Our Afghani Adventure Part 2.

Once a Hero, The Fetterman Fiasco

Because We Forget:

Why A Little History Is Worth the Effort

 

This is the second part of an article suggesting that America’s new role as the world’s cop and enforcer is not entirely without precedent, and much of the issues today are the same as they were during the conflicts with the Plain’s Indians of the 19^th Century, especially those of the Powder River War against Red Cloud in 1866-7. Part 1 compared the mission statements of both projects..  Part 2 suggests that the role of the War Hero to Americans changed from Daniel Boone, who always won, to sacrificial victims, often incompetent.  The two images struggle today in the War on Terror, which is really a war against militant Islamic anti-Occidents.

 

Once a Hero

When alleged civilization, as it sees itself, combats barbarism, it calls forth heroes from the hinterland of the imagination – outlaws seeking redemption – in order to provide a way to excuse its own barbaric actions in the conflict by focusing the public on their ordeals.  People understand slippage from grace when under pressure on a one to one basis.  In return, the heroes are given way too much credit for the victory.  It is always unstated, this recruitment enticement; it has always been there, the rules understood.  At least by the establishment.

 

The prototype of that superb (white) American archetypical Hero – The Frontiersman – was early on recognized as such.  He was born in Becks County Pennsylvania in 1734 to a Quaker family.  Working as a hunter and trapper in the Appalachian Mountains, at the age of twenty he found a job as a waggoner during the French and Indian War on an expedition funded by Benjamin Franklin.  British Major General Edward Braddock was moving against the French forces at Ft. Duquesne, where Pittsburgh now stands.  Heading his colonial militia was George Washington, the British officer who allowed the incident that started the War in Europe as well as the Colonies.  Washington tasted his first enemy fire at this battle, and also the first of many, many defeats. 

 

Braddock is presented to history as the stereotypical British ham-headed officer, possibly to burnish Washington’s reputation, and when ambushed by the French and their Indian allies (Hurons & Friends; the British favored the Iroquois) his command was slaughtered, Braddock killed, and Washington led the retreat, an experience that served him well.  Braddock is historically condemned for supposedly insisting upon fighting in ordered ranks in the middle of the woods, although if he had screamed “Oh hell, guys, I’m feeling impish!  Let’s try something we’ve never done before!” to his men with French muskets in their faces, his wound might have come from the ranks behind him.  The British were generally doomed by training and a century or two of tradition in close quarters.

 

  The waggoner lad fled with the others, his wide brimmed Quaker hat pulled tight over his head. 

 

It was not the only time that Daniel Boone ran, and it is true that his later exploits were exaggerated for profit by J. Filson, a friend and proto-novelist whose The Discovery, Settlement and present (sic) State of Kentucke illuminated the ranks of real estate boomer literature in 1784, setting the standard for American frontier mythology by including an utterly fictitious autobiography of Boone.  The fallout of that chapter permeated  American mythology for well over one hundred years, directly inspiring Parson Weems’ odd treatment of Washington, Davy Crockett's treatment of himself[1], Ned Buntline's handling of Wyatt Earp and Frederick Whitaker’s homage to Custer.  But of all the people who played a role in the conquest of America, and who were demonstrably capable and charismatic leaders, Boone probably was the man you would want at your side.  Whether blessed with extraordinary luck alone, or with unequalled talent and smarts, or both, he survived a hellacious life to within a few weeks of his eighty-sixth birthday, dying, it is said, of eating too many sweet potatoes at his son's home in Missouri.  The most impressive thing about Boone was that it was not necessary to exaggerate his frontier abilities to be impressed.

J. J. Audobon, a trained and exquisite observer - at least of birds - met Boone when Daniel was an old man and yet was so awed he described him physically as "gigantic."  Boone's son Nathan was less histrionic, and noted his father was only about five foot eight, weighed about one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and was fair of skin and blue of eye, born out by the few paintings that exist.  That Boone cast a huge presence in any gathering must be assumed, since few Americans were so world famous as to have been included, as Boone was, in a poem of Lord Byron's.  What Boone thought of his public persona must have provided some inner conflict, for the cameo he received in Byron's Don Juan is somewhat at odds with his evident claim that Filson's mythology was true, "every word." 

