Headquarters Military Division of the Missouri
Chicago, Illinois Oct. 26th, 1872
Mr. J. B. Omohundro (Texas Jack)
Fort McPherson, Neb.
Sir:
Your communication of the 20th inst and the Elk-horns were duly received a day or two ago. The horns are the largest and the handsomest I ever saw. Please accept my thanks for your attention.
I am,
Yours truly,
P.H. Sheridan
Lieut. General, U.S.A
By October of 1872, Texas Jack had wrapped up his long summer buffalo hunt with the Pawnee. He had wooed a southern belle, newly arrived on the prairies from the genteel southern city of Savannah. He had lassoed buffalo, planned a hot-air balloon ride in Omaha, led the Earl of Dunraven on a buffalo hunt across the Nebraska plains, and helped his friend Buffalo Bill with the preparations and management of the Grand Duke Alexis hunt. In less than two months, he would be standing on a Chicago stage with his best friend Bill Cody and Ned Buntline, the writer who had made them both famous.
But in October, he was finding ways to thank the men who had put him in positions of authority in Nebraska, despite his service as one of Confederate General Jeb Stuart's favorite spies and scouts in Virginia. Bill Cody later said that he had to take the matter all the way up the ranks to the Secretary of War in Washington in order to allow his friend Omohundro to serve as a scout for the Army.
Phil Sheridan, who met Texas Jack during the Grand Duke Alexis hunt and then personally recommended him to lead the Pawnee on their annual summer buffalo hunt, had commanded Union troops across the battlefield from Texas Jack and his commanding officers General Lunsford Lomax, General Fitzhugh Lee, and General Jeb Stuart at the Battles of Yellow Tavern, where Stuart lost his life, and Trevilian Station, the bloodiest and largest all-cavalry battle of the Civil War. The west had a way of erasing the north/south divisions of the Civil War. On the prairies of Nebraska, a former Confederate cavalry scout like Texas Jack could hear the favor of men like George Armstrong Custer and Phil Sheridan.
To learn more about Texas Jack, and the way a Confederate cavalry scout and spy could become the most famous cowboy in the world, sharing stages with Buffalo Bill and trails with Custer and Sheridan, preorder the new book Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns, coming April 1, 2021, and available wherever books are sold. https://www.dimelibrary.com/book
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