AMERICAN NARCISSIST

I can see Andrew Phillip Kehoe (above) clearly, as if he was standing next to me at this moment. And yet his image remains hazy. According to his drivers' license, he was five feet, nine inches tall, weighed 150 pounds and had gray hair.  He was also described as “ ...a slight, hollow-chested man”, of 46, with thin lips. And yet he remains an enigma. A neighbor, when shown several photographs of him, said, “ "I knew him well and he never looked like that.” And he was not just a physical enigma. 

Howard Kittle, the Clinton County agent and Farm Bureau manager, received a letter from Andrew, and admitted that if anyone else had written it “I would have thought sure he was insane.'” But that was before - when he was a community leader, a trusted guardian of the township's wealth and its future. Afterward the local newspaper - the Clinton County Republican-News - was forced to wonder, “Is the building of a modern institution which equips children to meet the problems of the world a burden - or is it a privilege?” You see, the man at issue was a anti-tax warrior and an American narcissist who murdered 34 children and 8 adults.

Bath in 1927 was a little farm town of about 300 people 10 miles northeast of Lansing, Michigan. “(It) had a ( grain) elevator, a little drugstore, and you knew everybody within 20 miles” said a life long resident.  Which means pretty much everyone knew Phillip Kehoe.

In 1922 rural Clinton County closed its scattered one room school houses. They used $8,000 of their own hard earned money to buy five acres of ground just south of Bath. They borrowed $35,000 to build a two story Consolidated School building. 

Here, classes would be divided by age,  to protect the younger, smaller children from older bullies. With fewer teachers, higher standards could be required of the instructors -  even a college teaching degree. And amenities such as a library, lunch programs, athletics, music and art were added. Buses now picked children up at their front doors and returned them safely home each night. It was the foundation for a secure world that future generations would grown up in. And it was not cheap for the older generations.

The future always costs. You either invest in it now, or it proves much more expensive.  In 1922 property taxes in Clinton county were $12.26 per thousand dollars of valuation ($160 today, or over $16%). In 1923 those taxes had gone up by half to $18.80 ($235 today). This was not the decision of a few liberals. This was debated for years within the community. And over time the decision was made to invest in the future of Clinton County,  in the counties' children, and to spend the money on their  future. 

Three years later, eager to eliminate the debt quickly, the elected leaders of Clinton County paid off $7,200 of their obligation, and taxes topped out at one dollar higher (to $240 per thousand of valuation in today's dollars). It was expected taxes would now start to drop, but that did not take into account the rising inflation of the 1920's, and the selfishness of one egomaniac who chose - chose -  not to have a future, and to steal the counties'.

Let me tell you about Andrew Phillip Kehoe, the way most Americans learned of him by sharing a headline from the New York Times, dated Wednesday, 18 May, 1927; “Maniac blows up school, kills 42, mostly children; Had protested high taxes...Children Pinned in Debris. Others hurled against walls or out windows – Searchers still hunt for missing. Agonizing scenes in yard. Distraught parents find little ones dead beneath blankets...”. 

The early numbers were wrong, of course. The maniac killed eight adults and 34 children at the school, that day. The last little victim, nine year old Richard Fitz (above), would die of an infection caused by his injuries, a week short of a year after the explosion that killed him. 

Just before he murdered 34 children, the maniac had bludgeoned his wife one last time - this time to death. 

He had tired his two horses' legs together and left them in the barn stacked with all his farming equipment. Then he set the barn on fire. Before that he had poisoned and killed every fruit tree on his farm. Interestingly, it was figured by the cleanup crews, that he could have paid off his mortgage and his property taxes by selling most of his well maintained farm equipment, which, according to his neighbors, he rarely used.  

Neighbor M.J. “Monty” Ellsworth wrote later, “He was at the height of his glory when fixing machinery or tinkering...He spent so much time tinkering that he didn't prosper.”  The maniac also stood out, as a farmer, for his meticulous appearance. He changed his shirt quickly should a spot of dirt appear on it and was often seen sitting on his front porch (above), in a smoking jacket,  puffing on a cigar.  But his primary interest, his obsession, was in reducing his taxes.

