The Reconciliation of North and South
—Well … the prodigal brother … Haven't seen you since the surrender.
— (The Searchers, 1956)
The United States Army had two missions in the post-Civil War era—to ensure the success of Reconstruction in the South and to pacify the Western frontier. Regarding Reconstruction, the army played three roles: (1) in 1865 to 1866 it supervised the restoration of loyal state governments in the South; (2) beginning in 1867, it implemented the Congressional plan of Reconstruction that reversed the earlier policy of restoration; and (3) until 1877, it engaged in a limited and erratic counter-insurgency operation to preserve “law and order” in the South. Although some officers were former abolitionists and supported Radical Reconstruction, many others had no sympathy with Radical policies or with the freedmen. Nevertheless, the federal government called on the army, as in the cases of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to engage in “nation building.”1 The famous Seventh Cavalry, for example, was recalled for the West three times during Reconstruction to restore order in Louisiana.
The army's role on the frontier was that of an agent of nation building—preparing the West beyond the Mississippi for exploitation by farmers, gold miners, railroads, and other agents of territorial expansion. Soldiers in the post-Civil War years established and protected the new Southern state governments and patrolled the western frontier.2 Its ranks included immigrants, freedmen, and ex-Confederates. Out West, ex-rebels and their former Yankee opponents joined in the fight against the Plains Indians and other native American tribes. It was hard, low-paid duty and the desertion rate was high, except among black soldiers. Not surprisingly, Hollywood's history of the West ignored the role of African-American troopers and focused instead on white cavalrymen, especially, in the case of John Ford, on Irish immigrants and ex-Confederate recruits.
Other western films (parallel with the cavalry-to-the-rescue genre) glorified the ex-rebel, usually a reluctant gunslinger, as a loner seeking escape from war and defeat, but maintaining his Southern pride and allegiance to Southern values (none of which it seems had anything to do with slavery).
The reconciliation theme had appealing dramatic possibilities for the movie studios, but the movie makers did not invent the idea. The movies reflected a concept that had become central to the mystic memory of the Civil War. The war in American popular memory (except among African Americans) was not about slavery. It was about states' rights. (This became the common wisdom despite the fact that a goodly number of veterans on both sides undoubtedly continued to believe long after the fighting ended that the war was indeed about slavery.) The South fought bravely and honorably against overwhelming odds. Thus, the war came to be seen as an honorable contest that allowed historical memory to avoid the messy issue of race. It was all very romantic and, ultimately, the defeat of the South preserved a Union, something that all, ex-rebels as well as Yankees, could take pride in. Reconstruction, however, was “the tragic era.” After the war, according to this interpretation, vengeful Radicals imposed an unjust peace on the South. The proud people of Dixie had to endure the oppression of carpetbaggers, scalawags, and ignorant freedmen until they were overthrown. The Klan was an unfortunate necessity, but short-lived. The tragic era came to an end as well, because Northerners, now in sympathy with the South, allowed the decent white people of the South control of their own affairs. Shortly, the Civil War became the “Brothers War”—a war in which both sides, the interpretation held, fought for equally compelling and valid “principles” (states' rights v. the Union). This was a key element in the reconciliation theme—and in Hollywood's cavalry films. The “Brothers” interpretation informed the dominant Civil War narrative into the twentieth-first century; like radiation, it had a long half-life.
Reconciliation as a theme in western films is predated by actual reconciliation celebrations. Ancient film footage survives of the reconciliation moments between the former foes as they “honor” the fiftieth anniversary of the great battle and join hands. Although black troops did not fight at Gettysburg, not a single black veteran was invited to participate in the ceremonies. Reconciliation was a white matter. The real issue of the war, slavery, was ignored along with the contributions of 180,000 black soldiers. Reconciliation, minus African Americans, brought the antagonisms, the war of competing “principles,” to an end. In an address to the assembled crowd, on July 4, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson put the antagonism to rest: The old rivalry gave way to nostalgia as former enemies reunited—it was the birth of a nation: “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valor.”
