Rifles for Watie

“‘I’m eighteen year old now an’ I want to see the world. I’m agoin!’”

Like Jeff, John Chadwick is looking for adventure. Although his time in the war will certainly provide adventure, this sentiment is a symptom of the way that war has been valorized and romanticized for young men like Chadwick and Jeff.

“‘You’re not old enough to go to war. You’ll git killed an’ we’ll find your bones bleachin’ on the prairie.’”

Bobby Gardner’s words of warning to his older brother embarrass David rather than unsettling him. What Bobby is expressing is a true statement about war, and given his youth, are probably offering insight into the kinds of things Mrs. Gardner have been saying to her son to convince him not to enlist. While Gardner survives, he barely makes it past training. His eventual reinstatement as a cavalryman shows how the army breaks him down and molds him into a new person who is able to withstand life as a soldier.

“‘Come on, kid, […] you shall have all the war you want.’”

The doctor who examines Jeff when he enlists is older and has seen many eager young men join the war only to suffer horrible injuries and death. Jeff worries that there won’t be enough time for him to take part in the war, but the doctor knows that there will be plenty of fighting and suffering for him if he survives.

“Pondering the question, Jeff felt better. He had been afraid the rebels would surrender and the war end before he could get into the fighting. And here was this fellow, suggesting he might be captured. Maybe he was going to see some action after all.”

Jeff’s naïve view of war is apparent, when he views the discussion of being captured as a positive. He is unconcerned with capture or death, but only that he will not have a chance to take part. This changes when he finally fights in his first battle.

“And Jeff learned that two neighbors of yesterday could today be separated by an impassable gulf when two bits’ worth of tinsel was pinned on the shoulders of one and not the other.”

Jeff realizes soon after enlisting that the power structure, which has immense ramifications for those tied into it, is manufactured based on arbitrary issues such as who enlisted earlier. He recognizes that the tassels and medals that demark honor and authority are only symbols that often have no basis in merit or ability.

“War was a lark, an adventure made for men.”

Before Jeff fights in his first battle, he has yet to fear for his life or to see his death as a real possibility. He wants to be a man, not a boy, and war is a rite of passage, a means to maturation and growth. When he does finally fight, he finds that his optimism and fearlessness has evaporated after a year of exposure to the casualties of war.

“‘Sure, my man’ a rebel! What’s wrong with that? So is the husbands of thousan’s of other wimmen all over Missouri. Sure, he broke his parole! He couldn’t bear standin’ round doin’ nothin’ when his state was bein’ invaded by a passel of furriners.’”

Mrs. McComas articulates the point of view of an individual who chooses to fight for the Confederacy. Ironically, her reasoning is similar to Jeff’s reason for joining up, since Jeff decided to enlist after bushwhackers from Missouri invaded his Kansas home and threatened his family. Her reference to the Union army as foreigners indicates the completeness with which the Confederacy considered their secession to have resulted in a completely different country.

“‘War’s hard. […] I wished they was something we could do about it. But they ain’t nothin’ we can do. Not a gol darned thing.’”

Bill Earle understands better than Jeff does that those in the infantry have no agency over whether they live or die. Once they have enlisted, they are committed to follow orders, even if those orders lead to their own deaths. Jeff feels guilty for taking part in confiscating the McComas family’s cow. He shows, however, that he is willing to risk punishment and possibly death to take control and do what he believes is the right thing.

“Gradually Jeff was beginning to learn the army’s careless regard for the private property of civilians, especially food.”

Jeff discovers that the army allows its men to steal from citizens yet severely punishes stealing on base. This is ironic, since Jeff joined the army because his family was being repeatedly raided and robbed by what he viewed as lawless factions from the Confederacy. He didn’t realize until he joined that the Union was also guilty of raiding citizens.

“[H]e still felt stunned. You marched with a guy for a whole year, ate with him, bunked with him, learned to like him, learned to obey his orders. And then suddenly he was shot in the back and you buried him and marched away, leaving him lying forever alone in the soil of a hostile land.”

When Sergeant Pete Millholland dies, Jeff must face the fact that in war, danger is uncontained. Someone who seems capable and infallible can die while doing something as simple as cooking dinner. Millholland’s death is personal to Jeff, and he recognizes the terrible anonymity of dying and having your remains buried where your loved ones will never find you.

“Angrily Jeff thought of how little control a soldier in the ranks had over his own destiny. It was a soldier’s business to starve to death, take the guff from the officers, march all night, and be shot to pieces in the daytime without ever opening his mouth in protest.”

In war, the soldier on the ground does the dirty work for those who are in control. While the officers in the novel do sometimes die, they are not as expendable as the boys and men who are sent out as cannon fodder. Not only are they forbidden from having agency in matters that affect whether they live or die, but they are not allowed to speak out.

“No matter how revered he was in life, a dead person was so completely out of things. Even his own relatives soon forgot him and quickly reshaped their lives without him.”

Before he finally sees battle, Jeff has imagined that he is immune from death. In the first battle for which Clardy reassigns him at the last minute, Jeff is judgmental of those who are afraid because he views death as unlikely. When Jeff does march into combat, he suddenly realizes that he will most likely die. He even sheds his coat because he doesn’t think he will need it. And he has no illusion that he will be immortalized for bravery. He has seen enough death to understand that when people die, the world continues, and that his death will have no meaning.

