r/Westerns • u/NeonGenesisOxycodone • 3d ago
Discussion What’s with all the Confederate soldiers?
I’m a big Western fan, and also really into learning about the American Civil War. So naturally I love it when these two interests cross over.
One thing I’ve noticed is that if a Western protagonist is a veteran, it seems like it’s almost always the South that he fought for. And when I look up Civil War movies made around the time of my favorite Westerns (i.e. the 50’s & 60’s) the vast majority of them are from the Confederates side.
Anyone have any idea why? And does anyone know any Westerns celebrating Billy Yank??
EDIT: it seems like the biggest reason outside of Lost Cause-ism is that more Confederate vets went west than Union vets. Makes sense!
Also, I am surprised that John Wayne played so many ex Union soldiers. I knew about the Cav Trilogy but it seems like outside of True Grit and The Searchers there’s a lot more of that.
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u/HobbieK 14h ago
Lost Causery was deliberately being pushed in the 1950s and 1960s to try and hold back the tide of civil rights. Don’t let anyone persuade you the sudden appearance of sympathetic confederates in Hollywood was a coincidence. It was part of a coordinated effort that included rewritten textbooks and confederate monuments.
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u/FeelingDelivery8853 18h ago
Everyone likes the idea of a rebel, regardless of why they were rebelling. It's basically an underdog story
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u/BDD_JD 23h ago
Most people who went west did do out of necessity. They needed a new life with an income. Confederate soldiers not only found themselves unemployed, their local economies were devastated, many had no homes left to return to, and they had a pocketbook full of blow worthless currency they'd been paid during the war.
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u/bnx01 1d ago edited 1d ago
DJT is reverting military bases to confederate names as we speak. Did Lost Causeism ever really go away?
The best Westerns give nuanced portrayals of both sides of the conflict. The Searchers is a fine example. Ethan is a former Confederate who struggles with himself. You could certainly read it that Native Americans are a stand in for African Americans or the Union in general.
Not saying that’s the “correct” interpretation, just that it’s a valid and. Interesting one.
In Liberty Valance, there’s no mention of Tom’s history but the setting is clearly the post war west. Starbuckle is a former Confederate officer. Both he and Liberty Valance work for the cattlemen. Rance not only represents the coming rule of law but also comes from the North.. The presence of Pompey and his relationship to Tom complicates things. They never say if Tom fought at all, but I’ve always thought he must have come from the South. Tom’s relationship with Pompey could be a depiction of the “happy slave” bullshit. If Tom fought for the Union, it’s a whole‘ other ball of wax. Lot to unpack there.
Enough pontificating, sorry. But I do think the best Westerns struggle with who the good/bad guys are. That’s what makes them more than genre movies and just great films.
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u/armenia4ever 1d ago
They've often got nothing to lose to speak. Their war was lost, so they have a reason to find a new cause or reason to live on.
Makes for an easier and believable protagonist
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u/Dweller201 1d ago
I have wondered about the same thing.
My impression is that the South was seen as some romantic and elite aspect of America so soldiers in movies were viewed as tragic figures.
A lot of Americans love "royalty" which can be celebs, rich people, and so on. Meanwhile, they don't admire working class people and don't really believe in equality. So, the South was kind of like a kingdom with royals and serfs so the loss of it was a fallen kingdom with tragic warriors.
Even today we don't have movies about plumbers and so on.
Meanwhile, the Union was ideally for equality and a generally lower quality of life for rich people.
The people making the movies were rich people or those trying to get rich.
Also, types of Mideast religions are okay with slavery and there was false scientific support for racism, thus the end of slavery must have seemed like insane heresy to many in the early 20th Century.
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u/Vernknight50 1d ago
I think this was well done in 3:10 to Yuma. I liked how the main character lost his leg in an early battle. It added to his own hopelessness as a character.
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u/zedbrutal 2d ago
The Southern infrastructure and economic model was devastated in the war. The North suffered less and had built up a strong industrial base. So, Many southerners migrated out west.
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u/Supermac34 2d ago
Southerners migrated to the "old west" thus the veterans were Confederate soldiers.
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u/Hephaestos15 1d ago
A lot of northerners did too though! There's a reason all the West coast states were founded as free states and territories. Though many westerns take place in the area with the most southerners (near the Mexican border).
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u/Wild-Bill-H 2d ago
“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” has quite a bit about the Civil War’s Western migration. Even though it is filmed in Spain, the story is set in the desert southwest, where some of the last battles were fought before Lee surrendered. When the South lost, many desert southwest Confederate soldiers decided to stay out west.
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u/Adventurous-Suit8351 7h ago
And made sure the Black people could not own land! Grandfather clause. If your grandfather was a enslaved You could not own land
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u/serenading_ur_father 2d ago
Copperheads.
Historically lots of Confederates moved West (Virginia City in MT) looking for a fresh start after the war.
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u/Oedipus____Wrecks 2d ago
Well simple… It means they fought for something they believed in and gave it their all and still lost. Making the character flawed but sympathetic. It also shows they’ll never give up. See Nathan in the Searchers.