In commemoration of the reunion, the New York Monuments Commission issued a pamphlet recording the event. It wrote this about “The Great Celebration”:
To those who were fortunate enough to be at the Reunion, there will remain always a deep and lasting impression of the affectionate relations between the Northern and Southern veterans as they walked in close embrace and renewed their vows to honor and protect the preserved and united country: one flag, one home, one destiny.3
There was a second reconciliation celebration in July 1938, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the battle. By then, the 53,407 white veterans who attended the “Peace Jubilee” now numbered only 1,800. The official program for the events emphasized that is was “the final joint reunion of the Blue and the Gray.” On the old battlefield, “these heroic figures will assemble in reunion … there to mingle as friends.” Such was the dominant narrative. Ironically, the rebel cause (disunion) was now alloyed to a new American nationalism: “Yes, the Veterans will want to recount significant incidents of their war service—they may want to swap yarns, smoke the peace pipe … and, in general, have a hale-fellow-well met good time.”4
The old veterans now appeared on film to record the reenact of Pickett's Charge where the Union survivors come out from cover to embrace the slowly charging Confederates. Two small groups of men face each other across a stone wall, shaking hands vigorously and saying, “Hello, hello” over and over again. One man turns to the camera and lets out a scream: “That's the Rebel Yell,” he tells us in an aside. A modern overlay on the scene declares that these men constitute “The Other Greatest Generation.” More shaking hands, more embraces. Uninvited and unseen in 1913, a handful of blacks, Union veterans, appear briefly. President Roosevelt addresses the gathering in a “spirit of brotherhood and peace.” He accepts, for the country, the gift of the “Eternal Light Peace Memorial.”
American westerns, in particular the films set in the1860s and 1870s (contemporaneous with the history of Reconstruction), are frequently the vehicles for “reconciliation” scenes between former Civil War antagonists.
Consider how Hollywood bought into the pro-Southern myths of Reconstruction stories about heroic ex-rebels (the “uncon-quered” and unreconstructed) on the frontier West. These films reflected how the North, tired of the Southern insurgency and lacking an enduring commitment to black rights, abandoned the cause of Reconstruction. This abandonment can be explained in part by the spirit of “reconciliation”—the coming together of white Union and Confederate veterans in a spirit of nationalism, shared valor, and honorable service at the expense of the commitment to black rights in the South.
The Searchers (1956), for example, embodies these themes in the persona of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), an embittered ex-Confederate soldier who returns to his brother's home in Texas in 1868 three years after the end of the war. He has not beaten his sword into a ploughshare as so many former combatants on both sides have done. His racism that apparently drove him into the Southern cause to begin with is now turned against Native Americans—all of them—but especially the Comanche who destroy his family and plunges him into a five-year search for his kidnapped niece. If Ethan Edwards remains unrepentant, Ford was much more supportive of reconciliation in his earlier “Cavalry Trilogy”— Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950). Here the post-Civil War Union cavalry, now fighting a new enemy—the Native Americans—is a mixture of Northerners (many Union Army veterans) and Southerners (all Confederate Army veterans) who have put aside their former enmity to face a common foe—the Indians.
These themes of reconciliation can also be seen in works such as Ford's Stagecoach (1939), Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee (1965), Andrew McLaglen's The Undefeated (1969), and Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), among many others, both “A” westerns and “B” westerns. There were TV westerns as well, including The Rebel, starring Nick Adams as a former Confederate soldier haunted by his memories of the Civil War. In the theme song to the series:
He searched the land,
This restless lad,
He was panther quick and leather tough
Cause he had figured that he'd been pushed enough, the rebel.
Hollywood pictured the ex-rebels sympathetically as tough loners and defenders of the underdogs on the frontier—the small farmer, the widow, and the immigrant. In a classic scene in Shane (1953), a sadistic gunfighter (Jack Wilson) goads a hapless, but proud ex-Confederate farmer from Alabama (“Stonewall” Torrey) into a gunfight and kills him:
Scene: A desolate frontier town
(filmed near Jackson Hole, Wyoming)
Wilson [Jack Palance]
They tell me they call you “Stone-wall.”
Torrey [Elisha Cooke, Jr.]
Anything wrong with that?
Wilson
It's just funny. I guess they named a lot of that …
Southern trash after old Stonewall.
Torrey
Who'd they name you after? Or would you know?
Wilson
I'm saying that “Stonewall” Jackson was trash himself.
Him and Lee, and all the rest of them Rebs. You, too.
Torrey
You're a low-down, lying Yankee.
Wilson
Prove it.
(Torrey draws his gun, but Wilson is faster.)
Later, Shane, a gunfighter with a mysterious past, kills Wilson in retaliation; the insult to the memory of Southern heroes is revenged.
