James Butler Hickock—“Wild Bill”—was only 29 when he was shot by Jack McCall in Deadwood. “Aces and Eights”—the poker hand he was playing—has been known ever since as “The Dead Man’s Hand.”
My first exposure to the man, when television screens were slightly bigger than postage stamps, was “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock.” Guy Madison played a squeaky-clean Pure American version of the gunfighter/lawman, with an equally squeaky-clean cowboy hat that never existed in 1876. Fortunately, his sidekick was the delightful Andy Devine, the stagecoach driver in John Ford’s 1939 Stagecoach, who rotundness, crowned by a an endearing squeaky voice, kept us from taking Wild Bill too seriously. Except for me, but I was only four.
I would not return to Hickock, thanks to the interventions of other TV gunmen/heroes, like James Arness, Richard Boone and Steve McQueen, until I began teaching U.S. History and American Lit at Mission Prep. Every year, I showed the revisionist Western Little Big Man because of its sweep, which included, for once, telling the Native American side of the story. Dustin Hoffman, too, was extraordinary. Before he became an adult Human Being—a Cheyenne—he had a gunfighter period, and it included this encounter with Wild Bill, played by Jeff Corey, an actor instantly recognizable for his many appearances in The Twilight Zone. Corey is excellent here, but it’s Hoffman’s squeaky leather that steals the scene.
It would be a good long time before I found a Wild Bill I’d want to hang with, if only fitfully. Jeff Bridges Bill is losing his eyesight, frequents opium dens, is adored by Ellen Barkin’s Calamity Jane (she looks like Calamity Jane not at all. Deadwood’s Robin Weigert is far closer to the mark, and she cleans up real good. She is lovely.)
What made Bridges even more real to me was that hat. It was amazing, and it looked like one of the hats the Hickock actually wore.
Bill liked his hats, even this one, from his buffalo hunter days..
Jeff Bridges, without a doubt, is one of my favorite actors, and his Bill is sublime, down to the gravelly voice he’s evolved into Rooster Cogburn’s. But he’s not my favorite Wild Bill. That honor, of course, belongs to Keith Carradine, who blends his portrayal, of a wasted man who knows he’s doomed, with unfolded moments of honor, taking up a hammer, for example, to help newcomers to Deadwood set up a hardware store or refusing to throw down when goaded by men almost as crude as the current president.
There was a certain nobility in Carradine’s character. I knew this scene was coming in Deadwood, and, like Calamity Jane, it took me a long while to get over it.
My Pop’s birthday anniversary (it would be #107) is tomorrow. He’s in this photo.
My Aunt Mildred (She preferred to be called “Aunt Bill.” Mildred, that unfortunate name, comes from a marriage connection to Washington’s Aunt Mildred) and Dad in Raymondville, Missouri, about 1936. They’re with Blackie the dog.
Blackie had just been given away for “botherin’ sheep,” but this is the moment when he arrived home after a forty-mile walk, running away from his new home in Rolla to be back with his people in Raymondville.
I inherited a little bit of an Ozark Plateau accent from these people; I’ve grown out of most of it, but here are some samples:
“July” is pronounced with a distinct emphasis on the first syllable.
“Insurance” is likewise.
“Theater” is pronounced “Thee AY ter.”
When I was in college and staying with kin near Raymondville, I was walking to the local burger stand in Licking, Missouri (MLB baseballs were once manufactured there) for some deep-fried mushrooms. Once you get deep-fried mushrooms fixed in your mind, they do not go away. I heard a voice.
BOY!
Kept walking.
BOY!
Damn. I heard it twice. It was a man calling me from a pickup truck. He just wanted directions. He meant no harm. I restrained myself, because he had a rifle rack. But I was steamed.
BTW: Deep-fried pickles, from The Heist in Lexington, Missouri, where my great-great-GREAT grandpappy fought a Civil War battle (I think his general’s commission got lost in the mail, a peril when you choose a confederate form of government) are beyond even deep-fried mushrooms. They are transcendental. The restaurant’s called The Heist because it was once a bank, robbed by Frank and Jesse James.
