Appendix A: Service Record of Lieutenant Jonah Woodson Hex,
4th & 7th Cavalry,
Confederate States of America
*Note: This section contains references to stories not yet covered
*Note: This section contains references to stories not yet covered
in the main history project.*
On April 12, 1861, the newly-formed
Confederate Army opened fire upon Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Tensions had been high between the North and
South for months, and the arrival of a simple supply ship at a Union-occupied
fort within Southern borders was the last straw. The fight lasted only a day, with the only
fatalities occurring during a flag-lowering ceremony inside the fort on the
14th, when an accidental explosion killed two Union soldiers. These were the first two men to die a in a
civil war that would last for almost exactly four years and leave an indelible
mark upon the country that can still be seen today.
Seeing as how Jonah Hex literally wears
his participation in that conflict upon his sleeve, it seems proper to devote
some space exclusively to the character's wartime experiences. Over the past four decades since his creation,
there have been multiple mentions of those experiences by both Jonah himself
and other characters, but when you compare those mentions against the real-life
historical record, certain questions arise.
Could Hex have really participated in all the battles he's supposedly been
in? How did he end up serving in two
different cavalry regiments, and what state were they based out of? And most importantly, why did Hex side with the
Confederacy when he was against slavery?
What follows is a unofficial timeline of
events based on what evidence we have, starting with an incident that occurred
a couple of years before Fort Sumter...
1859:
The Death of Cassie Wainwright - Like many future
Confederates, Hex had spent some time with the Union Army, though in his case,
he never officially joined. His
experience on the frontier led to him becoming a scout at an unnamed fort under
the command of Colonel Marcus Wainwright, somewhere in Comanche territory
(which encompassed a rather large area between Kansas and northern Texas by
this time in history). It was there that
21-year-old Jonah became engaged to Cassie, the colonel's daughter, who was
fated to die thanks to the greed of a half-dozen other scouts that robbed the
regiment's payroll (see Jonah Hex
#65-71 for more on that). Why does our
timeline start here? Because it's the last
dated event in Hex's personal history prior to the Civil War. There's a two-year gap between him vowing
revenge on the men who left Cassie to die and his first dated appearance in
Confederate gray, which took place during Christmas 1861 on the Turnbull
plantation located in Richmond, Virginia (as seen in Weird Western Tales #29). We have no idea what happened to him between Point A and
Point B: he made a comment in JH#65 that he had been hunting those men right up
until the War broke out (and having no luck at all in locating them), but where
exactly did that hunt lead him?
The narrative in Jonah Hex (vol.2) #36 mentions that "there
is no record of his having owned slaves or his living among the Southern
community with which he chose to align during the conflict." I take that to mean Jonah was living an
itinerant lifestyle prior to the War, with no fixed address nor a steady
job. This fits with the notion of him
spending every waking moment tracking those former scouts, and it's pretty much
the same way he lived his life after the War.
Despite any lack of official record putting him in the South pre-1861, I
do believe that, at some point during his wanderings, Jonah not only ended up
in Richmond, he also met and befriended Jeb Turnbull. Sadly, the majority of tales involving Jeb
are flashbacks revolving around the Fort Charlotte Massacre, so our knowledge
of the young man prior to his death is scant.
However, we do have a lot of personal interaction between Hex and the
Turnbulls in the aforementioned WWT#29, and going by some of the lines spoken
during those scenes, it gives the impression that Jonah was a familiar face in
their household long before the War broke out:
In retrospect, it's
certainly strange to see Quentin Turnbull being so friendly with Jonah Hex, but
I imagine that friendliness is why Quentin took Jonah's "betrayal" so
badly. We'll discuss these scenes -- as
well as Fort Charlotte -- a bit more later on, as we need to move on right now
to the next landmark on our timeline.
April 17, 1861: Virginia Secedes from the Union - Occurring just five days after the Battle of Fort Sumter, this
would've been a rather significant moment in Jonah's life, presuming that he
was indeed in Virginia at this point in time.
