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William Thompson Frohock
Wm. Thompson Frohock was cited in The Civil War Dictionary, by Mark. M. Boatner III. The David Mckay Co., 1959. He is listed as born in Maine, enlisted as an Illinois Regular Army Pvt. CoF, 3rd Bn. serving under the Union Dept. of Washington, D.C. 29 April 1861. He is next listed as 1st Lt. Adjutant, 45th Ill. Infantry, 26 Dec 1861; promoted to Capt. 18 May 1863. Then he is Col., 66th Colored Infantry 13 Jan 1864; resigned 20 Sept 1864. He then appears as Maj., 7th U.S. Veterans Reserve Volunteers 26 Mar 1865, and as Brevet Brig. Gen. U.S. Volunteers. He died in 1878. He received Brevets for war service (2), Shiloh and Vicksburg: Wounded in action - Vicksburg Assault. He was Judge Advocate at Vicksburg. Notes: 1) The initial call on the states for 75,000 militia to serve for 90 days in defence of Washington went out 15 Apr. 1861. Units from Ill. probably needed time to recruit before coming to Washington, as they are not listed among the first units arriving. 2) The 45th Ill. Infantry was organized Dec. 1861 as a line Regiment of Logan's Div., 17th Corps. 3) At the Shiloh battle, 6-7 April 1862, the 45th Ill. Inf. was in McClernands (?sp?) Div. 4) The 45th Ill Inf became known as the "Lead Mine Regiment", probably because of its employment in digging tunnels under the lines prior to the Vicksburg assault which began 19 May 1863. It appears Lt. Frohock was promoted to Capt. just before the assault. He was wounded in the assault, but apparently remained in Vicksburg after the occupation as Judge Advocate. Very probably he was a lawyer before the war. 5) The Veteran Reserve Corps was established to consist of Officers and men who because of wounds were unfit for full combat duty, but were used for limited service performing administrative services, guard duty and as nurses and cooks in hospitals, releasing thousands of men for full service. 6) Brevet Rank can be regarded as an honarary title, awarded for gallant or meritorious action in the time of war. The actions for which an Officer was breveted can be considered highlights of his military career. --------------------------------------- Old Fort Lancaster Frontier Garrison Battle of Fort Lancaster, December 26, 1867 By Patrick Dearen One of the Pecos's most violent army-Indian confrontations occurred at Fort Lancaster, where black "buffalo" soldiers and white officers of Company K, Ninth Cavalry, had encamped. But for the whimsical choice of a spooked horse herd to flee south for the river, the confrontation could have been a massacre to rival that of General George Armstrong Custer and his command at Little Big Horn. It was about 4:00 p.m. on the day after Christmas, 1867. As the horse herd - in the charge of mounted guards - passed through camp en route from pasture to water, two hundred Indians, Mexicans, and white renegades swooped down from the north by horseback and stampeded the animals. The guards opened fire, but superior numbers quickly dragged them from their mounts. Sixty attackers swept on through the startled soldiers, who soon gathered themselves and herded the majority of the horses toward the corral, only to find bars blocking it and another enemy wave charging from the west. With the battle spreading, the soldiers took positions to the north, west, and south, while company commander William Frohock and a contingent fought their way across to the horse herd. However, reported Frohock, "such . . . was the panic among the [horses] and so close upon us were the savages, that it was found impossible to control them long enough to open the corral." Falling back to the ruins of the sutler's store, the main body of soldiers finally repulsed the attack from the north, but found the west force - buoyed by the sixty riders who had swept through camp - fast closing around the horses. "I proceeded with every available man against them," wrote Frohock, "but before anything definite could be accomplished, the frightened horses rushed southward through our line and through that of another force numbering from three to four hundred which was advancing upon us from that direction." With attack only moments away on a third front, the stampede proved the difference between life and death for Company K. "Had this stampede not occurred," wrote Frohock, "it is doubtful if the defense against such overwhelming odds could have been successful." With the horses - the objective of the attack - now behind its lines, the southern body of Indians - renegades withdrew and formed a mile-wide battle front between the soldiers and animals. Refusing to accept the loss of the herd, Frohock left only a few men in camp and deployed the remainder as skirmishers. He wrote: "I advanced upon their lines which, receiving our fire, broke and reformed to the rear, several times; always, however, keeping the horses behind them and themselves beyond the reach of our shots." Suddenly hearing renewed hostilities at camp, Frohock sent a sergeant and ten men on in pursuit while he quickly fell back with the balance of his command to face a second attack from the north. For long, desperate minutes, the soldiers fought fiercely in and around the ruins before finally repelling the band. By now, large bodies of additional warriors and renegades - two-thirds of them unmounted - had appeared on the surrounding hills and in a nearby canyon. Learning only then that his command had faced an incredible army of 900 to 1,500 warriors, Frohock realized just how close he and his men had come to massacre. "Every disposition indicated a simultaneous attack from all sides to have been intended, but after the stampede of the horses their object seemed accomplished and the Indians upon the hillsides and in the valleys south and west of camp made no further demonstrations, although several hundreds appeared in full view." Nightfall brought the return of the men who had been sent in pursuit of the horses; they had kept up the chase for four miles before running out of ammunition and yielding to the dark. The night also gave Frohock a chance to count his losses: three men missing and presumed dead, including a teamster who, in the company of four men, had been acquiring wood and water near a live oak grove when the battle had erupted. "The teamster William Sharps," he reported, "saw the Indians and gave warning in time for the others to secrete themselves, defense being impracticable, as the Indians were between them and camp. But before he could get away from his team, he was lassoed." Frohock further determined that the war party had escaped with thirty-two horses and six mules, while five more horses lay dead or wounded among the ruins. Although Frohock initially assessed Indian-renegade losses at two men killed and several wounded, a few days later Fort Stockton commander Hatch amended the fatality figure to an "estimated twenty." Exact enemy losses were impossible to determine, said Hatch, "as night enabled them to recover their killed and wounded." The most striking thing about the military-like attack had been the participation of white men - apparently ex-Confederates carrying on the fight that had ended for most soldiers thirty-two months before. "The leader who charged with the first party appeared to be a white man . . . " noted Frohock. "The men [at the live oak grove] who escaped report that there were white men among them who spoke English draped in Confederate uniforms." Hatch, in describing the number of Caucasians as "many," likewise stressed that "conspicuous among the white men was the rebel uniform." Among the items soon recovered from the field of battle was one "private's infantry coat," presumably Confederate. Conversely, the bodies of the three slain U.S. Army soldiers would not be located for three months. On the night of December 28, two days after the battle, a war party again stormed Fort Lancaster - this time with far less force - but failed to capture the remaining stock. Finally, the band fled down the Pecos. "The Indians attacking Lancaster have moved south, will probably go into Mexico and then attack the settlements east of Fort Duncan," Hatch reported on January 3. "They had with them a large number of American horses and mules, evidently taken from settlements or posts west of us." Patrick Dearen, Crossing Rio Pecos, (TCU Press, Ft. Worth, 1996), pp. 99-101. |
