William Selby Harney (August 22, 1800 – May 9, 1889), otherwise known among the Lakota as "Woman Killer" and "Mad Bear," was an American cavalry officer in the US Army, who became known during the Indian Wars and the Mexican–American War for his brutality and ruthlessness. During his service, Harney commanded key frontier military operations in Florida, Texas, and the northern Great Plains, his aggressive actions in the Pacific Northwest also nearly sparked a potential war with the United Kingdom.
One of five general officers (including Winfield Scott, David Twiggs, John Wool, and Joseph E. Johnston) in the US Army at the beginning of the American Civil War, he was removed from overseeing the Department of the West because of his Southern sympathies early in the war, although he kept Missouri from joining the Confederacy. Under President Andrew Johnson, he served on the Indian Peace Commission, negotiating in several treaties before spending his retirement partly in Missouri and partly trading reminiscences with Jefferson Davis and Ulysses S. Grant in Mississippi, eventually moving to Florida afterwards, where he spent the last few years of his life.
William S. Harney was born on August 27, 1800, in Haysborough (Haysboro), a community on the Cumberland River (then a few miles above Nashville, Tennessee, now incorporated in the city), Harney attended a local private academy. His father Thomas Harney had been an army officer.
In 1817, Harney's brother, Dr. Benjamin F. Harney, an Army surgeon in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, asked Andrew Jackson, a hero of the War of 1812 and the current commander of the Army of the South, to write a letter to the Secretary of the Navy to ask for Harney's acceptance into the Navy, which occurred July 23, 1817. Harney visited his brother and met high-ranking military officers. He so impressed them that they arranged a commission for him as a U.S. Navy second lieutenant, which President James Monroe signed. However, Harney chose to serve under Jackson in the army. His first military assignment under Jackson was in 1818, as a second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Infantry. He helped to force the pirate Jean Lafitte to move his operations from the Louisiana Territory to the Spanish Main.
Harney began his many years of interactions with American Indians on the Great Plains in 1825, when he accompanied Colonel Henry Atkinson and Benjamin O'Fallon on an expedition to sign treaties with the Upper Missouri tribes. In 1832, Harney fought in the Black Hawk War against the Sauk and Fox tribes, serving as General Zachary Taylor's assistant inspector. There he met, fought, and befriended Jefferson Davis, Taylor's son-in-law and a fellow army officer.
In June 1834, while he was a major in the Paymaster Corps at the Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, Harney was charged with beating an enslaved woman named Hannah to death. Upset by the loss of keys to his office, Harney suspected Hannah of having stolen them. In a fit of anger, he fiercely beat her with a piece of rawhide. Hannah died from her injuries three days later. Harney then fled to avoid arrest, meanwhile seeking formal transfer to another state by the army. The coroner ruled that Hannah died as a result of Harney's violent actions, and he was indicted for murder by a grand jury in July. The trial was moved to Union, Missouri, and scheduled for the spring of 1835. Overseen by a judge with "a reputation in which Harney could take comfort" (according to biographer George Rollie Adams), fifteen witnesses spoke in court, their testimony going unrecorded, and Harney, "although clearly responsible for Hannah's death," was acquitted.
This was not the only instance of Harney brutalizing slaves. He owned a group of muscular male slaves whom he enjoyed provoking into fistfights with soldiers.
During the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), Harney gained a reputation as an Indian fighter for his daring and ruthless raids. Harney and troops under his command often fought the Seminole war leader and mystic Sam Jones, also known as Abiaka. Harney first fought against Abiaka in January 1838 at the Second Battle of the Loxahatchee. In July 1839, Abiaka's warriors attacked Harney and his soldiers at the Battle of the Caloosahatchee.
During the Mexican–American War, Harney was appointed colonel and commanded the 2nd Dragoons. They were attached to John E. Wool's command during the Chihuahua Expedition and the Battle of Buena Vista. Harney joined Winfield Scott's army as senior cavalry officer at the siege of Veracruz. However, Harney's headstrong and insubordinate temperament caused losses and embarrassment. So when Harney refused to leave Monterrey, despite orders to do so, he was replaced by Major Edwin V. Sumner, and Brevet Major General William J. Worth placed Harney under court-martial, and Harney was ultimately convicted. However, President James K. Polk overrode Scott's judgment to remove Harney from command and concluded that Harney's only fault was being in the Democratic Party. The incident damaged the relationship between the general and Commander-in-Chief.
Placed in temporary command of the 1st Brigade in David Twiggs's division, Harney fought with distinction at the Battle of Cerro Gordo and received a promotion to brevet brigadier general. He returned to cavalry command during the Battle of Contreras, the Battle of Churubusco, and the Battles for Mexico City. However, he was accused of mistreatment of captured prisoners from the St. Patrick's Battalion, which included US Army deserters and escaped slaves.
By order of Gen. Winfield Scott, thirty San Patricios were to be executed at the Battle of Chapultepec in full view of the two armies, and at the precise moment that the flag of the U.S. replaced the flag of Mexico atop the citadel. Harney was ordered to carry out the execution but was taunted and jeered by the condemned men. One of the condemned, Francis O'Connor, was ordered by Harney to be hanged even though both his legs had been amputated the previous day. When the army surgeon informed Colonel Harney that the absent soldier had lost both his legs in battle, Harney was said to have replied: "Bring the damned son of a bitch out! My order was to hang 30 and by God I'll do it!" In the aftermath of the executions, it was reported that Harney refused to cut the bodies down, stating that "I was ordered to have them hanged, and have no orders to unhang them".
Harney became an original member of the Aztec Club of 1847, which was composed of American officers who had served in Mexico.
On May 14, 1849, on the death of Brevet Major General William J. Worth, Harney assumed command of Military Department Number Five, which comprised almost all of the settled portion of Texas. He was assigned to control Indian raids, which led to the First Sioux War (discussed in part below), although Harney actually commanded Military Department No. 5 for only three short periods, having been replaced by Colonel George N. Brooke on July 7, 1849; after Brooke's death from March 9 until September 15, 1851, when he was replaced by Colonel Persifor N. Smith, and then from December 3, 1852, until he was again relieved by Smith on May 11, 1853.
Recalled from leave after he had attempted to visit his family in Paris in 1854, Harney led a punitive expedition against the Sioux after they killed a small US Army detachment in Nebraska Territory, an event called the Grattan massacre. He led attacks against the Brulé Lakota, who were involved in conflicts with immigrant travelers on the Oregon Trail. In the Battle of Ash Hollow, on September 2 and 3, 1855, Harney's troops routed Little Thunder's village at Blue Water Creek (now known as Ash Hollow), in western Nebraska, killing about half of the 250 band members. Among the victims were women and children who had hidden in a cave, into which cannons were fired under the pretense that they were warriors. Following this massacre the Sioux gave Harney the nicknames of “The Butcher” and “The Big Chief who Swears”. Harney earned a Lakota name translated as "Mad Bear" because after the attack, he marched across the Badlands to Fort Pierre, the largest trading post in Dakota Territory, and challenged the Lakotas to a winter fight. The success of the campaign encouraged Harney to suggest that mobile units might replace permanent army posts.