The 25th Infantry Regiment Iron Riders

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, but I'm Holly Fryed. Back in February, we got an email from listener Callista, who sent along an idea for an episode, along with some adorable cat pictures. Kitty cats who have very big feet because of their extra toes. I love them. Your babies have extra deck mind you, they both have extra toes, and one has particularly big feet. With all of her extra toes, they're facute, So thank you for that, Callista. The topic was the twenty fifth Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps, also known as the Iron Riders. This was part of the segregated US Army units that came to be known as the Buffalo Soldiers, and the Bicycle Corps got a lot of attention back in twenty twenty two for their Quasquas Centennial. I, however, do not remember ever hearing about them until getting this email, so again, thank you, Callista. We have mentioned the Buffalo Soldiers in a few episodes over the years, and we've lined one of those episodes up for this week's Saturday Classic. We have also gotten some requests for an episode dedicated just to the Buffalo Soldiers, but these regiments existed for almost a century. They were involved in a bunch of different wars and a whole array of non combat duties during that time, so like a general episode on the Buffalo Soldiers just felt very broad. This episode, though, does give us an opportunity to talk some more about the background on the Buffalo Soldiers, including where that name comes from, which we will be getting to. The Buffalo Soldiers were established not long after the end of the US Civil War. The United States Army had own enormously during the war, reaching a peak of roughly a million troops. Congress formally legalized the enlistment of black soldiers in eighteen sixty two. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation the following year, he stated that quote such persons of suitable condition will be received into the Armed Service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to manned vessels of all sorts insaid service. The US military started actively recruiting black servicemen, who typically served in segregated units under the command of white commissioned officers. This included the fifty fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. We ran our episode on them as a Saturday Classic in February of twenty nineteen. The Civil War ended in eighteen sixty five, and on July twenty eighth of eighteen sixty six, Congress passed an Act to Increase and Fix the Military piece Establishishment of the United States. This outlined what the nation's peacetime military would look like, including how many regiments there would be and what kind. Sections three and four of this act included the creation of cavalry and infantry regiments that would be made up specifically of black men. Black soldiers had served in the US military going back to its very beginnings, including serving in the Revolutionary War and the War of eighteen twelve, but this was the first time black troops were designated as a permanent part of it. Initially, there were to be two cavalry regiments and four infantry, but another law passed in eighteen sixty nine consolidated the infantry regiments to two. Ultimately, the Buffalo Soldiers included the ninth and tenth Cavalry and the twenty fourth and twenty fifth Infantry. As we've said the US military was racially segregated, but beyond that, the military assumed correctly that a lot of people, both soldiers and civilians, would respond to the presence of black soldiers with hostility or violence, so initially, these soldiers were stationed mainly in areas that the US thought of as the frontier, in the West and the Southwest. In the late nineteenth century, black soldiers made up about ten percent of the US Army, but about twenty percent of the soldiers in the western part of US territory. This didn't entirely protect these soldiers from racism and violence, though they still faced discrimination and abuse from white commanding officers and from white enlisted men when their duties brought them into contact with one another. Nearby White communities sometimes saw these army units as an asset, both for protection and for spending their money in town, but there were incidents of racism and racist violence from civilians too. Several Buffalo soldiers were lynched while serving in the army, at least one of them after his white commanding officer handed him over to a mob. When these regiments were first established, many of the men who enlisted had previously been enslaved, often from birth, so this could be their first opportunity to be paid wages for their work in a job that they actually chose for themselves. Also, after the Civil War, in a culture that was really dominated by racist attitudes, a lot of black workers were also forced into things like sharecropping, agricultural labor, or manual labor, and being in the army was seen as a more respected and prestigious job. People understood that demonstrating that black men could be good soldiers would also reflect well on black people as a whole, so a lot of people saw this as a way to prove their worth to a nation that just did not see them as equal. The creation of the Buffalo Soldiers and people's decisions to join and