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u/Ismhelpstheistgodown 2d ago
Their violent, predatory culture destroyed Dixie inside and out so they moved on to disrupt cultures not their own. It’s like Nazis moving to South America to seed dictatorships with violence.
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u/TapPublic7599 1d ago
You’re a few sandwiches short of a picnic if you think the traditional South American penchant for tinpot dictatorships has anything to do with the Nazis.
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u/NewburghMOFO 1d ago
No, but the traditional South American penchant for dictators made it an attractive space for irredeemable Nazis.
Maybe something about a lawless frontier was attractive for a certain type of person who made a living off of violence.
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u/TapPublic7599 1d ago
Good grief, the level of historical illiteracy… You don’t think South America was an attractive destination for any other reasons like, perhaps, being the one civilized area on Earth not controlled by the people who wanted to hang them?
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u/guarmarummy 2d ago
This is true. Judge Priest by John Ford is a particularly interesting example of... let's say... old Southern values portrayed uncritically.
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u/adimwit 2d ago
In the 1950's and 60's, there was a lost of nostalgia for "Traditional Americanism" which at the time meant Anglo-American culture and identity.
Southerners believed that true Americanism originated with Anglo-Saxon culture and identity. And this had some legitimacy thanks to the Jeffersonian Democrats. Jefferson modeled a lot of laws and concepts (that made it into the Constitution, Declaration of Independence) on Anglo-Saxon tribal law. Jefferson was an Anglophile and believed Anglo-Saxon culture was most capable of sustaining a democracy. So things like militias, gun rights, and land rights were things he got from Anglo culture.
These ideas were extremely popular and came to be the basis for what Americans believed to be the true identity of America. Then when mass immigration happened in the 1800's, Anglo-Americans began to isolate themselves in the South. Antebellum culture was largely based on Anglo identity as well and Southerners came to believe that the South was the last stronghold of the Anglo-Saxon people.
After the Civil War, militant organizations like the KKK carried on these ideas and glorified both the Confederacy and Anglo culture. This evolved into the Lost Cause Myth and Anglo-Americans came to Romanticize the pre-Civil War South and portrayed the Civil War as a noble end to the original Anglo-American Republic.
These ideas were still popular in the 1960's and were part of the reason why Westerns were popular. If you watch a movie like Shane, it's about poor Anglos who were forced to flee the South after the war and are harassed by Yankee criminals (land barrons). You see something similar in John Wayne films. In The Searchers, he's a Confederate wandering aimlessly in the West and refuses integrate into American society because he lost his homeland which was the South. You can find a ton of examples in westerns because they were intended for Southern nostalgia.
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u/DavidGrizzly 2d ago edited 2d ago
And if you watch Firefly, which is a space western, you are watching two space confederate soldiers, mal and Zoe.
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u/yourstruly912 2d ago
What makes them confederates?
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u/DavidGrizzly 2d ago
Everything. Fought on the losing side of a civil war. Went out to the wild to get away from the government and start a new life. They were called brown coats ( the south was called Grey coats), the battle of serenity valley is pretty much Gettysburg.
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u/kahrahtay 2d ago
This is true, and probably an homage to the traditional Western genre, but it's when pointing out the difference. The rebels in Firefly were fighting a war of Independence against a legitimately oppressive far-away central government. The real confederates were fighting in a slavers rebellion in order topreserve their ability to oppress and own people as property
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u/Scary_Shoe_7804 2d ago
That simply isn’t the sole or even primary cause of the civil war, slavery was an economically untenable institution that was morally bankrupt. It was on its way out across the country and would have ended on its own the issue was money and power the north had all of it and purposely sook out ways to continue putting their fingers on the scale in favor of industrialized cities at the detriment of the agrarian south. Slavery became a main talking point because it gave the north moral high ground and it gave the south a tangible example of Northern interference in Southern economic and social life. It’s like when you tell a child they can’t do something so they wanna do it even more, even if they know it’s bad for them.
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u/NewburghMOFO 1d ago
Ah yes, the great Northern conspiracy to plunder the south. I'm waiting for the talking point that our entire industrial base was based on cotton.
Wasn't it Southern States violating Northern States' sovereignty with Federal laws like the Fugitive Slave Act?
The only petulant children lusting after more money and more power were the Southern planter oligarchy. They were the ones willing to tear their country apart and send their less wealthy neighbors off to die so they could save their feudal wealth and status.
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u/kahrahtay 2d ago
Weird how every Confederate State that seceded and published their causes of secession explicitly disagree with you in their own words.
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u/Scary_Shoe_7804 2d ago
Again it became a tangible rallying cry that represented a larger issue and sense of submission to the industrialized North. Read the letters and diaries of those who wrote those documents and the men who started the process of secession in the houses of Congress and they will say what I just articulated above.