             

Boone was not given to undue modesty, and his assessment of his abilities in the wilderness may be well founded.  Certainly, he had a sense of humor, and a self-deprecating one, and this is hardly the stigmata of the fool or one given to believing his own myths.  "I can't say I was ever lost," he allowed in old age, "but I was bewildered once for three days."

 

 In 1765, he traveled to northern Florida and was among the first to travel the newly discovered path into Kentucky four years later.  The Cumberland Gap - named for the Duke of Cumberland by those less inclined to call him The Butcher of Culloden Moor - became an immediate highway, and Boone led many settlers over into the new state.  He was impressive to most of his clients.  "...was (sic) I to enter an exception to any part of his conduct, it would appear on the ground that he appeared void of fear...too little caution..."  These hesitations echo quietly the concerns Custer's contemporaries shared of him, and perhaps of all men on the frontier, myth and fact.  It is arguable that a hero cannot be void of fear; fear is what must be overcome in the Quest.  Courage and absence of fear are different. 

 

The real life people on whom fictional characters are based are far more interesting than their literary or cinematic equivalents.  Roy Chapman Andrews, a legendary paleontologist, traveled in search of fossils to many exotic places, including Mongolia, in the 1920's.  Along with his predecessors, like Copes and Marsh in the Dakotas,[2] he was an acquisitive and fame-hungry individual, whose most famous work, All About Dinosaurs, was nearly the layman's reference book on the subject for several decades.  It certainly was the most popular of the early children's books on dinosaurs.  He and his cohorts were the likely basis for George Lukas' Indiana Jones, an archeologist and adventure.  It is not likely that Andrews, who wore the hat and may have carried a bullwhip on occasion, was less ingenious than Jones.  In any case, the icon of the frontiersman, later emulated by everyone from Davy Crockett to Kit Carson to Buffalo Bill to George Custer, are but variations on the theme of Daniel Boone. 

 

Certainly, Boone was not the man to dare, taunt, or annoy.

 

When two of his daughters were captured in his absence by the Shawnee and Cherokee, Boone returned and, with few men, took off after them.  He found his children, apparently killed all the captors, and returned the girls safely home.  His daughters were, from beginning to end, in little doubt of the outcome.   When the long rifles of Boone and his men first blazed away, one of them apparently noted with some equanimity, "That's Daddy."  This story, which appeared more or less intact in Last of the Mohicans, is fairly convincing proof that Daniel Boone was the nearly sole basis for Natty Bumpo - Hawkeye, the Deerslayer, the Pathfinder, the hero of James Fennimore Cooper's novels that enchanted and warped a century of thought about native Americans and pioneers.

 

In 1778, Boone himself was captured by the Shawnee in the pay of the British during the Revolution.  He lived with them for quite a while, was given the name Sheltowee (Big Turtle) and was even allowed to hunt - under close supervision.  When he eventually discovered the Shawnee were on their way to attack Boonesborough, the town he founded in Kentucky, he escaped, ran to the town and organized its defense, and fended off a fairly impressive offensive by the surrounding Indians.  Despite this altogether suspicious story - or perhaps because of all such stories - there were many who felt Boone's ties to the British and their allies were never completely severed, and that he would as soon work for them as for the American government.  It’s still an open question, truth be told.

 

He moved to Missouri, then a Spanish territory, and he was welcomed with the understanding that he would bring settlers to the region.  He did so, was rewarded with about 800 acres of land, and was subsequently less than thrilled that Spain forfeited the land to France and even less pleased when the United States bought it in the Louisiana Purchase; now he was back in the hands of creditors from Kentucky, who questioned his patriotism and willingness to settle their claims.  He appealed for help to Congressional friends, of which he had many, but the War of 1812 prevented much being done.  To score brownie points with the federal government, Boone attempted to enlist in the army, but he was turned down.  Something about his being seventy-eight, one supposes.

 

If so, the army screwed up in disallowing this remarkable specimen.  For during his sixties and seventies, Boone traveled widely throughout the Louisiana Purchase, perhaps as far as Yellowstone in northwestern Wyoming - which would have brought him into contact with the Sioux, Cheyenne and Crows and all the tribes of the upper Missouri.  Here, he did some surveying and land deals for various parties, an occupation at which he apparently was not at his best, since his fouled-up surveys allowed land to be sold more than once, providing him with an endless series of legal headaches for himself (he shorted on his own lands as well) and his family.