The Civil War was just getting started, and Jonah would soon have to
choose which side he was on. Keep in
mind, however, that not everyone in Virginia was in favor of secession (what we
now call West Virginia was originally formed by the northwestern counties that
wished to stay with the Union), so just because Jonah may have been on Virginia
soil doesn't mean he automatically had to join the Confederacy. Even if we try to take into account what
state Jonah may have truly considered "home" as a possible influence
on his decision, the waters just get muddier: Joe Lansdale personally
characterized Hex as a fellow native of Texas (which seceded in February 1861),
while Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray revealed in All Star Western #0 that Jonah had been born in Missouri (a slave
state that remained loyal to the Union) and lived there for a decent portion of
his childhood -- his family eventually moved to Colorado, a territory that (according
to JHv2#36) eventually sent four thousand men to serve in the Union forces. And of course there's the fact that Jonah was
formerly a slave to the Apache...why would Jonah fight to keep others in
chains, having experienced it himself? Luckily,
Jonah himself speaks very plainly on the subject at hand in Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such #2:
Though that comic came out
in 1995, the attitude expressed within it can be seen throughout every decade of
Hex history: his unshakeable devotion to whatever he believes to be right, as
well as his lack of any racist tendencies (or as Bat Lash put it in Jonah Hex (vol.2) #24, Jonah has a
"policy of hating all men equally.").
So it's safe to say that, at the start of the War, slavery was a
non-issue for Jonah Hex. He simply disagreed
with what he saw as the North's policies oppressing the South, and felt that
the Yankees should mind their own damn business, therefore he joined the
Confederacy to defend the South's right to make their own decisions (there's
also the ironic possibility that the Turnbulls -- a slave-owning family living
in what would become the capital of the Confederacy -- may have influenced
Jonah's decision). In April 1861, this probably
seemed like the most logical choice, but in a couple of years' time, that
choice would come back to haunt him.
September 1861: Organization of the 4th Regiment, Virginia Cavalry
- Here's one of the points where Jonah's fictional life unravels under
careful scrutiny. We were first told in Weird Western Tales #29 that Jonah was a
member of the 4th Cavalry (no state listed), but by Jonah Hex #13, references begin appearing for the 7th Cavalry
(again, no state listed). The 4th Cavalry
isn't mentioned again until Jonah Hex
(vol. 2) #46, when Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray retell some of the events
of WWT#29, namely the Fort Charlotte Massacre (oddly enough, Michael Fleisher
himself retold those events in JH#35, but Jonah's inexplicably said to be in
the 7th that time around!). There are
few other references to Jonah's cavalry regiment during Palmiotti & Gray's
run, but when it does come up, they put him with the 7th again (with the
exception of JHv2#70, where they toss out a claim that Jonah was in the 66th
Infantry, but since that issue was one long hallucination, I ain't gonna take it
as gospel). Aside from those two
mentions -- both of which involve Fort Charlotte -- the 4th Cavalry is
nonexistent in Hex history, and could be written off as a continuity error if
not for the real-world connections that regimental number has to the Civil War.
Historically, there was both
a 4th and 7th Regiment in the Virginia Cavalry. Records state that the 7th Cavalry was made
up mostly of men from the northern Virginia counties, as well as some from
Maryland and what is now West Virginia, whereas some members of the 4th Cavalry
were recruited from the city of Richmond, as well as a few central
counties. With our previous presumption
that Jonah was in Richmond when the War broke out, it seems likely that both he
and Jeb would've been assigned to the 4th when they joined up. When you take into account that there's no
mentions of Jonah participating in any battle prior to September 1861 -- when
the 4th completed its organization -- the likelihood rises even higher,
especially since the 7th was organized in May 1861, meaning those men were
possibly on the frontlines for four months before Jonah, Jeb, and the rest of
the 4th was ready to go.
Speaking of which, there is
a scene at the beginning of Jonah Hex:
Riders of the Worm and Such #1 where Jonah is tending to a dying friend, a
former private by the name of Tex Smith.