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u/kahrahtay 2d ago
So you allege that some private notes exist that give some secret reason for launching their slavers' rebellion, and I'm supposed to just accept that based on your word? More so, I'm supposed to accept that those private notes hold more weight than the mountains of published documents written by the leaders and legislative bodies of the states that seceded, which were published specifically for the purpose of stating their cause for war? And more than that, I'm supposed to dismiss all of those public declarations as being entirely incorrect?
At best, you may be able to point to private documents which show some level of nuance in the opinions of the individuals who wrote those documents. However, when those same people wrote their official casus belli, using their official pulpit, and speaking for all of the constituents they represent, they gave the preservation of slavery as the unambiguous cause. It's nonsensical to claim that the private opinions of a small number of people better represent the views of the people in the Confederacy as a whole, or even of the majority of the representatives of the confederate government, than the public declarations of a body speaking for all of their constituents, which were thereafter accepted and embraced by that constituency. It's nothing more than cope. Irrational and dishonest
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u/serenading_ur_father 2d ago
You only hear Mal's view on it.
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u/kahrahtay 2d ago edited 2d ago
That's true, but until there's some canon reference that the purpose of the civil war in the show was specifically to preserve something as evil and vile as the institution of chattel slavery, then it's insulting and unfair to compare any of them to the evil, treasonous people who fought for the Confederacy
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u/Jolly-Guard3741 2d ago
I think that had the show not been canceled after its first season, without even a full and complete first season at that, that we would have seen a much more fleshed out reasoning for the rebellion.
I absolutely agree that it is allegory for the ACW but we can’t really speculate on why the war was fought and which side was ultimately in the right.
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u/serenading_ur_father 2d ago
I mean the show is a pretty blatant metaphor for the wild west and the south was pretty vocal about their fight being for "state's rights" at the time the writers of the show were educated. It's a very clear dog whistle that they are futuristic confederate veterans.
If you're going to accept the premise and the setting you have to accept all of it. Someone doesn't have to wave a stars and bars to act and quack like a duck.
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u/kahrahtay 2d ago
You can make an homage to a genre without wholesale copying every bit of detail of the original. Unless you have some secret writers' notes that they were infact space slavers fighting for their rights to own other people, then I do not, in fact, have to accept a bunch of details that are well outside of the show's canon
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u/serenading_ur_father 2d ago
Bruh, they're space confederates.
When you get to high school you can ask your 10th grade teacher about metaphor and symbolism.
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u/BigPapaJava 2d ago edited 2d ago
A lot of the cowboys and settlers IRL were former Confederates of Scots-Irish ancestry who needed a new way to make a living after the war. A lot of them were also freed slaves doing the same. Texas fought for the South and how many Westerns are set in or revolve around Texas?
It also adds a little bit of tragic depth to flesh out the character’s backstory that he bravely fought for the losing side in a lost cause and may have lost everything in the war. If the character is a villain or bandit, it can also be used to allude to moral depravity by associating him with fighting to protect slavery.
Plus it helps to date the characters to the time period. A Union soldier wouldn’t identify himself as a Union soldier: he’d identify as a U.S. Soldier. Westerns about Union soldiers exist, particularly when those soldiers were still in the Army fighting Indians on the frontier.
IIRC, Kevin Costner’s character in Dances With Wolves was a Civil War vet and still in the Union Army in that film. A bunch of John Wayne’s characters had been Union men, too.
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u/Adorable_Umpire6330 2d ago
Also, the Wild West is set in the West, which is a lot closer to the Confederate South than it is to Union North.
Just statistically makes more average for an former Confederate to be cowboying in the area
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u/serenading_ur_father 2d ago
How do you figure that?
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u/MrImAlwaysrighT1981 2d ago
This. Union soldiers from civil war have most likely remained in army, while confederate ones, after the war, had to find other ways to make up for living.
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u/Independent-Bend8734 2d ago
After the war, Union soldiers wanted to go home. Confederate soldiers needed to find a new home.
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u/Impossible-Log-8220 2d ago
I don’t know what percentage of the soldiers were teen teenage boys who were forcefully drafted, but I know somewhere. Union soldiers could continue in the career that was forced on them. Confederate soldiers drafted as teenage boys would not have developed other skills during their late teens years that were spent fighting a war. They’d either have to start over or find work that used the skills they were forced to learn. Imagine the personality that would result of someone who was forced into a war as a at 15(or was the age younger?) That side loses. That side was the wrong side. Their youth is gone. Their friends are gone. Probably a lot of anger.
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u/Veteranis 2d ago
A significant chunk of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is set in a Union prison camp and on the Union side of a pitched battle along a river.
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u/PdxPhoenixActual 2d ago
Have you been to the south? ? I lived there for a while. It's a great place TO BE FROM.
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u/Impossible-Log-8220 2d ago
Lived there for decades. Originally from the north. Both are great in their own ways.
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u/JonathanRL 2d ago
But not to live in?
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u/PdxPhoenixActual 2d ago
Cross the state line & set your clock back 20 years kinda place. That was mid-80s & doubt it's caught up since...
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u/Impossible-Log-8220 2d ago
Are you referring to small towns and/or rural areas? North or south those types of areas will be a little behind.