“‘Noah, anybody that ever joins anything is crazy. I’ll lay in the woods until the moss grows on my back a foot long before I’ll ever join anything again.’”

When Jeff volunteers for the war, he is doing what he believes a good citizen ought to do. After battle, he discovers that although he was lucky enough to survive, volunteering is tantamount to offering one’s life up to receive nothing in exchange. Volunteering is a fool’s game, and Jeff has been tricked by rhetoric that has taught him to valorize war.

“‘Naw, if we met in battle tomorrey, we’d still be tryin’ to cut each other’s heart out. This was jest a recess.’”

Gardner’s ability to compartmentalize the experiences of having friendly conversation with rebel sentries and then fighting them in battle shows an interesting cognitive dissonance. The army has trained them that attempting to kill the other side is their job and that it is separate from their humanity.

“A fellow who might get shot tomorrow shouldn’t have to wait a whole year to call a girl by her first name or tell her that he loved her.”

Jeff has been shy about Lucy and afraid of rejection. But his experience in the war teaches him that his life could end at any moment. Or even if he lives, circumstance might keep him from ever seeing Lucy again. He has no illusion of control over the course of his life. It suddenly seems like a necessary risk to say what needs to be said.

“Again, he marveled at privates and sergeants conversing as equals, addressing each other by their first names.”

Jeff is quickly disillusioned by the power structure in the Union camp and the way it is imposed on the social hierarchy. In the rebel camp, the social hierarchy breaks down. But although Jeff feels affection for the rebels who treat him well, he doesn’t express the same respect that he feels for General Blunt or Sergeant Millholland. While he burns with anger over being treated like a pawn, the structure in the Confederacy does not inspire him to believe in their cause.

“He felt mean about deceiving Heifer. Heifer had been good to him. When the rebels discovered him gone, it might go hard with Heifer. But this was war and Jeff had a job to do.”

Heifer’s job as the cook makes him seem more neutral than the other soldiers. Not only does Heifer treat him well, but he is unlikely to pose a direct threat to Jeff’s Union compatriots. This makes Heifer seem more innocent, and his devotion to Jeff causes Jeff to feel guilty about lying to him. But Jeff is growing up and does not need a father figure as he once did. He appreciates Heifer but ultimately does not rely on him. His choice is to either betray Heifer or to betray his own father, and the decision is clear in the end.

“When Jeff heard the battle tidings, he found his emotions queerly divided. He was secretly elated at the Union success and yet he didn’t want the Jackmans hurt by it.”

The more Jeff interacts with people serving the Confederacy, the more he hopes that they can escape harm. The Jackmans are nothing but kind to him, taking him in when he is sick and nurturing him as if he is a member of the family. Jeff is generally an honest and open person and living a double life does not mean that his feelings are feigned.

“‘Uncle Jeremiah rallied like that, too. It’s what we used to call the False Recovery. Every’body thought he was bucking up. Three hours later he commenced pickin’ at the covers. We buried him up on Cowskin Prairie.’”

Aunt Hettie’s commentary is rude and uncalled for, and mainly causes Jeff to worry for no reason. But the False Recovery she references mirrors the way the Confederacy has a final surge of victories before they are defeated at last. When Jeff escapes from the rebel camp, the Confederates are celebrating. Lucy is sure that they will win. But just as life is uncertain, war can turn on a dime.

“If the rebellion against his country had reached the point where the enemy now had a flag as well as a president, a congress and an army, no wonder the war had lasted three years. These people were fighting for something they believed in. They might be hard to subdue.”

Jeff has viewed the Confederates as rebels who stepped out of line but are still citizens of the United States. Seeing their flag makes it clear that the rebels have formed a new country. Seceding from the Union means that the men he is fighting with are not his countrymen. They are setting up something that is meant to be permanent and will fight for that permanence.

“He rode and ate and slept with the Watie outfit, sharing the hardships and dangers that bind fighting men inexorably together.”

The use of the word “inexorably” indicates that Jeff has fallen into a bond with men who are supposed to be the enemy that cannot be broken. He has also formed that bond with his fellow Union soldiers, which creates a serious conflict. The novel does not indicate what Jeff does between his return to Fort Gibson and the end of the war, except that he becomes a sergeant. Presumably, Jeff must participate in battle against the people he has come to care about.

“What an odd way to die, killed by our own countrymen as Bostwick had been at Honey Springs.”

There is a gap between the ideology of war and the materiality of war. If, as a spy, one kills or dies by the hand of one’s own army, does ideology matter more than the material harm? As Jeff imagines that he is about to meet the same fate as Bostwick, this question is important. If he dies anonymously on the wrong side, he will never be able to bring the information to the Union that will balance out any harm he did to their cause while undercover as a spy.

“Jeff saw their blue uniforms with the yellow braid down the side of the trousers. For a moment he feasted his eyes upon them. Pants and blouses all the same color. Sabers and carbines and metal canteens. Every man dressed and equipped alike and riding a thousand-pound horse. No patches, nor ponies, nor shotguns, nor clay jugs. His eyes misted over. They were the prettiest sight he had ever seen in his life.”

Although Jeff was questioning his loyalty to the Union, there is a stark difference between the two sides. He may hate the hierarchy, but the Union is established and organized. The flag is not handmade, and the weapons aren’t makeshift. No one is desperately patching their uniforms or wearing uniforms stolen from the other side. The blurriness between the two sides that tormented him from his time in the rebel camp is suddenly no longer blurry.