Smith asks Jonah to mark his grave with the sword he got off of a Yankee
at First Manassas (or as it's known in the North, the First Battle of Bull
Run). This battle took place on July
21st, so obviously Private Smith was in the fight by then, but that doesn't
necessarily mean Jonah was as well: there's no dialogue in the scene that
implies Jonah was present at First Manassas/Bull Run, nor are there references
in any other comic to his participation in that battle. So while the two men knew each other, and
possibly met during wartime, they may have not have served in the same
unit...or at least, they may not have at the beginning of the War. Due to mergers and reassignments, not every
man ended their service in the same unit they started with. That's the most likely real-world reason why Jonah
Hex would have two different cavalry numbers attributed to him: he started his Confederate military career with the 4th, and ended it with the 7th.
December 25, 1861: Slave Revolt on the Turnbull Plantation - The first eight months of the War were somewhat quiet, with only
a few major battles noted in the history books, none of which we have specific
record of Jonah participating in. We
don't know how much action he and Jeb Turnbull had seen by the time Christmas
rolls around, but when they go back to Richmond, Virginia on a three-day pass
and visit Jeb's father Quentin in WWT#29,
we can tell by the three chevrons on their left sleeves that the two young men have both achieved the rank of sergeant. They gave
Quentin a gift upon arrival: an eagle-headed cane that belonged to a Union
general, though it's not said how exactly they obtained it, nor which general it
belonged to.
By that evening, their
joyous reunion was interrupted by some newly-purchased slaves who'd stolen
rifles in an attempt to overthrow their masters, killing at least two hired
hands and setting fire to the barn in the process. Jonah joined the Turnbulls in quelling the
revolt, but he didn't look too pleased with himself when he gutshot one of the
slaves, nor did he agree with the brutal flogging that Quentin administered on
the slaves afterward. It's likely that,
when he and Jeb returned to their unit, Jonah was a little more aware of the
true stakes involved in this War, and a silent battle with his conscience had
begun.
April 6-7, 1862: Battle of Shiloh - In "The Last Bounty Hunter" (from the legendary Jonah Hex Spectacular) George Barrow
claims that his father fought alongside Hex at Shiloh -- AKA
the Battle of
Pittsburg Landing -- in Tennessee. Sadly, this is a throwaway line, with no
wartime flashbacks involved -- nor is there a real-world record of either the
4th or 7th Virginia Cavalry participating in that battle -- so we can neither
confirm nor deny the truth of it.
However, if Barrow's father did indeed fight alongside Hex during the
War, it does make you wonder if Hex had ever saved the elder Barrow's life in
battle, thereby giving him the chance to father the man who'd one day kill
Jonah Hex!
September 1862: Hex's Special Mission for "Stonewall"
Jackson - Though we can't pin a specific day on
this one, we can estimate that the first part of flashback tale related in Jonah Hex #37 occurred right before the
Battle of Harper's Ferry in Virginia (that area is now part of West Virginia). History notes that Major General Thomas
"Stonewall" Jackson was attacking Harper's Ferry as early as
September 10th, so we can presume this tale begins right around that date. The flashback shows that both Hex and Jackson
were on separate scouting missions at the time, and the young man came to
rescue when the general was ambushed by Union troops. Since he introduced himself as Lieutenant
Jonah Hex, we know that his promotion must've come through somewhere in the
past nine months (he also says he's with the 7th Cavalry, and there's even a
"7" on his uniform collar, but we're gonna ignore all that). Jackson was grateful for Hex's assist, and
soon informed him of the assault on Harper's Ferry, then asked the lieutenant
if he was willing to undergo a solo mission, wherein he'd destroy one of the
bridges crossing the Potomac River:
As with most Jonah Hex
stories, it's doesn't go all that smoothly, but Lt. Hex did indeed blow up the
bridge as General Jackson ordered, and even managed to get back to camp for a
personal congratulations from the general prior to Jackson's unit moving
on. It's not specified if the general is
referring to them advancing on Harper's Ferry, or the mad dash he and his men
will make after that battle -- which was over by September 15th -- in order to
bolster Lee's troops at the Battle of Antietam (AKA Sharpsburg) in Maryland on
September 17th...which leads us to a bigger continuity glitch than that
"7" on Jonah's collar. On the
very first page of Weird Western Tales
#31, as he rides into the town of Wolverine to visit an old Army buddy
named Dave Prentice, he wonders if the man has "changed a mite since we
fought the Yankees together at Antietam."
