EPILOGUE

“…the history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest….” Howard Zinn, A People’s History 1980

“There seems to be something willful, something almost luxurious in your desire to feel ashamed of the past.” -Duncan Campbell Scott, Conversations With a Dead Man by Mark Abley 2013

     A hundred years after the fact, on the so-called “civilized” east coast of 1879, the Sullivan/Clinton Expedition was considered a patriotic, ancient military campaign by the time General Tecumseh Sherman took the platform to give his memorial speech; in front of the adoring centennial crowd in upstate New York. After the Civil War, military men and armchair historians enjoyed a sort of heyday, bringing the musket, tomahawk and scalping knife back into parlors and auditoriums of genteel society. Men like Rev. Charles Rockwell, Sam Eager and James Quinlan, joined more scholarly, yet flawed, intellects like William L. Stone and Francis Parkman on the dais, fueling racist thought and practice. History was in fashion and everybody had an opinion. It wouldn’t be until a century later, in the 1970’s, when Francis Jennings, Howard Zinn, and others questioned their fore bearers’ accepted orthodoxy, that universally acknowledged narratives would be reevaluated and challenged. These scholars would debunk the revered Francis Parkman, Stone, et al; finally questioning the value of “American Exceptionalism,” in the historical milieu.  

    Even today, the term persists. Trump defends Putin’s lethal policies towards journalists and dissidents, by referring to our own “American Killers,” proudly pointing out America’s bad record with violence, instead of decrying it; as if to say, “Look at us!”— Russia’s not so bad. Editorialists jump at the obvious conclusions, once again insisting on evoking the term “American Exceptionalism,” in regard to our state crimes. Pundits (on the left and right) imply that we (America) always commit crimes for the greater global good. Americans somehow instinctively know when a Saudi sanctioned murder, like Jamal Khashoggi’s, should be overlooked or which particular brewing genocide (like the forcible separation of children from migrant parents) is permissible; always having loftier motives for our depredations. It’s in our DNA. 

    As for me, born a couple of months before Eisenhower was elected President, growing up during Kennedy’s Camelot, witnessing the Vietnam and 9/11 eras, the election of the first Black American president, as well as the first insanely ignorant one, the internet, the rise of social media, the realization that there is no such thing as post-racial or post-historical thought, has me engrossed in searching for my own particular and peculiar past. Over 350 years in the Catskills, this ancestral stew has produced today’s intra-historical Osterhout/Jennings hybrid— still operating in the folds—comfortably so. 

    On the front page, the election of a divisive billionaire, twitter troll, with a questionable handle on reality, has renewed popular interest in American history and politics. It’s a great spectator sport (and not just a little scary) to watch a pathological, alien organism, like Trump, grow on a steady diet of racism, negativity and vitriol. This slow-motion car crash is impossible to look away from. Why not take a stab at it? History is fun! How the fuck did we get here? And how are we going to get out in one piece? 

     The wild success of sites like ancestory.com are indicative of a amnesiac, pluralist society attempting to come to grips with propaganda, fake news and revisionist history; spewed at us on a regular basis and massive scale. As tough as it is to get at some basic truths regarding complex historical events, on the other hand, it is now easier than ever before. Digitalization of old texts, journals and primary material are no farther away than a google search. Wikipedia encapsulations, not to be taken at face value, are a great way to get a thumbnail sketch, before diving deeper into the footnotes. I wish I could say I’ve been spending my time in musty library stacks, bent over old hand written manuscripts with a magnifying glass, but research is a different game these days. I did my due diligence in the historical societies and libraries, but for the most part I remained on the couch. As I said— it’s all at your finger tips.

   Contemporary academics are constantly churning out books on racial struggle, the plight of the Native American and the resurgence of white supremacy, in a country that was founded by white supremacists. Terms like “post-shame” and “post-truth” are being bandied about with increasing regularity. As one of my more intellectually snobbish friends dismissively grumbled when I told him I was writing this book, “There’s a tradition of amateur historians.”  Coming from him, that tepid admission of an “existing tradition” was a great validation. What I was doing, maybe, hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Once again family history is back in the zeitgeist. Ladies Auxiliary here I come.