 

Boone was a remarkably tolerant and open-minded family man, marrying a smart, tough and fecund woman who gave him ten children, two of which were killed by Indians, and one of whom was the result of an affair with his brother when she had had reason to believe Boone had been killed or was not going to come back.  Or come back soon, anyway.  Something.  His attitude is refreshing.  "If the name's the same, it’s all the same," he felt, and let it go.  There is reason to believe that this was not a common attitude at the time.  Or now.

Others could later look the rugged look, and walk the solitary walk, but they could not fill the shoes.  Boone was the mold, and because of his seeming infallibility to the general public, others who would cash in on the image emulated him.  Although he never wore a coonskin cap, Filson said he had, and so the fad began, up to the Davy Crockett mania of the mid 1950’s.  Crockett never wore a coonskin cap either.   A coonskin cap is a lousy hat for a hunter.  The tail moves, disturbing game, and it has no visor to shield the eyes while sighting a rifle.  Boone, a Quaker by birth, wore the wide brimmed Quaker hat that adorns cereal boxes and sufficed as the Nike shoe of its era.

 

Boone was revered as an Indian fighter, although he cheerfully admitted that he had hardly fought any, and probably had a deeper regard for them than for his white brethren.  When he moved to Missouri, under pressure from creditors and in need of income, he said to a journalist that he was moving because it was getting too crowded in Kentucky.  This epithet became famous, the pithy saying that seemed to emulate all of the great frontiersmen.  It just wasn't entirely true, of course, like the all the silly myths about themselves and their perceived enemies, the Indians, who were ever so routinely surprised in bed by attacking soldiers……

 

The Fetterman Fiasco

Decades after Boone left the upper Missouri (if he made it that far) Generals Ranald MacKenzie, George Crook, and several others all were able to pull off the same stunt as did Custer at the Washita against the As-One-With-Nature plains warrior.  It seems simply amazing that after centuries of warfare with each other, tribes still never seemed to take the threat of attack by known enemies all that seriously.  However monumentally dense the whites were in learning to fight Indians, they learned how to beat them with overpowering numbers, bought treason, and amazing firepower.  The Indians, with bow or rifle, never did learn how to beat the whites; they never really understood the point of a white man's war until it was too late. 

           

The Army was temporarily often much worse in appreciation of its enemy's skills, especially right after the Civil War when few competents and fewer still of the highest quality stayed in service. 

 

For example, history records that each day of 1866 at Fort Phil Kearny (just south of Sheridan, Wyoming) seemed to start with the post commander, Colonel Henry Carrington, slapping his forehead because his wood train was being attacked.  This was a shock.  If only he had known.  Of course, the Sioux under Red Cloud had said they would do it, literally sending personal warnings directly to the fort.  Carrington knew Red Cloud's troops surrounded the new buildings.  Red Cloud himself barely stopped short of buying the 19th century equivalent of radio time to announce his plans to wipe out all the hated Bozeman Trail forts of which Phil Kearny was one, sending screaming warriors to serenade the troops in a manner requiring no translation.  Who would have thought?  Just because it had happened every single time the wood train went out, that was no reason to think it would happen today, December 21, 1866.

           

Like Civil War General George McClellan, Carrington was a great organizer and builder and little else.  In 1866, he and five hundred men built and manned three of the four proposed forts to guard the Bozeman Trail leading to the Northern Rockies in western Montana.  Of these, Ft. Phil Kearny was the showpiece.  Superbly placed with water, grass, and wood nearby, the fort was called the best in the United States by the Inspector General of the Army.  There were forty-two buildings, including a bandstand and barbershop, all enclosed by a heavy log stockade of the sort legend, movies, and television erroneously visualize in describing all army forts of the period.   On the last day of October, 1866, a flagpole one hundred and twenty feet tall was erected to great fanfare.  Serious effort was offered to make the fort habitable and impregnable, nearly an enjoyable place, not only for the officers but for the enlisted men and families.   This does not speak of a cruel or cold commandant, often Carrington’s description.

           

Carrington, despite having raised his own regiment, had had to sit out the Civil War for health reasons, and he subsequently never indicated a willingness to run any risks whatever, which, after all, is an element in military endeavor.  Yet, given the fact he only had, at most, three hundred men at Ft. Phil Kearny, one might understand his hesitations to retaliate.  During the first six months of Phil Kearney’s existence, the Sioux killed one hundred fifty people around the fort, stole eight hundred cattle and horses, and completed fifty-one attacks worthy of reprisal.   Carrington could not afford to lose any men, so he simply refused to patrol the vicinity, ensuring that the Sioux achieved complete surprise all the time. 