The maniac had been elected to the school board in 1924, two years after the new school had opened and the first election after the new higher tax rate had been announced. His platform was to cut the cost of the new school. In 1925, after the death of Maude Detluff, the school board's treasurer, he had been appointed to fill that position. His book keeping was, like his appearance, meticulous. After his suicide, his books showed  “a long and detailed explanation” of a 22 cent discrepancy.  But in the spring of 1926, when he ran for election to officially take on that job, the voters had rejected him. Once again, the majority approved investment in the future  He stopped paying his mortgage and the insurance on his farm. Eventually, the previous owners - his wife's relatives - began foreclosure proceedings.

Early Tuesday morning, 18 May 1927, after killing his long suffering wife, and every other living thing on his property, Phillip Kehoe set his house on fire (above) and drove off to carry out the rest of his plan for revenge,

Decades earlier, Phillip's promising career as an electrical engineer in St. Louis had been cut short by a fall and a serious head injury.  So farming was the his second career choice. He married and moved to Clinton county, Michigan,  right after the First World War. He might have over paid for his farm, because land prices were inflated at time. And his wife was afflicted with tuberculosis, a wasting disease before antibiotics. But he still assaulted her, every time he felt the need to feel superior.

The Klu Klux Klan paid for and staged a funeral for Phillip. They expected to garner support by blaming his Catholicism for encouraging him to destroy the school because it was not a Catholic school. But even if all of that were true, none of it would justify the cold blooded murder of 34 innocent children, and nine adults, and the farm animals. He was probably a racist by modern standards, but all Phillip Kehoe could focus on was HIS taxes.

Before the school was built, he had opposed it. Once it was decided to build it, he insisted it should be a 10 grade institution, instead of 12 grades. He opposed the inclusion of a library, or athletic programs or a music department.  And he lost every argument. 

Once the building was constructed, the tax increase gave him enough supporters to win election to the school board, where his obstinacy continued. He even opposed giving the superintendent a paid vacation each year, and then argued it should only be one week, not two. And as he lost each of these arguments, his obsession grew, day by day. 

Words used to describe him during this time were “surly”, “obstinate”, “impatient” and “arrogant”.  Eventually he began to invest his money not in his farm, or his wife,  but in World War surplus explosives. He slipped the explosives into the basement of the new school, and rigged  them with a timer and set them to explode early on a Wednesday morning,  just after classes had begun. And just before that bomb went off, Kehoe set off the last bomb, packed into his car, killing himself , the school principle and others.  

The day after the bombing,  while still in shock and grief,  the Clinton Country Republican ran an editorial, which explains, far better than I ever could, the connection between the maniac's crime and his anti-tax fever. “That he was insane there is little doubt", wrote the editors of the paper. " But he was not always insane. To start with he was merely antagonistic. Then he became radical.. He was the victim of the progress of his own lack of balance...

"What a terrible price to pay for narrow-mindedness", continued the editorial. "What an awful calamity for one peaceful little community to bear for one man's lack of ordinary American ideals...Never before have we known of aversion of the cost of education taking such terrible form. There are, however, many people who unthinkingly hamper and discourage the progress of good schools and other institutions for the welfare and happiness of the public. What are we going to do about it?”

It is almost a century later, and the question begs to be asked again, this time of a nation which elected an admitted rapist as President, supported by the power hungry unChristian unRight, - those who object to investing in the future because they choose not to believe we have one. And what are the majority of us going to do about it?  The answer after the 6 January 2021 U.S. Capital assault and the poison of the Trump Presidency is...not yet answered,

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Five

 

William Tecumseh Sherman was a member of a well off family of 11 children.  Then, in June of 1829, when “Cump” was just nine years old, his universe imploded.  While “riding the circuit” 90 miles from home, his larger-than-life father, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Charles Robert Sherman, had suddenly come down with a fever and died within a week.  And because Charles had been an honest man, he left no fortune behind. Without warning, William's family and security simply evaporated, like water left absently boiling on a hot stove.

