For three weeks or so, a lot longer than I intended, I have been working on accusations that some of my cousins committed atrocities during the Civil War. One set of accusations was made late in 1865 by J. H. Matthews, a sub-commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. His lies were so lurid that Senator George Boutwell, a Radical Senator from Massachusetts, summoned him from Mississippi to Washington, D. C., to testify. Matthews told Boutwell a hate-arousing mess of fiction which was just what the zealot Senator wanted to hear. The interview is in the Congressional Record. The foulest of Matthews's lies was that my cousin John H. McGehee had killed a black man and beheaded him and skinned him. Anyhow, I did my usual painstaking research and found (not expecting this!) that Matthews had in fact led a raid in which a different, more distant cousin of mine was murdered by one of Matthews's uncontrolled gang. No historian has mentioned that. Now I see that Matthew's lies, widely quoted early in 1866, are repeated in CIVIL WAR STORIES (2015), a Washington POST publication, in a piece by Robert B. Mitchell. Well, I have not liked lies in major newspapers, not since Richard Brodhead lied about me in the NY TIMES in 2002 (saying only I in my "black hole" had heard of Melville's 1860 POEMS). My poor cousin John H. McGehee! How many hundreds of years will Matthews' lies be quoted?
Friday, October 12, 2018
The Power of Lies--A False Accusation at the End of 1865 repeated in CIVIL WAR STORIES (2015)
For three weeks or so, a lot longer than I intended, I have been working on accusations that some of my cousins committed atrocities during the Civil War. One set of accusations was made late in 1865 by J. H. Matthews, a sub-commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. His lies were so lurid that Senator George Boutwell, a Radical Senator from Massachusetts, summoned him from Mississippi to Washington, D. C., to testify. Matthews told Boutwell a hate-arousing mess of fiction which was just what the zealot Senator wanted to hear. The interview is in the Congressional Record. The foulest of Matthews's lies was that my cousin John H. McGehee had killed a black man and beheaded him and skinned him. Anyhow, I did my usual painstaking research and found (not expecting this!) that Matthews had in fact led a raid in which a different, more distant cousin of mine was murdered by one of Matthews's uncontrolled gang. No historian has mentioned that. Now I see that Matthew's lies, widely quoted early in 1866, are repeated in CIVIL WAR STORIES (2015), a Washington POST publication, in a piece by Robert B. Mitchell. Well, I have not liked lies in major newspapers, not since Richard Brodhead lied about me in the NY TIMES in 2002 (saying only I in my "black hole" had heard of Melville's 1860 POEMS). My poor cousin John H. McGehee! How many hundreds of years will Matthews' lies be quoted?
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