The officer who had made the call to leave the fort expressed his opinion to the head of the army: “There is not, nor ever has been, any danger of the Mexicans crossing on our side of the river to plunder or disturb the inhabitants, and the outcry on that river for troops is solely to have an expenditure of the public money.”18 The pre–Civil War West might have been a place of opportunity for white men, but even without the issue of black slavery, the government there acknowledged a hierarchy of men according to their race.
