"Cannon in Front of Them" by Manly Wase Wellman (from Short Stories, October 25, 1944)
Confederate Captain C aldecott allowed himself to be captured by Union troops at Seven Pines in order to facilitate his battery to be captured -- the South could spare a captain more easily than if could guns Six days later he seized a musket and jumped from a train, only to be captured. He escaped once more from a train station in Philadelphia and was recaptured outside Medina. Finally, he was shipped to Fort Lowery in Minnesota, presumably too far from the South for him to make an escape. But escape he did. And now he finds himself surrounded on the prairie by searching soldiers and their Indian guide, onve agai to head beck to captivity..
Fort Lowery is staffed by two companies of third-rate infantry, "one hundred and fifty misfits, convalescents and shambling recruits," led in the main by "elderly uninspired officers [who] had been activated for this slipshod frontier duty." The fort's two cannons are antiquated and rusty and had not been cared for for years. Caldecott, who had been given the run of the camp (because where could he go?) is asked by Lieutenant Rovelle to show the infantrymen the use of the cannon (because when would the Union soldiers need them?) as a way to keep his soldiers busy. Caldecott was a fiece and loyal Southerner. If he had thought his showing the Union troops how to operate the cannon would have helped the Union Army, he would not have done so. Caldecott's one burning ambition was to get back into the was and help his Conferates drive the bluecoats as far north as possible. But Fort Lowery also held pretty Amy Rovelle, the daughter of Lieutenant Rovelle, who admired Caldecott as a person, rather than a Confederate officer. And Caldecott's feelings for Amy were almost as strong as his feelings for his loyalty to the Confederacy.
An overheard conversation and a misinterpretation of Amy's words led to a disagreement between the two. That, followed by a saber attack by a union paymaster, led Caldecott to be placed in the Firt's jail; for three days. That was when the Sioux attacked. Anyone not able to make it back to the walls of the fort were slaughtered. Caldecott is released from his cell to join the fray. Both the Sioux and the hapless soldiers of Fort Lowery did not plan on a brave Confederate artillery officer.
"Cannon in Front of Them" is your basic by-the-books story. the reader nows exactly what is going to happen and how it will all turn out. Two things make the tale stand out: the detail given to the frontier post and to the intricate operation of the cannon, and the character of Captain Caldecott (who was never given a first name). The Civil War is framed as a fight between Southern cotton and New England factories -- with no mention of slavery (or even state's rights). Caldecott is fighting for "his" country and will do nothing to betray it and whatever he can to asdvance its cause. Within this framework, Caldecott is Noble with a capital N.
Manly Wade Wellman, although born in Angola, considered himself a proud Southerner. (His middle name came from General Wade Hampton.) Much of his nonfiction and a godly part of his juvenile fiction dealt with the South and with the Civil War. His book REBEL YELL is an effective homage to the young men who fought and died for the Confederacy. He was a friendly and much-loved Southern gentleman, something that belies his blindness to slavery as the main cause of the Civil War and his opinio that the original Ku Klux Klan (back when it supposedly opposed the the corruption of Reconstruction, rather than being a white supremist, racist group) was a noble organization. Wellman was also know to leave a fice dollar bill in a tree hollow and to return to find a jug of white lightning.
Well is best-known today for his tales of fantasy and horro, although he wrote in many fields -- historical, western, detective, science fiction, sports, plays, and general fiction, as well as (as mentioned above) many works of nonfiction. He won an Edgar Award for his nonfiction collection about murders in North Carolina. One of his stories beat out one by William Faulkner to win an Ellery Queen prize. He also was active in writing for comic books, and scripted the very first story about Captain Marvel. His work is immensely readable. In 2013, the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundtion has been issuing the Manly Wade Wellman Award for outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy by a North Carolina author. Although much of his fantasy has been reissued in recent years, his work in other fields remains a treasure trove to be mined by present-day publishers.
The October 25, 1944 issue of Short Stories is available online at Internet Archive. (This issue also contains stories by Hapsberg Liebe, Bert David Ross, Roy C. Rainey (a house name), H. Bedford John ( the conclusion of a serial, and a tale under his "Gordon Keyne" pseudonym), George S. Rosenber (under his "George Armin Shaftel" pseudonym), Oliver Pruden, and Robert H. Leitfred. Some good reading here.)
A lifelong fan of Wellman and his work...I, too, have almost exclusively read his fantasy and horror fiction, and had not realized he might've retained fantasies about the nobility of the Confederate cause (perhaps, we can hope, he Learned Better as years went on, much as his contemporary Lovecraft was beginning to do by the latter's early death)...spending his early years in Angola at that time might not've been the best social situation to clarify human rights matters. Rather.a pity how things turned out with his son, as well.
ReplyDeleteWellman and Jones alone would tend to make for at least an interesting of SS.