J. Franklin Bell

Bell was born to John Wilson and Sarah Margaret Venable (Allen) Bell in Shelbyville, Kentucky. His mother died when he was young. Thereafter the two most important women in his life were the black woman who looked after him as a child and the white woman who became his step-mother.[1]

During the American Civil War, Shelby County was split between Union and Confederate factions. The extended Bell family was strongly in favor of the secession. After the firing on Fort Sumter, John Wilson Bell and his brothers drew lots to determine who would remain at home to look after their parents and who would join the Southern armies. John lost and remained at home. Young James Franklin, "Frank" as he was known to family and friends, thus grew up in a milieu in which slavery was not only accepted and practiced but strongly defended.

Bell attended the public schools in Shelbyville. Until he was sixteen, he also worked on his father's farm six days a week with breaks only for school and the Sabbath. In the process, he developed a strong physical constitution that stood him in good stead for the remainder of his life. In 1872 he began working as a clerk in a general store owned by one of his uncles. His chief recreations were baseball and horse racing. One neighbor later remembered Frank and a friend tearing down country lanes on horseback "as if the Devil" was after them.[2]

Working in a general store did not appeal to such a high spirited young person, and in 1874 he secured appointment to West Point. During his four years at the Military Academy, he excelled in art, horsemanship, demerits, and making friends. He graduated 38th in a class of 43. The War Department assigned him to the 9th Cavalry, one of the black units formed after the Civil War. Then in Kentucky on home leave, Bell attempted to resign his commission. This, in fact, was illegal, but someone at the War Department understood the attitudes that were behind this action and assigned him to the all-white 7th Cavalry. He joined the unit at Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory, on October 1, 1878.[3]

Bell became an instructor of military science and tactics and taught mathematics at Southern Illinois University, a position held from 1886 until 1889. While in Illinois, he read law and passed the Illinois bar. In 1889, he returned to the 7th Cavalry. Although the regiment participated in the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, Bell was on personal leave and did not participate. He was promoted to first lieutenant on December 29, 1890, and participated in the Pine Ridge, South Dakota campaign in 1891. Later that year, the 7th Cavalry was posted to Fort Riley, Kansas, and Bell joined the staff of the Cavalry and Light Artillery School. He soon became adjutant, then secretary of the school. In November 1894, Bell became aide-de-camp to General James W. Forsyth and posted to the Department of California. He was transferred to Fort Apache, Arizona Territory, in July 1897 and then to Vancouver Barracks, Washington, in February 1898.

At the outbreak of the Spanish–American War, Bell was acting as adjutant to General Forsyth, then commanding the Department of the West, with headquarters at San Francisco. He was immediately commissioned Colonel of Volunteers, and authorized to organize a regiment. This regiment was ordered to the Philippines and, under his command, saw service in the Philippine–American War.

After a few months in the Philippines, Bell was promoted from his commission of captain in the Regular Army to brigadier general in the Regular Army, outranking many officers previously his senior.

Bell was awarded a Medal of Honor for his actions of September 9, 1899 near Porac on Luzon Island in the Philippines. According to the official citation, "while in advance of his regiment [Bell] charged 7 insurgents with his pistol and compelled the surrender of the captain and 2 privates under a close fire from the remaining insurgents concealed in a bamboo thicket."[4]

In July 1903, Bell was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he headed the Command and General Staff School until April 14, 1906; Bell was promoted major general, and was appointed Chief of the Army General Staff. He served for four years, under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Bell was the first chief officer of the United States Army in 45 years who had not served in the American Civil War.

Major General J. Franklin Bell (photograph taken by Rex Dunbar Frazier, circa 1915)

When the United States military forces of the Western Pacific concentrated in the Philippines, he returned to Manila in 1911, as military commander, until war with Mexico seemed imminent. He was then ordered home to take command of the 4th Division. The 4th Division remained in Texas City as reserve and, although at several times he seemed about to cross the Rio Grande, he was never a part of the Mexican expeditionary force.

After the Mexican situation quieted, Bell was relieved of the 4th Division, and placed in command of the Department of the West. He remained in command at San Francisco, where he had once been acting adjutant, until the United States entered World War I.

In the early spring of 1917, Bell was transferred to the Department of the East at Fort Jay, Governors Island, in New York City, and as commander of that department, assuming responsibility for Officers' Training Camps created by his predecessor, Leonard Wood, at Plattsburgh, Madison Barracks, and Fort Niagara. Bell's aide, Captain George C. Marshall, was most directly involved in the logistical support for these camps, battling a lethargic army supply system to properly equip the volunteer citizen soldiers. These camps, in August 1917, graduated the large quota of new officers needed for the new National Army and, to a large extent, to officer the new divisions of the east and northeast.

In the same month, Bell was offered and promptly accepted the command of the National Army Division to be organized at Camp Upton. Bell commanded the Division when the first newly appointed officers climbed the hill and reported to their first assignment, through that formative stage when barracks were thrown together at a miraculous speed, and being filled at the same rate. Then, in December, he sailed for France to make a tour of the front, and observe, first hand, actual fighting conditions. He did not return until the latter part of March 1918.

On his return, Bell failed the physical examination required for active service overseas. When the doctors decreed that he would not take his division to France, Bell was again given command of the Department of the East, and returned to his old headquarters, Governors Island, which command he held until his death in January 1919.

• Medal of Honor
• Distinguished Service Cross[5]
• Distinguished Service Medal
• Indian Campaign Medal
• Spanish Campaign Medal
• Philippine Campaign Medal
• World War I Victory Medal

United States Military Academy Cadet – class of 1878

Rank	Date	Component
Second Lieutenant	June 1878	Regular Army
First Lieutenant	29 December 1890	Regular Army
Major	17 May 1898	Volunteers
Captain	2 March 1899	Regular Army
Colonel	5 July 1899	Volunteers
Brigadier General	December 1899	Volunteers
Brigadier General	19 February 1901	Regular Army
Major General	3 January 1907	Regular Army

• List of Philippine–American War Medal of Honor recipients

• The Philippine "Lodge committee" hearings (A.K.A. Philippine Investigating Committee) and a great deal of documentation were published in three volumes (3000 pages) as S. Doc. 331, 57th Cong., 1st Session An abridged version of the oral testimony can be found in: American Imperialism and the Philippine Insurrection: Testimony Taken from Hearings on Affairs in the Philippine Islands before the Senate Committee on the Philippines-1902; edited by Henry F Graff; Publisher: Little, Brown; 1969. ASIN: B0006BYNI8
• See the extensive Anti-imperialist summary of the findings of the Lodge Committee/Philippine Investigating Committee on wikisource. Listing many of the atrocities and the military and government reaction.
• Ramsey, Robert D. III "A Masterpiece of Counterguerilla Warfare: BG J. Franklin Bell in the Philippines, 1901–1902", The Long War Series: Occasional Paper 25 Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute Press 2007 ISBN 978-0-16-079503-9
• Raines, Edgar F., Jr. "Major General J. Franklin Bell, U.S.A.: The Education of a Soldier, 1856-1899," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 83 (Autumn 1985): 315–46.
• Davis, jr., Henry Blaine (1998). Generals in Khaki. Raleigh, North Carolina: Pentland Press, Inc. pp. 30–31. ISBN 1-57197-088-6.

• "The Burning of Samar". Archived from the original on September 5, 2008. Retrieved September 29, 2010. *James Franklin Bell at Find a Grave