"Clubfoot" Fort and the Lunatic Asylum

My thanks to the many of you who sent messages of congratulations for my just joining the “grandfather club.” I gotta say the first three days of membership have been wonderful. Not to be too sappy, but last night Jackson and his parents joined us for supper at our round kitchen table. It was Jackson’s first day home from the hospital, at the ripe old age of about 48 hours. Of course his adoring mother held him during the meal, but Jackson was awake watching with bright eyes when I reached out and held his wee hand, a fragile new hand in our family circle, while I gave a blessing for the food and the new little guy, the next generation of our branch of the McBride family tree. Pretty special. I think I’m going to like the grandfather club.

Moving on, the Texas Legislature has just convened for its “odd year” session in the state capitol building. It’s always a show, especially if you’re the type who enjoys watching sausage being made. Most people may enjoy the final spicy product, even if it’s greasy and bad for us, but we really don’t want to know what goes into the sausage mix or witness its making. Ditto for watching any legislature, since lawmaking often has some dead cats ground into the mix

Appropriately, in my historical “rabbit chasing” on the internet this week, I came upon the recently published memoir of a Texas legislator and Confederate soldier who I had never heard of before: Dewitt Clinton “Clubfoot” Fort.

Fort wrote a lengthy and very entertaining memoir of his war experiences, while awaiting trial in prison in Tennessee, accused of plotting to murder the newly appointed governor of Tennessee. He eventually beat the charge and returned to Bellville, Texas. His memoir lay undisturbed with his descendants until 2007 when it was dusted off, transcribed, footnoted, and published.

Just before the Civil War, in 1859, Mr. Fort won a seat in the 8^th Texas Legislature in the House of Representatives. Fort described himself as a one-issue member of the House – secession. He wrote that every vote he cast was based on whether passage of any bill would further the likelihood of secession. He also wrote some entertaining side stories of his time in Austin, including his visits, shortly after he arrived in Austin, to the state-run facilities for the insane, blind, and deaf.

Wrote Representative Fort: “I had always thought a lunatic asylum was a place where a person’s mind was strengthened and then restored to normalcy. Imagine then my surprise to learn that about only one person in ten had any sense at all, that at least 9/10’s of the residents of the lunatic asylum having lost their wits. I was at first apprehensive that should I linger too long, the same malady might become my fate. I have always been fearful of epidemics.

“But then I felt sure if I were to fully lose 9/10’s of my wits, there would still be very few members of the Texas Legislature that had has much sense as myself.”   

His words are old proof that some things are constant in politics, whether in 1859 or 2015.

As a Confederate officer, even with a crippling foot deformity, Fort earned a reputation as the fearless leader of a small company of cavalry scouts who first fought with JEB Stuart in Virginia, and later with Nathan B Forest in Tennessee. He was once captured and escaped by diving into the muddy Mississippi off the river boat that was taking him upriver to prison camp.

Fort wrote that he hit the water about dark and swam in the cold water and current for hours before reaching the shore shortly before daylight. After making his way back to Confederate-held land, he resumed his “scouting” duties in the Union-occupied area near Memphis. He led his scouts so successfully that when the war ended, there was a $5,000 in gold reward on his head. Be aware that the term “scouts” during the Civil War often meant a lethal band of guerilla fighters, operating with stealth and great violence within the Union army’s zone of occupation.

Captain Fort wrote very clearly of his band of 43 men fighting repeated engagements with Union cavalry, using ambushes and deception to great effect. His only defeat appears to have been an attempt to board and capture a steamship that had pulled in to the shore to load wood for its boilers. The plan was for Fort’s company to rush up the gangplanks in the dark, but they became intermingled with the ship’s fleeing crewmen who had been onshore loading wood. The noisy confusion allowed the ship’s captain enough time to slip the boat from the shore, leaving Fort’s lieutenant and first sergeant stranded onboard. They resisted capture and were killed by the ship’s guard detachment of Union infantry.

Although Fort wrote of leading multiple mounted charges straight at Union cavalry, remember that Fort nicknamed himself “Clubfoot” for his deformed extremity. That handicap must have kept him from leading from the front when his company charged up the gangplanks. In the tradition of military leadership, it’s not surprising that the men who were second and third in command of Fort’s company were the first onto the ship, stranded, and died fighting. (Think of the Israeli commando attack to free the civilian hostages of an airplane high-jacking at Entebbe, Uganda in the 1976. The Israeli commanding officer was the first one through the door of the building where the hostages were being kept, and the only Israeli soldier to die in the violence.)

