Buffalo Bill - Wikipedia

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), but he lived for several years in his father's hometown in Toronto Township, Ontario, Canada, before the family returned to the Midwest and settled in the Kansas Territory.

Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his father's death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 14. During the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout for the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.

One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill's legend began to spread when he was only twenty-three. Shortly thereafter he started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours in the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain and continental Europe.

Military services

Cody in 1865 at the age of 19.
After his mother recovered, Cody wanted to enlist as a soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War but was refused because of his young age. He began working with a freight caravan that delivered supplies to Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming. In 1863, at age 17, he enlisted as a teamster with the rank of private in Company H, 7th Kansas Cavalry, and served until discharged in 1865.[6][9]

The next year, Cody married Louisa Frederici. They had four children. Two died young, while the family was living in Rochester, New York. They and a third child are buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, in Rochester.[12]

In 1866, he reunited with his old friend Wild Bill Hickok in Junction City, Kansas, then serving as a scout. Cody enlisted as a scout himself at Fort Elsworth and scouted between there and Fort Fletcher (later renamed and moved to Fort Hays). He was attached as a scout, variously, to Captain George Augustus Armes (Battle of the Saline River) and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (guide and impromptu horse race to Fort Larned). It was during this service at Fort Elsworth that he met William Rose, with whom he would found the short-lived settlement of Rome, Kansas.[13]

In 1867, with construction of the Kansas Pacific Railway completing through Hays City and Rome, Cody was granted leave of absence to hunt buffalo to supply railroad construction workers with meat. This endeavor continued into 1868, which saw his hunting contest with William Comstock.[14]

Cody returned to Army service in 1868.[15] From his post in Fort Larned, he performed an exceptional feat of riding as a lone dispatch courier from Fort Larned to Fort Zarah (escaping capture), Fort Zarah to Fort Hays, Fort Hays to Fort Dodge, Fort Dodge to Fort Larned, and, finally, Fort Larned to Fort Hays, a total of 350 miles in 58 hours through hostile territory, covering the last 35 miles on foot. In response, General Philip Sheridan assigned him Chief of Scouts for the 5th Cavalry Regiment.[16]

He was also Chief of Scouts for the Third Cavalry in later campaigns of the Plains Wars.

In January 1872, Cody was a scout for the highly publicized hunting expedition of the Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia.[17]

Cody was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1872 for gallantry as an Army scout in the Indian Wars. It was revoked in 1917, along with medals of 910 other recipients, when Congress authorized the War Department to revoke prior Army Medal of Honor awards it had considered dubious since the introduction of strict regulations in 1897. All civilian medals were revoked, including civilian scouts, since they did not meet the basic criterion of being officers or enlisted soldiers, which had been expressly listed in every authorizing statute ever enacted. Cody was one of five scouts affected. Their medals were stripped shortly after Cody died in 1917.

Cody's relatives objected, and over a number of years they wrote repeatedly to Congress seeking reconsideration. All efforts failed, including a 1988 letter to the US Senate from Cody's grandson, until the office of Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming took up the cause in 1989. Its brief, which argued for the retroactive elevation of these civilian scouts' status to meet the Medal's standards, persuaded the Army Board for Correction of Military Records to restore their medals. The decision was controversial for a number of reasons. Senator Simpson's submission argued that the law had never required Cody to be a soldier, which was untrue, as every version of the law had required this. Simpson's submission cited a book, Above and Beyond, to illustrate this point, but the source actually listed the correct law that required Cody to be an enlisted soldier. Another problem was the questionable authority of the Board for Correction to contravene several federal statutes; the Medal of Honor revocation had been expressly authorized by Congress, meaning that the restoration went against the law in force in 1872, the law requiring the revocation in 1916, and the modern statute enacted in 1918 that remains substantially unmodified today. Since the Board of Correction is merely a delegation of the Secretary of the Army's authority, this raises a separation of powers conflict, since even the president cannot contravene a clear statute, yet Cody's medal was dealt with below the cabinet level. Modern Medal of Honor cases originating from the board, such as the recent case of Garlin Conner, required both executive action as well as a statutory waiver from Congress, which underscores this point. In the Cody case, the board's governing assistant secretary recognized that it lacked the authority to reinstate the medal directly, and so decided to return the case to the board for reconsideration. As a result, the board amended Cody's record to make him an enlisted soldier so that he would fall within the legal requirements, and did the same for four other civilian guides who had also had their medals rescinded. In doing so, the board overlooked the fact that Cody was a civilian guide with far greater employment flexibility than a soldier, including the ability to resign at will.[18]