serve these were threaded through with just a lot of meaning and importance. However, this was also a case of the United States using one oppressed group to oppress another. The Buffalo Soldiers often served at forts that had been built to protect white settlers from the indigenous peoples already living there. A long series of wars between the United States and indigenous nations has become known as the Indian Wars, and the Buffalo Soldiers fought in more than one hundred and fifty engagements across a number of these wars. By the end of the nineteenth century. Buffalo soldiers were also instrumental in efforts to drive indigenous peoples off their land. These army regiments fought against or helped remove people from numerous nations across the West and Southwest, including the Apache, the Navajo, the Ute, and the Cree. Buffalo soldiers also served as reserve units and guards during the eighteen nine massacre at Wounded Knee, in which the US Army killed hundreds of Lakota. This makes the moniker of Buffalo soldiers complicated. Multiple explanations have been put forth about exactly where this name came from, and most of them involve indigenous peoples comparing the soldiers to the American bison, also known as the buffalo. In some accounts, it's about the soldier's skin color and their hair texture. In others, it's a reference to their ferocity, with some sources citing a specific battle or a specific defense as prompting this nickname. Some conclude that it was actually about the soldiers wearing winter coats that were made from buffalo hide, with the hair still on, although the army didn't formally adopt these coats as part of the soldier's winter gear, and a lot of the soldiers who had them had just bought them on their own. A lot of writing about the Buffalo Soldiers assumes that this nickname was a sign of respect or admiration, sometimes including references to indigenous nations and peoples who consider the buffalo to be sacred. Although it doesn't seem like the Buffalo Soldiers used it themselves in the early decades of their existence, it's a name that they had claimed as a mark of pride by their early twentieth century. It's at least theoretically possible to admire the military prowess of an enemy in warfare, and there were sometimes that the Buffalo Soldiers acted to protect indigenous people, specifically indigenous nations that had signed treaties with the United States and were at war with nations that hadn't before the United States passed the DAWs Act and other laws that broke up reservation land and sold it off, including to non indigenous buyers. The Buffalo Soldiers also helped defend Indian Territory or what's now Oklahoma, from white squatters, but this idea that the name was meant to honor the soldiers seems to trace back not to Indigenous people but to the assumptions of white historians. Indigenous people have spoken out against it, especially as the Buffalo Soldiers started to get more widespread attention in the late twentieth century. For example, in nineteen ninety four, the US Postal Service announced that the Buffalo Soldiers were going to be honored with the postage stamp, including messaging describing the soldiers bravery and toughness as winning them the respect of Native Americans. This led to intense criticism from a number of Indigenous writers and activists. For example, Ojibwa activist Vernon Bellcourt wrote an article in Indian Country Today in which he said, quote the formation of military combat units made up exclusively of free black African men, the Buffalo Soldiers, for the purpose of destroying Indian lives is a euphemism intended to maintain the status quo of racism and denied history. Bellicourt described the Buffalo Soldiers as quote marauding, murderous cavalry units and stated that the quote Buffalo nickname was only about their hair and skin and was not a term of endearment or respect. There were also some layers to some of the Buffalo Soldiers service beyond the Indian Wars. These soldiers were some of the first caretakers of the first national parks in the United States, including fighting fires, building roads, and trying to stop illegal grazing and poaching. But the creation of those national parks involved forcing indigenous people off of this land, often in defiance of treaties that the US had with those peoples, and then kind of rebranding it as a pristine and untouched wilderness. The Buffalo Soldiers were also called on to maintain order during labor disputes, meaning that they were protecting communities, businesses, and strike breakers from the miners and railroad workers who were fighting to try to improve their pay and working conditions. So the Buffalo Soldiers represent an important part of black history and the history of black service members within the US military, But that history is way more complicated than the really romanticized and almost mythologized treatment that they've gotten in a lot of accounts. The Buffalo Soldiers were part of the US military all the way until the Korean War. The army began the process of dismantling these units after President Harry Truman issued Executive Order ninety nine eighty one ordering the desegregation of the military on July twenty sixth, nineteen forty eight. The process of actually doing this took a while, in part because of