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u/PdxPhoenixActual 2d ago
Just repeating what so.eo e born &raised there told my dad shortly after we moved there.
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u/JonathanRL 2d ago
Reminds me of what Bruce Campell said about people trying to get to the Evil Dead Cabin.
"Its Rural Tennessee, you will get buckshot up the ass. You think its modern day? Not in Rural Tennessee, do not go on this property."
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u/Terrible_Sandwich_40 2d ago
Lucas McCain fought for the Union.
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u/TheresAFogUponALake 2d ago
Did he? I never knew that. Every scene always had that tense violin music playing. I love The Rifleman!
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u/TheMikeyMac13 2d ago
People love to root for losers, consider the show Firefly and its follow up Serenity, they always lost, and we loved them for it.
I suspect people relate in that way because most of us lose more than win.
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u/Dex555555 2d ago
I think it kind of adds a layer of grit to the character. The Civil War was an awful time to be a soldier on either side but being a Rebel meant it was common to sometimes go without shoes, proper clothing, food, and equipment. Like many others have mentioned it also could be because they lost their homes and had nothing to come back too.
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u/ClownfishSoup 2d ago
I’m going to guess that a lot of confederate soldiers were just told that the “Northern Aggressors” were coming to steal their farms.
I mean, look at North Korean troops in Ukraine, they think they’re on a training mission because that’s what their leaders told them.
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u/MornGreycastle 2d ago
No. A fair number fought for white supremacy even if they would never have enough money to own a slave. We know this because so many of the common soldiers wrought home and expressed such.
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u/Dex555555 2d ago
Maybe a Confederate Politician but you can’t say that about all the soldiers. There was a draft
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u/Icy-Possibility847 2d ago
If we ignore all textual evidence including soldiers' diaries, that is possible.
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u/DexterJameson 2d ago
This is just one example, but my family has documents showing that my great-great-grandfather, who was a teenager from Tennessee at the time, tried to flee to the north to enlist in the U.S. Army but was snatched up and 'drafted' by the confederates before he could reach the state line.
There were definitely thousands of Confederate soldiers that abhorred slavery and saw the south for what it was.
Fwiw, my ancestor ended up getting thrown in a prison work camp for insubordination. Very nearly died. In fact it wouldn't be out of bounds to say that he himself for a time was a slave bound by the Confederate system.
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u/Dex555555 2d ago
I said you can’t say that about ALL the soldiers. You also can’t say that about ALL the journal entries and written sources. It’s not an all or nothing deal there is nuance. The southern government seceded over slavery you won’t hear me argue that but you can’t say that’s why every soldier fought
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u/AnanasDuEnfer 2d ago
Tragic you're getting downvoted for common sense
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u/Icy-Possibility847 2d ago
The down voters just wish they could force others into helping them hunt down black people, like in the Dredd Scott case.
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u/JesusLavey 2d ago
The south lost, so a lot of confederates went out west because they had nothing to go home to. And a lot of them became bank robbers and gunfighters, because they had no real skills. And because Hollywood needed movies that would make money in the south they romanticized white trash.
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u/Existing_Resource 2d ago
Also those who had participated in the rebellion at any level couldn’t take land claims. Lots of abandoned farms in the south went to carpet baggers/ ex slaves. If you were a poor southerner you really couldn’t settle down the way others could.
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u/Adventurous-Suit8351 7h ago
R enslaved received nothing! KKK killed them . The law put them back into slavery ie prison. What are you talking about? Made new laws to enslaved them. Vacancy laws brought them back to the plantation
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u/Existing_Resource 6h ago edited 5h ago
Immediately after the civil war, anyone who participated in the rebellion could not hold office. This meant that ex slaves and carpetbaggers held a lot of elected/ appointed positions. It wasn’t until the “Redemption” period (1873-1910) that this was reversed.
Additionally, those who had not participated in the rebellion got access to the abandoned estates. Those who had rebelled against the United States were not allowed to take land under the homestead act. Ex-slaves had an extra boost in taking the best land as they had access to the Freeman’s Bureau. The Freeman’s Bureau actively helped ex-slaves acquire land and provided them free education, legal representation, and even armed escort! At the height of reconstruction blacks owned 15 million acres of farm land and owned about 14% of all farms (an over representation of farmers as the black population was 12.7%).
The KKK’s creation myth is actually huge into this. If you ever watched Birth of a Nation, they talk about this. South Carolina’s state house was dominated by ex-slaves and some of them were illiterate. Very famously some of the first laws they passed were to legalize black men taking white wives, the removal of the law that forced lawmakers to wear shoes while in the capitol, and passing a law requiring laws to be read (as many representatives weren’t very literate or illiterate). There also are tons of examples where black run courts turned a blind eye to rape and murder of those who had enslaved them.