The Lost Cause myths played out in many formats and many genres, some of the most memorable versions coming in western films—once the most popular of all American films. In 1939, the same year as Gone with the Wind, John Ford's Stagecoach, one of the most enjoyable and, more importantly, one of the most influential films ever made in America, was released. When John Wayne made The Searchers in 1956, he had become “JOHN WAYNE.” In 1939, he was still “John Wayne,” known mainly for a string of 1930s' “B” westerns. By casting him as “Ringo Kid,” Ford began the process that turned him into an icon. But the Lost Cause myths and the Unfinished Civil War are not embodied in Wayne's character as they are in The Searchers. The Civil War is refought—so to speak—by two other characters: a drunken Doctor from the North and a degenerated Cavalier from the South. Dr. Josiah Boone and Hatfield (no first name) find themselves fellow passengers on the stagecoach from Tonto to Lordsburg (in Arizona) for two different reasons. Doc Boone has been kicked out of town for drunkenness and for being unable to pay his bills. Hatfield, a gambler (and gunfighter?) voluntarily leaves town as the protector of Lucy Mallory, a genteel Southern woman representing every cliché about genteel Southern women, who is on her way to meet her husband, a Captain in the US Army. Hatfield, as we later learn, knows Lucy Mallory but she has no idea who he is. In the midst of a card game, he looks out of the window, sees her, and declares she is “Like an angel in a jungle.” When one of the card players asks what he is talking about, Hatfield replies: “You wouldn't understand, cowboy. You've never seen an angel. Or a gentlewoman.”
Geronimo has jumped the reservation and the stagecoach might be vulnerable to attack. Thus, Hatfield's decision to “protect” Mrs. Mallory. The Civil War is refought early on the journey as Doc Boone mentions that he once set the broken arm of Ringo's brother.
Boone: Let's see. I'd just been honorably discharged from the Union Army after the War of the Rebellion [our italics].
Hatfield: You mean the War for the Southern Confederacy, suh [our italics].
Boone: I mean nothing of the kind, sir.
In three lines of dialogue, Stagecoach crystallizes the unbending conflict in its most elemental form. Later, the verbal battle restarts as Boone's cigar smoke upsets Mrs. Mallory. An apologetic Boone tosses the cigar out of the window.
Boone: Being so partial to the weed myself, I forget it disagrees with others.
Hatfield: A gentleman doesn't smoke in the presence of a lady.
Boone: Three weeks ago I took a bullet out of a man who was shot by a gentleman … The bullet was … in his back.
So much for the cavalier tradition from a Yankee perspective. Later Doc Boone orates that he is not afraid to continue the journey even with the possibility of running into Geronimo whom he had earlier referred to as a “butcher.”
Boone: I have always courted danger. During the late war … when I had the honor, sir, to serve the union under our great President Abraham Lincoln and General Phil Sheridan, I fought midst shot and shell and the cannons' roar …
He leaves off at this point to demand another drink.
Hatfield, for his part, finally gives Mrs. Mallory some hint of his concern for her:
Mrs. Mallory: “You're very kind … Why?”
Hatfield: In the world I live in one doesn't often see a lady, Mrs. Mallory. [He added, in a line cut from the film, “I'm only doing my duty as a Southern gentleman.”]
Lucy: Have you ever been in Virginia?
Hatfield: I was in your father's regiment.
Lucy: I should remember your name. You're Mr … Hatfield?
Hatfield: That's what I'm called, yes.
Obviously “Hatfield” is the name taken at the end of the war along with his decision not to return to Virginia. That Hatfield is someone else, someone from “old Virginia,” is confirmed when Mrs. Mallory asks for a drink of water. A canteen is offered. The script describes what comes next:
Hatfield takes the canteen from Ringo and pours some of the water into a small silver cup, then passes it to Lucy. Lucy takes the cup from Hatfield's outstretched hand and gracefully drinks. Then she closes its little lid and looks at it. She looks again, more closely, scrutinizing its crest and Latin inscription: “ad astra per aspera” as if trying to recall something from memory . She then looks up at Hatfield and leans forward, pointing to the cup as she questions him.
Lucy: Haven't I seen this crest before? Isn't this from Ring-field Manor [a plantation home]?
Hatfield: I wouldn't know, Mrs. Mallory. I won that cup on a wager.
