In 1836, Major George H. Crosman, United States Army, who was convinced from his experiences in the Indian wars in Florida that camels would be useful as beasts of burden, encouraged the War Department to use camels for transportation. In 1848 or earlier, Major Henry C. Wayne conducted a more detailed study and recommended importation of camels to the War Department. Wayne’s opinions agreed with those of then Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Davis was unsuccessful until he was appointed as Secretary of War in 1853. When US forces were required to operate in arid and desert regions, the President and Congress began to take the idea seriously. Newly appointed as Secretary of War by President Franklin Pierce, Davis found the Army needed to improve transportation in the southwestern US, which he and most observers thought a great desert. In his annual report for 1854, Davis wrote, “I again invite attention to the advantages to be anticipated from the use of camels and dromedaries for military and other purposes. On March 3, 1855, the US Congress appropriated $30,000 for the project. Among the reasons the camel experiment failed was that it was supported by Jefferson Davis, who left the United States to become President of the Confederate States of America. The U.S. Army was a horse-and-mule organization whose soldiers did not have the skills to control a camel
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