Kearny, Stephen Watts

Kearny, Stephen Watts (1794–1848), frontier army commander, conqueror of New Mexico, governor of California.Born in Newark to a prominent New Jersey family, Kearny became a regular army lieutenant in the War of 1812. He served with distinction at the Battle of Queenston Heights on the Niagara frontier. Promoted in the postwar period, he served in several expeditions and posts on the western frontier and molded the dragoons into one of the U.S. Army's crack units.

During the Mexican War, Colonel Kearny received orders to organize an expedition of dragoons and Missouri Volunteers and seize Sante Fe, the provincial capital of New Mexico. Commanding the Army of the West, Kearny led 1,800 men 700 miles from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on 30 June 1846, arriving at Santa Fe on 18 August. As a brigadier general, he established a U.S. civil government and a territorial constitution there, then left on 25 September with 700 men for his second objective, the seizure of California. Learning that Commodore Robert F. Stockton had already conquered California, Kearny sent half his command back to Sante Fe and proceeded with 300 troops overland to California.

In December, he arrived near Los Angeles, which had been retaken by Mexican Californians. On 6 December, at San Pascual, Kearny defeated a Mexican detachment. After reprovisioning in San Diego, Kearny's soldiers and Stockton's sailors and Marines defeated 600 Mexicans at San Gabriel and retook Los Angeles. A feud between Kearny and Stockton, the latter supported by John C. Fremont, over who was in charge in California led to Kearny's recognition as the military governor and ultimately to Fremont's court‐martial for insubordination. Kearny died from yellow fever.

Bibliography

Dwight L. Clarke , Stephen Watts Kearny: Soldier of the West, 1961.

John M. Hart