William's older male siblings were apprenticed out, and the girls and younger boys were scattered to adoptive families across Ohio. “Cump” was taken in by a Lancaster neighbor, a lawyer and soon to be U.S. Senator, Thomas Ewing. The tragedy left such deep abandonment issues that “Cump” never called his loving adoptive parents anything but Mister and Misses Ewing. And he never escaped the panic whenever it seemed his security might be swept away again. In May of 1863 Major General William Tecumseh Sherman had a re-occurrence of that panic when he first arrived on the Mississippi side of the Mississippi River.

On Saturday 9 May, “Cump” reached the Pipes-Bagnell house near Harkinson Ferry, expecting to be reunited with his friend Sam, only to discover that the day before General Ulysses Grant had moved on. Cump panicked, a little. He immediately wrote to Grant at Rocky Springs, “ Stop all troops till your army is partially supplied with wagons, and then act as quickly as possible, for this road will be jammed as sure as life if you attempt to supply 50,000 men by one single road."

Grant promptly reassured his dear friend. “I do not calculate the possibility of supplying the army with full rations from Grand Gulf,” he wrote. “What I do expect, however, is to get up what rations of hard bread, coffee, and salt we can, and make the country furnish the balance.” With that rational explanation, and a few words of reassurance from Grant, Sherman was able to again pass along the confidence to his “tail-end Charlie”, General Francis Preston Blair, that, “Don't let the wagons get encumbered with trash. We will be in want of salt, bread, sugar, and coffee. We may safely trust to the country for meat."

With the arrival of the bulk of Sherman's XV corps, Grant now had in Central Mississippi about 45,000 men. And he had decided, while scouring his maps and cavalry reports over Mrs. Pipes-Bagnell's dinning room table, to strike first to the north, to cut the Vicksburg and Jackson Southern Railroad. 

By occupying that line he would be cutting Vicksburg off from reinforcement from the eastern Confederacy, just as he had cut Vicksburg off from the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy by occupying the Texas and Monroe railroad line to Desoto, Louisiana. And in typical Grant fashion, he chose to accomplish this in as devious a fashion as he could.

It was impossible to disguise the arrival of Sherman's Corps around Harkinson Ferry. So Grant used the noise and dust to his advantage. Sherman was instructed to ostentatiously prepare to assault the rebel lines along the Big Black River. 

The bridge captured by McClerand's men would never support a major advance, so scouts and staff officers were seen inspecting possible crossing points above and below it. With Vicksburg just 20 miles to the north, Pemberton would have had no choice but to assume Grant was preparing a “coupe de main” or “direct assault” on the city, and hold his divisions back to defend against it.

Meanwhile, McClernand's XIII Corps had moved to camps further up the road which hugged the

Big Black River.  Rebel observation posts could not help but see the dust from their marches and the smoke from their camp fires extending inland toward the Natchez Trace. This seemed to hint that Grant was moving further north toward the Big Black River Bridge, west of Edward's Depot. That larger structure, and the railroad bridge nearby, could support a major advance on Vicksburg. And Pemberton had been suspecting since the Port Gibson breakout, that this was Grant's real goal. 

But also on that Saturday, 9 May, the divisions of McPherson's XVII corps were marching northeast on the Natchez Trace, passing through the XIII corps camps. At the hamlet of Reganton they took the road east, camping 3 miles beyond Utica. Grant was now traveling with the XVII Corps and set his new headquarters outside of Cayuga.

The XVII corps was now Grant's right flank, threatening Clinton and tying down the slowly assembling Confederate force in the state capital of Jackson. Sherman was positioned in the middle, where he could march directly on Bolton, screened by McClernand, ands strike toward Edward's Depot to the north.  Grant's intention was to cut the Southern Railroad not once but in three, tripling his odds of severing the vital railroad.