After beating his murder conspiracy charge and returning to Bellville, Texas, Fort practiced law. In 1868, at the age of 38 and recently a new husband and father, Fort was gunned down by Lancaster Springfield, who himself had been a Confederate captain, and who was an angry courtroom opponent. The cowardly assassin first knocked Fort to the ground with a shotgun blast to his back on a dusty street in Hempstead, Texas, then walked up to his prostrate victim and finished him off with a derringer bullet to his head.  As an aside, this was during the era of reconstruction in Texas, and a jury acquitted Springfield of the murder.

I’m trying to think how to insert Captain Fort into the McBee saga as a tough-as-nails “scout” with a quick wit, but I’ve already closed the door on 1862 in Tangled Honor, the last year Foot was in Virginia. McBee is not destined to fight in western Tennessee where Fort spent the last half of the war, so if Fort makes the story it would have to be after the war, back in Texas, and right now the grand plan ends in Virginia, not Texas. But, dang, if Fort is not an intriguing character.

It’s this sort of discovery of real people with engaging stories, people like Lucy Pickens and Clubfoot Fort, people who tempt writers to stretch the facts of real history to fit into our fictional stories. Sometimes I sigh in regret and move on, sometimes a facsimile in a new character joins the cast, and sometimes I close my eyes and cheat the dates or the geography, putting a real name in a place and day where he/she wasn’t. That’s when I excuse my departure from historical exactitude by reminding myself that I’m writing historical “fiction,” and, besides, the devil made me do it.

 

I am here. I am safe. I am ALIVE!

At 7:38 last evening my first grandchild was born. In celebration, I’m lifting six short words from the lyrics of a song in the Christmas Cantata sung by our church choir back in December:

I am here. I am safe. I am ALIVE!       

Unsurprisingly, those words were written as an interpretation of the baby Jesus’s first cry after his birth. Less than twelve hours ago I heard my first child’s first child’s first cry, and that’s what little Jackson Robert said to his parents and grandparents in the first moments of his life. I am here. I am safe. I am alive.

It may have been his alert eyes that spoke to me as Jackson looked straight at my gray-bearded face when he was just minutes from his mother’s womb. It may have been when I ever so gently touched one of his ten fingers (You bet I counted every digit) as he waved his arms around. It may have been that first real cry, but like the lady in the movie said, “He had me at hello.”

Jackson Robert McBride is the new son of Todd and Maggie McBride, who are also our next door neighbors, so I expect there will be engagement with this baby, early and often.

Since this is my Civil War Novel blog, let me note that the new Jackson Robert McBride, born in 2015, is the third to bear that name in our branch of the family tree. Baby Jackson’s great-great grandfather, born in 1892 in Oakwood, Texas, and his father, born in 1858 in Lexington, Virginia, were both named Jackson Robert. That doesn’t make Baby Jackson eligible to put JRIII on the back of his sports jersey someday, since there is a three generation gap in the name, but I bet the two long-gone Jackson Robert’s are smiling in heaven anyway.

Baby Jackson’s great grandfather Frank McBride, son of the second Jackson Robert, is going to celebrate his 95^th birthday this year, so I hope Todd and Maggie will put their son in his great granddaddy’s arm’s and say, “Jackson, this is Frank. Live long like him. He still delivers Meals-on-Wheels to the old people.”

I’ll be going back to the hospital today, just so Nita and I can be near Jackson Robert, and so I can keep patting Todd on the back for a job well done, and kissing Maggie’s forehead for becoming part of our family and growing such a wonderful baby.  After all, the kid has already told his grandfather, “I am here. I am safe. I am ALIVE.”

Levi On A Horse

Today is Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday, and seems a good day to reflect on the particulars and the significance of this Civil War vintage photo of the young black man on a horse. The role of African-Americans in the Civil War is difficult for many of us to discuss. The fact is that both the north and south used freedmen and slaves the same way for the first half of the war. They were restricted to being servants and doing hard labor.

The manpower needs of both sides grew as the war reached into its third year, causing the north finally to put segregated regiments of black men into the field. The fine 1989 movie, Glory, well portrays one of those early regiments of African-American soldiers. 

Historically, both of the Confederate regiments featured in my two novels engaged in firefights against regiments of US Colored troops. Some 200,000 black Americans did indeed eventually join the US Army and fight against the armies of the Confederacy, in all three theaters of the war, from Texas to Virginia.

The Confederate armies never fielded African-American troops in any significant numbers. In fact, armed black Confederates were rarely seen. That can’t be surprising, given that slavery was a core issue that brought about the attempted secession of the southern states and the war itself.

 As a sidebar, my favorite Confederate general is Patrick Cleburne, a handsome Irishman who served as an enlisted soldier in the British army before he emigrated to Arkansas. Cleburne effectively capped his career as a general when he wrote a lengthy request to CSA President Jefferson Davis suggesting that southern slaves be given the chance to earn their freedom by fighting as Confederate soldiers.