Trouble is, in Jonah Hex (vol.
2) #13, Palmiotti & Gray claim that Jonah was at Fort Donelson in Tennessee
on September 18th, which is over 700 miles away from Antietam. Not even Jonah Hex could cover that distance
in one day!
To make this work, we'd have
to presume that Jonah is referring not to the famous battle, but to some minor
skirmish near Antietam on another date.
We'd also have to presume Jonah didn't participate in the battle at
Harper's Ferry at all, save for blowing up that bridge, thereby giving him time
to not only rejoin his unit (remember, Hex was on a separate scouting mission
when he ran into Jackson, who was not his C.O.), but also about 5-7 days for
all of them to travel to Tennessee (we'll even presume there was a train and/or
boat involved in that travel, 'cause that's a damn long way to march). The logistics of this are still close to
impossible, but since the next landmark on our timeline has multiple references
to back it up, we can't exactly gloss over it.
Mid-September 1862: Raid on Fort Donelson - This incident and the three other landmarks that follow all come
from Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #13, the
first part of Palmiotti & Gray's "Origin of Jonah Hex"
three-issue arc (an abbreviated version of them was included in All-Star Western #0). Fort Donelson was an actual fort located near
the Cumberland River in Tennessee, and was originally held by the Confederates
until it fell into Union hands in February 1862 (the battle where General Ulysses S.
Grant earned his nickname of "Unconditional Surrender"). A year later, the Confederates tried to take
back the fort but failed due to lack of firepower, so we can presume by the
dates in this issue that Jonah participated in an earlier attempt to reclaim
the fort. Under the cover of both
darkness and a heavy rain, Lt. Hex and two other men snuck onto a Union supply
wagon and, once it had been brought into the fort, attacked the guards at the
gate so they could let Confederate troops inside. The incoming Rebs were soon cut down by a
Gatling gun, and when the Union officers were examining the dead, the colonel
in charge recognized Hex (a year into the War, and he's already got a
reputation!). The colonel ordered his
men to bayonet any surviving Rebel soldiers, leaving Hex alive to "make an
example of him".
September 18, 1862: Blood Spilled on the Cumberland River - Palmiotti & Gray cite a specific date for this, but it's
uncertain how long Hex had been held prisoner at Fort Donelson by this point (it's
possible this occurs the morning after the failed raid, since this is a
daylight scene). Clad in only a
Confederate flag and tied to a Saint Andrew's cross affixed to a log raft, Hex
was whipped repeatedly across the face and chest before being set adrift upon
the Cumberland River as a warning to any Southerners who might come across
him. It's unknown how long he spent in
that horrific condition, but we can guess by the artwork that at least two full
days and nights passed before Jonah was rescued:
By some miracle, the head of
the family that found him was a doctor, therefore giving the nearly-dead
lieutenant a chance to survive, though that certainly didn't mean his problems
were over.
September 22, 1862: Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation Announced
- The wheels were actually set in motion as far back as July 1862,
but it wasn't until after the Union's victory at Antietam that President
Lincoln unveiled the Proclamation to the public. It should be noted that only those states not
already under Union control were affected by the Proclamation when it was
finally implemented on January 1, 1863, meaning Tennessee -- a Confederate
state under the rule of a Union-backed military government at the time of
drafting -- was exempted from this. Still,
the Proclamation was major news no matter where one lived, and the doctor who
tended Jonah's wounds just so happened to be reading aloud to his family from
an article in the Clarksville Leaf
when Jonah woke up from his ordeal (the presence of the newspaper indicates
that Hex is still in Tennessee, but he may not be in Clarksville itself), so we
can presume this scene in JHv2#13 must've occurred around the same time as the
announcement.