I was delighted to read that a Bakersfield-based restaurant, “Honey I’m Home” has opened up a Pismo Beach branch. The menu is pure Texas County, Missouri:
Chicken-fried steak and eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy.
Hamburger steak and eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy.
Deep-fried catfish and eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy.
I haven’t tried the place yet nor will I tell my cardiologist if I do, but the menu fits my Dad and me perfectly.
Before I go on anymore, I need to pause for my grandmother’s mashed taters. She was a delegate to the 1924 Democratic convention in Madison Square Garden, the granddaughter of a kinda sorta Confederate brigadier general, and that woman, although scary (she’d been a rural Ozark Plateau schoolmarm and swung her cane liberally when we tested her), could flat-out COOK.
My college friends and I once found a handsome catfish struggling from a trotline over a creek near Columbia, Missouri. We liberated him. Then we fried him. He was delicious. Parenthetically, water moccasins inhabit Missouri creeks. You have to really, really want some deep-fried catfish to wade in after one.
My college friends also enjoyed exploring nearby caves. You get absolutely filthy with deep-down Missouri clay, but finding cave explorer graffiti left by University of Missouri students in 1874 makes you pretty happy anyway.
My father was a marvelous joke-teller and was especially fond of Spoonerisms. One of his favorites was about the Empress of Iran, the Shan. (A mythical title). I don’t remember the joke except for the punchline:
“Where were YOU when the fit hit the Shan?”
Another, about Roy Rogers killing the mountain lion that ate his cowboy boots:
“Pardon me, Roy. Is that the cat that chewed you new shoes?”
Dad was also a repository of pithy sayings, some from the Great Depression, some from World War II:
“Use it up, wear it out. Make it do or do without.”
“When in danger or in doubt, nose her down and bail out.”
Which contrasted with:
“Forward ever! Backward never! Sink or swim! Do or die!”
Lt. Dad (Robert Wilson Gregory), 1944.
He came home from World War II Europe with a profound and colorful vocabulary, which we discovered every time he tried to adjust the TV antenna on the roof, and us just below:
“A little more! A little more! STOP! Too far!”
From the roof: ARGDIDDLYGMRPHSONOF!!!VILEBASTARDSSNAFUFUBAR!
His greatest gift to me was teaching me how to tell stories. His only equal is my friend and mentor, Cal Poly Emeritus History Professor Dan Krieger. They taught me how to teach, which led me to thirty-one of the happiest years of my life, knee-deep in teenagers.
At least I wasn’t knee-deep in water moccasins.
Me and my AP European History students, Arroyo Grande High School. San Luis Tribune photo.
Elizabeth and I were watching this film, featuring this Irving Berlin song, and modestly enjoying it.
And, of course, being raised proper by our World War II-generation parents, we began to wonder where the Black GI’s were. Not one in sight.
They were in London, where their dash endeared them to most Londoners. There was an outburst of “race riots,” from San Luis Obispo to Greenland, the same year as this film.
No one—no one—marched and sang cadence like Black American soldiers, including these young men on a British street.
And their dash was often equaled by their sass. This soldier, with his M1 Garand, seems to be outpacing the White column beyond him.
But you didn’t see Black GIs in This Is the Army. Then this scene appeared, in all its glory, in blackface, even with blackface transvestites.
Only 432 World War II American servicemen were recipients of that rarest of honors, the Medal of Honor. Not one of them was a Black man.
