Easter Fashions

Since 2003, once a year, around Easter weekend, son Todd and I have put on the gaudiest Civil War uniforms imaginable: Red fezzes with big fat royal blue tassels hanging off the top. Baggy bright red wool pantaloons with sky-blue trimmed red wool sashes wrapped around our waists. A navy blue bolero jacket with bright red flower shaped designs on the chest, and a wool vest with a red racing strip down the middle. The pantaloons tucked into white canvas button-up gaiters around both ankles and covering the tops of our shoes.

That was the issued uniform of U.S. Army Zouave regiments during the Civil War. The odd Zouave uniforms were modeled after the French army’s Zouaves, soldiers who originally haled from Morocco in North Africa. Like today, French fashions were “in” during the 1850’s and ‘60’s.

To my surprise, the uniform, especially the baggy pantaloons, are comfortable and relatively cool, even if they are wool. The wide waist sash, if put on tightly with the help of friend yanking it as snug as possible, acts like a wrap-around girdle to lard-asses like me. And the white canvas gaiters keep out nasty little critters. If you’ve never itched like mad from two dozen chigger bites in a ring around each ankle, you can’t appreciate the security that gaiters provide. Only the fez, which provides no protection from sun or rain, is useless. But it does mark us on the battlefield, like a bunch of red-headed woodpeckers flocking together.

The photo shows four of us wearing our Zouave outfits, and some of the individual variations that soldiers, real and play-acting, inevitably add to their regulation uniform. I took off my vest because I sweat like a pig, and added a pair of yellow lambskin “jambieres,” overleggings, that lace up the side. Two of us are wearing white flannel turbans around the bottom of fezzes, formal wear that were normally only put on during parades. And one sash is trimmed in white, not blue. So, variety within our uniformity.

 We portray the 165^th NY Zouaves, an outfit from Brooklyn, New York historically. The 165^th NY was part of the siege in May and June of 1863 of the Confederate defenses at Port Hudson. Port Hudson was the site of the cannon-studded defenses that guarded the southern section of the Mississippi River that was still controlled by the Confederacy. The defenses at Vicksburg were thirty or forty miles upriver and that single stretch of the mighty Mississippi was a key highway for greatly needed supplies to pass from Texas and Louisiana to the rest of the Confederacy. It was a very important thirty miles of river, so important that the Union army was simultaneously hammering away at both fortress-like defenses, upriver and downriver.

Next weekend, Todd and I will drive six hours to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to take part in the reenactment at Port Hudson State Park. This will be my eighth trip to Port Hudson to wear the red pantaloons and shout, “New York! New York!” as we charge the enemy breastworks. Usually, I yell, “Texas! Texas!” when we charge because I’m portraying a Texas Reb, intent on driving the dastardly Yanks back where they came from. Not at Port Hudson.

We’ll even throw a couple of dozen homemade faux grenades over the Secesh defenses as the real Zouaves did with real “Ketchum” grenades. In 1863, the Rebs got smart and started catching the finned bombs in blankets before they hit the ground, and tossed them back at the damyankees who threw them. I'm sure our Reb reenacting opponents will relish doing the same with our balsa and styrofoam fake grenades.

In real life, the 165^th New York Zouaves stepped off the paddle-wheeler transport ship at New Orleans without their knapsacks which held their blankets and personal belongings. The canvas packs were still in the cargo hold and were promised to be delivered to the regiment “soon.” The soldiers spent the next thirty days without those packs, just making do with what they wore and carried when they disembarked, including the worthless fezzes.

The 165^th took heavy casualties in a charge against the Confederates earthworks at a part of the defenses appropriately termed Fort Desperate. The attack was unsuccessful. In fact, the Rebs at Port Hudson only surrendered after Vicksburg fell to General Grant’s siege on July 4^th, a month later. With Vicksburg lost, there was no longer any point to continuing to defend Port Hudson.

As to a link to my books, there are Zoauves in the first McBee novel, Tangled Honor. At the battle of Second Manassas, Virginia in 1862, the 5^th Texas regiment charged and routed the 5^th New York Zouaves, all 500 of them. It was a bloody, bloody fight for both the 5^th Texas and the 5^th New York, with the short intense engagement claiming the lives of about half of each regiment.

I’ve never portrayed the 5^th NY Zouaves receiving the charge of the 5^th Texas at a reenactment. I confess I don’t plan to either, after the past three years of researching the minutia of the 5^th Texas regiment’s history, and creating several characters who are fictional soldiers in the regiment, and now are pretty much family members, even if they are sort of like Harvey the Rabbit to everyone but me.