January 17, 1863: Hex Rejoins the Fight - Nearly four months pass before we see Jonah again, and though he
appeared to be fully healed by this time, he was still staying with the family
who rescued him. Considering that the
doctor had previously told Jonah he'd have to leave as soon as he was able due
to Union troops moving into the area, this seems odd, and there's even a scene
where the doctor's son remarked, "Now that President Lincoln signed papers
saying that slaves are ta be set free, I reckon you'd want ta get back ta the
Army," followed by, "I don't even know your name." Admittedly, Jonah's voice wasn't up to snuff yet
-- the doctor commented earlier that "I suspect it will remain a coarse
whisper" thanks to what the Federals did to him -- but he could talk, not
to mention write, so why hadn't he told them his name yet? More than that, why was he still there if his
presence put that family in danger?
This is pure speculation,
but I imagine that Jonah had done a good amount of thinking over those past
four months about the War and his place in it.
The passing of the Emancipation Proclamation meant that he couldn't ignore
the slavery aspect of the conflict anymore, but unfortunately, he was still
conscripted to the Confederate Army, and as they point out in JHv2#36,
"The punishment for desertion from the Confederate ranks was death",
so it's possible that Jonah may've decided the best course of action was to
disappear and let his superiors think he was among those killed at Fort Donelson. Perhaps Jonah had already spoken with the
doctor about this decision, as it appears he wasn't a slave-owner himself -- his
family resides within a rather large house, but there's no scenes featuring
servants of any sort, black or white -- for all we know, Jonah was still there
because the doctor was arranging to have Jonah snuck out of Tennessee. As for Jonah keeping mum about his name, that
might've been for the family's safety, in case soldiers from either side came
around after he was gone: if they didn't know who he truly was, they couldn't
reveal the information.
Even if this was the case,
it was rendered moot when a trio of thieves masquerading as Confederate
soldiers broke into the house, murdering the doctor and forcing themselves upon
his wife. Jonah killed all three of them
in the merciless manner we're accustomed to seeing, and after helping to bury
the doctor, Jonah finally hit the road, dressed in Confederate gray once
more. Did seeing those thieves
disgracing the uniform sway him to put it on again? To be certain, the one he was wearing had to
have come off one of them, since his had been stripped off at Fort Donelson.
Late-January, 1863: The Fort Charlotte Massacre - There's been three full retellings of this incident over the past
four decades of Jonah's publishing history -- WWT#29, JH#35, and JHv2#46 -- with
little variation between, but that doesn't necessarily mean we know everything
there is to know about it. For one, we
can't pin down exactly where this occurred, as there is no Fort Charlotte
listed in any real-world Civil War record.
Historically, two forts in the United States have carried that name -- one
near Mobile, Alabama and the other in South Carolina -- so perhaps in the
DCU's version of history, one of these old forts was reinstated by the
Confederacy, only to be captured by the Union and put to their use (like what
happened to Fort Donelson). Or it could
be that this Fort Charlotte was completely unrelated to either of them, and was
located in an entirely different area (we know it's within fifty miles of a
marshy field containing red clay, and that's near someplace called Henderson
Plateau, but I can't find any place by that name). Also, since we have no specific date, we
don't know how much time passed between Jonah leaving that home in Tennessee
and meeting up with his regiment (not to mention how he found them after being
away for 4 months!), nor do we know how long Jonah waited before he confessed
to his friend and comrade-in-arms Jeb Turnbull that his heart was no longer in
the fight, and he planned on surrendering to the Union troops at Fort Charlotte:
Of course, it wasn't as
cut-and-dry as all that, and Jonah's noble-minded solution to his conundrum led
to the inadvertent capture of thirty-five members of his regiment, many of whom
died when they tried to escape. Jonah
managed to get kill the fort's C.O. to avenge the death of his friend Jeb, but
that wasn't enough to keep the survivors -- as well as Jeb's father, Quentin
Turnbull -- from branding him a traitor.