It took the Army until 1997 to bestow the Medal of Honor on these soldiers:
By 1997, Baker was the only one of this group still alive. Here is his Medal of Honor citation:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty: First Lieutenant Vernon J. Baker distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 5 and 6 April 1945. At 0500 hours on 5 April 1945, Lieutenant Baker advanced at the head of his weapons platoon, along with Company C’s three rifle platoons, towards their objective, Castle Aghinolfi – a German mountain strong point on the high ground just east of the coastal highway and about two miles from the 370th Infantry Regiment’s line of departure. Moving more rapidly than the rest of the company, Lieutenant Baker and about 25 men reached the south side of a draw some 250 yards from the castle within two hours. In reconnoitering for a suitable position to set up a machine gun, Lieutenant Baker observed two cylindrical objects pointing out a slit in a mount at the edge of a hill. Crawling up and under the opening, he stuck his M-1 into the slit and emptied the clip, killing the observation post’s two occupants. Moving to another position in the same area, Lieutenant Baker stumbled upon a well-camouflaged machine gun nest, the crew of which was eating breakfast. He shot and killed both enemy soldiers. After Captain John F. Runyon, Company C’s Commander joined the group, a German soldier appeared from the draw and hurled a grenade which failed to explode. Lieutenant Baker shot the enemy soldier twice as he tried to flee. Lieutenant Baker then went down into the draw alone. There he blasted open the concealed entrance of another dugout with a hand grenade, shot one German soldier who emerged after the explosion, tossed another grenade into the dugout and entered firing his sub-machine gun killing two more Germans. As Lieutenant Baker climbed back out of the draw, enemy machine gun and mortar fire began to inflict heavy casualties among the group of 25 soldiers, killing or wounding about two-thirds of them. When expected reinforcements did not arrive, Captain Runyon ordered a withdrawal in two groups. Lieutenant Baker volunteered to cover the withdrawal of the first group, which consisted mostly of walking wounded, and to remain to assist in the evacuation of the more seriously wounded. During the second group’s withdrawal, Lieutenant Baker, supported by covering fire from one of the platoon members, destroyed two machine gun positions (previously bypassed during the assault) with hand grenades. In all, Lieutenant Baker accounted for nine enemy dead soldiers, elimination of three machine gun positions, an observation post, and a dugout. On the following night, Lieutenant Baker voluntarily led a battalion advance through enemy mine fields and heavy fire toward the division objective. Lieutenant Baker’s fighting spirit and daring leadership were an inspiration to his men and exemplify the highest traditions of the military service.
When “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” appeared in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, it was complemented by two fine actors, Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens. Pickens is facing imminent death—you can see his realization of this, and then his light beginning to fade, In Jurado, you see the love she carries for him. Surprisingly—maybe not—the tenderness of the scene was directed perfectly by Sam Peckinpah.
Avril Lavigne’s version, framed as an antiwar song, is incredible.
The “Playing for Change” people produced this Afro-influenced version, but the harmonica could’ve been Dylan’s own.
There’s not a version of this song I’ve heard that I dislike, including from The Dead, Guns ‘n’ Roses, another “Playing for Change” version, also Afro-influenced and at least one “America’s Got Talent” cover. This one, with Dylan and Tom Petty, kinda seethes. The background singers are miraculous.
It’s not a” “girl” song, you might say. But I give you Avril and this woman, Leire. Born in the Basque Country, she’s performing her version near Leicester Square, in London There’s a chance that her version is my favorite.. Wow.
And, to get off-topic, one more from Leire, this time from Pink Floyd.
Why can’t my generals be more loyal, like Hiter’s generals? Donald Trump to Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly.
Hitler’s generals tried to kill him, and they almost pulled it off, Kelly replied.
The most famous example of Kelly’s history, which is factual, as opposed to the President’s knowledge of history, which is nonexistent, is the July 20, 1944 bomb plot, engineered, as we all know, by Tom Cruise (Valkyerie), not my favorite actor, with an assist by Bill Nighy, who is.
The story is familiar to those who study history. Claus von Stauffenberg, a decorated German officer who kept losing parts of himself (one eye, one arm), was, like most of modern Washington D.C., disgusted with his nation’s leader. Unlike most of D.C., he was willing to do something about it.
