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Poe’s Law, the Civil War Edition

31 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by danielwalldammit in History

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Bullets, Civil War, Humor, Minie Ball Pegnancy, Parody, Poe's Law, Pregnancy, Satire, Tall Tales

Have you heard of the minie ball pregnancy?

It occurred during the civil war at a battle in Raymond, Mississippi. Apparently, a minie ball (a conical-shaped bullet commonly used in the era) passed through a Confederate soldier’s testicles and then lodged itself in a young woman’s own private parts. Though, still a virgin, she later gave birth to a baby boy, apparently impregnated by the minie ball carrying the young man’s seed along with it.

Okay, but by “apparently,” I of course mean “not at all.”

This did not happen.

Not really!

Photo of Legrand G. Capers found in Wikipedia

The fact that this didn’t happen didn’t stop an army surgeon by the name of L.G. Capers from reporting on the incident as though it really did. He describes in detail coming upon a soldier staggering toward him before collapsing as a woman began screaming from the house in which he planned to conduct field operations. He treated both parties, or so he says. Later, Capers writes that he returned six months later to find the young woman pregnant though her hymen remained intact. A month or so later, he also delivered the baby, still confused about her story. After piecing the events together later, Capers says he found the soldier and explained the child to him. Of course the young man did the honorable thing, and the doctor reported visiting the lovely couple many years later to find them living happily together with 3 children.

All of this was published in a journal known as the American Medical Weekly in 1874. It was later republished in a British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and a few subsequent publications (whose editors should probably have known better) have presented the story as medical facts. Author Tony Horowitz tells us that at least one museum in Vicksburg Virginia related the story without comment as of his research for book, Confederates in the Attic, published in 1999. (The story appears on pages 199-200). Though the American Medical Journal later published a clarification explaining that the whole account had all been a joke, it seems there are always a few folks determined to take it seriously.

Also, aside from the source being a known spoof, apparently, this is a medical impossibility.

This time, by “apparently,” I mean “absolutely.”

What has me thinking about this today is Horowitz’s account. As he put it, the original account was intended as a spoof of other wildly exaggerated stories circulated by medical doctors in the wake of the civil war. If nothing else could have tipped a reader off as to nature of this tall-tale, the fact that Capers reported later removing a mini-ball from the child’s own testicles should probably have been the final “gotcha” moment of the story. Tall tales often have this, a final twist so improbable as to effectively communicate to anyone who might still be wondering that the whole thing was just an elaborate joke. This, if nothing else, ought to have tipped readers off then and now as to the nature of the Capers’ clever little yarn. Note to mention, the correction published published by the same journal.

Apparently, some people would rather believe the story anyway.

And by “apparently,” this time I just mean “apparently.”

***

All of which brings to mind a principle coined by an old net-friend of mine, Nathan Poe. Frustrated with debating young-earth creationists on Christian forums, Poe once quipped; “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.” In other words, you can’t make a satirical statement sufficiently outrageous to out-absurd the very people he was arguing with. But of course Christian fundamentalists are not the only bunch with a few loose canons in their midst, as others have pointed out. So, the principle has been generalized since its original formulation to apply to a broad range of topics about which satire might be mistaken for the real thing, not the least of reasons being that someone is usually just as extreme as any parody their critics might make-up to poke fun at them.

Apparently, that was also true in 1874.

***

This story was only a couple pages out of Confederates in the Attic, but I highly recommend the book as a whole. Great read! There are some other good sources on the internet. Wiki has a decent page on Capers, and of course that contains many good links in itself. Mark Powell’s write-up is useful and fun to read. Of course, Snopes has a good page on it as well, complete with many of the relevant primary documents.

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Violent Memories and the Civil War Era in the Southwest

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Native American Themes, Politics

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Civil War, History, Kit Carson, Monuments, Navajo, Old West, Santa Fe, Southwest, War

It must have been a couple decades back. I was at a small party in Forth Defiance. Those attending included a number of officials in the Navajo tribal government. Fort Defiance serves as kind of a bedroom community for the capital of the Navajo Nation, so this was hardly unexpected. What none of us expected that evening was a quick lesson that began when our host asked if anyone knew the name of the main street going through the town? No-one did. As it happens, the name was Kit Carson Drive.

Kit CarsonApparently, it still is.

To say that most of the party-goers found this shocking is putting it mildly. It may not be obvious to some of my readers why a room full of Navajos would object to a street named after Kit Carson, but even the most cursory knowledge of their history would make this pretty well obvious.  The man is popularly known as an old western Indian fighter, and as it happens, a good number of the Indians he fought were Navajo.  When General James H. Carleton, the Army Commander for the Territory of New Mexico decided to go to war with the Navajo people, it was Colonel Kit Carson that he sent off to do it. Carson marched through Canyon de Chelly, the heart of Navajo territory, destroying resources (just as Sherman might have) and letting winter bring his enemies in to surrender. This campaign, and the four years of internment at Hwéeldi (Fort Sumner) still constitute the darkest chapter of most historical narratives about the Navajo people. So, you can just imagine what it must have meant for people who can still tell you about relatives lost on the long walk to Fort Sumner to learn that a road right through their community bears the name of the man responsible for their deaths.