President Davis squashed the idea with such vigor that Cleburne was ever after not trusted, even as his troops excelled in battle after battle under his command.  Cleburne was among the very best combat generals in the Confederate army, but he was condemned for his belief that black men were capable of being good soldiers, his belief that black men would loyally fight for the nation that went to war to keep their race in slavery. Maybe President Jefferson was right about that, and Cleburne was wrong, but we’ll never know.

Back to the image: It seems unremarkable at first look, but a few details are worth noting.  The man appears to be wearing gray military jacket with 9 buttons and sleeve trim. His pants are a darker color than his coat, maybe sky blue, maybe tan or brown. Perhaps his jacket is a faded blue instead of gray. He’s wearing shoes and a well-shaped felt hat. His horse is outfitted in military fashion, including what is probably a pistol holster at the front of the saddle.

Whether he is a slave body-servant belonging to a southern officer, or is a contraband or freeman working for pay for a Union officer, the young black man is most likely a servant, not a fighting soldier.

Existing photographs of mounted men during the Civil War are not rare, but they are not common, either. Horses couldn’t go inside a photographer’s tent or studio. Setting up a camera outside and getting the subjects to freeze for about ten seconds was much harder than posing men in chairs inside.  Moreover, horses don’t freeze on demand for ten seconds.  

Photographs were also expensive, beyond the means of a servant. So, this image of a young black man mounted on a military horse, is an anomaly.

Did an officer, the man for whom the young black man worked, pay to have his servant photographed on the officer’s horse? That seems unlikely. Did the photographer ask the young black man to sit still on the horse and take his picture, while he waited for someone else?  Was the young black man perhaps employed by the photographer and being used for a practice run? We don’t know.

Whatever the circumstances, the result may be the only Civil War image of a mounted African-American man, and he looks pretty spiffy.  When I look at the image, I see Levi, one of the main characters in Tangled Honor, and I’m thankful to have found a primary source visual likeness of what Levi and the other body-servants in my story might have looked like.  Early in the story I made a point of Levi asking his new master for a soldier’s uniform to wear, and it’s nice to see supporting evidence for that scene.

All in all, not knowing the story behind the image, I see a proud man who looks assured of his place, whatever it was. A good photograph to post on Martin Luther King Day, as we enter the 150^th anniversary of the final year of the Civil War.

Backpacking Pussies

There are two newly-added photos to the right, one taken thirty-five years ago, and one taken five years ago. The top image is of my wife and me backpacking in Colorado in 1979, on the second day of a two-night, three-day trek. I think we hiked about a dozen miles, and went up above the tree line across the top of Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountains National Park.

The photo under it is me (standing on the left) near the end of a “campaign” Civil War reenactment in Tennessee near Fort Donelson, not far from Nashville. It was taken after two chilly, wet nights on the ground and over a dozen miles of “marching,” slogging, I’d say, along a muddy dirt trail.

In the hobby of Civil War reenacting, “campaigning” means backpacking, carrying your stuff all weekend. But to backpack as things were in the 1860’s means carrying only things that had been invented by the 1860’s. What both modern backpackers and Civil War campaigners have in common is a deep appreciation of packing light, of only taking essentials, of leaving at home all that neat stuff you “might” use.

As a modern backpacker since the 1970’s, and a Civil War campaign “backpacker” since 1998, I’ve concluded that modern backpacking is for pussies compared to Civil War campaign reenacting. That’s right: Pussies.

Modern backpacking is strenuous, sure. It requires self-assurance and minding a lot of details, but consider:

The light nylon tent, pack, and sleeping bag, the foam sleeping pad, the aluminum pack frame, the goose-down vests, the near-weightless boots with thick waffle-stomper soles, the cute little gas stove and tiny flashlights, the freeze-dried dinners, the foil-wrapped energy bars, the trail-mix of wheat chex, raisins and M&M candy in plastic baggies, the packs of fruit-flavored powder to add to God’s good water in a plastic bottle.

Under all of the light-weight modern camping and eating wonders, look at what we wore on the trail: Shorts and t-shirts for goodness sake! And, finally, no nine-pound musket, steel bayonet, and leather accoutrements. Pussies.

The Civil War was fought in an age before nylon and plastic, in an age before Coleman stoves and freeze-dried dinners, and before Tang went to space. Civil War shoes and boots were made of leather from top to bottom, and had slick soles. Wool and cotton were the kings of clothing and bedding.  I could go on, but you get it.

As a sidebar, wool was warm and shed water pretty well. But it was heavy and killer-hot in the summer. Cotton was cool, but soaked up rain, and didn’t keep the cold from your bones in the winter. The northern states had lots of sheep to grow wool, while the southern states had lots of cotton fields and slaves to grow cotton. Neither side had lots of both sheep and cotton fields.

