Henry Wilson

The Ganghwa Island incident or the Japanese Battle of Ganghwa , was an armed encounter between the Joseon Dynasty and Japan which occurred in the... vicinity of Ganghwa Island on September 20, 1875. In the second half of the 19th century, Korea peninsula was the scene for a power struggle between several imperial powers including the Russians and the French, as well as the Chinese and the Japanese. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended the 265-year-old feudalistic Tokugawa shogunate in Japan. The new government of Japan sent a messenger holding a letter with the sovereign's message which informed of the founding of a new administration of Japan to the government of the Korean Joseon Dynasty on December 19, 1868. However, the Joseon Dynasty refused to receive the letter because it contained the Chinese characters 皇 and 勅 . According to the political system of the day, only the Chinese emperor was allowed to use these characters, as they signified the imperial authority of China.
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The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon was a significant United States victory that brought about the end of the Red River War. Ever since the summer of 1874... the Comanches, Cheyenne and Kiowas had sought refuge in Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas panhandle. There they had been stockpiling food and supplies for the winter. Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, leading the 4th U.S. Cavalry, moved up from the south intending to trap the whole force in their Palo Duro Canyon holdout. Fighting several skirmishes with Comanche warriors along the way Mackenzie reached Palo Duro in late September. Early in the morning of September 28, one of Mackenzie's scouts found the Indian camp and notified the colonel. Mackenzie brought the whole regiment to the edge of the canyon and planned a surprise attack. Comanche Chief Red Warbonnet discovered the U.S. soldiers and fired off a warning shot, but was quickly killed. Mackenzie's troopers were unable to find a suitable path down, so instead plunged straight down the steep canyon cliffs. Mackenzie first hit Chief Lone Wolf's Kiowa camp and routed it.
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The Second Battle of Adobe Walls was fought on June 27, 1874 between Comanche forces and a group of twenty-eight U.S. bison hunters defending the... settlement of Adobe Walls, Texas in what is now Hutchinson County, Texas. Adobe Walls was the name of a trading post in the Texas Panhandle, just north of the Canadian River. In 1845, an Adobe fort was built there to house the post, but it was blown up by the traders three years later after repeated Indian attacks. In 1864, the ruins were the site of one of the largest battles ever to take place on the Great Plains. Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson led 335 soldiers from New Mexico and 72 Ute and Jicarilla Apache scouts against a force of more than one thousand Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache. The Indian army forced Carson to retreat though he was acclaimed as a hero for successfully striking a blow against the Indians and for leading his men out of the trap with minimal casualties. This is known as the First Battle of Adobe Walls. After the decimation of the buffalo herd in Kansas the hunters moved south and west to continue practicing their professional depradation of the buffalo.
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The Taiwan Expedition of 1874 , usually referred to in Taiwan and mainland China as the Mudan incident , was a punitive expedition launched by the... Japanese in retaliation for the murder of 54 Ryukyuan sailors by Paiwan aborigines near the southwestern tip of Taiwan in December 1871. The success of the expedition, which marked the first overseas deployment of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy, revealed the fragility of the Qing dynasty's hold on Taiwan and encouraged further Japanese adventurism. Diplomatically, Japan's embroilment with China in 1874 was eventually resolved by a British arbitration which confirmed Japanese sovereignty over the disputed Ryukyu Islands in 1879. In December 1871 a Ryukyuan vessel was shipwrecked near the southern tip of Taiwan. Fifty-four members of its crew of 66 were beheaded by the Paiwan aborigines. The remaining 12 crewmen were rescued by Han Chinese and were transferred to Tainan in southern Taiwan. The local Chinese government officials transferred them to Fujian province in mainland China. From there, the Qing government arranged to send them back home.
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