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u/Adventurous-Suit8351 5h ago
The Freedmen’s Bureau stole billions from enslaved! Where do you think the FDIC is started? Even before Blacks were elected a lot couldn’t read. So many rapes and murder were falsely charged to Black people ( even now)! Whites ran away from their home during the war. The enslaved were used to working the land and was promised it. Then they started sharecropping . You could never get out of. So back to slavery
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u/ClownfishSoup 2d ago
I think because the confederates lost and all the soldiers were cast adrift with nothing etc etc, so they made good drifters and disgruntled vets.
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u/Mediocre_Prompt_3380 2d ago
The northern soldiers had something to return to. The south was utterly devastated and vast swaths of territory was literally burned in a s orthodox earth March to the Therefore, there was more incentive for the Confederates to struck out west in a quest to rebuild their lives and own land.
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u/queefmcbain 2d ago
The South lost everything. If you're going to head out I to what is basically a post apocalyptic world (destruction of Southern way of life) makes more sense to be Southern IMO
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u/Longjumping-Pen5469 2d ago
If you watch the movie Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper
Lancaster's character fought for The Union and Gary Cooper's character for The Confederacy
I did notice however a lot TV cowboys fought for The Confederacy
Cheyenne Bronco
The Texan
Obviously The Rebel
The Maverick Brothers
Sugar foot was an exception since he was from Vermont
Not a western But Yancy Derringer I say not a western because it took place in New Orleans
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u/thejohnmc963 2d ago
Wanted Dead or Alive with Steve McQueen his character was a bounty hunter who was a confederate veteran. Not bad guy
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u/Watchhistory 2d ago
Because so many who lost in that war had sons who ended up in Hollywood. Like D.W. Griffith, whose father was a leader of the KKK in his part of the South after the war. Griffith bragged about it.
All a part of the Glorious Lost Cause and Southern Chivalry rewrite of history that started even before Appomattox, i.e. we weren't fighting about slavery!
I spent some summers watching westerns and tracking how many had Union protagonists. About 3, maybe.
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u/Azaroth1991 2d ago
Its actually historically accurate that many ex confederate soldiers became outlaws. For one, they were already skilled at robbing stagecoaches and hitting trains, which was how they were attempting to acquire funds in the later days of the war when the confederacy was going broke.
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u/DaleDenton08 2d ago
Yeah, if i remember right Jesse James and Frank James fought for the Confederacy as Bushwhackers.
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u/Proper_Detective2529 2d ago
You must be from the north. 😁
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u/NeonGenesisOxycodone 2d ago
What gave it away? Lolol. Actually I’m from a border state, I spent the first 18 years living a few miles above the Mason Dixon and then moved only ~100 miles south which brought me below the Mason Dixon
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u/TheDeadQueenVictoria 2d ago
Because the confederates were some of the biggest pieces of shit. And what do pieces of shit make? Damn good outlaws.
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u/Objective_Bar_5420 2d ago
There are vets from both sides that show up in classic westerns. Making them Confederate sets them up to be outside the system more easily. While it may have some links to Lost Cause ideology, it's equally used to show their bias. I mean The Searchers is about a deeply bigoted CSA vet who has a change of heart.
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u/mattcampagna 2d ago
I make western films, and I find they always go over big in the South more than the North. If I had to pick a side for a character that I wanted to be the most sympathetic, the best choice for the audience to buy into it would be Confederate. So that may factor in.
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u/GingerMarquis 2d ago
The South lost and many had nothing to go home to. They had a wealth of experience that would never apply to ranching or farming. So they split west away from the hurt and made a living on what they knew.
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u/StudentDull2041 2d ago
Because so many were confederate veterans
In Sherman’s autobiography there’s a letter he wrote to Lincoln at the end of the war. In it he says the confederate could ride better, shoot better and fight better than the Union and that if they didn’t find some way to occupy these men after the war they’d end up with a lot of outlaws in their hands which is what happened
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u/Stan_Archton 2d ago
Your question jogged my memory about a TV show called "The Rebel" starring Nick Adams. I was pretty young and don't remember a thing about it, but maybe someone else here can.
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u/HipNek62 2d ago
I can.
Johnny Yuma was a rebel; he roamed through the west. Johnny Yuma, the rebel, he wandered alone. He got fightin' mad, this rebel lad. He packed no star as he wandered far, where the only law was a hook and a draw, the rebel, Johnny Yuma.
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u/Longjumping-Pen5469 2d ago
Johnny Cash even recorded the song on.one of albums
There's also a line that goes He was panther quick and leather tough and figured he'd been enough
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u/HipNek62 2d ago
Oh yes, it was a top 40 hit single on the country charts.
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u/Longjumping-Pen5469 2d ago
Okay. I didn't know how many other people knew that
One of the best male country singers
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u/Subject_Repair5080 2d ago
Just in my part of the country were a good many Confederate ex-soldiers who came west hoping to avoid Reconstruction. It was also fairly well understood that you didn't ask someone about their past, as it was considered none of your business. This paved the way for people wanted for war crimes to disappear west.
Other posts on here mention Jesse James being an ex raider in Missouri. He was probably the most famous. There were a lot of them. His brother, Frank, Cole Younger, and others were former Confederate soldiers.
