The United States was not prepared for a foreign war as tensions with Spain rose in 1898. Then, on February 15, 1898, the battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. Two hundred sixty American sailors were killed, and war seemed inevitable.
The call went out for volunteers, and North Dakotans did not shirk. Towns across the state held banquets for their boys heading off to war. Volunteer units staged parades on the way from local armories to the train station. Sidewalks were thronged with people who came to see them off. The volunteer companies gathered in Fargo and set up Camp Briggs, named in honor of the governor.
On this date in 1898, businessman E. A. Farrell returned to Langdon after a week’s stay in Fargo. During his trip, he visited the Langdon boys at Camp Briggs. He reported that they were well tanned and looking healthy. He was not the only one to make the journey. North Dakotans took advantage of low-cost excursion trains to visit the young soldiers.
Life at Camp Briggs was not all military drills and target practice. Military activities were broken up by a steady round of social events, and newspapers published details of the camp’s nonmilitary doings.
Civil War veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic planned a banquet for Company B, and the Catholic Lady Foresters donated a barrel of lemonade.
Some enterprising volunteers came up with a plan to earn extra spending money. The men from Williston were described as rough riders “in the truest sense of the word.” They announced that if anyone in the Fargo area had a horse that needed breaking to saddle, they could handle the job, and “now is the time to get in the game.”
As Camp Briggs took shape and the volunteers began to look less like civilians and more like soldiers, the Bismarck Tribune observed, “It gladdens the hearts of the old [Civil War] veterans as it recalls the scenes of thirty-seven years ago.” Many of their sons were preparing to do their duty, just as their fathers had before them.
The North Dakota volunteers were sent halfway around the world to the Philippines. They served first in the Spanish-American War, and then in the Philippine-American War that followed. They were gone for eighteen long months before finally returning home to their families and friends.
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Carole Butcher
Sources:
- Jamestown Weekly Alert. “Camp Briggs Notes.” Jamestown ND. 5/15/1898. Page 2.
- Bismarck Weekly Tribune. “Routine of Camp.” Bismarck ND. 5/6/1898. Page 7
- Courier Democrat. “Gossip and Notes.” Langdon ND. 5/19/1898.