the army's reluctance to integrate, so the last of the Buffalo Soldiers' Regiments wasn't deactivated until October first, nineteen fifty one, with those remaining soldiers being transferred into other units. While these units were in existence, twenty seven members were awarded the Medal of Honor, which is the US military's highest award for valor. Fourteen of those medals were awarded for the soldier's conduct during the Indian Wars. We are going to get into the bicycle Corps after we pause for a sponsor break. We talked about the development of the bicycle not too long ago on the show in our episode on Kitti Knox in the Bike Boom from January of twenty twenty three, so we are not going to rehash all of that today. The most important part is that the first practical, relatively affordable bicycles, known as safety bicycles, were introduced in the eighteen eighties. Some militaries had already been exploring whether they could make use of bicycles before this point, like there are reports of messengers using Penny Farthing bicycles with those enormous front wheels to get around during the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy, but the safety cycle sparked an enormous interest in cycling for civilians and the military alike. The first practical cars and motorcycles were also introduced in the eighteen eighties, but the first gasoline powered trucks were still about a decade away, so from a military perspective, the big question was whether bicycles could be a suitable replacement for horses, which were already in widespread use. Unlike bicycles, horses need to eat, they can get sick or hurt or killed. Horses also need to be trained, and after they're trained, they still don't always get along with their handlers or other horses, and even well trained horses can panic or behave in unexpected ways, especially once you factor in food and training and upkeep. Bicycles are typically a lot less expensive than horses. Feel like anybody that owns a horse is nodding their head right now going duh. Depending on the terrain, they can also be a lot quieter. So, for example, a unit on bicycles might be able to sneak deeper into enemy territory than they could on foot, with a better chance of getting back out without attracting attention than they would be on horseback. Answering this question also involved figuring out the answers to a lot of other related questions. Being on a bike instead of a horse meant the soldier was using his own power rather than a horse doing a lot of the work. So we're all of those trade offs that Holly just alluded to. Were they worth it? Which soldiers would be best suited to be in some kind of bicycle corps? What kind of physique did they need to have and how would they need to be trained? How much could a bicycle reasonably carry and how far? What kind of equipment needed to be carried to keep a bike working in good repair? Could bicycles be used in combat? Like could soldiers fight or accurately fire a gun while on a bike? Could bicycles be used to transport entire units over long distances? It was pretty clear, really quickly that bicycles peak could be used for things like scouting and carrying messages, especially in places that had good roads or pretty even terrain. But figuring out the answers to some of these other questions took a lot more experimenting and some trial and error. Not everyone's proficiency on a bike is going to be the same, right, so answering each one of those questions also as to be calibrated to individual people and their own performance. In the US, one of the people who was interested in answering these questions was Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles. He had become interested in the possibilities of the bicycle as a military tool after attending a bicycle race. Some sources say this happened in Chicago, others that it was a six day race at Madison Square Garden in New York that happened in eighteen ninety one. His efforts, though to experiment with this went through some stops and starts. It seems like his superiors didn't think it was the best use of time and resources. But in eighteen ninety five he was promoted to commanding General of the US Army, meaning that he got to decide when Miles was promoted to this role. The twenty fifth Infantry Regiment was garrisoned at Fort Missoula, Montana. There were officers in Montana who were interested in the idea of military cycling as well. This included Colonel Andrews Sheridan Burt and Second Lieutenant James Moss. There's some fuzziness in the details about bicycles at Fort Missoula, like who proposed a particular idea or which of these two men, if either was involved in specific elements of it. Do you know, though, that Bert was generally really supportive of sports and athletics among the troops, and that Moss was an avid wheelman. That was the term people used at the time for cyclists and cycling enthusiasts. Moss was definitely instrumental in the creation of the bicycle Corps and their long distance rides. Though he had been stationed at Fort Missoula as a commissioned officer in the twenty fifth Infantry Regiment after graduating last in his class from the US Military Academy at West Point in eighteen ninety four. So that gives you a sense of how undesirable this assignment was. From the Army's perspective. Moss