At Hitler’s bunker in East Prussia, the Wolf’s Lair, Stauffenberg nudged a briefcase full of plastique under the map table to the edge of the Fuhrer’s kneecaps. He then discreetly left. Another officer, wanting a better view of the movement of the mythical panzer divisions–reinforced, equipped and sped into action across the map—Normandy at one end and the Russian frontier at the other, by Hitler, nudged the briefcase out of his way and behind a support that held the map table up.
The finicky offer painted the wall when the bomb detonated.
The Fuhrer had his pants shredded. Sadly, the explosion did not kill him at all.
Hours later, Stauffenberg was shot, the lucky fellow, unlike other senior officers, Bomb Plot plotters, who were hanged with piano wire, a procedure filmed and played for Hitler’s pleasure.
Claus and Nina von Stauffenberg in their 1933 wedding.
Our piano-wire days are not here yet, but we need to be patient. We’re firing already, nicely, on all eight cylinders of Gestapo.
The doomed nationalist, Stauffenberg, was from Baden-Wurttemberg, and so were the ancestors of my beloved Grandma Kelly, whose maiden name (Kircher, from the word for “Church”) was blended with Irish blood, which may have led to two Irish husbands—one Keefe, a charming drunk and a car thief, my biological grandfather; one Kelly, a cop, my real grandfather.
My grandmother and my mother, circa 1925, about when the first Irishman, Ed Keefe, disappeared forever.
Baden-Wurttemberg, where the bomb plotter and a California gold chlorider (my Grandma Kelly’s father, Michael, who worked in a gold-processing mine and mill now beneath Lake Shasta) is stunningly beautiful.. On the left is the town where the Kirchers lived, until the 1830s; on the right is the Evangelical Lutheran church were Michen, my third great-grandfather, was baptized.
So there’s little chance that Stauffenberg and I are distant cousins. I wouldn’t mind it.
That’s not all. Oh, no.
Hitler was examined intensively after the bomb’s detonation had reduced his pants to crenelated culottes, There was not damage Down There, not that der Pilz des Anführers(“The Leader’s Mushroom”), a term suggested by porn star and Trump couplet and strumpet Stormy Daniels.
But up there? Here’s where I come in. I attended Stanford University.
Okay, for a week.
I studied the history of Depression, New Deal and World War II America with Dr. David Kennedy—an amazing man—who’d written the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of those years, Freedom from Fear. On one of our breaks—all of us high-school history teachers—we toured the Hoover Institute.
To refresh your memory, Hoover accomplished this in the 1932 presidential election (in red).
He was succeeded, of course, by some fellow from upstate New York who gave my teenaged father a job in relief work, distributing food to proud Ozark hill people whose starvation, briefly, overcame their pride, who sent CCC teenagers from New York City to Arroyo Grande to reclaim the soil that had been devastated by erosion, whose federal employees built school buildings extant in Arroyo Grande, whose vice president appointed my father to Officers’ Candidate School during World War II, whose tour of Camp Lejeune in December 1944 was guided by a Marine, a motor pool driver, a sergeant, a woman, from nearby Oceano, California, who’d lost her brother two years before on Tarawa.
Thelma and George Murray, in a composite made for their mother after his death.Murray’s body, and the graveyard of his Marine brothers on Tarawa, disappeared. He was found and came home to his mother –hie is now buried with her–in 2017.
So there’s all that.
The Murrays are all that. Our alleged president isn’t. He gives us nothing, sacrifices nothing, cares nothing for us, deserves nothing from us.
But at the Hoover Institute, an incredible repository, I was allowed to hold the X-ray of Hitler’s skull, taken after the misdirected explosion at the Wolf’s Lair this day in 1944. I have not seen an x-ray of our leader’s skull, but I have seen this one.
What I’ve seen instead, and just in the last few days, are President’ Trump’s ankles. They are grossly swollen, explained away glibly by the latest of his snake-oil doctors, like the one who proclaimed him the fittest man ever to occupy the White House.