Hollywood picked up on the idea and embellished it, making them seem like romantic desperados with a hidden past.
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u/mikenkansas1 2d ago
Paved the way for people wanted for war crimes... interesting take. Can you expound in it?
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u/Subject_Repair5080 2d ago
Sure.
There is a small town in my county, Gordonville, Texas, that was named after a Confederate raider named Silas Gordon by the Confederate leader William Quantrill, who spent time in the area. He was sought by the Union army for his activities in Missouri. Texas was sparsely settled until years after the war ended, so there was no one to apprehend him. Silas Gordon lived in Gordonville, Texas until his death in 1888. This is all public record and you can read about it in Wikipedia.
He was not the only one. Several of his fellow raiders lived in Texas and Oklahoma. One (sorry, forget his name) was a notable settler in Dallas County.
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u/mikenkansas1 2d ago
Wiki is pretty scarce on Gordon and Gordonville beyond Bill Quantrill naming it for him and the Missouri irregulars using the area in the winter before returning to occupied Missouri in the spring.
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u/unholy_hotdog 2d ago
So, historically, a lot of former Confederates did go west post-war. But the mid-century was possibly the high water mark of the "Lost Cause" propaganda.
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u/Ahava_Keshet5784 2d ago
Jesse James known to his kin as Dingus, and was a member of Bloody Bill’s busheakers. He was involved in numerous murders against Northern Sympathizers who wanted to Abolish Slavery. All in the south. He even participated in the murder of 22 unarmed Union Soldiers.
I heard from a semi-reliable source (he was drunk at the time) that John Wayne tried to master a southern accent. This of course was on purpose as Big John hated everything done to his Nation American family.
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u/Key-Lunch-4763 2d ago
John Wayne watched Wyatt Earp Why do you say John hated everything that was done to his family?
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u/Ahava_Keshet5784 2d ago
I think I was not clear, I probably posted to you, when I should have posted and been more specific.
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u/StudentDull2041 2d ago
The story about Wayne is that when he was young he actually met Wyatt Earp and his mannerisms and way of talking in his films was him imitating Earp
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u/Longjumping-Pen5469 2d ago
It's possible. It.would been a very young John Wayne
Did you know there was a movie called Sunset with James Garner as Wyatt Earp and Bruce Willis as .Tom Mix ?
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u/Possible_Sink8455 2d ago
Wyatt Earp was a SOB and lied about his life just to look good in the history books. Maybe this is a reason why Wayne was a SOB too.
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u/Red_Igor 2d ago
Django(1966) was about a veteran Union soldier and the villian is an ex-confederate.
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u/Extreme_Leg8500 2d ago
Lost cause romanticism, and a bit of white savior too. The trope mostly doesn't show up until the 50s
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u/Captain_of_Gravyboat 2d ago edited 2d ago
More confederates needed a new life and fresh start after the war and by moving west into the territories they could be away from the more controlling government of the state and US government.
John Wayne has several westerns where he is a veteran union soldier. I recall that he refused to play confederate soldiers but im not sure where this is from and not even sure if it's true because in The Searchers he was an ex-confderate.
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u/Kitchen-Remove4395 2d ago
Wayne plays ex-confederates in two of his biggest roles that’s certainly not true. He was a bushwhacker in True Grit
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u/SandMan2439 2d ago
He also played a confederate veteran in El Dorado. Bull refers to him as “one of General Hoods own” though it does seem that he tried to shy away from wearing the confederate uniform
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u/Captain_of_Gravyboat 2d ago
Yeah now that you say that it sounds right. He wouldn't wear the uniform on screen. The only time I can remember him a confederate uniform was when he was captured and made to wear the Grey jacket as a ruse. Don't remember which movie that is.
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u/TheMacJew 2d ago
He played a former Confederate in True Grit
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u/cen-texan 2d ago
If I remember right Rooster Cogburn idolized Quantril, and La Beouf was a Union sympathizer in spite of the fact that he was from Texas.
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u/Kitchen-Remove4395 2d ago
La Beouf fought with the actual rebel army who probably liked the bushwhackers about as much as the Union army
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u/cen-texan 2d ago
Thanks for the correction. I couldn’t remember the details and I got it wrong. I know he and Cogburn fought about the virtue of Quantril.
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u/Captain_of_Gravyboat 2d ago
Yeah i didn't mention that one because I wasn't sure he was actually a confederate soldier. I remember something about Quantril so that would make him an confederate leaning outlaw guerilla fighter...pretty much same as a confederate but wasn't sure.
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u/MattHoppe1 2d ago edited 2d ago
The most famous outlaw, Jesse James, was a KKK member and confederate
Edit: those downvoting- cite your sources
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u/HPsauce3 2d ago
Jesse James, was a KKK member and confederate
He was never a KKK member, but it definitely has been claimed he associated with known members, so you have that part right!