had been born in La Faye at Louisiana, on May twelfth, eighteen seventy two, and an address that he gave in his hometown a few months after this corp's pretty dramatic long distance ride which we'll be talking about, gives a glimpse into his mindset. Quote, being a Southern boy, I did not at first, I admit, like the idea of serving with colored troops. But I was a soldier and had received an order from a superior, and there was but one thing for me to do obey. After having been with the regiment for a while, I found the men to be respectful, obedient, and good soldiers, and I liked to have such men under my command. So this quote really should not be interpreted to mean that he eventually came to see these soldiers as his equal. His ridings and reports about his time with the bicycle Corps are just threaded through with a lot of stereotypes and bias. By the time Miles was promoted to commanding General of the US Army, bicycles were already in use at Fort Missoula, mainly for recreation and just forgetting around in eighteen ninety five, Bert reported that three officers and seventy eight enlisted men could ride bicycles, and that year Fourth of July festivities included a bicycle drill that Moss may have arranged. By eighteen ninety the fort had an established bicycle drill team, which delights me. This team's drills included things like preparing to mount, mounting, dismounting, and crossing over obstacles. They experimented to figure out the best ways to cross water, eventually deciding it was easiest for two men to carry the bicycles suspended from a pole between them. They worked on different ways to load gear onto the bike and distribute the weight, and to develop appropriate equipment for going on bicycle missions, including things like metal storage containers for their stuff that could also be used as cookpots. Over time, they determined that carrying a rifle across their backs while cycling was uncomfortable, but they needed their rifles, so they worked out a way to clamp them to the bicycle frame instead. By eighteen ninety seven, the drill team had expanded into a bicycle core that included Sergeant Dalbert P. Green, Corporal John G. Williams, musician, William W. Brown, who was a bugler, and privates Frank L. Johnson, William Proctor, William Haynes, Elwood Foreman, and John Findley. Findley had worked for Imperial Bicycle Works in Chicago before joining the army, so he already knew about how to repair and maintain bicycles, and since he already knew how to ride, he helped teach riding drills to the other soldiers. In August, Moss led this core on its first long distance ride from Fort Missoula to Lake McDonald, one hundred and twenty six miles away. This was a learning experience. To put it mildly, Moss later wrote, quote, had the Devil himself conspired against us, we would have had little more to contend with. Packed with all of their rations, clothing, tents, and other supplies, the bicycles they were using weighed an average of seventy six point two pounds or thirty four point five kilograms. The weather was rainy, so the roads turned into a really sticky mud, and they were sometimes impassable because of fallen trees. At one point, two of the men fell into a stream they were trying to cross. They also encountered hills so steep that they had to walk their bikes up one side and down the other because trying to ride down the downhill slope was just too dangerous. The bicycles overall held up well, but they still lost a lot of time stopping to deal with minor issues like punctured tires, loosened bolts, or chains that needed adjusting. In spite of all that, Moss considered this trip, which went from August sixth to the ninth, to be a success, and he started planning another longer trip to begin on August fifteenth, this one to Yellowstone National Park. This trip was more than twice as long. It was three hundred miles or about four hundred and eighty four kilometers, and they planned to ride between forty and fifty miles or about sixty four to eight eighty kilometers per day. They faced a lot of the same challenges that they had on the earlier trip, including steep, uphill and downhill grades while crossing the Continental Divide. Their bikes were heavier than on the previous trip, weighing seventy nine point seven pounds or thirty six kilograms on average, thanks to being loaded up with four days worth of food, So not only did they have to walk the bikes up and down the hills, they also had to grip the handbrake for long stretches of the downhill slope so that the bikes didn't just run away from them with all that extra weight. And when they were able to ride for a lot of the journey, they were often riding into a stiff headwind, and that made the going even harder. They talked about having to hold the handbrakes for so long that their hands would start cramping, but if they let go, they might lose their whole bike just rolling down the hill and then crashing probably. They reached Fort Yellowstone on August twenty third, and after they rested for about a day day and a half, they embarked on one hundred and thirty two mile tour of the park by bike. Their pace on this tour didn't seem as grueling as the journey to get there had been. For the most part, they rode a little faster, but they also had more time to rest and sight