In the end, Hatfield proves that some idea of how a Virginia cavalier behaves still resides in him. The stagecoach is attacked by Geronimo and his bloodthirsty Apaches and the defenders soon run out of ammunition. Hatfield sees that he has one bullet left in his pistol and prepares to shoot Mrs. Mallory in the head to keep her from falling into the hands of the savage Apaches. (Replicating a scene in The Birth of a Nation in which a white man prepares to put a bullet through the head of a white woman lest she be racially defiled.) But an Apache bullet stops him before he can pull the trigger and, simultaneously, the cavalry arrive to save the day.
Hatfield dies in the arms of Mrs. Mallory and, ironically, Doc Boone and his last words are the final revelation: “If you ever see Judge Ringfield … (fighting for breath) … tell him his son …” One theme of the westerns, especially the ones set in the years soon after the Civil War, is the reconciliation of former enemies as they move from confronting each other to confronting new threats to Americans and America.
Scene: A Ranch House in the Middle of Monument Valley aka Texas, 1868
Captain/Reverend Samuel Johnson Clayton
(Ward Bond) (expressing surprise at the sudden
appearance of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne)
Well … the prodigal brother … Haven't seen you since
the surrender. (Pause) Come to think of it, I didn't see
you at the surrender.
Ethan Edwards
I don't believe in surrenderin’ … I still got my saber, Reverend
… never turned into any ploughshare neither!
The exchange between Clayton and Edwards, from John Ford's deeply powerful but deeply fl awed film, indicates one of the ways that the Civil War still raged, especially in the hearts and minds of some Southerners, after the war actually ended. Ethan Edwards, still wearing his Confederate gray topcoat three years after the end of the war, finally returns to his brother's Texas ranch after— it seems—a seven-year absence. Besides being a Southern loyalist, Ethan apparently went to war because he was (and is) in love with his brother's wife—Martha—and in the first few scenes— before she is raped and murdered by Comanche warriors—her facial expressions, body language, and tremulous voice strongly suggest that she loves in return. Asked about California, Edwards indicates he never went there. He did go to Mexico, fighting as a mercenary for the Emperor Maximilian. He has returned with a medal made of solid gold and two pouches filled with twenty dollar gold pieces. The exchange with Captain Clayton (of the Texas Rangers) takes place soon after his return when Clayton and a few others arrive to pursue thieves who have stolen a neighbor's cattle. Clayton tries to temporarily deputize Ethan's brother Aaron so he can join the posse but Edwards declares he will take his brother's place and that his brother should “stay close” to the ranch house because the thieves may be rustlers or they may be (and it turns out they are) a band of Comanche bent on a “murder raid.” Switching brothers leads to another exchange emphasizing Ethan's loyalty to the South (and, by his words, to the Lost Cause).
Clayton (grudgingly): All right … I'll swear you in …
Edwards: You can forget that … (as Sam stares) Wouldn't be legal anyway.
Clayton: Why … (a pause … then shrewdly) … You wanted for a crime, Ethan.
[Note: the script adds “Martha waits—intent”—one could add even fearful of the answer.]
Edwards: You askin’ as a Reverend or a Captain, Sam?
Clayton: I'm askin’ as a Ranger of the sovereign state of Texas.
Edwards: Got a warrant?
Clayton: You fit a lot of descriptions.
Edwards (levelly): … I figger a man's only good for one oath at a time … I took mine to the Confederate States of America … (he pauses—then) … So did you, Reverend [our italics].
This brief scene suggests many things about Ethan's character. There is no further mention of the Civil War in the film, nor for that matter of slavery (as can be expected), but whether because of the war alone or a combination of circumstances, Ethan is no Southern cavalier. On the other hand, just as war is the continuation of policy by other means, 1950s' westerns, especially the best of them like The Searchers, constitute a discussion of black and white relations by other means; in this case using Native Americans as stand-ins for blacks. The Searchers was released in 1956, two years after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court which declared segregated schools unconstitutional, a decision that set off legal, political, cultural, social, and sexual battles that still resonate today. The year 1956 was also the year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott that began at the end of 1955 and would stretch until the end of 1956. One could say a second Reconstruction was taking shape and the response to it, in many ways, would be just as brutal as the war on the first Reconstruction but, in the long run, fortunately, not successful.
