fund to be used for the good of the soldiers.

In 1863 William H. Moore and Company expanded its commercial empire.  The firm established a store in Franklin (now El Paso), Texas, and also became the post sutler (for three years) at nearby Fort Bliss.  Nathan Webb, a partner since 1861, managed both concerns under the name of N. Webb and Company.  The parent firm also joined William Kroenig in building a flouring mill in 1863 near the junction of the Mora and Sapello Rivers nine miles from Fort Union.  Moore built a house on this property and may have resided there after losing the sutler’s position.  For a few years, at least, the mill was quite profitable, running constantly to fill government flour and wheat-meal contracts.

In fact, the firm must have realized a hefty profit from the many supply contracts it held with the Army.  In 1861 Moore and Company won contracts to furnish Fort Union with 100 tons of hay at $45 per ton and an unspecified amount of beans at $5 per bushel. Then, during Sibley’s advance into northern New Mexico, the firm agreed to deliver one million pounds of corn from the States at 83/4 cents per pound.  In 1863, the year the mill was completed, the partners agreed to deliver 250,000 pounds of flour at Albuquerque; and the following year they agreed to furnish a total of 1,250,000 pounds at Forts Union, Sumner, Bascom, and Stanton, plus corn and wheat meal at Sumner.  In later years the firm held additional contracts for the delivery of beef cattle, flour, and hay to several New Mexico posts.

Moore was also heavily involved in transportation contracts.  The firm already had considerable experience moving goods across the Plains when in 1865 and again in 1870 Moore won contracts to transport military supplies within the Department of New Mexico.  Moreover, in at least four other seasons, he carried out the obligation of other transportation contractors.  This work entailed heavy investments in mules, wagons, harnesses, and personnel.

Despite his many valuable services to the military, Moore had to work hard to retain his position as sutler.  Early in 1866, for example, he successfully fought off attempts by Charles F. Shoemaker to be named sutler for the quartermaster and commissary departments at the post.  But he had less success fighting powerful Senator James H. Lane of Kansas, who applied to President Andrew Johnson later that same year to have his son-in-law Charles W. Adams replace Moore as sutler.  Johnson, indebted to Lane for supporting his presidential Reconstruction policy, wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton strongly recommending Adam’s appointment.  Stanton promptly commissioned Adams to this post.  And although officers acquainted with Moore’s selflessness during the Confederate invasion stepped forward to plead for Moore’s retention, Adam’s appointment stood firm.

Bowing to circumstances, Moore and Mitchell took Adams into the partnership and continued to operate the Union sutlership under the name of W. H. Moore, Adams & Co.  A year later Adams resigned as sutler, possibly having never set foot in New Mexico.  But he did fatten his wallet, for W. H. Moore and Company purchased his entire interest in the firm for $14,000.

About the time Adams resigned, Moore was busily investing in a number of speculative enterprises that probably failed to produce many profits.  He purchased more than $11,000 worth of stock in the New Mexican Woolen Manufacturing Company, for example, located in Cherry Valley 15 miles south of Fort Union.  And he also became heavily involved in the new goldfields opening in Moreno Valley in Colfax county about 50 miles north of the post.

In fact, in June 1867 Moore established the first store in Moreno Valley, hoping to capture the mining trade.  Elizabethtown, the bustling mining camp that grew up around his store, soon sported a variety of businesses, including two restaurants, two saloons, a drugstore, a barbershop, and gambling houses.  The Santa Fe press reported in 1868 that Moore’s store “is immensely stocked, and is doing a magnificent business” under the management of Morris Bloomfield.  E-Town, as the camp was called, was at its peak in the following two years, but no further mention of Moore’s store is found in the records.

Moore also invested at least $5,000 in the Copper Mining Company, a firm incorporated in the spring of 1867 by Moore, Lucien B. Maxwell, William Kroenig, and several other prominent men in organizing the Virginia City Town Company, a real estate venture attempting to promote a new mining town six miles south of Elizabethtown.  The site proved too far from the diggings, however, and the sale of property never met expectations.

Because Moreno Valley lacked sufficient water to carry on extensive mining, the Moreno Valley Water and Mining Company was formed in 1868 to finance construction of a ditch to carry water from the Red River east across mountain passes to the gold fields.  Initially Moore invested $45,000 in stock in the firm and then advanced an additional $20,000 in later months.  Although the first water flowed through the 41-mile system of ditches and aqueducts in July 1869, the company eventually went broke, the ditch failing to deliver the anticipated volume of water because of leaks and breaks.  According to the local press, Moore “lost heavily in the Moreno ditch enterprise.”