see. They also got a lot of attention from civilian tourists in the park, who mostly seemed curious about them. The Corps started their return trip on September first and arrived back at Fort Missoula on September eighth. According to MOS's official report, their last day of travel back to Missoula was the worst of the entire trip, requiring ten hours of riding to travel forty miles facing both rain and snow and wet muddy roads, but he again considered the trip a success. They had proven that the bicycles could be used to transport troops across the difficult Montana to rain. After returning to Missoula, the Bicycle Corps took part in some joint exercises involving the twenty fifth Infantry and the tenth Cavalry. The Bicycle Corps mainly acted as couriers during this exercise, and that turned out to be critically important when a wagon train got stuck in the mud and the cyclists were able to summon reinforcements to help get them out. Moss was not done though. He wanted to prove the bicycles could be used to transport troops across any terrain, so he started planning another ride, an almost two thousand mile journey from Fort Missoula, Montana, to Saint Louis, Missouri, and we'll get into that after we pause for a sponsor break. Second Lieutenant James Moss was sent to Washington, d c. Over part of the winter of eighteen ninety six to eighteen ninety seven. Nelson A. Miles, commanding General of the US Army, had tentatively approved his play to take a bicycle corps from Missoula, Montana, to Saint Louis, Missouri, but he wanted Moss to find a way to do this without the Army having to spend money buying bicycles. Moss spent some of his time researching bicycles and cycling, and he toured the facilities of several bicycle manufacturers. This included A. G. Spaldingen Brothers later known just as Spalding, who ultimately loaned the bicycles to the Army for this test ride. Moss also worked with Spaulding to make some modifications which he hoped would reduce the amount of time spent dealing with minor maintenance and repair issues during the ride. The bicycles that they'd used on the earlier trips had wooden rims, which were prone to delaminating over time. These had steel rims, instead guards protected the chain from dirt and debris. Spalding reinforced portions of the bike's frames and added luggage carriers and swapped the standard seats out for or what was known as the Christie saddle. This was an aluminum seat with recessed areas to hold cushioned pads that made riding more comfortable, and unlike a lot of other bicycle seats at the time, it didn't extend between the legs, which could cause chafing. It was developed and patented by Henry A. Christi, and these bicycles, which were nicknamed the Military Special, weighed thirty two pounds or fourteen point five kilograms each. That was before they were loaded with gear and equipment. I tried to compare that to today's bicycles and gut numbers all over the place about such bicycles way today, especially ones that are meant for riding on roads as well as like rougher terrain. Yeah. When he got back to Missoula, Moss selected the men who would be part of this trip. He chose twenty soldiers from the twenty fifth Infantry. Five of them had been part of the earlier rides in eighteen ninety six. The highest ranking of these was Ming Sanders, who acted as non commissioned officer in charge. Sanders was also the oldest of the soldiers at the age of thirty nine. The youngest member of the Bicycle Corps for this trip was twenty four. Also on the journey were Moss, Army physician doctor James Kennedy, and newspaper reporter Edward Boose, all of whom were white. Booze was an enthusiastic wheelman and filed regular reports with the Daily Missoulian that were picked up by papers all over the country. Almost everything that we know about this journey comes from Moss's reports and Booze's reporting. We have almost nothing by the enlisted men, aside from a couple of articles paraphrasing statements made by Private Richard Rout to a reporter. I think it's possible that there does exist documentation somewhere from somebody's journals or letter home or whatever, but like that's what we know of right now. The Bicycle Cores route would span about nineteen hundred miles or three thousand and fifty eight kilometers southeast through Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Missouri. It included a wide range of terrain and road conditions. That's why he picked this route. He wanted to test these bikes on as many surfaces as possible. At the same time, they were running mostly parallel to railroad lines. To make it easier for them to resupply, Moss worked with quartermasters at other forts and military installations to arrange food drops about every one hundred miles. Although the men had carried four days worth of food for their round trip to Yellowstone, this time they would only be carrying two days of food at a time, meaning if they did not go fifty miles a day so they could travel the one hundred miles to the next resupply, they would run out of food. Cooking gear was carried in ten cases attached to the fronts of some of the bicycles. Rations included flour, salt, sugar, and coffee, which were packed in rubber cloth bags. There was also bacon that was wrapped in cloth, and canned goods carried in the