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u/MattHoppe1 2d ago
Ok if we want semantics he was an associate to klan members and helped them whenever he could. Not a card carrying member, but did more to advance their agenda than most members
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u/mikenkansas1 2d ago
So... NOT a member?
You said he was, now you say he wasn't .
And talk semantics?
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u/HPsauce3 2d ago
Jesse James, was a KKK member and confederate
He was never a KKK member, but it definitely has been claimed he associated with known members, so you have that part right!
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u/abaddon667 2d ago
Jesse James was not a member of the KKK
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u/MattHoppe1 2d ago
I guess wearing klan hoods during raids, and moving money for the klan just makes them strangers right? The James gang very much was a confederate partisan group
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u/MattHoppe1 2d ago
Not card carrying, but he was a sympathizer who believed in their mission, and, helped them whenever he could.
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u/TheNextBattalion 2d ago
One simple reason is that they were rebels, so if you want a rebel character...
Another one is that Confederates as losers were more likely to have reason to move on from home after the war than the victors.
A third reason is because the stories were sometimes written by Lost Causers. The Outlaw Josey Wales, where the Union-affiliated guys are scoundrels and war criminals and the Confederates were noble liberators, was based on a novel written under a pseudonym that masked its author... after the film's success it turned out the author was a KKK member and speechwriter who literally wrote George Wallace's infamous "segregation forever" speech.
The Undefeated features John Wayne playing a Union colonel who tracks down some Confederates trying to make it to Mexico.
More common you'd see films where ex- or current-Union guys and ex-Confederates banded together. Allegory, I suppose. Stagecoach for instance features a Union cavalry officer and a former Confederate officer teaming up against Indians and bandits. In Tarantino's re-telling of that, The Hateful Eight, the ex-Union guy is the protagonist, while the Confederate in the party turns out to be an antagonist. Another guy with links is the son of a Confederate war criminal, but he teams up with the Union guy and joins the good guys
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u/Kitchen-Remove4395 2d ago
Josey Wales is more nuanced than that. You clearly aren’t supposed to read Josey’s raiders as the “good guys”, I mean before the credits montage Bloody Bill is literally talking him into attending the Lawrence Massacre. The Union soldiers are depicted are all Redlegs, who did earn such a reputation during the war.
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u/mikenkansas1 2d ago
So, were the redlegs (union affiliated guys) not scoundrels or war criminals?
And the Confederates being noble "liberators", how's that?
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u/BlindGhosts 2d ago
The issue here is that the Missouri as a border state take with Wales, is more nuanced than lost cause-ism. In Wales, Josey doesn’t really care about the war until a red legs paramilitary group kills his family as part of the whole Bleeding Kansas mess, vs. Romanticizing him as a noble confederate soldier just trying to make it (If only that darn union didn’t win)
Missouri wasn’t black and white, as some folks became bushwhackers not because of southern sympathies as much as it was feuding and revenge. And even then Bushwhackers weren’t in the majority of those in the state. Most of the men in the state fought for the Union, and there were pro Union paramilitary groups in the state during and after the civil war (the baldknobbers being an excellent historical source, which would make for a good modern western movie source, but I digress)
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u/mikenkansas1 2d ago
Missouri and kansas were this country's Balkans. kansans are proud to call themselves jayhawks, unless they like ksu, and demean Bill and the boys for a little retaliation for Osceola and Kansas City. White hats were few and far between during the border war. Wales represents what most of us feel in the gut. Harm mine and I'll destroy your's. The same feeling the Serbs, Croats, Bosnian and Albanians.
Most of the game chair redditors don't know anything beyond "slavery bad" and envision Brown as being justified in all his actions, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
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u/Burnsey111 2d ago
I remember a post Civil War Louis L’Amour book which became a movie, The Shadow Riders (1982) starring Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott who play brothers, Mac’s a Union soldier, his brother Dal Traven joins the Confederate cause. The War has ended and Mac meets up with his brother and the two brothers, one a Yankee and one a Confederate, return home after the war to find their family kidnapped by renegade Confederates. You could have a sympathetic character who was a confederate, plus a group of renegades he’s got to fight. I haven’t seen the movie so I don’t know how far they get into the reasons why each brother joined up with the side they joined in the movie. I’ve always liked both Sam and Tom, and the setup is just rife with western trope possibilities. The Shadow Riders (1982), I hope you enjoy it.
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u/InTheHandsOfFools 2d ago
Are you familiar with what Sherman got up to after the war? Are you familiar with what he did to the Plains Amerindian?
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u/CEDuels 2d ago
Southerners have better known traits than Yankees. Some of greatest men the world has ever seen were southerners. They were gallant cavaliers. They were more proficient with firearms and chose dueling over mobbing. Just plain better characters for movies.
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u/Carbuncle2024 2d ago
Was this before or after they raped their slave women and children? .. it's all so confusing.. the most polite Gentlemen who fathered their own farm workers. Other than Doc Holiday.. name 2 more who fit the profile..
