A couple of years ago, I did the Beartooth Pass on my motorcycle. Stopped at the vista center and saw a sign that indicated the General Philip Sheridan and 120 men had crossed over this pass in August 1872.
My thoughts at the time were, is there anything this General's couldn't do.
Yes, I agree "Phil Sheridan Can Order What he Wants"
Came back next year on my way to Idaho and did the Chief Joseph Highway. Roads that you need to do if in the area.
I guess most Americans today don't know who he was. That movie comes from a time when the history must have been better known, because it doesn't really explain much about him or his career. In 1952 maybe ordinary Americans knew who he was and what he did.
He was one of the most consequential Americans ever to live: Sherman's right-hand man, who repeated Sherman's March to the Sea down the Shenandoah Valley, and then took the techniques they perfected in the war out West to break the Native American Nations as they had broken the South. The United States would not have been so united in the 20th century if it hadn't been for Sherman and Sheridan.
It makes the John Wayne character interesting. He was a United States cavalryman who remained loyal in the Civil War, and destroyed his own home along with all his neighbors' as a consequence. Then he went out West, and was doing to the Apache what he had done to his own. There's a lot of moral exploration there that Rio Grande doesn't much consider; but it also means that Sheridan is free to make a gesture like this in the direction of healing old wounds. No one can suspect him of disloyalty, and so he can do something that in another man might be thought treasonous. In so doing, he shows honor to a lady, and helps heal what was done in the war.
3 comments:
A couple of years ago, I did the Beartooth Pass on my motorcycle. Stopped at the vista center and saw a sign that indicated the General Philip Sheridan and 120 men had crossed over this pass in August 1872.
My thoughts at the time were, is there anything this General's couldn't do.
Yes, I agree "Phil Sheridan Can Order What he Wants"
Came back next year on my way to Idaho and did the Chief Joseph Highway. Roads that you need to do if in the area.
I guess most Americans today don't know who he was. That movie comes from a time when the history must have been better known, because it doesn't really explain much about him or his career. In 1952 maybe ordinary Americans knew who he was and what he did.
He was one of the most consequential Americans ever to live: Sherman's right-hand man, who repeated Sherman's March to the Sea down the Shenandoah Valley, and then took the techniques they perfected in the war out West to break the Native American Nations as they had broken the South. The United States would not have been so united in the 20th century if it hadn't been for Sherman and Sheridan.
It makes the John Wayne character interesting. He was a United States cavalryman who remained loyal in the Civil War, and destroyed his own home along with all his neighbors' as a consequence. Then he went out West, and was doing to the Apache what he had done to his own. There's a lot of moral exploration there that Rio Grande doesn't much consider; but it also means that Sheridan is free to make a gesture like this in the direction of healing old wounds. No one can suspect him of disloyalty, and so he can do something that in another man might be thought treasonous. In so doing, he shows honor to a lady, and helps heal what was done in the war.
I'll have to make that ride you mention one day.
"Don't cheer me, boys! FIGHT! We will lick them out of their boots!"
Sheridan at the Battle of Cedar Creek, 1864
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