 The 5^th NY was the sister regiment to the 165^th  NY, coming from the same part of New York City. They wore the same gaudy Zouave uniform, the only difference being the 5^th wore bright yellow tassels from their fezzes instead of the royal blue tassels of the 165^th NY.

So, the weekend after Easter, think of Todd and me and our reenacting pards, as we answer 1,001 questions from interested spectators about our goofy red pantaloons and fezzes. By the way, on the rare occasion I drive home without changing out of the pantaloons, and go into a hamburger joint, I answer questions by telling the curious that I’m a rodeo clown. 

This weekend, I trust you will a family-centered and enjoyable Easter Sunday, remembering our Risen Lord. And don't forget the eggs and bunnies. 

Mitchell, Cyrano, and Roxanne

Since I wrote last week about a new upcoming movie about the Civil War which stars a Texas-born-and-raised actor, this week is an encore about two more movies.

In 1897, a French playwright wrote a popular play Cyrano De Bergerac. Set during the Hundred Years War in Europe in the 1600’s, the beautiful leading lady was named Roxanne. The star was Cyrano himself, a formidable, but witty soldier. Cyrano was blessed with a very large nose, about which he was greatly embarrassed and rather prickly about anyone calling attention to it. There’s lots of sword fighting and verbal repartee in the play. Three American movie versions of Cyrano De Bergerac have been made, in 1928, 1950, and 1990.

In 1987, some 90 years after the French play was first performed, actor/comedian Steve Martin made a movie named Roxanne based on the same French play about Cyrano and Roxanne. The leggy, blonde, and hot Daryl Hannah became Roxanne and Cyrano/Martin’s nose grew to the length of a ski slope.

In both scripts, a key element of the plot is Cyrano/Martin falling in love with Roxanne, but he is too shy and embarrassed by his large nose to admit his attraction to her. Instead, like a dope, Cyrano/Martin writes touching love letters to Roxanne on behalf of a dense, but handsome, young man who also is smitten by Roxanne’s beauty. Misunderstanding and confusion follow, but in the end, Cyrano/Martin gets the girl, his wonderful nose notwithstanding.

Civil War? Where’s the Civil War in this? Here it is:

After the Civil War, in 1910, J.B. Polley, an old man who had been a young soldier in the 4^th Texas Infantry, wrote a lengthy memoir of his Civil War experiences. Polley’s work is entertaining, and generally his accounts of the war hold up to others as true enough.

But Polley also had a fun-loving streak and sometimes included anecdotes of questionable veracity. This one may or may not have been influenced by the recent popular French play about Cyrano de Bergerac.

Here's a summary:

Like Cyrano and Martin, a Private Mitchell in the 4th Texas Infantry Regiment was too embarrassed to own up to one “flawed” feature of his character which he couldn’t control: He couldn't write. But through subterfuge and the help of a friend who wrote love letters for him, Mitchell won the heart of a girl in Richmond. 

But Mitchell’s writing friend is transferred, which prompts Mitchell to enlist yet another soldier friend to write one more letter to the girl, saying that Mitchell was killed in battle. Rather than admit to the woman, who had agreed to marry him, that someone else had written his love letters, Mitchell pronounced himself dead, to preserve his precious dignity. So he loses the girl, after all. Not as happy an ending as Steve Martin’s Roxanne movie.

Perhaps J.B. Polley was a fan of the French theatre, and plucked the convenient tool of one man writing love letters for a friend.

Or, perhaps he related a tale of universal appeal – a good man who feels some part of him is unworthy of a beautiful woman, but he’s too proud to be honest about it, and consequently makes a real muddle of things .

Either way, isn’t it fun when something delightfully piquant comes around again and again, the same touching irony, just in a new wrapping.

As a last thought, I wonder if Steve Martin was a youthful student of the Texans who fought in the Civil War and knew about Polley’s memoir? Very doubtful, but then again, Martin was born in Waco, Texas and he plays a great banjo, a Civil War era instrument.

