William S. Harney

Born on August 27, 1800, in Haysborough (Haysboro), a community on the Cumberland River (then a few miles above Nashville, Tennessee, now incorporated in the city), Harney attended a local private academy. His father Thomas Harney had been an army officer.

In 1817, Harney's brother, Dr. Benjamin F. Harney, an Army surgeon in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, asked Andrew Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812 and the current commander of the Army of the South, to write a letter to the Secretary of the Navy to ask for Harney's acceptance into the Navy, which occurred July 23, 1817. Harney visited his brother and met high-ranking military officers. He so impressed them that they arranged a commission for him as a U.S. Navy second lieutenant, which President James Monroe signed. However, Harney chose to serve under Jackson in the army. His first military assignment under Jackson was in 1818, as a second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Infantry. He helped to force the pirate Jean Lafitte to move his operations from the Louisiana Territory to the Spanish Main.

Harney began his many years of interactions with Native Americans on the Great Plains in 1825, when he accompanied Colonel Henry Atkinson and Benjamin O'Fallon on an expedition to sign treaties with the Upper Missouri tribes. In 1832, Harney fought in the Black Hawk War against the Sauk and Fox tribes, serving as General Zachary Taylor's assistant inspector.[1] There he met, fought, and befriended Jefferson Davis, Taylor's son-in-law and a fellow army officer.

As the American Civil War began, Harney was still in command of the Army's Department of the West based at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, and his wife's family was prominent in the area. General Twiggs accepted a Confederate commission to head the Department of Louisiana and was accordingly dismissed from the US Army and replaced by Edwin V. Sumner. Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson was pro-secession, but the majority of Missourians favored Union. After the bombardment of Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion. Jackson refused and began plotting with Confederate authorities to bring about Missouri's secession by a military coup.

On May 10, 1861, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, commander of the St. Louis Arsenal, led a force of unofficial Unionist "Home Guards" to capture a force of state militia that were poised to seize the Arsenal by acting without any authorization from Harney, his superior. The Camp Jackson Affair resulted in a bloody riot in St. Louis, which horrified Harney.

The state legislature responded by reorganizing the militia as the Missouri State Guard and authorizing it to resist an invasion by federal troops. Harney tried to calm the situation and agreed to the Price–Harney Truce with Guard Commander Sterling Price, who was married to Harney's wife's niece. They agreed that the State Guard would control most of Missouri while federal troops stayed near St. Louis. The deal also involved Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson, who favored secession but swore allegiance to the Union.

That was not acceptable to Unionist leaders in Missouri, including the Republican leader Francis Preston Blair, Jr., since Price did nothing to prevent the organization of pro-Confederate forces or to protect Unionists in his territory. Worsening matters was Harney's Tennessee heritage, which made his loyalty to the Union suspect. Blair reported all to the Lincoln administration in Washington, DC, and was authorized to replace Harney with Lyon, which Blair did on 30 May.

Recalled to Washington to discuss the situation, Harney was captured by Confederates at Harper's Ferry on April 25, 1861.[9] He was offered a command by Confederate General Robert E. Lee but turned down the offer. However, because he was a Tennessean, his captors released him and allowed him to continue on to Washington.

Harney remained in Washington and served in various administrative positions. When it became clear that he would not receive another field command, he retired in 1863 and lived in St. Louis. In recognition of his long and distinguished career, he was awarded and breveted to major general in 1865.

President Andrew Johnson appointed Harney to the Indian Peace Commission and so he returned to the Great Plains in 1865 and 1867 to negotiate treaties. In part because Harney urged the US Congress to honor past treaties, the Sioux called him the "man-who-always-kept-his-word." He helped secure the Little Arkansas Treaty with the Comanche and Kiowa in 1865, the Medicine Lodge Treaty in 1867 and the Fort Laramie Treaty with the Brule Sioux in 1868. In 1868, Harney established three Sioux agencies on the Missouri River, which he did at Whetstone Creek, Cheyenne River, and Grand River.[1]

Harney then retired to Pass Christian, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast and often reminisced with his old friend Jefferson Davis about their old service at Fort Crawford, including their near duel; they forgot their opposite service during the American Civil War.[10] After Davis's death, Harney moved to the Orlando, Florida area, where he died.

In 1833, in St. Louis, he married Mary Mullanphy, daughter of John Mullanphy, an Irish immigrant who became a wealthy merchant in Baltimore and St. Louis' first millionaire. Harney converted to Catholicism, and they had three children including John Mullanphy Harney (1847–1905). However, Harney only saw his wife twice after 1850, and she would relocate to France with their children in 1853, where she died in 1860. Her children would return to St. Louis, and their granddaughter Marie Antoinette Harney Beauregard (1868–1940) would marry the son of Confederate general Pierre Beauregard. In 1884, Harney married Mary St. Cyr (1826–1907).[11]

Harney died at his home near Orlando, Florida, in 1889, just months after Harney County, Oregon was named for him.[12] He was interred at Arlington National Cemetery, as would be his widow in 1907. His will, witnessed by Ulysses S. Grant and filed in St. Louis, gave his son "John Hearney" and daughter "Eliza Hearney" $5 each, and the rest of his property, wherever located, to his widow.[13] Harney is an intriguing figure representing perhaps an individualist standing apart, in an age of rough dichotomies. One time "Indian Fighter", later "Indian Defender" known by the Sioux as "Man Who Keeps His Word"[14] for trying to keep initial peace treaty-terms as they were written and opposing the reneging of said terms, by later officials.

Previously, Harney was known among the Sioux as "Woman Killer." due to his actions (known as the "Harney Massacre") at an Indian village in 1855 at Blue Water Creek, south of the Black Hills: "While engaged in a delaying parley with Chief Little Thunder" Harney's troops "circled undetected" toward the village, "where the infantry opened fire and forced the Indians toward mounted soldiers, who inflicted terrible casualties. 86 Indians were killed, 70 women and children were captured, and their tipis were looted and burned."[15]

• List of American Civil War generals (Union)

• Hogan, Michael (September 2006). "Los San Patricios: The Irish Soldiers of Mexico". Indymedia. Retrieved July 15, 2008..
• L. U. Reavis, The Life of General Harney available at archive.org
• "Harney, William Selby", by Thomas W. Cutrer, in the Handbook of Texas Online, uploaded June 15, 2010.
• Military Career of Wm. S. Harney

• Works by or about William S. Harney at Internet Archive
• Arlington National Cemetery