Stephen Watts Kearny (sometimes spelled Kearney) ( KAR-nee) (August 30, 1794 – October 31, 1848) was one of the foremost antebellum frontier officers of the United States Army. He is remembered for his significant contributions in the Mexican–American War, especially the Conquest of California. The Kearny Code, proclaimed on September 22, 1846, in Santa Fe, established the law and government of the newly acquired territory of New Mexico and was named after him. His nephew was Major General Philip Kearny of American Civil War fame.
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Early years
Stephen Watts Kearny was the fifteenth and youngest child of Philip and Susanna Watts Kearny. His father, who was of Irish ancestry (the family name had originally been O'Kearny), was a successful wine merchant and landowner in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, before the start of the American Revolution (1775–1783). Kearny was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Philip Kearny Sr. and Susanna Watts. His maternal grandparents were the wealthy merchant Robert Watts of New York and Mary Alexander, the daughter of Major General "Lord Stirling" William Alexander and Sarah "Lady Stirling" Livingston of American Revolutionary War fame. Stephen Watts Kearny attended Columbia University in New York City for two years. He joined the New York militia as an ensign in 1812.
Marriage and family
In the late 1820s, after his career was established, Kearny met, courted, and married Mary Radford, the stepdaughter of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The couple had eleven children, of whom six died in childhood. He was the uncle of Philip Kearny, a Union general in the American Civil War who was killed at the Battle of Chantilly.
Career
In 1812, Kearny was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the War of 1812 in the 13th Infantry Regiment in the U.S. Army. On October 13, 1812, during the Battle of Queenston Heights, Kearny and Lieutenant Colonel Winfield Scott led a charge that took the British position, but the British retook it when the "untrained militiamen" did not reinforce the U.S. regulars who had taken the objective. "Humiliated, Kearny and Scott were forced to surrender"; wounded and captured, he and Scott spent several months in captivity before being paroled. This experience hardened his prejudice against militias for the rest of his army career. Kearny was promoted to captain on April 1, 1813. After the war, he chose to remain in the U.S. Army and was promoted to brevet major in 1823; major in 1829; and lieutenant colonel in 1833. He was assigned to the western frontier under the command of General Henry Atkinson. In 1819, he was a member of the expedition to explore the Yellowstone River in present-day Montana and Wyoming. The Yellowstone Expedition of 1819 journeyed only as far as present-day Nebraska, where it established Cantonment Missouri, later renamed Fort Atkinson. Kearny was also on the 1825 expedition that reached the mouth of the Yellowstone River. During his travels, he kept extensive journals, including his interactions with Native Americans.
In 1826, Captain Kearny was appointed as the first commander of the new Jefferson Barracks in Missouri south of St. Louis. While stationed there, he was often invited to the nearby city, the center of fur trade, economics, and politics of the region. By way of Meriwether Lewis Clark Sr., he was invited as a guest of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
In 1833, Lieutenant Colonel Kearny was appointed second in command of the newly organized 1st Dragoon Regiment. The U.S. Cavalry eventually grew out of this regiment, which was re-designated the 1st United States Cavalry in 1861, earning Kearny his nickname "father of the United States Cavalry". The regiment was stationed at Fort Leavenworth in present-day Kansas, and Kearny was promoted to the rank of colonel in command of the regiment in 1836. He was also made commander of the Army's Third Military Department, charged with protecting the frontier and preserving peace among the tribes of Native Americans on the Great Plains.
By the early 1840s, when emigrants began traveling along the Oregon Trail, Kearny often ordered his men to escort the travelers across the plains to avoid attack by the Native Americans. The practice of the military's escorting settlers' wagon trains would become official government policy in succeeding decades. To protect the travelers, Kearny established a new post along Table Creek near present-day Nebraska City, Nebraska. The outpost was named Fort Kearny. However, the Army realized that the site was not well chosen, and the post was moved to its present location on the Platte River in central Nebraska.
Mexican–American War (1846–1848)
At the outset of the Mexican–American War, Kearny was promoted to brigadier general on June 30, 1846, and took a force of about 2,500 men to Santa Fe, New Mexico. His Army of the West (1846) consisted of 1,600 men in the volunteer First and Second Regiments of Fort Leavenworth, Missouri Mounted Cavalry regiment under Alexander Doniphan; an artillery and infantry battalion; 300 of Kearny's 1st U.S. Dragoons and about 500 members of the Mormon Battalion. With this force, and due largely to the behind the scenes and coordinated efforts of U.S. President Polk, New Mexico Governor Armijo, and the American merchant James Wiley Magoffin, who had 20 years of trading experience in Mexico; Kearny was able to comply with the president's wishes, and conquer New Mexico without firing a shot. Kearny established a joint civil and military government, appointing Charles Bent, a prominent Santa Fe Trail trader living in Taos, New Mexico as acting civil. He divided his forces into four commands: one, under Col. Sterling Price, appointed military governor, was to occupy and maintain order in New Mexico with his approximately 800 men; a second group under Col. Alexander William Doniphan, with a little over 800 men was ordered to capture El Paso, in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico and then join up with General John E. Wool; the third command of about 300 dragoons mounted on mules, he led under his command to California along the Gila River trail. The Mormon Battalion, mostly marching on foot under Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke, was directed to follow Kearny with wagons to blaze a new southern wagon route to California.