Here's the excerpt of Polley's memoir for those who like to read primary sources:

A Review of Times That Are Past But Live in History –

Prepared by J. B. Polley, Floresville, Texas

          “While the Fifth Texas was in camp near Richmond Corporal L. C. Mitchell met and fell desperately in love with a young lady living in the vicinity.  She was handsome and highly accomplished, and Mitchell resolved if it were possible he would win her for a wife, and when the regiment was ordered to the Potomac arranged for correspondence with her.  But though a soldier of merit and good standing enough to take the fancy of the most fastidious lady, Mitchell’s penmanship was illegible to himself when the ink got cold.  Well read and having knocked about the world a great deal, his conversation was always entertaining, but writing the hand he did it was impossible to make his letters a charm.  So when the time came for the first he persuaded Charlie Hume – now Major F. C. Hume of Houston – to do both the writing and the composing of all the missives mailed from camp.

          The novelty of the situation inspired Hume to do his best, and that best resulted in a series of letters that were marvels of the epistolary art and so gratifying to the lady that in return she did her best, and the correspondence rapidly changed from that of simple friendship to one where sentiment bore a large part, culminating finally in a declaration of love by Mitchell and an acknowledgement of its reciprocation by the lady. 

     After the retreat from Yorktown, and later after the seven days’ battles, his regiment was in the vicinity of Richmond.  Mitchell managed to visit his betrothed and presumably received proof stronger than mere profession that she loved him.  Just after the battle of Sharpsburg, and before he could write the letter for Mitchell that would announce his escape from the bullets of the enemy, Hume was transferred to another command and immediately joined it.

          This put Mitchell in the middle of a bad fix.  It was utterly impossible for him to write such letters as Hume had been writing over his (Mitchell’s) name, and nobody in his company could do it.  Heroic measures his only recourse, he called to his assistance another messmate, Bob Brantley, now living in Somerville.  Under his instructions Brantley wrote as follows:

IN CAMP NEAR SHEPARDSTOWN,

Va., Sept. 25, 1862

Miss ----, Richmond Va.

          Dear Miss: Your letter of recent date addressed to my late comrade and friend, Robert E. Mitchell enabled me to secure your address, and makes it my painful duty to inform you that my comrade and your lover was killed on the 17^th of September 1862,while far to the front most gallantly fighting for his beloved South.  He was shot through the heart and fell with his face to the foe.  We buried him on the field of battle with your letter resting on his heart.  Words are powerless to express the deep sorrow we feel over his untimely death, or the sympathy that wells up in the hours of your grief, and therefore I make no attempt to console with you.  With assurance of my sympathy, I am, dear miss, yours most respectfully,

                                                                                      R. L. BRANTLEY

          “What the mischief do you want to send such a letter as that for?” inquired a comrade, cognizant of all the circumstances.  “Why do you not write to her yourself, tell her of the deception you have practiced, ask her forgiveness and forever after be happy?”

          “What!” exclaimed Mitchell, “put down in my scrawling handwriting that for more than a year, I have been making her the victim of a fraud?  No, sir, I’d rather be dead to her than to let her know either by letter or by a face-to-face confession that I’m as d----d a humbug as I really have been.”

          The letter was mailed, and although often in Richmond afterward Mitchell never met the lady again, if yet living she no doubt still believes he was killed at Sharpsburg.  In truth, though, he survived the war, came back to Texas and died some ten years ago.”

                                                                            

Newton Knight and What Eve Started

The new March 2016 Smithsonian magazine has a fascinating article about the man whose life is the basis of Matthew McConaughey’s forthcoming Civil War movie: Free State of Jones. The historical character around whom the movie plot revolves was named Newton Knight. That's his image from about the time the Civil War began.

Mr. Knight was a big man, standing 6'4" and was a staunch Baptist who didn't drink, but had a violent streak. He enlisted in the Confederate army and fought in a Mississippi Infantry regiment during the 1862 bloodbath at Corinth, Mississippi. After the lost battle at Corinth, Knight walked away-deserted from the army. He returned to Jones County, a rare place in central Mississippi where the white, male population had overwhelmingly voted against secession (24 for, 374 against). Needless to say, a pro-Union county in central Mississippi was an anomaly.

When Knight returned home from the army, he was mad because the Confederate army had taken his only horse and his home destroyed. He became a guerilla leader of pro-Union men who were hiding from the Confederate draft, or, like Knight himself, had deserted from the Confederate army. The movie is partly about the fighting between Knight’s men and the brigade of Confederate soldiers who were sent in 1864 to stamp out the nest of pro-Union renegades. Men died on both sides of the fighting, but Newton Knight survived.