But I’ve learned not to take his doctors’ word for anything. A more hopeful explanation, after a steady diet of Big Macs, incinerated New York steaks, gray inside, and colored only by Heinz ketchup, Kentucky-fried buckets whose grease is wiped clean on the armrests of Air Force One, double Mar-a-Lago helpings of chocolate cake with ice cream—he eats piggishly in front of his guests, allowed slivers of cake—complemented by exercise that consists of driving a golf cart across painfully manicured—by immigrants–putting greens. So there is a good chance that those bloated ankles portend congestive heart failure.
And, with God’s help, and may it be soon, the arteries that supply his heart and his brain will collapse.
He will not die for awhile.
He will stare, silent and furious, just as Stalin did at his Inner Circle after his stroke—many of them were soon the be shot at the Lubyanka, the secret police slaughterhouse in Moscow—at the the White House eunuchs who’ve abetted his every aberrant behavior, most of all the predatory ones, and they will have nothing for him, nothing to save him from the drowning his cruelty has earned him.
The cruelty he’ll leave behind is vast and invasive. The healing will take years. The war that lies ahead of us will be the hardest we have ever fought. To fight it, we need to look beyond ourselves.
We brought Elizabeth home from the hospital this afternoon with one sprained and one broken ankle. It was a team effort: Brother-in-law Rick, sister-in-law Evie, #2 son Thomas, cheering by sister Sally and niece Becky. Thank the Lord.
I was about to work out when she called. She’d fallen on Dodson Way. Oh, crap. Was it the knee she shattered a year ago? Nope. Ankle(s).
When I arrived, some nice Dodson Way people were minding the dogs and comforting Elizabeth until the ambulance and the fire truck, whose sirens we could hear from WAY off, arrived.
They said you could hear the final artillery barrage on July 3 at Gettysburg in Harrisburg,, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The sirens reminded me of that.
Four cute young men took care of her.
The ambulance guys were very solicitous. I asked one if Frank Kelton still owned the ambulance company. We were altar boys together at St. Barnabas. Nope, the ambulance guys replied. Frank’s retired, but his son is the boss now.
$3500 for the ambulance? one cute young man asked. Or, your husband could drive you to the ER.
Two crazy kids, 1986 and 2021.
We chose the latter.
So I pull up to the AG Community Hospital with one wife in pain, one Irish Setter and one Basset Hound. I dash inside.
Dash, dash dash.
They point me to a wheelchair.
Wheel, wheel, wheel.
STAY, doggies!
I take Brigid and Walter home. Then I change out of my stinky gym gear into a nice shirt and shorts. I hear the front screen door click.
Sprint, sprint, sprint.
Brigid is in the front yard, doing puzzled orbits. She looks like she’s about to take off. Maybe, she’s thinking, there are ducks nearby for me to find?
NO! I shout. She stops. IN THE HOUSE! She obeys.
Wait. Didn’t we have TWO dogs? Confirmed. So this is what I do next:
WALTER!
Walter?
Walter Walter Walter Walllll-ter?
Repeat 17 times.
He’s not in front. He’s not in back. He’s not at his girlfriend Millie’s at the end of the block.
WALTER? Okay, I’m almost sobbing.
Walter and Millie. True love.
Meanwhile, my wife is in the ER. Without me.
I walk again to the end of the block. Then to the other end. Then I get in the car and circumnavigate Fair Oaks two and a half times.
I come home, defeated and disconsolate. Then I knock on Jim, our next-door neighbor’s door. Walter was there all along.
Basset hounds are notoriously stubborn. And selectively deaf.
But to give you an idea of what Basset hounds mean to me, I smoked a pack of cigarettes in the two days after Wilson, our first Basset, died. I hadn’t smoked in forty years. That’s Wilson, at left, and Walter, puppyish, on the right.
But I had to slap on after-shave and squeegee on deodorant. Back to the hospital.