 

This would seem to be the height of stupidity, yet about eighty years later our military had similar choices to make, and did so as badly as the allegedly wimpy Carrington. "Where planes are not available to cover all sectors, the selection of the sectors to be covered is left purely to chance..."[3]  Hence, Pearl Harbor.

 

Here is the familiar military quandary of building a fort or assembling a fleet for the purpose of projecting power and finding that it can barely defend itself.  In our own time, Admiral Rickover,[4] the champion of nuclear submarines in the United States Navy, looked askance at the huge aircraft carriers that sucked dry his budgets.  He coldly allowed that in war with the Soviet Union the carriers of the United States could not even save themselves, much less project power, and would last, perhaps, two days.   He felt that in a general war, a small and inaccurate enemy nuclear missile could blow away the entire task force, but that in any case, the best it could do would be to protect itself.  There was much huffing among the surface admirals but near total agreement from the rest of the Navy. 

           

While in hindsight it is now hard to fault many or any of Carrington’s decisions, at the time and for some time thereafter things were not so clear.  Some of problem resided in Omaha where General Philip St. George Cooke resided.  Actually, much of the problem resided there. 

 

The father-in-law of the late Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, Cooke had been humiliated by his daughter’s husband repeatedly during the war, and apparently was looking for some way to assert himself.[5]  When young, Cooke had been a prescient and capable officer, and had actually served in the West well.  But since the Civil War, Cooke may have become the largest fool still in the Army, and he made Carrington’s life miserable with silly dictates. 

 

The prime example of Cooke’s incomprehension of his command involved the delivery of mail to and from the forts and his headquarters at Omaha, which had numerous and rather obvious reasons for often being late.  Cooke’s petty mind and surprisingly deep ignorance of transportation logistics suggested a solution to the delay of the arrival of Carrington’s reports: henceforth, Carrington’s reports were to be sent once a week, the riders to travel not less than fifty miles a day.  No consideration given for hostile Indians, weather, or the chronic lack of sound horses.  Given that half the horses (and all the cattle, for that matter) had already been stolen by the Sioux, this was a problem. 

 

During that first winter of 1866, Carrington’s farthest construction project - Fort C. F. Smith up on the Bighorn - had only ten rounds of ammunition per man, and Phil Kearny had not much more.  Cooke made this horrid situation even worse by pointlessly deciding that Phil Kearny was to be restricted to a notional twenty-five square miles, apparently feeling the less land to defend, the less ammunition needed.  But this decision cut off the best grazing, hay, and timber from the legal control of the army, and so Carrington had to employ civil contractors, and had to defend them, which is to say twice the danger at four times the expense.

 

Cooke was not, himself, immune to the danger from the Sioux.  As an expression of his appreciation for their talents, he kept twelve companies of his better cavalry in Omaha - where there was absolutely no chance of their being needed - but thoughtfully sent sixty-five cavalrymen equipped with muzzle-loading infantry rifles up the Bozeman to Phil Kearny.  In case Carrington had been lulled into a sense of false security, Cooke attached ninety-five totally untrained infantrymen to slow the advance of a nearly useless but hungry reinforcement.  Possibly in shock at his own largesse, Cooke sent another missive to Carrington ordering that Jim Bridger - probably the best scout then extant - to be fired from the rolls of Carrington’s fort.  Having thus saved the taxpayer a full five dollars a day, even at the expense of relieving Carrington of the only person who had some semblance of competence, Cooke settled in for a comfy winter.   Carrington, the alleged wimp of the west, sent back his refusal to fire Bridger by the next weekly mail.     

 

But he obviously did not know how to control or even command minimal respect from his junior officers, questionable as they in turn were.  His image with his troops was not helped by one of his first priorities during the construction of this impressive but constantly embattled fort: the placing of “Keep off the Grass!” signs around his new parade ground.  Under Carrington, active young officers, fresh from a winning war, chaffed.  A Lt. Grummond and a Captain Brown were among those frustrated by the scholarly officer who overbuilt his fort and seemed always on the defensive.  The fact is that Carrington was waiting for winter when he could logically assume the Sioux would be in hibernation and vulnerable to attack.   He was absolutely correct in this assumption.  Normally.