These speculative ventures, coupled with legal suits, Indian depredation, and government patronage, threatened to topple Moore’s financial empire.  In August 1868 Gertrude Webb instituted a lengthy and presumably costly court case against Moore and Mitchell to recover her late husband’s fair share in the company.  Nathan Webb had died two years earlier, and the widow, failing to gain a satisfactory settlement from the surviving partners, initiated a suit that was not settled for several years.  In 1873, however, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Territorial Supreme Court’s decision to award the widow $72,900.  As a result of the higher court’s ruling, Gertrude Webb (by then Mrs. David L. Huntington) should have received about one-third of this amount.  But the records fail to disclose the sum she actually collected from the financially strapped partners.

William H. Moore and Company received an additional financial setback on may 26, 1869, when a party of 15 Cheyenne Indians in broad daylight raided the outskirts of Sheridan, Kansas, driving away 215 mules belonging to the firm’s wagon train.  Although some animals were later recovered, 153 remained in the raiders’ possession.  Moore and Mitchell wasted little time in filing a claim with the government, asking reimbursement of $46,120 to cover their losses.  That figure included $200 for each stolen mule, $1,000 in travel expenses to identify recaptured animals, $2,500 to $3,000 to transport goods in other freighters’ wagons, and additional sums to cover debts incurred as a result of the raid.  Although never doubting the legitimacy of the claim, government officials later reduced it to $22,950.  Still, the issue remained unresolved at the time of Moore’s death.

In the end, however, it was politics rather than litigation and Indian depredations that forced William H. Moore and Company to leave the Fort Union reservation.  In September 1869 General John M. Schofield, commanding the Department of the Missouri, granted John C. Dent, brother-in-law of President Ulysses S. Grant, authority to open a trading establishment at Fort Union.  The President must have approved or even encouraged this action for he had requested a tradership for Dent as early as 1867.

For several months Moore and Dent each operated a store at Fort Union, but this arrangement ended shortly after passage of the 1870 law giving total appointment power of post traders to the Secretary of War.  On July 18, 1870, Moore wrote to Secretary William W. Belknap requesting reappointment under the new law.  None of the testimonials he solicited on his own behalf, however, swayed the Secretary.  On October 7 Belknap reaffirmed Dent’s appointment and a month later authorized “the firm of W. H. Moore & Company to remain at Fort Union, as traders, until January 1, 1871, and no longer.”

There is no evidence that Dent distributed bonus money to secure the tradership; his connection with the President was sufficient to win the position.  But the Belknap scandal that broke in the spring of 1876 revealed that several other applicants had spent large sums in pursuing their goal.  Several old friends of Secretary Belknap, in fact, became lobbyists for aspirants, accepting fees of as much as $1,000 for their help in securing an appointment.  One influence peddler, J. M. Hedrick, accumulated $20,750 and one-third interest in at least four traderships in this manner.  Historian W. N. Davis believes, however, that “only a small percentage of the traderships were involved in outright bribery and sale.”

On March 2, 1876, Belknap resigned as Secretary to avoid impeachment, but Congress began proceedings against him nonetheless.  He was tried only in connection with selling the tradership at Fort Sill, Oklahoma – and won acquittal.  Many senators who believed Belknap guilty voted against conviction because they questioned whether Congress had jurisdiction over an individual no longer in office.  Because of the Belknap scandal, however, the old system of allowing councils of administration to initiate trader nominations was restored in 1876.

But the loss of the tradership was a financial blow to William H. Moore and Company.  In November 1870 Moore had written to Belknap requesting to remain at the post until the following March to close out the business.  The firm had on hand, he avowed, a large stock of goods. “that we cannot dispose of except at a military post, and if we are compelled to take our goods away from here at once, and not be allowed time to settle up our outstanding debts it will involve upon us a loss of many thousands of dollars.”  He ended his plea with these words:  “We know that our record during the Rebellion will show that we are entitled to this much consideration from you, and from the government.”

Belknap, however, refused the request.  And, indeed, Moore’s fears probably were justified.  Within two years of his departure from Fort Union, Moore’s firm was listed by R. G. Dun & Co. as “considerably broken up, heavy judgments [against] them.  Do not pay their debts.”

Meanwhile, Moore had taken up residence near Watrous in the Mora Valley a few miles south of Fort Union, where for nearly two decades he lived the quiet life of a gentleman farmer.  In 1874 he married Mary C. Magruder, about 30 years his junior and the daughter of Charles Magruder, Moore’s former bookkeeper.  Mary and William produced at least one child, a daughter named Jane.  But it was John Moore, Moore’s son by his first wife who helped manage the family farm, which in 1885 comprised 15 acres of improved land.  Here the Moores raised a few horses and milk cows and tended five acres of apple trees.