The receptionist suggests politely: “Your wife’s credit card isn’t going through. Would you like me to try it again?”
A few minutes later: “Would you like me try it again?”
I’m flop-sweating now, because I was going to go to SESLOC to get a new credit card for the one I think is lodged somewhere in the washing machine. We had no backup credit card, and, true, we have a debit card, but it was already $187 overdrawn.
“Would you like me to try it again?” She was so nice about it.
Fourth time. It worked. “The problem was on our end,” she admitted. I was so nice about it.
When we got home, we found out that the card had, indeed, been charged four times.
I thought about telling them that Dr. Cookson, who founded the hospital, was my doctor when I was little, but the Frank Kelton story didn’t go over all that well, so I held my tongue.
As I did when they kept calling out a woman named Maria in the waiting room. I had to put my hands around my own neck to keep from belting out “Maria” from “West Side Story.”
Getting home was as painful for Elizabeth on crutches and a borrowed wheeliemajig . Thank goodness, Thomas had made dinner. It just took awhile to get Elizabeth inside so she could enjoy it.
We got her situated in the same bed where she’d lived for so many weeks last summer with the shattered kneecap.
Winston the Cat, Wilson the Basset and Brigid the Irish Setter all squeezed in close to Mom.
Elizabeth broke her right ankle. In a game against the Steelers, her dad broke his left ankle.
Brigid has occasional seizures and the medication prescribed her sometimes makes her forget what her hind end is doing.
Yup. She forgot.
Brigid, looking perplexed on St. Patrick’s Day.
To give you an idea of how wet the bed was, I will have to refer you to Pharoah’s army getting drownded in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 “The Ten Commandments,” which the four-year-old me saw at the Fair Oaks. The struggling horsies [SEE: Jim Morrison, the Doors, the song “Horse Latitudes,” which includes the line “Mute nostril agony”] forever traumatized me, although not quite as much as Bambi’s mother.
Japanese American farmworkers planting seedlings in the Lower Arroyo Grande Valley. Pismo-Oceano Vegetable Exchange.
It’s just a first draft, and it’s not Hollywood Production Quality. But this presentation draft, to be given in final form next Saturday, is still very close to my heart.
Jefferson’s document has inspired similar declarations by France, Israel, Haiti, Mexico, Venezuela, Kosovo, Chile, Liberia and Vietnam. Maybe it’s time we took it back. The majority of the 1776 document is taken up by grievances justifying revolution against tyranny. Here are some examples:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has instead advocated laws that endanger the health and safety of the public.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has interfered in the jurisdiction of his Governors in matters of maintain domestic peace, substituting, against their will, armed Guardsmen in the place of local police.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has advocated punitive measures against large states whose votes he could not win, has harassed them with lawsuits, has withheld public funds that were their due.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has set capricious deadlines for the passage of a voluminous, arcane and deceitful bill, fatiguing Senators into compliance with its passage.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has erected walls and let loose secret police forces on foreigners whom he refuses to naturalize, notwithstanding their proven benefit to the economies of the states and the capitalists therein.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has subjected the judiciary to denigration and harassment, even to veiled threats of harm, in an effort to discredit them in the eyes of the people.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has subjected judges and legislators who defy his Will to arrest and public humiliation.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has used ICE and DOGE to intimidate both the people he is sworn to govern and to punish those who serve the government with faith and diligence.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has mobilized state militia and Standing Armies—the Marine Corps– given them no clear mission and deployed them, at great public expense, without the Consent of state and municipal authorities.
He has effected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has subverted the authority of the Los Angeles Police Department, a civil agency, with armed militia and Marines
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For quartering armed troops in civic buildings maintained by states and/or municipalities; they are subjected to primitive and debilitating conditions therein.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing capricious and nonsensical tariffs on foreign trade partners in the naïve belief and the constant assertion that it is foreigners who will actually pay those duties.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
And for relieving the wealthiest among us of their share of the burden of Taxes.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For the increasing use of arbitrary arrest and secret confinement, practices which subvert the tradition of Due Process of Law.