soldier's knapsacks. These knapsacks also carried one each of winter and summer undershirts and winter and summer underwear, two pairs of summer socks, a pair of winter socks, a towel, two handkerchiefs, a toothbrush, toothpowder, a cake of soap, a blanket, and toilet paper. Every other soldier also carried a comb and a brush. In addition to this, each soldier carried a rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition, as well as half of a shelter tent and poles for that tent, as well as mosquito netting and a cloth to wipe down the bicycle and a knife, a fork, and a spoon, and a meat can. I was like, what's a meat can? The army went through a series of meat can designs over the late nineteenth century, but this started out as a metal container meant to hold uncooked meat rations so that other stuff didn't get greasy. It evolved into something like a frying pan with a fold out handle that was sometimes issued with a plate that nestled into it, with the handle holding it all together like if you've ever seen a mess kit. The parts of the mess kit that hold that all together. Packed with all of their gear, these bicycles weighed about sixty pounds or twenty seven kilograms. The bicycle corpse set off on this ride on June fourteenth, eighteen ninety seven, at five point thirty in the morning. The plan was that they would get up before dawn each day, ride until lunch, and then stop and spend the hottest part of the day resting. Then they would continue riding until dark and stop and make camp. Pretty much immediately they ran into heavy thunderstorms that turned the roads, which these were really more like wagon trails, turn them into mud. Specifically, a very thick mud was very sticky, made primarily of Bentonite clay, which was known as gumbo. Eventually, they had seen so much rain and so much mud that was causing them so many problems that they decided to ride on the railroad tracks instead. This meant a lot of jolting along the cross ties. The difficulties just continued from there. It was often hot, very hot, at one point in excess of one hundred and ten degrees fahrenheit or forty three degrees celsius. But even though it was summer, they also encountered snow at higher elevations. In late June, they ran low on rations and they were subsisting on water and burned toast, and Booze wrote quote we were wet, cold, and hungry, and a more jaded set of men never existed. Although they had to deal with a lot of punctured tires and a range of minor problems throughout the ride, they only had one major mechanical failure. After leaving Gellette Wyoming. The front axle broke on one of the bikes, and it wasn't like they had a spare bike with them. They didn't have an axle to replace it with, so the rider private Foreman had to walk, and then the rest of the corps had to slow down to match his pace while Moss and two other men rode ahead to their next plan stop at Moorcroft. The plan was for these men who went ahead to have dinner prepared for everybody else by the time the rest of the men caught up, but night fell. The terrain turned out to be really rough, and that meant that everyone wound up having to walk their bikes, including the ones who had tried to ride ahead. This was a particularly bad time for them to run into this kind of issue because they were also running low on water. With all this happening, they didn't get to Moorcroft until the morning, and then they had to rest until about two in the afternoon before they were able to set off again. The stretch from Gillette to Moorcroft was not the only time the Core had trouble getting enough water. In much of South Dakota and Nebraska, the temperatures were extreme and the water was alkaline, something that can happen in desert environments as the water absorbs a lot of salts and minerals from the ground. To add yet another layer to how difficult this was, Alkaline water was a real problem in the Nebraska sand Hills, where the sandy soil was so loose that riding was impossible and walking was extremely difficult. They'd ridden on the railroad tracks to try to bypass terrain that was just too bad to ride on before, but in this area the way the cross ties were laid jolted the bikes to a halt. Having the railroad nearby was still an asset, though, because it turned out the water tanks used for the engines held water that was more drinkable. Some of the soldiers became ill during this part of the ride, and Moss got so sick that doctor Kennedy told him he could not continue. Moss had to backtrack and then take the train ahead of the rest of the Core so that they could catch up with him while he recovered. A report Moss made on the trip said of this region, quote, this part of the trip was a real nightmare. It was impossible to make any headway by following the wagon road in loose sand ankle deep, and the Core thereafter followed the railroad track for one hundred and seventy miles before they got out of the sand, so they were walking alongside the railroad track to be clear, to continue the quote, by almost superhuman efforts. This distance was covered in four and a half days, averaging thirty seven point seven miles per day. The Alkali water was abominable and the heat terrific. A lot of other people the cor encountered during this ride seemed more interested in what they were doing than anything