Kinda put a damper on the party.

You might think it odd that folks didn’t know the name of the road to begin with, but it’s hardly unusual. Folks don’t pay that much attention to street names out that way. Many of the roads don’t have signs at all, and I don’t recall seeing that particular name on a street sign when I lived out there (though one can certainly be found in Fort Defiance today). This party was the only time anyone ever mentioned it to me.

The old south isn’t the only place in this country with a questionable sense of public history from the Civil War era. Those in the Southwest have less to do with the war between the states than the early stages of the Indian wars which would dominate the interior west for a couple decades. Kit Carson Drive is one of many such examples. The Obelisk in the town square of Santa Fe provides another. It’s had its own share of controversies over the years, not the least of them being this dedication:

20914595_10214035631069907_2575022190736341192_n“To the heroes who have fallen in various battles with savage Indians in the Territory of New Mexico.”

It should come as no surprise that this line acquired its share of critics over the years. It has had some defenders as well, to be sure, but plenty of critics. The sentiments might have seemed appropriate enough to those who erected it in 1868, but in the 1970s, sentiments had changed a bit, as had the political status of some of those ‘savage Indians’ referenced in the piece. So it really should have come as no surprise when calls went out for removal or modification of the monument. Today, at least, it may seem a little surprising to find the monument had Native American defenders, which apparently it did. Attempts were made to put the original wording into it’s proper context, so to speak, preserving it without appearing to endorse it, but some clearly weren’t satisfied with this way of thinking about the issue. Resolution apparently came in the form of a chisel, and the result is a monument with its own fill-in-the-blank question.

20992726_10214035596509043_4949865469052976294_n

It seems, the American public is hashing out a new round of debates over public monuments, particularly those in the South. Some no doubt find the entire debate quite trivial. Who reads the placards on a monument anyway? Of course when people fight over seemingly trivial things, you can bet your ass they aren’t really fighting over the trivial things. It isn’t actually history (much less historical monuments) that has people up in arms over Confederate Statues, just as it wasn’t really history that caused a word to fall off the monument in Santa Fe. Such battles are always about the present. They are about the way that people think and use history to shape the present, and there are usually some very specific present implications in these battles.

People typically see the present interests loud and clear when they confront advocates of social justice. If anyone ever forgets this, the term ‘political correctness’ is right there to remind us that someone (or at least someone on the left) has an agenda. What folks are slower to get, it seems, is the fact that these sorts of gestures are hardly neutral to begin with. There is a reason James W. Loewen devoted a fair portion of his book, Lies Across America, to Confederate monuments, and it wasn’t because these monuments contain sober and thoughtful commentary on the actual history of the region. A statue to a confederate hero isn’t just a reference to history as such; it says something to those who those whose ancestors those heroes fought to keep in bondage. And a monument to heroes who died fighting ‘savage Indians’ may say something noble to those descended from colonists (Spanish or Anglo) in the American southwest; it says something else to those descended from those very ‘savage Indians’.

To be sure, complications abound. Some folks may have ancestors on either end or neither of his memorial demographics, and some people may have no dog in the fight at all. Also ironic usage happens. Not every Native American takes umbrage at the word ‘savage’ just as not every Native American objects to the term ‘Redskins’. But we should be wary of efforts to make these exceptions into the rule. The Washington football team has, for, example paid good money trying to find, cultivate, and promote just about any Native American willing to help foster the notion that the team name reflects anything but a racist stereotype. Were the team name really so bland, one might almost wonder what use it would have for people interested in such a martial sport! And of course we now have the Cheetoh-in-Chief (who has his own bullshit civil war monument) mourning the loss of beautiful artwork and a desecration of history with every Confederate statue that goes down. His language is so flowery and positive. You’d almost think these monuments held no serious political significance in the present age.

Of course the folks delivering the Nazi salute in defense of Robert E. Lee might seem to argue otherwise.

There are people, times, and places who don’t find it necessary to remove or modify monuments to their sordid past. Some of these might not even be terrible people, places, or times. But if the monuments to an abusive past aren’t so toxic, this isn’t simply because potential critics choose to let it slide; it’s because the community as a whole has somehow managed to handle the issues in question. When the dominant voices prove tone-deaf or outright hostile to the interests of those on the wrong-side of monumental history, then we are all a lot less likely to get along. Then statues get pulled down.

…or someone just shows up with a chisel.