       Slavery and it’s rippling effects are still being felt today, ever so prickly, and any American descendent of the white European has only technology, colonialism, mechanized warfare and capitalism as their glorious inheritance. It’s because we are so goddamn talented at all these things, that we have shit our nest to the brim. Climate change? Look out your window. Reparations? Send me a bill. I know I owe plenty. Even after all this, I’m somehow still an optimist. Who would’ve thought Jack Hodges would die of old age, in the home of a future governor, or Austin Reed would have his book published? Anything can happen.

    When I started this project I claimed no desire to wallow in any sort of misplaced collective white guilt. While I’ve tried to keep those feelings at bay, it’s no use. Nobel as that goal may have been, it has become unattainable. Guilt permeates every shovel full of ground I turned over in an attempt to get to the bleached bones of these dear ones. Pride has drifted away and shame seems to be a persistent, yet meaningless, scattershot that holds no value, a “luxurious” indulgence. What good do any of these admissions or reflections do? It’s way too late for apologies. I’ve done the best I could in approaching this history truthfully, in a world that rewards clever fakery.

   As I said, this is not a “who done it?” Those who thought I would name names, or point steady fingers, are now sorely disappointed. After three years of research I still don’t know the answers to many pertinent questions. Who dealt the lethal blow that killed Richard Jennings? Was young Henry Seward somehow involved in the conspiracy to kill Uncle Dick? Did Hannah Teed commit suicide or was she killed? Did William H. Seward father Rosetta Alexander? Why didn’t the Indians adopt basic technologies like blacksmithing and carpentry? Why couldn’t the brilliant Austin Reed stay out of jail? Was Bill Freeman insane? What did I miss?  

    Henry Seward would survive one more (possibly the most famous since Julius Caesar) murder conspiracy. The same night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, Secretary of State William H. Seward was stabbed repeatedly in his bed, by co-conspirator Lewis Powell. Henry would survive. Seward’s son Frederick was brutally beaten with Powell’s Navy Colt and never completely recovered. The conspiracy would be quickly unraveled and adjudicated. Four conspirators (Powell included) were hanged. Booth was chased down and shot dead by a Union soldier. Henry Seward would retire from public life, travel the world with his adopted “daughter” Olive Risley, and die at home in Auburn on October 10, 1872. Despite his dark (some would say genocidal) opinions of indigenous peoples, Seward’s reputation as a statesman and abolitionist is still intact, and his statue remains seated in Central Park…..for now.    

      After repeated recidivism Austin Reed was finally released from prison for good in 1866; as the nation was emerging from civil war. His destitute mother had died “from exposure,” freezing to death in her unheated Rochester home. Pardoned on August 26, 1876 (not August 21st) by New York Governor Samuel Tilden, Reed’s signature wouldn’t be seen again until a couple of letters to the administrators showed up at The House of Refuge in 1895. He was hoping to clarify details of his time there; refresh his memory in order to either finish his prison narrative (if he still had it) or compose a new one. 

     This is all according to the editors of The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict, published and copyrighted in 2016, that I have used without permission. Not much else is known of Reed’s life. But it’s more than enough. Reed’s last known letter dated April 14, 1895, exposes a much different man than the one who wrote:

 “There I stood, nothing but a boy, with a pistol in my hand, ready to give Jones another charge, but some of the bystanders wrest the pistol from my hand, and I was taken off to the jail that stood under the market to pass a long a miserable night, without a blanket or a bed to lay my head on.”

    Reed had found Jesus and now the old man’s tone was no longer defiant, but sadly introspective. Wishing for some insight he penned a letter to the new superintendent at the old New York House of Refuge in reverent inquiry into his own hard past, offering up a little redemptive verse:  

“Hoping some day when I Shall gather up my cold feet in death. I may mount the air with Eagle wings. and enter the golden Gates of Heaven. Seated on the white milk Horse with the golden Halter in my Hand and riding through the courts of Heaven Singing the new song of moses and the lamb.”

                                                           END

Footnotes, bibliography and permission to publish copyrighted material to follow.

Copyright Mike Osterhout 2019 all rights reserved oldshul1@gmail.com

P.O. Box 671

Glen Wild, Ny 12738