Over the first two weeks in May of 1863, Grant showed he had indeed learned from Napoleon, who wrote, "When you determine to risk a battle, reserve to yourself every possible chance of success...”. Grant had done this by following the Emperor's twin guidelines. “Operations must be designed to surprise and confuse the enemy,” while rendering them helpless “through the severance of his lines of supply, communications, and retreat.”

Over the first 2 weeks in October of 1805 the core of Napoleon's Le Grand Armee marched 275 miles from the banks of the Rhine to the banks of the Danube in Bavaria. He thus placed his army between the 60,000 Austrians under General Mack von Leiberich, around Ulm, and the 80,000 Russians under Tzar Alexander I, just nearing the Austrian capital of Vienna. By the end of October, Napoleon had forced General Mack to surrender. And on 3 December in the startling victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon killed or captured half the Russian army. Those twin achievements inspired Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. What Grant was about to achieve at Vicksburg deserved an equally impressive artistic footnote, and more because it was not achieved merely to make one man an Emperor.

Back in February, shortly after arriving to dig the Lake Providence canal, Sergeant Cyrus F. Boyd, had gotten his first unvarnished look at the reality of human slavery.  Among the “contraband” who entered the 15^th Iowa lines that first day, Boyd spotted a young girl with dark skin, deep blue eyes and straight hair which hung down to her shoulders. 

The mother explained the girl had been fathered by her “master”, and said she had given birth to two other daughters by the same rapist. Upon hearing this, according to Boyd, an unnamed corn husker had exploded in anger at the injustice. “By God”, he shouted, “ I’ll fight till hell freezes over and then I’ll cut the ice and fight on it.” Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had re-framed the war, from one for the survival of the United States, into one for the future of humanity.

Two days later, on 11 May, Grant's primary worry was a sudden shortage of water. The appearance of dry weather and the presence of 45,000 men and 100,000 horses, had left streams and and wells bone dry. Still Grant pushed his men forward. On this Monday, 54 year old General Frederick Steele's (above)  1st division of Sherman's XV Corps, marched to Five mile Creek, looking for a drink of water. 

Doing same,  29 year old James Madison Tuttle's (above)  3rd division of the same corps camped closer to Auburn. General McPherson's XVII Corps advance only 1 ½ miles, slowed by the search for water. That night Grant urged McPherson to press his men to take Raymond, saying, “We must fight before our rations fail”.

At 5:30am, Tuesday, 12 May, 1863, all three Yankee corps continued their advance from Five Mile Creek. General McClernand's (above) XIII corps were guarding the army's flank along the Big Black River.  

Sherman's (above)XV Corps was moving faster, determined to cut the Southern railroad at Bolton by nightfall. 

But 32 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's (above) XVII was so short of water their main thrust this day was toward Raymond, to capture and use the wells south that town.

As they set out, Grant sent a message via Grand Gulf, to General Halleck, Beginning now, the Army of the Tennessee would be out of communication until they had captured Vicksburg. Or been destroyed. What Grant was telling Lincoln, was that he was so confident of victory that he was marching  an entire Federal Army right off the map.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Four

John Gregg (above) did not get along well with his father-in-law.  Gregg was a successful lawyer, with a practice in the east Texas flat lands of Fairfield County and a personal wealth of over a quarter of a million in today's dollars. Still it would have been odd if John had not felt a little self conscious about comparing what he had to offer his 1858  bride, Mary Francis Garth, to what she giving up – her father's large plantation in north central Alabama, with almost 200 slaves toiling daily to provide for her care and comfort.

The Garth's were cousins to Patrick Henry, and , Jessie Winston Garth (above)  himself had spent time with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, and was a long time friend of the 10^th President of the United States, General John Tyler.  Jessie  himself had been a general in the Virginia Militia during the War of 1812.   After moving south to share in the lands bullied from native peoples, Jessie  Garth had helped found the town of Decatur, helped write the Alabama state constitution, was the first President of the state senate and had served in the state house as well. 

