Drum Barracks

The impending withdrawal of regular troops from California to fight in the Civil War presented Los Angeles with a threefold crisis: The response was to build a major installation, adjacent to San Pedro Bay and 25 miles south of Los Angeles,[2] to be garrisoned by troops moved from Fort Tejon and later by recruits from Northern California and from among the loyal minority in the area.

The immediate cause of his arrest is not known, but one of his many editorials had said that the Northern mobilization was an abolition war, "instigated, carried on, and to be consummated, by the degradation of the white race, and the elevation of the African family over them" and that "Black Republican" rule "has degenerated into worse than an Oriental despotism.

[6] The report of the arrest does not say what the utterance was, but one of his speeches was published later: “What sorcery is there in the name of Lincoln that it should move the world to extraordinary homage and devotion, and obliterate all the monuments of ancient security and freedom?

It belongs to kingly and not to free government.”[6] Drum Barracks troops were stationed at San Bernardino for most of the war and made intermittent encampments at El Monte.

Continuing demonstrations by secessionists required the dispatch of 25 additional men to take up a post near Los Angeles in a position to command the town.

[9] Troops sent east from Los Angeles to confront Confederates first "had to fight the Apaches, hereditary enemies of the Pumas and Maricopas; and the Navajos were also war-like.

From Tucson into New Mexico, in fact, the column had to fight its way through hostile Indians, who lurked in every mountain pass, and guarded every water hole.

Drum Barracks troops, including the Spanish-speaking Native California Cavalry, made incursions into the Mexican state of Sonora at Hermosillo, Altar and Magdalena.

In October 1871, the Los Angeles Star reported that all remaining troops at Drum Barracks had been ordered to Fort Yuma.

[14] The Drum Barracks was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries in the early 1990s, in a segment narrated by Robert Stack, called 'Civil War Ghosts'.