Philip St. George Cooke — A U.S. Army Colonel's Extraordinary Tribute to the Mormon Battalion (1847)

Philip St. George Cooke was a career U.S. Army officer — a West Point graduate, a Virginia gentleman, and decidedly not a Latter-day Saint. When he was ordered in October 1846 at Santa Fe to take command of a battalion of Mormon volunteers and march them nearly 1,100 miles through unknown desert and mountain terrain to California, his first reaction was dismay. He described them as 'worn out' and poorly equipped — half of them sick, their wagons inadequate, their supplies nearly exhausted.

What he witnessed over the next three and a half months changed him.

The Mormon Battalion marched from Santa Fe to San Diego through the winter of 1846–47 — the longest infantry march in United States history at that time, covering approximately 2,000 miles in total from Iowa. They blazed the first wagon road from the continental United States to the Pacific Coast. They crossed the Sonoran Desert, the Continental Divide, and the rugged Sierra Madre — half-starved, half-clothed, drinking from muddy holes, eating mule meat and intestines boiled into what the men grimly called 'bird's eye soup.' They fought off a charge of wild bulls near the San Pedro River. They passed through Tucson without firing a shot.

Through it all, Cooke observed one remarkable constant: these soldiers did not drink, did not curse, did not gamble, did not quarrel. They prayed. They fasted. They cared for each other. Their conduct was, by any military standard, extraordinary.

When the Battalion was mustered out at San Diego on July 16, 1847, Cooke issued a farewell order that became one of the most celebrated tributes ever paid to Latter-day Saints by an outsider. He wrote:

'History may be searched in vain for an equal march of infantry. Half of it has been through a wilderness where nothing but savages and wild beasts are found, or deserts where, for want of water, there is no living creature. There, with almost hopeless labor, we have dug deep wells, which the future traveler will enjoy. Without a guide who had traversed them, we have ventured into trackless table-lands where water was not found for several marches. With crowbar and pick and ax in hand, we have worked our way over mountains, which seemed to bar all passage, and hewed a passage through a chasm of living rock more narrow than our wagons. Thus, marching half-naked and half-fed, and living upon wild animals, we have discovered and made a road of great value to our country.'

Cooke concluded: 'I can only say of the marching, that it has been physical and moral courage. Soldiers of the faith, I salute you.'

Later in life, Cooke stood alone among senior U.S. Army officers of Southern birth when the Civil War came — he remained loyal to the Union even as his son, nephew, and son-in-law J.E.B. Stuart fought for the Confederacy. The man who had marched with the Saints kept the values they modeled.

For Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Battalion march is regarded as a miracle of collective faith and endurance — evidence that Brigham Young's promise held true: 'If you will live your religion and keep the commandments, you shall not be harmed.' Not one man died in battle. Not one man died of starvation. A skeptical U.S. Army colonel became their most eloquent witness.