As The 150th
Anniversary Of The Union Victory In The American Civil War Closes-Marching Through Georgia-For Billy’s
Bummers
From The Pen
Of Frank Jackman
Sam Lowell
knew in his blood-stained heart, his Vietnam War blood-stained heart that as
much as he had come to hate and oppose that war as a participant, as an
unwilling and unwitting tool of forces in the government who were clueless about
‘Nam, about people who had done them, and him no harm, with which he had no
quarrel he could never go all the way in his opposition to wars. Although after
the fact , after his service, he had spent a fair amount of time in the streets
with fellow veterans trying to get the word out that a monster was on the loose,
the American government, a government that had made him, made his war buddies
nothing but savages, trying to work the anti-war veteran point of view which had
some “cred” to all who would listen, half-listen anyway, he would never really
be able to fully make himself a pacifist. Never make himself a solid almost biblical
in turning the other man of peace for all seasons. Go the distance on some
Gandhi trip as he called it talking to his old friend Bart Webber one night.
Not when in his head he knew there were causes, just causes that could not be
resolved short of blood and iron if humankind was to roll the rock of
progressive up the hill a little. He favored a look like some long-bearded Jehovah
come seeking vengeance against the night-takers until the world was got and rid
of night-takers.
That is why
Sam, despite his misgivings about the Vietnam War never really opposed it
personally via some application for conscientious objector status. Never saw himself
and the friendly Quaker, Mennonite, Amish man of good cheer and no grudges.
Never was around such people when it counted although he had heard about their
gentility and had seen it in action down in Pennsylvania Amish country. More than
that where in his growing up ethos was their room for such thoughts having grown
up in working class Carver in Massachusetts where guys volunteered in droves if
for no other reason than to get out of the hick town, get away from being
boggers, cranberry bog workers when Carver was something like the cranberry
capital of the world or accepted quietly and without rancor induction if
drafted. He would have received no support, from family, friends, neighbors who
looked askance at him when in 1966 he had expressed some reservations about the
carpet-bombing of Vietnam back to the Stone Age which was the effective policy
of the military doctrine of the day. Sam frankly said to Bart that talking
night that he would not have known even how to go about doing such a thing as
filing an application. And if he had known under the conditions existing in
1966 for CO status, although not a few years later, he would not have been granted
that status since he had been raised a Catholic, a church organization which
held to a just war theology rather than an absolute opposition to war like the
Quakers and Mennonites, people who held such historic pacifist positions.
Although
after Vietnam Sam went through a crisis on the question of war and peace in
which he came to err on the “side of the angels” and he abandoned the Catholic
Church and its version of the just war theory which seemed to more often, much
more often, than not justify all of Caesar’s wars, he still held to a secular version
of that just war theory. When thinking about the matter then in the late 1960s
and early 1970s the Spanish Civil War had come to mind since he had been
something of a buff about that event since freshman year in high school when he
had written a term paper for a history class on the subject. In that desperate conflict
whose struggles enflamed his dreams he saw himself obviously fighting for the
Republican side against the Nazi-backed Franco forces. He had dreamed as well that
he would have if he had been around then signed up as a volunteer for the
Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades, the famous Abraham
Lincolns who did heroic battle around the Jarama and other tough spots. He knew
that those organizations were controlled by the Communists of that age but while
in high school he was as fervent an anti-communist as anybody in town he would
give them a pass on that situation, would have joined the united front. He was
still bitter, always would be when the U.S. under the liberal oligarch Roosevelt
called for hands-off, for neutrality and the British and French sat on their
hands while Spain died a thousand deaths. No, Sam would not have sat on his
hands on that one.
Later,
several years later in the late 1970s when things had settled down and an ebb
tide had taken over in the land on the question of whether a “new breeze” was
going to come again, a time when he was beginning to make a small name for
himself in the legal profession around the South Shore of Boston he developed a
strong interest in the American Civil War, a strong interest in the importance
of the Union victory and the abolition of slavery. This interest had been
kick-started one day as a result of his going into Boston on a legal matter at
the Suffolk County Courthouse on Beacon Hill one day and passing what was then
a much neglected frieze of the heroic Colonel Robert Gould Shaw-led Massachusetts
54th Black Volunteers who did themselves proud down in front of Fort
Wagner and later would march into the citadel of the Confederacy Charleston,
South Carolina singing the John Brown song.
Sam had in
high school based on admittedly sketchy information rather grudgingly admired
Captain John Brown late of Harper’s Ferry and his exploits in trying to break the
back of slavery by a military expedition to free the slave and create an
insurrection. Once he delved into the Civil War history, read more in depth about
Brown and what history would have looked like if he had a modicum of success he
saw Brown as the Calvinist “avenging angel” high Jehovah scourge of the
night-takers. That thought that he had long held in his mind concerning the agents
of just wars. While Sam held such thoughts about Brown and men of action like
Brown who were not afraid to rankle feathers he admitted to himself that he would
not have very likely joined such an expedition.
As Sam studied
the military situations, the military strategy and tactics he did find himself drawn
to the General William Tecumseh Sherman-led march through Georgia to the sea to
break the will, break the communications, break the supply routes, to deny the
Confederacy the capacity to produce much of anything. So in his imagination he
could see himself as one of “Billy’s bummers” marching through Georgia, making
Jeff Davis squeal, make Robert E. Lee reach for the white flag. Make old Captain
Brown a man ahead of his times. Yeah, Sam would not have sat on his hands on
that freedom fight either.
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