***

Just a few pics of Canyon de Chelly (click to embiggen):

 

19732010_10213608255385782_3134402216345552500_n
20264884_10213790741107811_6139379835115073225_n
20776824_10213976954923040_6197824098058023091_o
20799382_10213964731857471_643789261344359561_n
19554785_10213533887766638_4703562301468482973_n

 

 

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California Admitted as a Free State, …Oh Wait!

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by danielwalldammit in Education, History, Native American Themes, Politics

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

American Indian, California, Civil War, History, Narrative, Native American, Semantics, Slavery, Story-Telling, teaching

Okay, so we just started a section on slavery and the civil war in my American history class. One thing that always irritates me here, or maybe it just amuses me, I don’t know… Anyway, I think about it whenever I cover this subject. Every textbook I have ever used on American history explains that California was admitted as a free state under the terms of the Compromise of 1850.

So, what’s the problem?

The problem is a little known law passed in California that very year, ostensibly for the protection of Indians. The law imposes a $50.00 fine on anyone forcing an Indian to work against his will. So, that should be good, right?

Actually, no.

The law also contains the following provisions:

When an Indian is convicted of an offence before a Justice of the Peace punishable by a fine, any white person may, by consent of the Justice, give bond for said Indian, conditioned for the payment of said fine and costs, and in such case the Indian shall be compelled to work for the person so bailing, until he has discharged or cancelled the fine assessed against him…

and

Any Indian able to work and support himself in some honest calling, not having wherewithal to maintain himself, who shall be found loitering and strolling about, or frequenting public places where liquors are sold, begging, or leading an immoral and profligate course of life, shall be liable to be arrested on the complaint of any resident citizen of the county, and brought before any Justice of the Peace of the proper county, Mayor or Recorder of any incorporated town or city, who shall examine said accused Indian, and hear the testimony in relation thereto, and if said Justice, Mayor or Recorder shall be satisfied that he is a vagrant, as above set forth, he shall make out a warrant under his hand and seal, authorizing and requiring the officer having him in charge or custody, to hire out such vagrant within twenty four hours to the best bidder, by public notice given as he shall direct, for the highest price that can be had, for any term not exceeding four months; and such vagrant shall be subject to and governed by the provisions of this Act, regulating guardians and minors, during the time for which he has been so hired.

Oh there is a lot more to the act, and plenty of reassuring clauses that appear to keep people from exploiting natives, but it should not take a lot of imagination to read between the lines here and see how this story actually went down. To say that this law opened up the native labor-market to exploitation would be putting it mildly. …too mildly.

In essence, the law made it illegal to enslave an Indian, at least on one’s own initiative, but if someone was caught being an Indian on a city street, the city could bond him over to you for a price. Oh yes, folks would have to go through the trouble of slighting the moral integrity of the Indian first, but how difficult do you think it would be to find a white guy willing to do that?

Not very.

It’s not the most efficient form of slavery one could devise, but it is slavery non-the-less, and that is why it always bugs me to see textbook after textbook announce that California was admitted to the Union as a free state under the terms of the compromise of 1850.

…in the very year they created a legal procedure for enslaving Indians.

Oh I get it; this kind of issue simply falls outside the scope of the narrative in question. It was not even on the horizons of those debating the major issues of the day in Congress. So, if one is recounting the events leading up to the Civil War, then this piece of information does not really change that story much. Neither does the existence of a viable slave-trade in the interior Southwest. If one is focused on the question of slavery as it was framed in the national politics of the day, then yes, California was certainly admitted as a free state.

Or is that the problem, the terms of that debate?

The bottom line is that ‘slavery’ is just a word, and you can choose to use it or not as easily as you can any other term regardless of the realities of the labor conditions in question. So, historians can skate right past these instances of captive labor (much as the great figures of the era did in their own approach to the issue) while focusing on the institutional forms of slavery that were the main issues of the day. But of course that same sleight of hand is necessary to cap off the story of the Civil War in the standard way, describing it as bringing about the end of slavery in America.

To give closure to the issue of slavery in our national storyline, one has to ignore the use of debt-peonage in conjunction with Jim Crow Laws, or at least classify them as a whole new kind of problem. Using the word “slavery” in the chapters leading up the Civil War and dropping it afterwards creates the illusion that the new social problems are significantly different than the old ones. This approach suggests that the problems associated with slavery were somehow resolved with the closing chapters of Reconstruction, perhaps not to the satisfaction of all concerned, but resolved nonetheless. And Jim Crow then becomes a whole different kind of problem, as do a host of similar practices.

Just like the California Law for the protection of the Indian.

***

Note: The law can be found in the California Statutes from 1850. It is also included in the primary documents for the following textbook:

Albert L. Hurtado, Peter Iverson. Major Problems in American Indian History: Documents and Essays. Second Edition. (Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

71.271549
-156.751450

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