Colonel Philip St. George Cooke’s Farewell Order: ‘History May Be Searched in Vain for an Equal March of Infantry’ (1847)

On July 16, 1847, as the Mormon Battalion was honorably discharged at Los Angeles, California, their commanding officer — Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, a career U.S. Army officer and non-member of the Church — issued a farewell order that became one of the most quoted military tributes in LDS history.

Cooke was not a Latter-day Saint. He was a Virginia-born West Point graduate who had commanded the Battalion through the most grueling portion of its march. He had sent sick men to Pueblo, ordered women off the march (and then been persuaded otherwise), and driven his command with professional rigor across terrain no army wagon had ever crossed. He had no theological stake in what the Battalion represented.

His farewell order read:

'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 tablelands where water was not found for several marches. With crowbar and pick and axe in hand, we have worked our way over mountains, which seemed to defy aught but the wild goat, 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.'

For Latter-day Saints, the tribute of an unbelieving officer — a man with no religious motive to flatter them — carries a particular weight. Cooke saw what they did. He called it what it was. The book *History May Be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion* (2006) takes its title from this order.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in B. H. Roberts, The Mormon Battalion: Its History and Achievements (Deseret News, 1919)):

Head Quarters Mormon Battalion, Mission of San Diego, January 30th, 1847. Order No. 1. The Lieutenant-Colonel commanding congratulates the Battalion on their safe arrival on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, and the conclusion of their march of over two thousand miles. 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 tablelands where water was not found for several marches. With crowbar and pick and axe in hand, we have worked our way over mountains, which seemed to defy aught but the wild goat, 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.