All that’s fascinating to any Civil War nut, like me, but the family side of Knight’s history is even more intriguing. After the war, the Newton Knight maintained two families, one white and one black, each with a passel of children fathered by Knight, each with their own house on the Knight farm. Knight’s black common-law wife, Rachel, was a freed slave owned by Knight’s grandfather.

Eventually, Knight’s white wife left him, and he spent the rest of his long life with ex-slave Rachel, and their children. Knight’s son and daughter from his white wife married bi-racial children born to Rachel before she and Knight became a couple. During the decades after the war, both black and white residents of Jones County shunned Knight’s openly bi-racial family and lifestyle.

The Knight family bi-racial issue stretched into the 1940’s when one of Knight’s great-grandsons still living in Mississippi was arrested and convicted of miscegeny -- a black man marrying a white woman – still a crime in Mississippi in 1948.  There’s a lot more to Knight’s story and books have been written about his life. I urge you to find the new Smithsonian magazine and read the article.

That brings me to my McBee Civil War novel trilogy, where one of the main characters, Levi, a mulatto (half white) slave, gradually confronts his bi-racial identity, after he becomes the body-servant of the other main character, Captain John McBee. The war thrusts the two men into three years of living together in the harsh environment of a Confederate infantry regiment in Lee’s army. 

Hardship, deprivation, deaths and battle impact the master and servant one way, driving them together out of necessity, while the brutal social realities separating white masters and black slaves impact them in the opposite way, keeping each bound in his respective role.

If surviving the war and the question of Levi’s white father are not burdens enough for the enslaved young man, Levi eventually attracts the romantic attentions of an unusual young white woman.

Does that sound salacious enough for a steamy best-seller? I was talking myself into believing the budding bi-racial romance was too over-the-top for the 1860’s. After all, I grew up in the Deep South and can clearly remember the first time I saw a black-white couple in public. That was in 1971, a hundred years after Newton Knight’s open, common law marriage to a black ex-slave. Things tend to change slowly in the South.

I’ve made this point before: I am aghast at the widespread acceptance in the 1800’s of white men fathering children with enslaved black women, with no recognition of the children as anything but another slave. The 1860 US census had three choices of race: White, Negro, or Mulatto. There were so many children born of black mothers and white fathers, that those offspring had their own racial label. Babies who essentially had no fathers.

So, I was gratified that my recent reading about Newton Knight provides a historical example for the bi-racial romance thread in the McBee books. Such romances certainly weren’t the norm, but interracial marriages did truly happen, even in the South during the Civil War.

Good novels usually aren’t about the normal, everyday things of life, are they? Good fiction often explores the uncommon, addressing our natural curiosity and fascination with that which is normally forbidden to us.

Consider that Eve only ate the apple after she was sternly told not to do so. And look at the bestseller that Eve's act of defiance starts. But I promise that Levi’s forbidden romance won’t be smooth sailing. And where it will end, I don’t even know yet.

David's Hands

I ask your forgiveness right up front. So to speak. But this morning I can’t help myself.

I’ve promised my blog posts will remain focused on the Civil War, writing, and sometimes family. Nothing political. Last summer I strayed, giving my thoughts about the venerable old Confedereate battle flag. Last night another of those “I can’t ignore this” tidbits came along.

Hands. Big hands, little hands. Short fingers, long fingers. And whether or not big or little hands reflect other size matters.

First of all, I cannot believe two serious contenders for the nomination to represent a major political party in this year’s Presidential election would ever, would ever, would ever, get into a literal “mine is longer than yours” spat on national TV. Holy Moly. How low can we go?

But I gotta admit, it was funny, too, in a comedy club sort of way. But never in a Presidential Candidate Debate sort of way.

Appropriateness of the venue aside, my wife and I and jillions of other tourists have gazed in awe at Michelangelo’s answer to that eternal question, the one so crudely addressed by two of our wannabe President candidates. That’s my wife Nita in Italy in 1999 staring up at David’s “hands.” He is so tall, I couldn’t get David and Nita both in the frame without turning the camera cock-eyed. I pretend she gazes at me in such a way.

The other photo came off the internet today. It’s seems David is getting a long-needed good scrubbing. The nasty little boy in me sure would like to see a photo of some pretty Italian lady, Sophia Loren maybe, taking a soapy brush to David’s…you know.

Okay, I got it out of my system. Enough of such juvenile silliness. I hope our Presidential candidates now feel the same.

Next week's post will be back to the Civil War.