else, and some of them either sold or gave them things like eggs, pies, red or other food, which helped them keep writing and keep their spirits up. But the court did experience hostility and racism, which generally increase the further south that they traveled. At one point, when they asked a farmer if they could camp on his land. He asked if they were Union soldiers, and when Moss said he supposed they were, the farmer said no. This was, of course, more than three decades after the end of the Civil War. A report in the Kansas City, Missouri Journal alluded to this kind of treatment as well, quote the roads across Missouri were bad and hilly, and with the exception of a few gravel roads were the worst on the entire trip. Went away from the railroad, the people were inhospitable. In one instance, water sufficient for cooking being refused, and no reliable information regarding the roads could be gained. The heat for the last three days of the trip was severe and hard on the men. On July twenty fourth, eighteen ninety, when the twenty fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps finally arrived at their destination of Saint Louis, they were welcomed by about one thousand cyclists who met them and escorted them to Forest Park, where they were able to rest and talk to their well wishers and cycling enthusiasts, although for the first time their camp was racially segregated, with Moss, Kennedy, and Boose separated from the enlisted riders. Yeah the newspapers had really covered their ride heavily, so people were waiting for them to arrive and eager to kind of celebrate the success of the journey, and Moss considered the ride to be a success. They had averaged fifty two miles or about eighty four kilometers per day at a pace of a little more than six miles an hour or nine point six kilometers per hour. They only had that one major breakdown, and there was only one man who had not made it to the end. This was private Eugene Jones, who became too ill to continue and was sent all the way back to Missoula by train. Although Moss thought that Jones was malingering and had been hoping to be sent ahead to Saint Louis to wait for everybody else there. It is not really clear whether like what this person, whether this person was really sick, whether Moss was just being judgmental about him, don't really know. Moss later summed it up this way, quote the bicycle has a number of advantages over the horses. It does not require as much care, it needs no forage, It moves much faster over fair roads. It is not as conspicuous and can be hidden from view more easily. It is noiseless and raises but little dust, and it is impossible to determine direction from its track. Furthermore, the fighting strength of a bicycle corps is not diminished by horseholders. Under favorable conditions, the bicycle is invaluable for courier work, scouting duty, road patrolling, rapid reconnaissances, et cetera. A bicycle corps as an adjunct to infantry or cavalry could render excellent service where speed rather than number is required, such as taking possession of passes, bridges and strong places ahead of the command and holding them until reinforcements could be gotten from the main body. On the other hand, in rain, weather, over bad roads, etc. The horse is superior. The very thought of the bicycle doing away with the cavalry altogether is ludicrous. Each has particular functions. The one isn't superior to the other. The question therefore, which confronts us is should not a modern, up to date army have both, that it might avail itself to the advantages of the one or the other as the proper conditions present themselves. From here, Moss really wanted to keep riding onto Minneapolis to demonstrate what the bikes and their riders could do on better roads than what they had had most of their time coming down from Missoula. The Army did not grant permisis for him to do that, though, and the corps went back to Missoula by train. The bicycles went back to A. G. Spaldingen Brothers, and when the Corps got back to Missoula, they learned that the discovery of gold in Alaska had totally overshadowed their ride. In the newspapers. In early February of eighteen ninety eight, Moss proposed the Bicycle Corps take another journey, this time to San Francisco, California. Colonel Bert theorized that this could also work toward improving race relations, writing quote, it is well known there is a prejudice against the colored man. It is a wise policy to educate the people to become familiar with the colored man as a soldier. The expedition proposed by Lieutenant Moss would be a fine educator. The one he made last year to Saint Louis had a very happy effect. The men, by their behavior, won the respect of everybody. But on February fifteenth eighteen ninety eight, the USS Maine exploded in Havana, Harper and the Spanish American War began not long after, and that meant testing out the feasibility of bicycles for army use was no longer a big priority. The twenty fifth Infantry was sent to training camps in Georgia and Florida, and then on to Cuba, where, among other things, they worked to maintain order during a yellow fever epidemic. The twenty fifth Infantry Regiment Bicycle Corps was disbanded after they returned to Fort Missoula after the Spanish American War. Before long, the US Army