He was the first President of First National Bank  (above) in Decatur, and owned enough stock in the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, that the first steam engine to pull a train into Decatur was named after him. John would never measure up to Jessie Garth's social accomplishment. But there was an even more fundamental matter dividing John Gregg from his father-in-law.

Seventy year old slave owner Jessie Winston Garth was emphatic about the union. He would willing give up his slaves, he insisted, in order to save the union of the United States of America . But having never fought beside northerners, 34 year old John Gregg (above) felt no need to compromise or learn from the free labor of the north.   Lincoln observed before he took the oath of office that secessionist demanded Republicans not only promise to not touch slavery, they must somehow convince men like John Gregg they would not touch slavery.  And in 1861, that was no longer possible. 

These were violent, ambitious men,  frontiersmen who were unwilling to admit their "peculiar institution" was both economically and morally bankrupt.  A civil war could only hasten the death of slavery, and yet men like John Gregg were driven to bring on the cataclysm.  

As was observed at the time, secession was a logical discordance which had gripped one third of the nation. Such periodic bouts of insanity seem to be the the price humans have to pay for the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation.

In the name of defending slavery, John Gregg became colonel of the 746 men from 9 east Texas counties who formed the 7^th Volunteer infantry regiment.  In the summer of 1861, after Mary Francis had been sent to the Garth's Alabama estates for safety,  John had joined his regiment at Hopkinsville, Tennessee, on the border with neutral Kentucky.  There, over six months, disease buried 130 of the men before they fired a shot in anger. 

Then, in February of 1862 another 20 were killed and 40 wounded at the battle at Fort Donelson. Almost all of the remainder, including John, were forced to surrender.

The 7^th Regiment was paroled and exchanged at Vicksburg in the fall of that year.   By 1863 John was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, and the Texas 7^th joined with the 3^rd, 10^th,, 41^st and 50^th Tennessee regiments into the 4,500 man 10^th Battalion or Gregg's Brigade. They were supported by Bledsoe's Missouri Battery, a smooth bore 6 pound bronze cannon called “Old Sacramento” and a pair of iron 6 pound cannon, all under Captain Hiram Bledsoe.

For the first 4 months of 1863, Gregg's Battalion was stationed 80 feet above the Mississippi river at Port Hudson (above), some 20 miles north of Federal lines at Natchez, Mississippi. Until Sunday,  3 May, 1863, that is - when a telegram arrived from Lieutenant General Pemberton in Vicksburg. Grant's breakout at Port Gibson had forced a desperate reshuffling of battle lines. Pemberton ordered Gregg and his men to move with all dispatch to Jackson, Mississippi, 200 miles away.

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So on Monday, 4 May, at Port Hudson (above) General Gregg loaded his men onto the 7 cars of the Port Hudson and Clinton Railroad, for the 20 mile trip inland to the seat of East Feliciana Parish.

Their top speed over the corroded line was no more than 5 miles an hour. And after a seemingly endless series of shuttles back and forth the brigade's trip terminated in Clinton, a town of 1,500 white souls. Gregg's 4,500 Tennesseans and Texans then began a 37 mile forced march in the heat and dust of a suddenly dry Mississippi spring.  Fifteen miles east of town they crossed the almost empty Amite river and then camped beside the trickle of the Tickfaw creek. Private W.J. Davidson of the 41st Tennessee remembered, ", Our rations gave out and the heat and dust was almost insufferable." The next day they reached Kent's Mills. Here Gregg's Battalion boarded cars of the New Orleans and Jackson railroad, to continue their journey north.

But they had barely resumed their progress when, shortly after crossing the Mississippi state border they had to disembark again. Two weeks earlier Grierson's Yankee raiders had destroyed many of the rails between Osyka and Brookhaven, Mississippi. So it was another 47 mile forced march, before Gregg's Battalion could board a third train for the 56 final miles into the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi. The Battalion had marched over 100 miles and traveled 100 miles by rail in 5 long exhausting days. They arrived in Jackson early on Saturday 9 May, 1863. That evening the weary rebels drank their fill from the cool waters of the upper Pearl River.

