July 24, 2024
Still working on final copy for the Killer Kids of The Civil War. Here's a sneak peek.
And, it must be pointed out, he's toting four pistols in the Bushwhacker mode. So much for present day re-enactors claiming the old gunfighters never carried two pistols ("The two-gun man is a Hollywood myth!"). Okay, maybe they were half right?
Damned If You Do. . .
The Shiftless And Cruel World of Guerrilla Warfare
The terror for civilians caught in the border wars of the Civil War is that the guerrillas would often dress as Union troops and Union militia often rode around dressed as civilians. Both sides had allies in the countryside with the end result being nobody could trust anyone, even old friends, who often made secret deadly alliances. Spotting the enemy became an impossible game where outward appearances were rarely what they seemed to be.
One survivor concluded to his brother in a letter, "Low lived men who claim to be Union or Rebel as Occassion requires, [ride] the country destroying life & property, regardless of law & usages of regular warfare." Another Missourian, Thomas A. Peters, said, "I think about one half the Bushwhackers seen is the enrolled militia. ." And, as the author Michael Fellman puts it, "All bands of mounted marauders dressed in civilian clothes tended to be reported as guerrillas. There was also great fluidity in both guerrilla and militia band formation and some young men played it both ways." Put in stark terms, neither side had the slightest interest in a fair fight.
An Iconic Myth Is Born
Out of all this terror and confusion and guerrilla warfare came a generation of young men who were schooled in the arts of deadly tactics and as they approached manhood, more than a few of them wandered west and encountered a broader and more significant conflict between three pre-existing cultures, indigenous and Spanish and Mexican cultures and it is little wonder that a mythic story would be born out of the ensuing conflict and that a caucasion gunfighter would rise out of this turmoil and take his place in the pantheon of worldwide myths. Some historians claim the gunfighter myth ruled from about 1948 to 1973, and that it has since devolved into parody.
And, if you are interested in what exactly went down in Lincoln, New Mexico last Saturday, here is a follow-up article by Ollie Reed that ran in the Albuquerque Journal last Sunday.
A review of the Ellis Store Reopening
“Billy was 220 volts and everyone else was 110 volts. He was quicker than everybody. Everybody’s scared to death of him.”
—Buckeye Blake
No comments:
Post a Comment
Post your comments