Second Oregon Infantry, San Francisco, 1899

Soldiers from the Second Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment are shown in this photograph parading down San Francisco’s Market Street after their return from the Philippines. The Second Oregon were among the first infantry units to be sent to fight in the Philippine-American War (1899-1902). They were also the first to return, arriving in San Francisco on July 13, 1899, where they were met with a hero’s welcome.

When fighting between the United States and Spain broke out in April 1898, the U.S. Army found itself unprepared to fight an overseas war, the first in the nation’s history. The War Department put out a call for volunteers from the National Guard, including one infantry regiment from Oregon, which had one of the better equipped and disciplined guards in the nation.

In early May 1898, the entire Oregon National Guard assembled at Portland’s Irving Park, temporarily renamed Camp McKinley by Governor William P. Lord. One regiment was organized and designated the Second Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment—the first volunteer regiment had been organized in the 1870s to fight the Modoc Indians.

More than 1,300 volunteers from all over the state served with the Second Oregon. On average they were 25 years old, 5 feet 8 inches tall, and weighed 148 pounds. Most were single; fewer than ten percent had graduated from college. Their professions were quite varied; many were farmers, but more were clerks, students, or laborers. Fewer than half were members of a church.

Private H.C. Thompson, a guardsman from Eugene, remembered that after the volunteers swore an oath to serve for two years or the duration of the war, they “marched through the cheering streets of Portland, pelted with flowers and deafened with cheers.” On May 11, 1898, the volunteers boarded a train bound for San Francisco, stopping at Salem, Eugene, and other towns along the way, where they were met by crowds of supporters and brass bands playing Civil War songs.

The Second Oregon Volunteers spent twelve months in the Philippines, securing Manila before fighting against Filipino independence fighters in the countryside. Sixty-one men from the regiment died, disease accounting for more than two-thirds of the fatalities. Three received the congressional medal of honor, the nation’s highest military award.

Further Reading:
Bunnett, Sara, ed. Manila Envelopes: Oregon Volunteer Lt. George F. Tefler’s Spanish-American War Letters. Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1987.

Thompson, H.C. “War Without Medals.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 59 (1958): 293-325.

Written by Sarah Griffith, Cain Allen © Oregon Historical Society, 2003, 2004.