Consequently, the Yanks, dressed in wool shirts, wool jackets, and wool trousers, sweated and suffered from heat and dehydration during the southern summers. Meanwhile, dressed in cotton blend “jean-wool,” as the Union blockade cut off the supply of English wool, the Rebs froze and suffered from pneumonia in the brutal winters of Virginia and Tennessee.   

The point of this post as related to my Civil War novels is to reinforce an appreciation for how tough people were in the 1860’s. They routinely walked long distances. They spent far more time outside than we do. They didn’t have air-conditioning and central heating, or cars, refrigerators, phones, radios, TV’s, X-rays, sonograms, computers, or “hand-held wireless appliances.”  

Hell, they didn’t even have aspirin for head-aches or anything for allergies. Water-treatment plants weren’t around, but then neither were twist-knob faucets, hot-water heaters, buried water pipes or flush toilets and sewer lines. It was the age of the outhouse and the water bucket. Tragically for many soldiers on campaign, it was the age of drinking filthy river water, shared with their horses and mules.

Like I said, those Civil War soldiers who stayed healthy, were tough hombres.

So that’s it for this week. The Cowboys lost to the Packers yesterday in Ice Bowl 2, and the first college football play-off championship game is tonight. I guess I’ll be an Oregon Duck fan, if for no other reason than their pioneering the current trend in flashy uniforms. Sort of like the Civil War Zouave uniforms did in the 1860’s, but that’s for another post.

The Vietnam Draft and Lt. McChesney

Welcome to 2015, everyone. In three days Nita and I will celebrate our 43^rd wedding anniversary. 
 

The Vietnam War was raging when I proposed to Nita late in 1971 with the expectation that I would soon be drafted or would enlist in the army, with the hope of going to officer candidate school. My draft lottery number was 88, and I had ridden a bus packed with likely draftees from Longview to Shreveport, LA, where I easily passed the draft physical.

Happily, my draft lottery number had been passed by while I was still enjoying the last semester of my college student draft deferment. The draft board didn‘t swing back until January of the next year to pick up those whose student deferments had expired. That meant I needed to quickly make a decision to join or be drafted, or the draft board would make the decision for me. The choices were to be drafted for two years and certainly go to Vietnam as a private, or enlist for four years, hopefully graduate OCS, and probably go to Vietnam as a Second-Lieutenant.

A third, never considered option, a classic “deus ex machina,” that is, a god who resolves the plot, intervened. In late December, with mounting opposition to our involvement in Vietnam, President Nixon announced that he was ending the draft on December 31st. I had sidestepped one of the biggest decisions of my life.

At the time Nita and I rejoiced. We married and using all $800 of our combined savings, took a long camping trip around the US, sleeping in the back of our old pick-up truck under a homemade plywood camper top. In the fall, I returned to college, finished my degree and started my career as a public school educator.

After the tragic ending to the Vietnam War, I began to regret my lack of military service. It took a while, but I came to understand that the other young men who served during the Vietnam War era took my place. In a real way, I let others carry my load, something that doesn’t sit well with me now.

Moreover, my interest in military history has not faded away, and now I’m writing novels about soldiers in our Civil War. Every time I’m at the keyboard I wish that I had personal experience as a soldier to draw upon, even if the war in my novels happened 150 years ago. I know many good writers of military fiction are not veterans, but I can’t help but believe that experience counts, that my war stories would be in some way better if I had served in the army when I was young.

That New Year Confession made, I’m posting a period photograph of Lt. Robert McChesney, a handsome young man from Lexington who is considered the second Confederate officer to be killed during the Civil War. He was shot while on a scout on June 29, 1861 in what is now West Virginia.

I looked on the internet this morning and found that the best research (done in 1889) asserts that 4,626 Confederate officers died during the Civil War, 3,332 of them from battle wounds and 1,294 from disease. That nearly 3:1 battle to disease death ratio is reversed for enlisted soldiers, reflecting that while officers may have had warmer clothes and ate better, they also led from the front in battle, and were singled out as targets by enemy marksmen.

I know genealogy of someone else’s family gets real boring real fast, but the unfortunate Lt. McChesney was the nephew of my great-great grandmother Annie McChesney McBride (who is Elizabeth McBee, one of my favorite characters in Tangled Honor).

McChesney served in Company H, 14^th Virginia Cavalry, a company whose members came from Lexington and was the same company in which the real James McBride (my uncle who inspired Sgt. James McBee in my novel) served

In Tangled Honor, Brother James is in the hospital because he fell from his horse. In real life, Uncle James survived the war, and died several years later from injuries received when his horse threw him. I’ve always thought horses are large, dangerous, cantankerous beasts best left alone. Turns out I’ve been right about that.