Ethan is an unrepentant racist, a borderline psychopath who hates Indians, all Indians, especially the Comanche. One of the things that makes The Searchers so intriguing and such a gold mine of speculation for film historians, film critics, and filmmakers is the mysterious nature of Ethan Edwards's character. Despite his insane hated of the Comanche, he speaks their language and even knows their customs, down to their ideas about the afterlife, just as white Southerners, before and after the war, declared their intimate knowledge of how blacks thought and behaved. Most importantly, as an unrepentant Confederate, he is obsessed with the “abomination” of sexual contact between whites and, in this case, not blacks, but Indians. He and Thomas Dixon and D. W. Griffith view the world through the same sexually deranged eyes.
His sister-in-law, the love of his life is raped (and probably mutilated as well before being murdered) during the attack on his brother's home. His brother and nephew are also murdered but his two nieces—Lucy, about twenty and Debbie, about ten—are taken captive by the Comanche. Ethan, initially assisted by two others—his adopted “nephew” Martin Pauley who Edwards distrusts because he is one-eighth Cherokee and Brad Jorgenson who was courting Lucy—commence what becomes a five-year “search” to find Debbie. Lucy is found early in the search—also raped, mutilated, and murdered—by Ethan who wraps her body in his Confederate topcoat and buries her “with my own hands.” At first he withholds the information from Brad and Martin but he has to reveal the truth because Brad thinks he has found Lucy. At a distance he saw her “blue dress.”
Edwards: What you saw was a buck wearin' Lucy's dress … I thought it best to keep it from you—long as I could.
Brad: Did they …? Was she …?
Edwards (Ethan wheels on him in shouting fury): What've I got to do—draw you a picture? … Spell it out? … Don't ever ask me! … Long as you live don't ever ask me more!
Moments later, Brad is dead as his grief impels him to attack the three or four Comanche, including the one wearing Lucy's dress. The search continues, one year becomes two years, eventually becomes five years. Ethan and Martin make one visit “home” to the Jorgensen ranch a year after Brad's death. Ethan is determined to continue the search but suggests that Martin stay behind to work for Brad's father, especially since Brad's sister Laurie insists that she and Martin have been “going steady” since they were three years old! But Martin sees the need to continue as well. Something has gone wrong with Ethan and Martin fears for Debbie when and if they ever find her. “That's what scares me—him finding' her … Laurie, I've seen his eyes when he so much as hears the word ‘Comanche’ … I've seen him take his knife an' … never mind … But he's a man can go crazy wild …” That's as far as he gets in the film. But the original script indicates he continues: “It might come on him when it was the worst thing could be … What I counted on, I hoped to be there to stop him, if such a thing come.” And, as the years pass, Ethan becomes “crazy wild” more often. Once when they stop to kill a buffalo for meat, Ethan shoots one buffalo after another. Martin asks “What's the sense in it?” and Ethan (in a fury) replies: “Hunger!—Empty bellies! That's the sense of it, you Cherokee! …” Ethan keeps firing until the herd runs off and then adds “Least, they won't feed any Comanche this winter … Killin' buffalo's as good as killin' Injuns in this country.” Later they enter an Army camp after the cavalry has destroyed a Comanche village and brought back several white girl captives. Every one of them is deranged in some way as the film suggests that living with the Comanche has driven them insane. Ethan and Martin walk among them, hoping to find Debbie but with no luck. A soldier says to Ethan: “Hard to realize they're white.” Ethan replies: “They're not white any more—they're Comanche!” Ford emphasizes the hatred that this idea festers in Ethan by having his camera dolly in for a tight close-up of Ethan's face, seething with unspoken rage.
After four years or more into the search, they finally find Debbie, now about fifteen, and living in the tent of Comanche chief “Scar,” who led the attack that destroyed her family, as one of his “wives.” Ethan and Martin camp nearby, uncertain as to what Scar will do since he obviously knows who they are and why they are there. Suddenly Debbie comes to them, begging them to leave because the Comanche are now “her people.” In the original version of the script, she defends the Comanche saying they saved her when her family was attacked by white rustlers, but Martin starts to convince her of this lie. In the film version, she tells Martin that she remembers him “from always” and prayed for him to find her but it is now too late. At this point Ethan draws his pistol with the intention of killing her. Martin stands in front of her to protect her and only a sudden attack by Scar and his warriors prevents Ethan from killing her (and perhaps Martin as well). Ethan is wounded in the attack and, after they escape, writes a will in which he leaves all his property to Martin because he has no living kin. Martin flings the document back in Ethan's face with, “You can keep your will! I ain't forgotten' you was all set to shoot her yourself … What kind of a man are you, anyway.” Ethan's reply, again, could have come straight from one of Dixon's novels: “She's been with bucks! She's nothing' now but a …” Imagine what word or words follow that “a”! Martin shouts back: “Shut your dirty mouth!” So Debbie has been irreversibly “tainted.” Unlike Flora, she doesn't choose to kill herself so someone, her uncle, must do it for her … for her sake and for the sake of whites in general.
