Chapter 45

(Revisions to History)

My trip to Washington, D.C. had left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

I thought about all the hardy souls that had surrounded me during the dangerous American Civil War and the adventurous Americans that had pulled up stakes and headed west in the greatest migration the country had ever seen seeking the ideal place to put down roots and making this country the greatest the world had ever seen.

I think it was the solid wall of bureaucracy that disgusted me the most because it was layer after layer of inefficiency insulating the powers that be from the reality on the ground. In a way, my trip into the past had opened my eyes to the inconsistencies between actuality and the history textbooks that related a story not quite in tune with the facts of the matter.

Even before my trip into the past, I had come to the conclusion that a lot of what was driven into our skulls by textbooks that simplified a complicated past with the particular biases and false conclusions of the author or authors was presented in a way that eventually was accepted as “gospel truth” when there really were two sides to the story.

I remembered in particular my research leading me to the conclusion that the famous traitor General Benedict Arnold was actually a hero of the American Revolution driven over to the other side by backstabbing lobbyists haunting the halls of power. They denied him his just due in financial recompense and delayed promotion. His move to the other side was caused more by jealous competitors than any devious sense of duplicity. His name was erased from the history books for his many accomplishments in establishing the new colonies as a world power and he was relegated to a hall of shame for being a turncoat and returning to his original roots. I saw the same kind of ill treatment by textbooks suffered by well-meaning patriots like Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee.

The owning of slaves by the original signers of the Constitution was highlighted by many historians as a reason to disassociate the benevolence of the general public from any sort of show of respect or admiration for the founding fathers devoted sense of duty to the new nation.

I had seen that same sort of unfair judgement from incompetent people that would brand a military man a coward if he dropped his weapon and ran for his life at one single solitary time in the face of overwhelming odds and yet have a long history of fighting many battles, absorbing many wounds and having a fine record of military accomplishments.

My travels during the Civil War had led me to the conclusion that the average male slave harbored thoughts of being free and able to make their own decisions, but had little liking of the responsibility of owning property, forming a family or finding a way to put food on the table and taking care of all those little things that were taken care of by his former master. I confirmed the fact that the black men fighting on both sides of the conflict were capable military men and would often do heroic acts to help their comrades survive to another day.

Later, during the wars in Indian Territory, I found the Native Americans to be fighters of distinction with the ability to endure hardships most white people would avoid at all costs. I also determined that the blacks freed from slavery and the Indians removed from their hunting grounds formed an association of American interests that was ignored by past media and current day historical accounts to a point of ridiculous omission.

My earlier employment on Wall Street and familiarity with the capitalist system led me to seek out the financiers of the Manifest Destiny phase of American expansion and I found that they were motivated by a search for capital and expanded income regardless of political belief or personal agenda. The railroad tycoons were informed investors and they competed on a fairly level playing field with the exception of some questionable land grants associated with Civil War logistical demands.

I was dismayed that Jefferson Davis was given short shrift by the writers of history books despite the fact that he was politically connected long before the Civil War and had been the foremost proponent of a transcontinental railroad system in his capacity as the Secretary of War. His acceptance of the leadership of the Confederate States of America was due to his brilliance in planning and setting up systems of all phases of government.

Little had been mentioned in the history textbooks about the circumstance that found a number of the most highly qualified West Point graduates joining the ranks of the rebels and leaving the North with a military line-up of average generals more concerned with promotion than with risking all on a battlefield where a bullet knows no boundaries.

I had made an effort to see why the Pacific Northwest railroad system had fallen victim to the fast moving Central Pacific line out of San Francisco and Sacramento. Obviously, it was the preferred route by the governmental forces in Washington, D.C. and I saw that it was the financial backing and relative lack of corruption found in the northern route that made it much more popular. The public relations of the central route were optimal at the time and public opinion was important at a time of vast internal disruption from a bloody Civil War.

I had discovered early on that the much-needed support from the Mormon Church was a key element of the central route superiority. The widely spread-out Mormon settlements from Oregon to California and all the way back to Salt Lake City gave tangible support in terms of donations, work teams and other logistical support to the Central Pacific line moving east from the Sierras.

I searched in vain for historical accounts of the Mormon contribution and I had to finally admit that their participation in the winning of the west was distorted and minimized to conform to the following century’s way of thinking. It looked like their efforts to create a larger geographic role in their western exodus were blocked and nullified on all sides probably due to a distrust of a religion that fostered polygynous marriages and encouraged females to marry young to increase the chances of multiple births in the same family. The early decades of Mormon expansion generally had suffered a shortage of males in their demographic and the practice made sense from a family unit point of view. Still, the strangeness of it made so-called Christians uncomfortable about Mormon inclusion into the clan of “decent folks” for quite a long period of time.