It should be noted, however, that there's no record of the Confederate
Army arresting Jonah Hex for treason, much less punishing him for deserting his
post, and the lieutenant went on to serve under the Rebel flag for another two
years. Considering how long those men
carried a grudge against Jonah, it seems reasonable that at least one of them
would've tried to bring him up on charges.
If so, did they fail due to lack of evidence? Perhaps this is why all references to the 4th
Cavalry disappear after Fort Charlotte: Jonah may have requested a transfer to
another regiment in order to get away from his former friends who now treated
him as a pariah. As for the matter of
Jonah continuing on with the Confederacy after he'd made it clear that he
didn't want to fight to uphold slavery, I daresay his back-to-back experiences
with how inhumane the Yankees could be overshadowed his moral quandary. Jonah most likely felt that he couldn't trust
the word of either side now, but since he'd already thrown his lot in with the
South, that was the side he'd stick with.
Early 1863: Incident at Vicksburg - In Jonah Hex #25, the
bounty hunter goes to Lawrenceville, Kansas to visit an old cavalry buddy, who
now owns a newspaper. When Jonah
arrives, the news office is on fire, and Jonah rushes in to help, saying,
"Nate Ashin lost his good right arm savin' me f'um gettin' sliced in half
by a Yankee saber at Vicksburg...an' now seems as good a time as any tuh tell
'im how much Ah've appreciated livin' all
these past thirteen years since then!"
Due to the vagary of Jonah's
reference to Vicksburg and the number of battles that took place near there, it's hard to figure out an exact date for this one. We can narrow it down to 1863,
since the story is dated 1876 and Jonah says thirteen years have passed since Ashin
saved his life. It could be Jonah's
referring to the Siege of Vicksburg, which took place May 18th-July 4, but seeing
as how the next two landmarks on our timeline -- which take place around that
same period -- are both roughly a thousand miles away from Vicksburg, Mississippi
and he'd have to cross that distance
twice to make this work, it seems unlikely (it's the same problem that
keeps us from placing Jonah at the Battle of Antietam back in September 1862). The most likely answer is Jonah took part in
an earlier, smaller skirmish at some point between January (after the Fort
Charlotte Massacre) and April (when he'd have to head back east to
Virginia and the next landmark on the timeline).
May 2, 1863: "Stonewall" Jackson Fatally Wounded - We return to Jonah Hex
#37 for the second part of that flashback tale.
It's been nearly eight months since Jonah had his run-in with General Jackson,
and though that previous encounter ended well for both men, this one would
not. Halfway through the Battle of
Chancellorsville in Virginia -- which raged on for over a week -- Jackson was
returning to camp in the middle of the night, only to be shot by Confederate
troops, who mistook his group for a Union cavalry force. In the real world, it was members the North
Carolina 18th Infantry regiment that made the error, but in DCU history, it's
said that Lieutanant Jonah Hex was the first to open fire. The general was hit three times and would
eventually die of complications from pneumonia on May 10th.
In All-Star Western #19, Palmiotti & Gray confirm that this tale also
exists in "The New 52" timeline when somebody asks the bounty hunter
point-blank, "You shot Stonewall Jackson, didn't ya, Hex?", to which
Jonah replies, "On accident."
