The US Army Camel Corps
Not all failures lead to accidents. In the late 1840s a recommendation made its way through the US War Department to import camels to the United States for evaluation of their use as beasts of burden. The Army was especially interested to learn how well they would fare in the Southwest and across the Great Plains. Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was intrigued and supported the idea, and after becoming Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce, he managed to gain the support of enough congressmen to obtain some funding for the experiment. On July 4 1855 Army Major Henry Wayne departed New York on the aptly named USS Supply to acquire the camels in the Mediterranean region.
Thirty-three camels returned with Wayne, and with some foresight he acquired pack saddles, reasoning that no American saddle maker would know how to make them. He also brought back experienced camel drivers. During the voyage one male camel died, but two calves were born, so that the expedition arrived in Texas with more camels than they had when they left the Arab lands. Supply was immediately dispatched back for another herd of camels and the animals were herded to Camp Verde. After Supply returned with the second load of camels and more drivers, and the loss of some of the original herd to disease, the US Army owned seventy camels in its experimental Camel Corps.
At first the camels proved to be of use as pack animals, a group of 25 camels made a trek from Camp Verde to Fort Defiance in the New Mexico Territory, carrying 600 pounds of supplies each. The leader of the expedition, Edward Beale, continued on to his own ranch in California, where he offered to keep the camels, an offer which was refused. Other uses in the arid areas of the southwest led Army lieutenant Edward Hartz to comment that the camels were superior to horses and mules when used as pack animals, and no less a personage than Colonel Robert E. Lee, who had ordered their use in an expedition in the spring of 1860, was impressed with their performance.
In the Civil War, the camels in the far west were of little use. Those in Camp Verde, Texas, became property of the Confederacy. There were 80 camels which fell into the hands of the Confederates, who had little use for them, there were more than 100 by the time the Union regained control of the camp. Curiously, though Jefferson Davis had been an early and avid supporter of their use as US Secretary of War, he did not advocate for them as President of the Confederate States. After the war the Union government collected the remaining camels, selling most of them to lawyer and judge Bethel Coopwood.
What he did with them is unknown. There was still a contingent of camels in California, in the vicinity of Bakersfield, and some of the camels undoubtedly found their way into traveling circuses and the shows which criss-crossed the opening of the west. Despite receiving the praise of the officers and men who used them the camels never really impressed the controllers of the budget in Washington and the Army’s experimental Camel Corps was disbanded. It was considered a failure. The Army mule retained its status as the primary beast of burden in use by the US Army, and would continue to until World War I.