Near the end of the film after Scar's camp is located, Captain Clayton and the Rangers along with Ethan and some cavalrymen plan an attack to try to rescue Debbie. Laurie asks Martin not to go. It seems, from her reply, that Ethan's sexual obsession with race is not confined to him.
Laurie: It's too late … She's a woman grown now.
Martin: I got to fetch her home.
Laurie: Fetch what home? … The leavin's of Comanche bucks … sold time an' again to the highest bidder? … With savage brats of her own, most like?
Martin (shouting it): Laurie! Shut your mouth!
Laurie: Do you know what Ethan will do if he has a chance? … He'll put a bullet in her brain! And I tell you Martha would want him to!
Martin: Only if I'm dead!
(Scar's camp is seen in the pre-dawn light and the Rangers prepare to charge in and attack.)
Wait! We go chargin' in, they'll kill her … and you know it.
Ethan (calmly): It's what I'm countin' on.
Martin: I know you are … Only it ain't goin' to be that way … she's alive …
Ethan: Livin' with Comanches ain't bein' alive …
Martin: She's alive … Better she's alive and livin' with Comanches than her brains bashed out …
Martin eventually prevails and is allowed to try to sneak into the camp to find Debbie and get her out. But Captain Clayton makes no promises once the shooting starts: “… at the first alarm, we're comin' in—and we ain't goin' to have time to pick and choose our targets when we do …”
Martin finds Debbie and kills Scar. The Rangers charge in (the script specifically saying that Clayton leads them in shouting the “Rebel yell”) and Martin runs away from the campsite with Debbie to save her. Ethan sees them, pursues them, and knocks Martin down. He confronts Debbie and prepares to shoot her. In the original script, he looks down at her and says, “You sure favor your mother.” He then picks her up; his racial and sexual rage apparently purged by the memory of his beloved Martha. In the film, he picks her up, stares at her for a moment, then cradles her in his arms and says, “Let's go home Debbie.” By making Ethan's change of heart less specific, Ford retains the “mystery” of Ethan's character to the very end. After five years of seething, murderous rage and sexual obsession, there is no explanation for his decision not to kill Debbie. The Searchers ends with one of the most memorable moments in the history of film. Martin and Laurie are reunited; Debbie is taken into the Jorgensen house; family has been restored. But Ethan Edwards, the unrepentant Confederate who returned to his brother's home five years earlier seemingly seeking reintegration into family and community, now stands alone and solitary outside the Jorgensen house; he walks slowly away, as the door slowly closes, accepting perpetual exile.
We have spent these pages discussing The Searchers in detail because the closer one looks at the film, the more it actually emerges as something more than a typical John Ford western (if there actually is one). The Searchers replays, in the ways detailed above, an enormous number of the Lost Cause and Unfinished Civil War themes. And The Searchers is not the only western film that plays out these themes.
One theme of the westerns, especially the ones set in the years soon after the Civil War, is the reconciliation of former enemies as they move from confronting each other to confronting new threats to Americans and America. Seven years before The Searchers, John Ford, in the second of his “Cavalry Trilogy,” She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), injects a poignant moment of reconciliation into the film. An older soldier known as “Private John Smith” is mortally wounded in a battle with rampaging dog soldiers. Sergeant Tyree (Ben Johnson), who refers to his commander as a “Yankee officer,” calls to Captain Nathan Brittles (John Wayne) to “take a look at Trooper Smith.” “Dixie” plays softly on the soundtrack with the sound of a harp most prominent:
| Trooper John Smith (as he dies): |
Don't bother about me, Captain. Trust you'll forgive my presumption … I'd like to recommend the boy here … for the way he handled the action. In the very best tradition of the cavalry, sir. |
| Tyree (to Smith): | I take that very kindly, sir. |
| Smith: | Captain Tyree! Captain Tyree! [our italics] |
| Brittles: | Speak to him. |
| Tyree: | Thank you. (Comes to attention.) Yes, Sir. Sir! Sir! |
| Brittles: | (realizing that Smith has died): I'm afraid he can't hear you, Captain. |
So who was Private John Smith and why was he calling Sergeant Tyree “Captain”? The little matter of the Civil War being over, both Smith and Tyree (ex-rebels) have reconciled with the Union Army, and, yet, retained the old allegiance—an allegiance recognized even by their “Yankee” commanding officer.