July 1-3, 1863: Battle of Gettysburg - The only references to this infamous battle are in Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo #4, and they're
done in passing, with no flashbacks to be seen (at least not for the
reader). The first one occurs after Doc
“Cross” Williams stuffs Hex into a barrel and forces him to guzzle down some of
his zombie-making elixir. Though Jonah
promptly vomits it up, he admits in the narrative that the stuff has affected
him somewhat: “That night was long and as cold as a well digger’s ass. I fought the Battle of Gettysburg all over
again...and we lost again.” Later on in
that issue, once Jonah’s escaped and nursed back to health by a kindly farmer,
we’re witness to a poignant exchange. As
the farmer loans him a horse, he confesses that he knows of Jonah’s outlaw
status (long story short: Jonah’s been having some rotten luck lately). “I was at Gettysburg too, Mr. Hex,” the
farmer says. “I was a private. I seen how you did, and you damn sure ain’t
no backshootin’ coward like that poster says.”
“That was a bad day for
everyone,” Jonah replies, and you can actually see a tear rolling down his
cheek when he says it. Sadly, Jonah has
never elaborated upon what exactly happened to him at Gettysburg, and we can’t
infer anything else about his involvement in the battle due to the vagary of
these two references. We do know for
certain that members of both the 4th and 7th Virginia Cavalry were present
during the Gettysburg campaign, and that roughly 52,000 men were either dead,
wounded, or missing by the time it was through, so no matter where or when
Jonah came into that mess, there’s little chance he came through it
unscathed. That could be reason enough
for him to keep his mouth shut about it.
1864: The Spoils of War - We can only
put the vaguest of dates on this flashback from Jonah Hex #30, the first part of a three-issue tale. The flashback begins when, according to the
narration, Jonah's mind "races back a decade", and since the third
part in JH#32 is dated 1874, we can presume the first part takes place around 1864. We can't say for certain where
this all takes place, however, other than it happens near an arroyo with some
sparse woodland nearby. Lieutenant Hex
was scouting out the path being taken by a Union paymaster's wagon when a
couple of Yankees took him by surprise.
They knocked him out and brought him back to camp for questioning, but
other than name, rank, and serial number (which starts with 573, for those
curious), he told them nothing. Luckily
for Hex, one of the members of his regiment, Corporal Eddie Cantwell, followed
their trail and, after making the Yankees think they were under attack from a
whole platoon, mowed them all down with their own Gatling gun. Hex was appalled, and told Cantwell he had no
right to kill all those Union soldiers since they'd already surrendered
(despite the treatment Jonah had previously received from Yankees on two other
occasions, it appears that he wasn't willing to stoop to their level when it
came to prisoners of war). Hex also
didn't approve of Cantwell's idea to take the Yankee payroll for themselves,
even when Cantwell threatened to shoot Hex, who eventually talked the soldier
into doing the right thing and turning the money over their superiors, so as to
fatten the Confederate war chest.
October 1864: Flushing out Yankee Spies - Back in 1999, there was a 12-part miniseries written by John
Ostrander called The Kents, detailing
the settlement of Superman’s adopted family in Kansas of the 1850s/60s. By issue #8 -- which takes place during the
final years of the Civil War -- we’re treated to a scene with Wild Bill Hickok
telling some fellow Union scouts about a spy mission he and Nathan Kent
(Jonathan Kent's ancestor) had just gotten back from (in truth, Hickok really
did spy on Confederate forces for the Union, and even dropped out of sight for
about a year due to it). Seems the two
of them had gotten caught behind enemy lines, and even worse, they were in the
same camp as Jonah Hex, who knew Hickok was a spy, so the two men got out of
camp as quickly as they could by riding their horses across the river the camp
is located by. Hex spotted them and
opened fire, but they were too far out of range by that point, so he settled
for yelling at them, "Maybe we'll meet again, Hickok -- when I don't hafta
kill ya!"
Thanks to the mention of the
Battle of Westport within the text -- which occurred on October 23-25, 1864 --
we know this took place in Missouri, with the river mentioned being either the
Big Blue River or the Marais des Cygnes.
This would be the furthest west Jonah has been sighted during the entire
War (the second-furthest being Vicksburg,
Mississippi). It's not impossible, just odd, though perhaps
he'd been sent out there on another "special mission", like when
General Jackson kept him away from his regiment for a spell in Jonah Hex #37. Another oddity is that Jonah is shown to already
have his famous facial scar:
Since we know those Yankees
at Fort Donelson back in Jonah Hex (vol.