largely moved on to gas powered vehicles like motorcycles and cars, rather than bicycles or horses, although with bicycles still being used in some cases by messengers, couriers, and the like. Other nations continued to use bicycle infantries for decades after this, though especially in the face of shortages in horses or fuel. As just a few examples, Canadian cycling units performed reconnaissance and stealth missions during the One Hundred Day Offensive in World War One, Both the British and the Boers used bicycle infantry troops during the Anglo Boer Wars in South Africa, and the French developed a folding bicycle that soldiers could carry on their backs during World War II. Also, as we noted at the top of the show, the last of the Buffalo Soldiers' regiments wasn't dismantled until nineteen fifty one. So there is a lot of history of these regiments beyond this one story. But we did want to mention one incident that was directly connected to some of the men who were part of this ride, and that was the Brownsville affair. In nineteen oh six, one person was killed and another was wounded during gunfire in Brownsville, Texas. White residents of Brownsville blamed the twenty fifth Infantry Regiment, who were stationed at nearby Fort brown even though their commanding officers said that all of the soldiers had been in their barracks at the time. By order of President Theodore Roosevelt, one hundred and sixty seven members of the twenty fifth Infantry were discharged without honor in the wake of this. Roosevelt described them as maintaining a conspiracy of silence. Two of the men discharged were Sergeant MINGO. Sanders and Private John H. Cook, both of whom had been part of the Bicycle Corps. Sanders was just a little more than a year away from retirement and being dishonorably discharged meant that he lost all of his benefits. But this was an enormous miscarriage of justice. In nineteen seventy, John D. Weaver published The Brownsville Raid, and the publication of this book led the Army to conduct a new investigation into the incident, and that investigation cleared the soldiers of any involvement. Afterward, they were awarded honorable discharges, although by that point only one of them was still alive, so most of these discharges almost all of them were made posthumously. Some did have surviving widow or descendants who received some compensation from the government after this, so that felt like a little of a downer place to in the episode, but it also felt incomplete not to reference it in any way. Do you have less downer listener mail? Yes, this is from Caitlin. Caitlyn wrote, Hi, Tracy and Holly. On a short trip last week. I was catching up on episodes and the timing of the week of Popcorn and then salt made me laugh. Popcorn is one of my peak snacks, especially when traveling. I can graze through a bag of pre popped kettle corn like nobody's business. And because of one of my several syndromes, I have what I casually refer to as not enough blood disease or hypovealmia minus mild. But if I get it all dehydrated, I get blood pressure drops and dizzy spells. So I'm constantly drinking water, which means I'm also constantly craving salt. One of my doctors told me about salt supplement pills, and the iodization episode made me go, look, the supplements are free of extra iodine. I get plenty through my diet. But it was an interesting moment of wait, huh uh now the cats. I've written in with pictures and stories of my torty baby Sharktipis several times, but at the end of March he became a big sister. I went to a cat cafe with a friend just to say hi and left with the contact of the rescue sponsoring one of the Orange Boys. He is named after an episode from previous hosts Sarah and Doblina on sixteenth century Russian history. His full government name is false Dmitri the Fourth the Final Threats, although he's more often Dmitri or Demi. He's the sweetest and most affectionate guy and the total personality inverse of my full of attitude sharktpis. He loves being held, having his belly rub and playing fetch with his toy mice. He's very small cat too. We think he's about two and a half because of his size when he was rescued two years ago. But he's skinny and lanky with the longest gangly legs. I hope you enjoy the attached pictures. Very excited to see y'all in Indie and hear another great live show at the History Center Caate Lynn. And so then we've got pictures of old goodness. The cutest orange kitty cat. I like a long, spindly cat. One of ours is like that, and I call him a snake with legs. I love it. So many good pictures. I know, not personally, but I know of some people who have talked about using salt supplements because they have pots and that has in their particular case sort of helped with some of the symptoms of that would not have occurred to me either to look at whether there was iodine in them. But it makes sense that you would not necessarily want a bunch of additional iodine in supplement to get an additional salt into your body. So thank you so much for this email and these pictures. If you'd like to send us a note, we're at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and we're on social media at miss in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook and whatnot, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.