| Brittles (later, while burying Smith): | I also commend to your keeping the soul of Rome Clay, late Brigadier General, Confederate States of America. Known to his comrades here, Sir, as Trooper John Smith, United States cavalry … a gallant soldier and a Christian gentleman. |
Following the ceremony, Tyree places a small rebel battle flag on the coffin. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” accompanies other scenes in the film when Wayne's character is set to retire from the service. Later, when Brittles receives an unexpected post-retirement appointment as Chief of Scouts for the army, he tells Tyree that the letter is endorsed by Phil Sheridan, William Tecumseh Sherman and U.S. Grant. Tyree observes that it would be even better if the appointment carried the signature of Robert E. Lee. Brittle agrees.
Reconciliation also is a factor in the other two films of the Ford “Cavalry Trilogy.” In Fort Apache, John Wayne, beloved U.S. cavalry officer, was a colonel in the Confederate army. In Rio Grande, John Wayne is a US cavalry officer from the North but his estranged wife—Maureen O'Hara—with whom he reconciles by the end of the film—is from the South.
Three other films from the 1960s and 1970s, among many other “A” and “B” westerns, also deal with the post-Civil War theme of reconciliation mixed with ongoing enmities that still simmer: Major Dundee (1965), The Undefeated (1969), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).
Major Dundee, directed by Sam Peckinpah (during one of his self-destructive periods), features Charlton Heston and Richard Harris as former West Point comrades who ended up on opposite sides during the war. Ben Tyreen (Harris) has a long standing grudge against Amos Dundee (Heston) because Dundee cast the deciding vote in Tyreen's court-martial for participation in a duel (as any Southern cavalier would do; it's genetically coded). Dundee has been reassigned to New Mexico after some vaguely described mistakes that he made at Gettysburg. Rampaging Apaches under a bloodthirsty chief (are there any other kind?) named Sierra Charriba are massacring ranchers and cavalry. Dundee assembles his own “army” of Union troops, both black and white, Confederate prisoners, led by Tyreen, Indian scouts, and civilian mercenaries to pursue Charriba into Mexico. Despite his animosity towards Dundee, Tyreen agrees to serve the mission loyally but “only” until Charriba is “killed or taken.”
The disaster that Major Dundee turned into (although a Sam Peckinpah “disaster” still means it is better than most other directors' “triumphs”) is a subject for film historians. The emphasis here is on the continuation of the Civil War antagonisms, which are maintained throughout a good portion of the film. When one of Tyreen's men tries to desert, he is captured and Dundee announces that he will be hanged. Tyreen objects but Dundee is adamant so Tyreen shoots the man rather than see a loyal Confederate “hung” by a Yankee. A black Union soldier Aesop (Brock Peters), the leader of the black troops, gets into a fight with one of Tyreen's men, Jimmy Lee Benteen (John Davis Chandler), a belligerent racist.
Once in Mexico, Dundee's force not only has to deal with Charriba but also French troops loyal to Emperor Maximilian (the very same person who awarded Ethan Edwards with a solid gold medal) whose supplies they steal to replenish their own. Eventually, Charriba is tricked into attacking what appears to be a weakened and vulnerable Dundee force and he and his Apache warriors are wiped out. As they approach the Rio Grande river to cross back into the United States, they are confronted by a contingent of French troops. As the battle develops, Tyreen is shot. He seizes the American flag and, as he is dying, delays the arrival of additional French troops so that Dundee and the other survivors can make it across the river.
Four years later Andrew McLaglen and John Wayne (uncredited) directed The Undefeated with John Wayne as Union Colonel John Henry Thomas and Rock Hudson as Confederate Colonel James Langdon. Thomas had defeated Langdon in a battle, only to learn the war had ended a few days before. Unrepentant, Langdon defiantly burns down his plantation; he and his men plan to cross into Mexico to join the forces of Emperor Maximilian (and perhaps run into Ethan Edwards!). Simultaneously, Thomas, his adopted Indian son Blue Boy, and his surviving troops bring a herd of 3,000 horses into Mexico to sell in Durango.