On the plaza in Santa Fe, a monument marks a fateful day. Gen. Kearny had entered the city after routing the militia of New Mexico under the command of Governor Armijo and entered a city then undefended but very hostile. He marched to the plaza in front of the Palacio Real, and took down the flag of the state of New Mexico, which he thought was the flag of Mexico. In its place he hoisted the Stars and Stripes and gave the speech which is summarized on the monument. New Mexico was then a state with a democratically constituted government, which Kearny overthrew, installing in its place under the Kearny Code a military dictatorship. The next year, in 1847, three men pressed the case for the restoration of New Mexico's statehood and its admission to the American Union: Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, and Kearny's rival, John Charles Frémont. New Mexico's statehood and self-government were not restored until 1912.
Kearny, per orders from President Polk, set out to "conquer and take possession of California" on September 25, 1846, with a force of 300 men. En route he encountered Kit Carson, a scout of John C. Frémont's California Battalion, carrying messages back to Washington, D.C., on the status of hostilities in California. Kearny learned that California was, at the time of Carson's last information, under American control of the marines and bluejacket sailors of Commodore Robert F. Stockton of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Squadron and Frémont's California Battalion. Kearny asked Carson to guide him back to California while he sent Carson's messages east with a different courier. Kearny sent 200 dragoons back to Santa Fe believing that California was secure. After traveling almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) his weary 100 dragoons and most of his nearly worn-out mounts were replaced by untrained mules purchased from a mule herder's herd being driven to Santa Fe from California. On a trip across the Colorado Desert to San Diego Kearny encountered marine Major Archibald H. Gillespie and about 30 men with news of an ongoing Californio revolt in Los Angeles.
Governorship and last years
Kearny remained military governor of California until May 31, when he set out overland across the California Trail to Washington, D.C., and was welcomed as a hero. He was appointed governor of Veracruz, and later of Mexico City. He also received a brevet promotion to major general in September 1848, over the heated opposition of Frémont's father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton.
After contracting yellow fever in Veracruz, Kearny had to return to St. Louis. He died there on October 31, 1848, at the age of 54. He was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery, now a National Historic Landmark in St. Louis.
Legacy and memory
Historian Allan Nevins, examining his attacks on Frémont, states that Kearny:
was a stern-tempered soldier who made few friends and many enemies – who has been justly characterized by the most careful historian of the period, Justin H. Smith, as "grasping, jealous, domineering, and harsh." Possessing these traits, feeling his pride stung by his defeat at San Pasqual, and anxious to assert his authority, he was no sooner in Los Angeles than he quarreled bitterly with Stockton; and Frémont was not only at once involved in this quarrel, but inherited the whole burden of it as soon as Stockton left the country.
Kearny "was simply, a professional soldier's soldier, and he "may have been the only general in the Mexican War who did not long to become president.
Kearny is the namesake of Kearny, Arizona and Kearney, Nebraska. Kearny, New Jersey near Kearny's place of birth, is named after his nephew, Philip Kearny Jr. of American Civil War fame. Many schools are named after Kearny, including Kearny Elementary in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Kearny High School in the San Diego neighborhood of Kearny Mesa. Kearny Street, in downtown San Francisco, is also named for him, as is a street within Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Camp Kearny in San Diego, a U.S. military base which operated from 1917 to 1946 on the site of today's Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, was named in his honor. Fort Kearny in Nebraska is also named for him.
Two U.S. postage stamps relate to Kearny. Scott catalog number 970, printed in 1948, commemorates Fort Kearny, and number 944, issued in 1946, the capture of Santa Fe. The accuracy of the latter's depiction has been questioned.
Actor Robert Anderson (1920–1996) played General Kearny in the 1966 episode "The Firebrand" of the syndicated western television series Death Valley Days. Gregg Barton was cast as Commodore Robert F. Stockton, with Gerald Mohr as Andrés Pico and Will Kuluva as Pio Pico. The episode is set in 1848 with the establishment of California Territory and the tensions between the outgoing Mexican government and the incoming American governor.