During those years Moore was heavily involved in litigation.  Hounded by several creditors and hoping to make good on some of his debts, he diligently pushed his Indian depredation claim through the government bureaucracy.  Neither Moore nor Mitchell, however, lived to see the claim settled.  On June 16, 1898, 21 years after Mitchell’s death, a judgment was made in favor of Mitchell’s estate for the sum of $11,475, one-half the amount the government allowed on the partners’ joint claim.  But in settling with Moore’s estate, the government resurrected two outstanding claims against Moore, both involving him as bondsman for failed government officials.

In July 1874 the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe had assessed damages of $3,320 against Moore and Charles W. Kitchen, bondsmen for George W. Howland, a Santa Fe postmaster who had misappropriated government money.  A decade later the court again ruled against Moore in a case that had its origins prior to the Civil War.  On July 26, 1858, Moore and Taos merchant Ceran St. Vrain signed a $20,000 bond for Thomas G. Rhett paymaster of the U.S. Army.  At the outbreak of war, Rhett had left the territory to fight for the Confederacy, never bothering to settle his financial affairs.  In one of the true ironies of Moore’s career, the court ordered him to pay $20,000 to cover damages the United States had sustained when Rhett deserted to the Rebel cause, completely ignoring Moore’s role in helping to save the Department of New Mexico from bankruptcy.  In 1917, long after Moore’s death and nearly half a century after the Cheyenne raid, the U.S. Court of Claims handed down its final decision concerning Moore’s depredation claim.  The Court acknowledged that Moore’s estate was due $11,475, but this amount was more than offset by the sums Moore still owed the government in the Howland and Rhett cases.  In balancing the ledger, the Court ruled that Moore’s estate owed the government more than $16,000.

On May 6, 1890, William H. Moore died at his residence near Watrous; his wife preceded him in death by about ten months.  In lamenting his passing, the local press wrote of the large fortune he had amassed while post trader at Fort Union.  It also reported that “at the time of his death [his wealth] had dwindled away to almost nothing.”  During probate proceedings, in fact, the deceased’s personal property (a miscellaneous assortment of tools, furniture, blankets, books, kitchen utensils, and farm animals) was valued at only $450.

In many respects, Moore’s story is typical of other entrepreneurs who traveled West to exploit the young nation’s abundant resources.  Like William A. Carter at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, Seth Ward at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and Alvin C. Leighton at Fort Buford, Montana, Moore used the sutlership as a springboard to greater financial success.  Profits from their sutler’s stores enabled these men to invest in a variety of other commercial enterprises, thereby helping to develop the economies of their respective localities.

Still, the majority of sutlers and post traders failed to attain the great wealth of Moore, Carter, Ward, and Leighton.  Nor did they retain their post trading privileges for as many years as these men.  Certainly many lost their positions as a result of politics.  But it would be instructive to know to what extent the government bureaucracy ignored sacrifices on the part of these merchants in reassigning the traderships.  And it would also be interesting to learn how many suffered a total reversal of fortunes, as did Moore, after losing the tradership.

But even as Moore’s fortunes declined, the days of the post trader were numbered.  John C. Dent complained in 1876 that since taking over at Fort Union from Moore “the business as trader has not been remunerative . . . owing to the small command stationed at this post.”  In fact, post traderships declined in value throughout the West in the late 1870s and the 1880s, as the Army initiated a retrenchment program, eliminating some posts and reducing the garrison strength of others.  In 1889 a general order authorizing the U.S. Army’s canteen system signaled the end of an era.  Once commanding figures in military and civilian society, post traders soon vanished from Western military installations.

In their heyday, however, sutlers and traders had performed valuable services for civilians and military personnel alike.  Their stores often were rendezvous for emigrants crossing the continent or for local settlers seeking information, supplies, and social intercourse.  They likewise furnished officers and enlisted men with clubrooms and commodities, and at the same time performed other valuable services for the military high command.  Imaginative, hardworking, and willing to take risks, these merchants were a part of an entrepreneurial vanguard seeking their fortunes in the sparsely settled American West.

 

The above article appeared in the April 1993 issue of Journal of the West, an illustrated quarterly published by Journal of the West, Inc., Manhattan, Kansas, volume XXXII, number 2, pages 7-18.  The attempt has been made to transcribe the work both accurately and completely, although the original publication contained photographs, a U.S. Army pay table and Fort Union location maps.  Darlis A. Miller, the article's author, in 1993 was professor of history at New Mexico State University.  Her Ph.D. in history is from the University of New Mexico, and she has published a variety of works on Western and military subjects.