2) #13 whipped him across the face, I suppose we can write this off as an exaggeration
of the damage done. The oddest thing of
all, however, is Hickok's claim that he and Jonah were already acquainted prior
to the events of Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo (remember that zombie
elixir I mentioned earlier? Ol’ Wild
Bill got a snootful of it, courtesy of the Doc, and has a couple of shootouts with
Hex throughout the story). There doesn’t
seem to be any indication in that miniseries that Hex recognizes Hickok to any
degree prior to the Doc telling Hex outright who the big zombie cowboy is, and
even when Hex does refer to Hickok by name, he seems somewhat doubtful. Since the flashback in The Kents comes about from Hickok spinning a yarn, with no input
whatsoever from Hex himself, it's hard to say whether or not the two men really
had encountered each other before that day.
Since Lieutenant Hex's reputation had already spread through the Union
ranks after only a year of fighting -- as evidenced by the officers at Fort
Donelson knowing who he is on sight -- it could be that Hickok merely spotted
Hex in that camp, and decided to build up his own reputation by claiming that
Hex knew who he was as well.
April 23, 1865: Laying Down Arms - We're back to Jonah Hex
#30 again, this time to witness Jonah's final surrender to Union forces. This occurred two weeks after General Robert
E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia on April 9th, and just
over one week after President Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April
14th. Since it took a while for word to
get around about Lee's surrender, fighting continued on for over a month, so
it's conceivable that Lieutenant Hex and his regiment -- here referred to as
the 7th Light Cavalry -- were still battling Yankees just prior to their
surrender at the Federal stockade in Lynchburg, Virginia. The circumstances behind this are unknown,
though it should be noted that they entered the stockade unaccompanied by Union
soldiers, so it could be this was a voluntary surrender and not one forced upon
them at gunpoint. Considering what
happened to Jonah two years earlier at Fort Charlotte, what could've persuaded
him that he wasn't leading the men under his command into a trap that day in
Lynchburg? With no further information available, the question will
remain unanswered.
1866: Same Uniform, Different Meaning - Jonah Hex (vol. 2) #36 seems the best place to end our timeline, for not
only is it one of the few post-Civil War tales to show Hex without his infamous
scar, it also does its best to explain why he still wears Confederate gray. Set in Pulaski, Tennessee, roughly 530 miles
southwest of Lynchburg, Virginia (and just over 100 miles south of
Clarksville...did Jonah perhaps pay a visit to the Tennessee family that sheltered him
after his ordeal at Fort Donelson?), we learn that the former Confederate
originally kept his uniform simply because he had nothing else to wear. Like many veterans of the War, he was
stranded far from home with little more than the clothes on his back, so this
was more a matter of necessity than a moral or political statement. It was only after crossing paths with a group
of white supremacists who mistook Jonah for a man with similar inclinations --
and making them pay dearly for the error -- that Jonah apparently decided to
continue wearing the uniform long after the need passed. As the narration near the end of the story
informs us, "His insistence on wearing the Confederate uniform until the
day of his death in 1904 stands as a symbol of personal shame, a cross to
bear. For he knew that anyone who saw
the gray colors would greet him with hatred and revulsion. Those who saw the gray coat and extended a
hand, in friendship and the recognition of an idea which promoted the
subjugation of another race, did so at their own peril."
Though our timeline ends here, we know
very well what fate had in store for Jonah Hex after he departed Pulaski, Tennessee. Somewhere on the horizon is a reunion with
his adopted Apache tribe, as well as "The Mark of the Demon" they
will bestow upon him, followed by his decision to become a bounty hunter. The events of those four long and bloody
years will resurface at unexpected moments for the rest of his life, however, as will
the people he met during that time, so in a way, the Civil War
can never truly end for Lieutenant Jonah Woodson Hex.
Excellent, excellent exegesis!
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