But the next day General Gregg received new orders from General Pemberton. And before dawn on Monday, 11 May, John Gregg would lead his weary battalion on yet another forced march of 27 miles to the southwest. That afternoon they were greeted by cheering crowds at the town of Raymond, happy to see so many Confederate soldiers after a week of apparent abandonment. Their joy was mitigated somewhat when after filing into a field just south of town, “…the brigade...were too tired to stand in line...and everyone dropped...as soon as we halted.” 

General Gregg, meanwhile was quickly seething with anger. The cavalry he expected to find guarding the roads south of Raymond (above) , were nowhere to be seen.

Pemberton was trying to form a ring to contain Grant's army, behind the Big Black River to the west, and its tributaries Fourteen Mile and Baker's creeks to the north and east. And the force he chose to stake out the positions south of Raymond until Gregg's men arrived, were the 500 troopers of Colonel Willaim “Wirt" Adams 1^st Mississippi cavalry regiment. And the reason they were not where they were supposed to be had to do with their hot headed commander.

Both 49 year old William "Wirt" Adams (above)  and his younger brother Daniel were violent southern gentlemen prone to spontaneous duels -slash -brawls to defend their “honor”. Younger brother Daniel had even been tried for the murder of a journalist, but the jury generously found he had been acting in self defense.  Colonel Adams would eventually die in a similar encounter on a street corner.  But that was 20 years in the future. On Friday, 8 May, the 1^st Mississippi cavalry were in Jackson, resting men and horses after futile and frustrating week spent chasing Gerierson's raiders across central Mississippi, with only a brief encounter at cannon range to slate their hunger. 

Pemberton now ordered Colonel Adams to “picket” his men on the roads south of Raymond. But he also ordered Adams to ride to Edward's Depot, to assess the situation there.

Two weeks earlier Pemberton had been so desperate for cavalry to stop Colonel Gierson's raid, he had ordered 3 companies of the 20^th Mississippi Infantry at Jackson, Mississippi – about 400 men - to be put on horseback, and sent to Edward's Depot to guard the 300 muskets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition stored in Edward's Produce and Grocery. These guns were one of dozens of such arsenals through out Mississippi,  kept to deal with a feared uprising by the victims of the allegedly “benign” institution of slavery.

On 6 May, 1863 a 100 man scouting detachment of the 20^th Mississippi horse-slash- infantry, out of Edwards Depot, was surprised along Bakers Creek by union cavalry.  And it was their capture which had so frightened editor and publisher George William Harper at Raymond, that he had inspired Pemberton's concern about the capabilities of the metamorphosed 20th Mississippi. 

And that was why Pemberton had asked Colonel Adams to ride the 25 miles from Jackson, through Bolton, and across Bakers Creek to Edward's Depot. Once there he was to coolly observe and calmly report about the condition and combat readiness of the 20th regiment.  But cool and calm were not words usually associated with either of the Adams boys.

If Colonel Adams had caught up with Grierson's raiders, even for a brief struggle, he might have reacted differently to Pemberton's orders.  But the insult of  burned box cars and warehouses along the Grierson's route was seared into his mind. He had breathed in the stench of blackened wooden cross ties and bridges, felt the humiliating heat of smoldering and twisted bow tied iron rails. His honor demanded revenge. Revenge was something William Wirt Adams understood.

So on Saturday morning 10 May,  even though ordered to  picket his men on the roads between Raymond and Forty-mile Creek,  Brigadier General William Wirt Adams had mounted his entire command and ridden the 25 miles to Edward's Depot.  Here, behind Confederate lines, all was confusion. Adams spent the next 48 hours in Edward's Depot, looking for a fight, unaware he had just missed the most important one in his life. 

Because, on the evening of 11 May,  Brigadier General John Gregg's 4,500 infantrymen were  left defending the three roads leading into the town of Raymond without the eyes and ears of cavalry to warn them of any approaching Yankee army.  And the Yankees were approaching,  In great numbers.

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