 

When a young, aggressive semi-hero of the Civil War named Lt. William Fetterman arrived at the fort, the dam broke.  Fetterman, with Grummond, Brown, and others, mimicked and ridiculed Carrington while the commander coolly ignored it and continued in his duties.  After demanding Carrington reassign a rescue party to his command to foil this day's attack on the wood train - an insubordinate action that under another commander would have put him in the brig - Fetterman proceeded to fall for a trap that is instinctively employed by children playing variations of Capture the Flag.  One he had fallen for before.

           

The Fetterman Fiasco -- no other word for it -- spoke accurately of the US Army's quality of post Civil War officers[6] and its knowledgeable, intelligent handling of  troops fighting Indians. Orders were not obeyed.  In general, the use of infantry to fight mounted warriors - early on considered the finest cavalry in the world, spoke volumes about the contemporary military mind in 19^th century America.[7]  But there was a lot of snow on the ground that day, and horses couldn’t move quite so quickly.  Fetterman seemed to have missed this.  The Sioux did not.  The use of cavalry with infantry, meaning the horse soldiers had to slow down to protect the infantry during the few times the blinding speed of the foot soldiers (now slogging through deep snow) allowed any Indians whatever to be found, is another puzzler. The yellowlegs became taller targets atop altogether attractive means of propulsion.

 

Fetterman had said -- had often said -- that he and eighty men could ride through the entire Sioux nation to the Tongue River, prompting old Jim Bridger to drawl to Carrington “Your men who fought down south are crazy!  They don’t know anything about fighting Indians,”[8] which to the childish Fetterman seemed like a challenge. 

 

So on December 21, 1866, when the Sioux attacked, Carrington ordered out units to defend the wood train and get it back to the fort.  The foaming Fetterman efficiently assembled both necessary elements of an American Western military debacle: insufficient cavalry under an inexperienced commander, and just enough infantry to slow down the whole expedition. Lest there be a remote chance of success, Fetterman separated both units out of supporting range of each other by disobeying orders, which were to stay within range of the Fort and not to go beyond  a certain landmark, Lodgepole Ridge.  But when the Sioux approached and waved their genitalia at the soldiers, it is possible Fetterman lost composure.  He apparently chased these rather obvious Sioux decoys - who might as well have had DECOY stenciled on their buckskin like FBI swat teams - and left his infantry plodding through snow up over a high hill, trying to catch up.  

           

Fetterman had many admirers among the soldiers.  He had a good war record and was an experienced fighter of Confederates, a quality repeatedly demonstrated throughout the frontier as an absolutely valueless commodity in dealing with Indians.  But at least he wanted to do something to take the war to the enemy rather than react to the inevitable like Carrington.   Frederick Brown, one of those all-too-prevalent racist psychotics sharp as a pound of wet leather, had practically jumped up and down when the force left the fort, saying he was being transferred and if he did not get to fight now, etc. etc.  So he rode with Fetterman.  They were found close together near where the battlefield monument is today.  They may have killed themselves.  There is a theory they killed each other by pact, but reality rarely allows such a perfect and fitting end.  There are those, both Indian and white, who felt many of the men panicked and killed themselves rather than fall wounded into the hands of the Sioux.   If so, they were wise.  Fetterman’s entire command, from first shot to last, was gone in about a half hour.  Their bodies were mutilated, much in the manner that Chivington had done to the Cheyenne men, women and children at Sand Creek four years previous. 

           

All under Fetterman were buried at the Fort, and later disinterred and buried in the Custer cemetery.

           

Evidently, Carrington decided, when Fetterman saw the decoys, the cavalry gave chase, leaving the infantry wheezing behind. The land north of Ft. Phil Kearny is rugged, steep, and clawed with deep ravines and sharp conical hills, decidedly not ground suited for cavalry.  Especially in snow.  The cavalry was hit by a huge number of Sioux who had easily hidden in wait, and fell back, eventually towards where the infantry had taken cover, leaving a stream of bodies in its wake.  This was the second such trap in a short time for which Fetterman had fallen, and his entire command, which may have exactly tallied his desired eighty men, was destroyed and hideously mutilated.   Red Cloud's foremost warrior, Crazy Horse, may have been in charge of the whole thing.

