Apache Campaigns - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

Orlando Bolivar Willcox was in the West Point class of 1847, and joined the 4 th Artillery in time
to see action at Mexico City and Cuernavaca. He served in the Seminole War, resigned in
1857, and became a colonel of the 1 st Michigan Infantry during the Civil War. He was
wounded and taken prisoner at Bull Run. After being exchanged in 1862, he took part in the
battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Weldon Railroad, earning brevets to the rank of
major general. As a colonel of the 12 th Infantry in 1874, he commanded Angel Island, CA. He
took over as Department of Arizona commander on 5 March 1878 from August V. Kautz. In
1886 he took command of the Department of Missouri as a brigadier general. He retired the
following year and died in 1907. Photo courtesy Arizona Historical Society.
Dr. Joseph K. Corson, a Civil War surgeon who would be awarded the Medal of Honor
in 1899 for gallantry in action near Bristol Station, Virginia, on 14 October 1863, was assigned to
Fort Whipple as Willcox was taking over. In his diary he wrote that the new department
commander was “an excellent officer,” but that “he was surrounded in Prescott by a rather hostile
staff who lamented the ‘days of Empire’ under Kautz. The people of Arizona were hostile to both
and in nearly every saloon and store was a picture of General Crook, with the motto: ‘Arizona’s
Only Friend;’ and ‘Give Us Back Our Old Commander.’ In the course of a few years they got
10 him back and in six months he was as unpopular as his predecessors.” HUACHUCA ILLUSTRATED
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Public alarm was justified. There were raids everywhere after Crook’s departure and
resettlement at San Carlos. Chiricahuas resumed their raids in the southeast, Ojo Caliente Apaches