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For rewarding, from the Public Treasury, foreign dictators who incarcerate, without trial, those accused of pretended offenses.
In every stage of these Oppressions We [through our elected representative and through civic gatherings] have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
My sons and I at Gettysburg, 2000. The graves are marked only by numbers. The names will never be known.
July 1-3, the days when Gettysburg was fought in 1863, never fail to move me. When Elizabeth and I took our sons to the battlefield in 2000, I’d read so much, from little boyhood, that we didn’t need a guide. With one exception—Culp’s Hill—I knew where we were and what had happened there: This was where Buford’s cavalry held the Confederates off until reinforcement could arrive. This was Little Round Top, where the 20th Maine turned back a flanking movement on July 2 and essentially saved the Union. That, in the distance, was the copse of trees that was the target point for what came to be called Pickett’s Charge. That was the door that failed to stop the bullet that killed Jenny Wade when she was in the kitchen baking biscuits for her sister.
Death in the American Civil War changed death itself.
Confederate dead at Gettysburg. A third of Lee’s army marched into Pennsylvania barefoot. Had these been Union soldiers, their shoes would’ve been missing.
I say this because of the magnitude of deaths. The traditional figure was always 620,000, but Cliometricians, historian who specialize in statistical analysis, have now put that figure at 750,000. The modern equivalent would be eight million dead Americans.
Before the war, death had been familial and familiar. There is a marvelous scene in the film Places in the Heart, set in the 1930s South, that replicates the old way of dying. Sally Field plays a character whose husband, the county sheriff, is accidentally shot dead by a young Black man. Friends carry his body into the family home, where it’s laid gently down on the biggest surface—the dining room table, covered by a sheet—and friends and relatives gently wash the the body and dress it again in Sunday clothing.
In antebellum America and in Western Europe, death had become so ritualized that a popular practice was “death daguerreotypes,” especially of children, like the one below. This was actually reflective of a newfound attachment to children, who had been treated brutally in early modern Western history. Farmers made the attachment between parent and child more intimate: more and better food meant that most children lived longer and that their parents were more likely to love them. The photographs show, indeed, that they didn’t want to let their children go.
The Civil War meant something new and terrible. The children—some soldiers as young as fifteen—couldn’t be photographed. They couldn’t be found. For the first time, development in weaponry, including high-explosive artillery shells, meant that soldiers simply disappeared. And armies on the move sometimes had no time to bury their dead. As Union soldiers advanced into the trees and scrub of The Wilderness in 1864, the skulls of their comrades, killed the year before at Chancellorsville, now uncovered, leered at them in macabre welcome.
So for soldiers like these, there was no funeral to be had, no body to wash, no chance to say goodbye.
It’s not a coincidence that the war generated the spiritualist movement, with grieving parents attempting to communicate with the Other Side, with their boys, at seances. Sadly, most of them were conducted by charlatans. Another example of this kind of callousness is this postwar photo of Mary Lincoln. The photographer has created a double exposure to convince the widow that her husband is still with her.
As much as the war itself fascinates me, its emotional impact in the years after was far-reaching and tragic. Many veterans became addicted to alcohol or morphine. Two-thirds of the inmates in American penitentiaries in 1880 were Civil War veterans. One source puts the suicide rate among active-duty soldiers at about 15 per 100,000. In the year after war, among veterans the figure doubled.
The war’s emotional impact on civilians was just as far-reaching. There would be, for so many families, no reunion, and the lost chance to say goodbye marked families for many years after. Sometimes this pain was so grievous that it was passed down to generations a century or more beyond Civil War battlefields.
An extraordinary book about the war’s emotional impact is This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust. Faust later became president of Harvard, and Jordan Hayashi, one of our AGHS grads, Harvard ’16, played a piano recital in Faust’s home during his student days there.
A Work in Progress 