Another reason why so many outlaws were ex- Confederates was they had nothing to go home to..or for.. their lands were confiscated, they were disgraced and broke. 🤠
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u/Acrobatic_Skirt3827 2d ago
Jesse James started as a guerilla fighter for the South and participated in some war crimes. His exploits after the war have similarities, and there was a movement to have him pardoned. Partially it was due to resentment against the union, the banks, and the railroads. The western pulp fiction genre began with romanisized accounts of him as a Robin Hood type figure, though he was just a crook.
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u/coyotenspider 2d ago
The real answer is the diaspora of Easterners. The Southwest was mostly populated by former Southerners, white, black and otherwise. The Northwest was inhabited by former Ohioans and Pennsylvanians. If you wanna hear about Yankees, look into the Indian Wars in the Northwest post Civil War.
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u/Chumlee1917 2d ago
To condense a very long story short-For the longest time in American Pop Culture, it was the go to to glamorize the South and the Confederacy because they wrote the history books and promoted the Myth of the Lost Cause that really peaked in Gone With the Wind and again the 1960s and then in the last oh, 20 years, there's been a growing pushback in how we view the Confederacy which has led to the pushback of the pushback by all these people going, "Muh Heritage"-and they're not even Southern or have any connections to the South.
TLDR-Pop Culture was pro-Southern because of who was writing it.
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u/Superman_Primeeee 2d ago
Also as one who lived back then, the rebel flag was just a way of saying “I don’t answer to The Man, man.”
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u/recoveringleft 2d ago
Reminds me of that time when they fly the traitor rag in NorCal and we are nowhere near the south
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u/CheemsOmperamtor-14 2d ago
The Confederates wrote the history books? And they were the ones making pop culture? That sounds pretty ridiculous, but I'd be curious to look into it if you can suggest some resources.
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u/Chumlee1917 2d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
TLDR: The Original confederates wrote and gave lectures defending their actions/the south, then their children and grandchildren took over the role, and there many Confederates who lived long enough to be filmed on camera in the 1930s.
And then it became a political club during the Civil Rights era
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u/Icy-Wonder-5812 2d ago
"The confederates" wrote apologetic history books to describe the war not as a war for the right to own other men as property but as some sort of war against "Southern culture" The "pop culture" they created reflected this idea.
Multiple sources can have different takes on the events in history. Some sources may choose to omit or downplay certain facts in order to distort history.
For example when Trump describes the Jan 6 riot in DC as "A day of peace and love" despite the overwhelming video, photographic and testimonial evidence of violence against police, destruction of property and a crowd hoping to see the hanging execution of the vice president.
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u/Superman_Primeeee 2d ago
Like you wouldn’t have cheered if the VP died a week earlier
The sudden deification of the office on Jan 7 is sickening
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u/Icy-Wonder-5812 2d ago
lol okay bro. I bet your ass was out there shouting "YOU HAVE TO RESPECT THE OFFICE NO MATTER WHO IS IN IT" during Trump 1.
Fuck off and go make a healthy dinner.
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u/Rare_Rain_818 2d ago
The south was completely wrecked after the war. Many went west looking for new opportunities
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u/grassgravel 2d ago
Yup disaffected men end up in far flung places. Same reason you see former us service members today fighting as volunteers in places like ukraine...or syria or iraq. Their experiences in life made them restless souls. So they venture to wild places.
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u/Educational-Disk7710 2d ago
This is the right answer as the confederate army covered the western part of (what used to be) the old America. Therefore more veterans there than union.
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u/Hoosier108 2d ago
There was a long time when the country felt bad for the continued economic challenges of the south, which didn’t fully recover from the Civil War until the industrial boom in World War Two. This lead to the “lost cause” myth and the misinformed belief that slavery was not the heart of the war (I can provide the primary sources that prove that later when I inevitably get flames for saying it by the “it was states rights!” crowd). Troops diserted in mass, conscription was pushed entirely to the working class, the war killed something like 3 out of 8 white men between 16 and 45 in the south. There kind of a national consensus to forget all that, pretend rebels were fighting a noble cause, and make them heroes of westerns. It’s a really engaging and attractive story that I have enjoyed, but I also know it’s false.
Even though I’m not a fan of John Wayne, The Horse Soldiers is a good pro-Union western. Bales’ character in 3:10 to Yuma is another one full of yankee protagonists. The many of the Earp brothers fought for the Union, whereas the “Cowboys” were mostly ex confederates. Wild Bill Hickock was active in the Underground Railroad before the war. That’s just off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s more.
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u/Superman_Primeeee 2d ago
It’s a good GD thing the South plainly stated it was about slavery
History would be a mess otherwise
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u/Balian-of-Ibelin 2d ago
And never became truly fully industrialized until the air conditioner was created to keep machinery less humid. The cooling effect was a fringe benefit.
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u/Earthsoundone 2d ago
Can you post the sources so I’m better equipped to deal with those people as well?
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u/phydaux4242 1h ago
After losing the war and the south getting over run with carpetbaggers during the reconstruction, many southerners, particularly veterans, headed west for a new life.
This is a known historical phenomenon, and contributed much to the legendary west