Halfway to Durango, Blue Boy, using his Indian cunning, realizes that bandits are planning to attack a group of travelers, who turn out to be Langdon and his followers. Thomas and his men rescue the Confederates and drive off the bandits. The two groups of former enemies celebrate at a party that takes place conveniently, for the theme of the film, on the Fourth of July. Everyone has a good time and the war is bloodlessly re-fought in a series of fistfights between the two sides. Could it be more obvious that McLaglen (and Wayne) were trying to make a John Ford film without John Ford. The Undefeated is clearly the weakest of the three films discussed here.
The two groups go their separate ways but Blue Boy and Lang-don's daughter have fallen in love (a good thing Ethan Edwards wasn't on the scene). Langdon and his group are captured by a Mexican general who will release them in exchange for Thomas's horses. Seeming to agree, Thomas stampedes his herd through the Mexican camp to rescue the hostages. North and South unite, once again, to put aside old hatreds and to defeat a common enemy. Notice in both Major Dundee and The Undefeated, the enemy is both foreign and located in a foreign country: Apaches and French in the former; Mexicans in the latter.
The Outlaw Josey Wales, directed by Clint Eastwood, is the most successful of these films. Eastwood is Wales, a “peaceful” Missouri farmer and unreconstructed Southerner who seeks revenge for the brutal murder of his wife and son by pro-Union Kansas “Redlegs” (as Union sympathizers were called) led by Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney), a protégé of the infamous Senator James H. Lane (shades of Ride with the Devil two decades later). Wales joins the Missouri Bushwackers/Border Ruffians. At the end of the war, the guerrillas are persuaded to surrender with a promise of amnesty. Wales, still seeking revenge, refuses to surrender, thus surviving the massacre of the men by a band of “Redlegs” who are now part of the Union army. Wales manages to shoot down several of the attackers with a Gatling gun. Senator Lane offers a $5,000,000 reward for Wales who is now on the run from the Union Army and bounty hunters while still seeking revenge and trying to get to Texas to start anew. He takes along a wounded survivor of the massacre, Jamie (Sam Bottoms).
On the run, he acquires a “new” family in the form of an old Cherokee named Lone Watie (Chief Dan George), a young Navajo woman (Geraldine Kearns), an elderly woman from Kansas (Paula Trueman), and her granddaughter who has been rescued from a band of Comanches (Sondra Locke, and her name is Laura Lee, not Debbie Edwards!). Cornered by the Redlegs in their new “home” in Texas, the “family” fights back and wins. Wales kills Captain Terrill, the leader of the Redlegs, who had ordered the massacre of the guerrillas, with his own US cavalry sword. Wales manages to convince all but one of his pursuers that he has been killed in Monterrey, Mexico by five gunmen. The one skeptic declares that he will go to Mexico himself to look for Wales. The film ends on that note. Wales has purged himself of his hatred and will be reborn as family man.
Of the three films, Wales was the most critically and financially successful and that success came at a time—the 1970s—when the western was in serious decline. In an interview Eastwood called Wales an anti-war film:
As for Josey Wales, I saw the parallels to the modern day at that time. Everybody gets tired of it, but it never ends. A war is a horrible thing, but it's also a unifier of countries … Man becomes his most creative during war … But that's a kind of sad statement on mankind if that's what it takes.5
In 1961, the nation had once again an opportunity to celebrate the reconciliation of North and South—the Centennial of the American Civil War. But, as the website of the National Archives and Records Administration notes:
Congress created a Civil War Centennial Commission that sponsored and encouraged activities to commemorate the war's 100th anniversary—including battle reenactments, conferences, publications, costume balls, and exhibits. The events emphasized the bravery of the soldiers from both sides and national reconciliation after the war. They largely ignored the political and economic causes of the conflict, slavery, African Americans, and postwar violence against blacks.6
So, the anniversary was not about the thing that actually caused the war or the people the war had liberated; rather, it was about shared glory and the birth of a nation. In the 1961 Civil War Centennial Handbook, the caption under a photograph of Confederate and Union veterans shaking hands reads: “They have become a common property and a common responsibility of the American people.”7