Thomas F. Harney

[Wild Bill]

I am shocked, SHOCKED, SHOCKED to fine that John Fazio finds John Wilkes Booth and his cohorts, male and female, lied! Since when are those living and operating behind enemy lines compelled to be truthful to the occupying power? And moreover, Fazio says that Booth, et al., lacked character, common decency, and the moral courage to be called heroes.

What is heroism? Glendon Swarthout discussed Fazio's the in his book on Pershing's 1916 invasion of Mexico turned into a Gary Cooper movie in 1959, They Came to Cordura. The title is not of a true town in Mexico. Rather it means good sense or wisdom. It turns out that the several heroes Cooper recommends for the Congressional Medal of Honor all fit Fazio's condemnation of Booth and his cronies in normal life, seedy, cowardly, ne'er do well, slovenly, lacking of any morals. But when called on they rose above their short-comings to heroism--briefly--before sinking back to normal.

The same problem occurs in the Michael Caine movie Zulu, taken from the 1964 Donald Morris book, Washing of the Spears, where outnumbered British soldiers defeat the Zulu impi by arising to bravery only to return to the misfits they were in regular life. Heroism is a funny thing. or as we moderns like to say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Speaking of heroes, my own The Last Confederate Heroes will be issued in a new format sometime before the 2015 annual meeting. Fazio gave me a C- for my efforts last summer, so if you all would like to see what is wrong with my look at Booth and his people, you are in luck. I am sorry if my work doesn't live up to someone in the know like Fazio, but after my misbegotten life as an ignorant, seedy, slovenly, immoral wrangler of horses, mule skinner, and horseshoer, what do you expect? Artistry? I am from the Deep South and Southwest, after all (shudder!).

BTW it is not lying to mislead Yankees--ask any real Southerner.