 

Anglicized Indian names are often romantic but there is something condescending and annoying about their use.  It is also puzzling the habit is seemingly reserved only for the Indians of the northern plains.  Forgetting the occasional habit of giving an arbitrary Christian name, as to King Phillip or Chief Joseph, hardly any Indian names are translated into English except those of the Sioux and Cheyenne.  Perhaps, because they so often walked away from battles the winners, the eerie implications of the name Crazy Horse appeals to the same mentalities that have Born to Be Bad tattooed on their arms, simpatico with the Good Ole Boy mind set.   It is less likely the habit would have been continued if people were aware that ‘crazy’ in the Cheyenne language and - it might be assumed - in the language of their closest Sioux cousins, the Oglala - meant something close to lascivious.  Perhaps more accurately the greatest warrior of the Northern Plains might be called Horny Horse.  On the other hand, nothing whatever can be read into this, since he got the name from his father, who relinquished it for another. 

 

 It is too often forgotten that most of our names are not anglicized and translated, but simply pronounced in an English manner.  For example, my given name is Richard MacLeod, which when translated into English (something my parents would never do....) from the Gaelic and old French probably means Brave Heart, Son of Ugly.  (I am really quite certain they would not do that to me knowingly...)  That would take some getting used to, dealing with the implications of your name every time you are addressed.   In any event, it cannot be sheer coincidence that Crazy Horse participated in and certainly was a leader in the three greatest military victories of the Plains Indians: the Fetterman Fiasco, the Rosebud, and Little Big­horn.  This compares well with any of the credits shared by his opponents.

           

Fetterman, typically, was lauded as a hero, while Carrington -- the survivor – was offered as a failure.  The now forgotten controversy swelled for years, but Carrington may have taken some vengeful pleasure when the Army exonerated him (years after forcing him out) and in the knowledge that his new wife was the widow of one of his enemies, cavalry leader Lt. Grummond.  Husband and wife shared many interests, both writing literate and absorbing books, and apparently were very happy. 

           

For a nation that, until Vietnam, has claimed to have won all its wars, the frequent appearance of such stupidity calls into question the whole myth.  How is it that we won all our wars?  The answer, of course, is that we have not.

           

A strong case can be made that Washington was a terrible general on the field and that the French (and an England exhausted by European conflict) won our Revolution.  The War of 1812 is viewed quite differently in, say, Canada, where our truly incompetent invasion attempt was stopped by Canadian deputized police and our leaders arrested, leaving us with four -- 4 -- single engagement frigate battles, three by the Constitution, some activity around the Great Lakes under Oliver Hazard Perry, and a land victory in New Orleans fought after the war was over.  In the interim, we had our capital and presidential home burned.  Whatever this was, “victory” does not elbow its way to objective lips.             

 

There was an undeclared and essentially un-fought naval war against the French we might have won, although nobody then or now has offered an entirely coherent explanation for or description of this alleged event, including Alexander Hamilton[9], the man who pushed it, and John Adams, the President who deflected it.

 

            A war against the Miami Indians in Ohio led to the slaughter of over six hundred soldiers in a single battle, three times worse than even the Little Bighorn. 

           

            Our war against the Tripoli pirates managed, with the coincidental assistance of the French and English navies, to produce a treaty, not a surrender.

           

            We declared our intention to defeat and remove the Seminole Indians from Florida; many of them are still there, good citizens, studying about their new nation's undefeated military.

           

            We fought an embarrassing war against Mexico that few who participated in it would recall with pride.  Ulysses Grant, who was there, called it the most unfair war a strong nation ever waged against a weaker.

           

            And we fought a war against Red Cloud's Oglala Sioux, who wanted us to remove the Bozeman Trail forts.  After some brisk action and a new southern railroad that removed the cause, reflection on the then-current state of our military -- so recently called into focus by the original cast of Ft. Phil Kearny -- propelled the removal of the Bozeman Trail forts, which the Sioux joyfully burned.  Not the blush of victory.

           

            The United States never declared war against the Indians; these were technically our first Presidential police actions.  So maybe we try not to count undeclared wars or police actions.  Yet, by 1876, the Union had convinced itself it was unbeatable, that it was, in fact, on a mission from God, a Christian Crusade to improve the world, and had picked up the white man's burden in seriousness long before Kipling set pen to paper in irony.

 

            This brings us back to Afghanistan and our Asian adventures, where the war over the Bozeman forts annoyingly casts a shadow.

 

To be continued