Title 42, Still Waiting
Gloriously Immortal in Failure-- and Forgotten in Victory, George Custer and Ranald Mackenzie
Good Morning friends,
We did it to ourselves— promising no more newsletters until the New Year. Such promises all but guarantee something happening.
Last night the Supreme Court put a hold on the demise of Title 42, at the request of 19 states, including Texas. But there was language in the measure that makes it sound like the switch could flip back the other way rather quickly.
Who knows what’s going to happen?
The only people more confused than the taxpayers right now are the migrants waiting to cross, probably.
We read reports yesterday that some think they need to hurry here before the border closes. Others think it’s going to open wider. It’s a huge mess, but that’s hardly new.
“What are you going to do?” “How are you guys getting ready?” These are the kinds of questions getting put to various border town officials right now, asking about any kind of planning for the collapse of Title 42. And while some have more artful responses than others, the short answer for many seems to be “We’ve already done all we can— there’s not much more we can do right now.”
That’s the gist of what we saw from Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin on the television last night, and it’s consistent with what we’ve been observing in general.
The other big question many are asking is why Texas Governor Greg Abbott hasn’t taken any further steps with Texas Military Personnel? The loudest of interrogators in this vein lately has been Tucker Carlson, by virtue of his national mainstream reach.
There are many possibilities why or why not— some kinder than others. Perhaps the kindest, and we hope the most accurate, is that the Governor is still waiting for some kind of signal from Congress, that the State won’t be sticking it’s head out on it’s own, only to get it chopped off by the Executive Branch.
It’s one thing to have the support of various Constitutional clauses— and another to have those clauses, and a strong signal of financial and policy commitment from lawmakers who up until now have seemed utterly feckless and unwilling to do the least little concrete thing.
Texas and Frontier American history is replete with stories that reference awkward moments along the border. Times when U.S. and Mexican Governments were not half so friendly, and not nearly as co-operative with each other.
An online acquaintance’s recent post on Twitter reminded us of the story of Ranald S. Mackenzie— once one of the most promising post-civil-war Officers in the U.S. Military. And he was a successful Indian fighter that was stationed at Fort Clark, leading raids and counter-raids against the Comanche, Kickapoo, and others.
The Indians called him Col. “Bad Hand,” referencing a wound that had removed some of his fingers.
He was regarded as a strict disciplinarian by his men, and a terrible opponent by many of the Indians, though they did respect the lengths he would go to in keeping his word and any agreements made with them.
At one point, Mackenzie even led an unauthorized raid into Mexico, in pursuit of Indian attackers and bandits. They forded the Rio Grande near where the town of Quemado sits in present-day, and burned three villages near Remolino.
The site sits some more than a few miles west of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras.
The raids stopped after that.
Afterward, some officers learned they had crossed into Mexico without orders and told Mackenzie that had they known, they would not have gone, to which Mackenzie snapped, "Any officer or man who had refused to follow me across the river I would have shot!"
—Editor Michael Travis, from a history of Comancheria, at www.forttours.com
Some historians have drawn reverse-parallels between Mackenzie and General George Armstrong Custer. Custer is regarded as gloriously immortal in failure. Whereas Mackenzie is all but forgotten, no matter his success as a soldier and commander. The parallels even extend to the nature of their most well-known engagements.
For Custer, it is of course his disaster at Little Bighorn. For Mackenzie, it was the battle of Palo Duro Canyon, against the Comanche near present-day Lubbock. The Comanche had mostly led Mackenzie and his men on for miles— drawing them deeper and deeper into the canyon without a satisfactory decisive battle.
Custer was similarly drawn on and on— pulled away from his artillery support.
Mackenzie wasn’t so easily baited and recognized the danger. His men managed to capture a herd of Comanche horses. He ordered the vast majority of them slaughtered, and ordered the men to begin withdrawing out of the canyon. It’s said that the Comanche lost the will to fight when seeing such resolve. The loss of the horses probably also removed most of the incentive to pursue Mackenzie and his soldiers. There was no profit to be had. For his part, Mackenzie recognized that his men were worn out and in no shape to keep pursuing the Comanche into what was unknown territory. Most believe the last major non-native military expedition into the canyon had been by Coronado looking for the Cities of Gold.
Ironically, Mackenzie was one of the American commanders rushed North to clean up after Custer’s loss. He regarded the tour as a failure, though he did force the surrender of one Sioux Chief. He returned to Texas in 1878 just in time to respond to new raids from Mexican territory.
The Army had him provocatively patrol up and down the Rio Grande in what could’ve only been a reminder of his previous cross-border raid into Mexico.
The Mexican Government clamped down in response, and the Indian and bandit raids stopped once more.
So why is Mackenzie all but forgotten?
Well, his story has a very tragic ending with a sudden seeming descent into mental illness and a stay in a New York institution called “Bloomingdale Asylum.”
Bloomingdale was on the island of Manhattan— at a site now occupied by Columbia University.
It was probably not the worst place in the world— though it is remembered in history as the location where the New York Tribune’s Julius Chambers filed a series of undercover reports, having himself committed, and then publishing the abuses of inmates by employees and administrators. That was in 1872.
Mackenzie was there in 1882, following a shakeup of administration in the wake of the undercover reporting. He passed away on Staten Island some years later. He’s buried at West Point.
Most historians connect his decline to an incident at Fort Sill years before, where Mackenzie fell down, hit his head, and was said to be impaired for several months after.
But, more contemporary accounts say a lifetime of duty, unusual empathy for the suffering of his men, and the literal carnage he witnessed in his career may’ve also played their parts, leading to severe depression and other poorly understood mental illnesses at the time. It is not unreasonable to imagine a combination of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder combined to lay him low.
It makes his recorded words all the sadder.
“I think that I am not insane. I think that I have served as faithfully as anybody in the Army. I would rather die than go in the retired list. The Army is all I have got to care for.”
—Ranald S. Mackenzie, recorded statement in response to the Army Medical Board that retired him.
In 1958, Mackenzie and Ft. Clark were featured in a syndicated television series called Mackenzie’s Raiders.
They filmed 39 episodes. A young Leonard Nimoy pops up in two of them, as a character named Kansas.
Have a great morning folks. Who knows what’s going to happen next, as lawmakers and other officials fumble about in Washington. The Supreme Court’s reluctance about the whole thing couldn’t be any plainer.
We do have a little housekeeping re: yesterday’s newsletter. We misread a report about El Paso declaring a State of Emergency. Silly us— we have invasion on the brain, and read “invasion” where we should’ve read “emergency.”
Apologies for that. No predictions on when we’ll be back— odds are there’s going to be some development later today that’ll also demand some form of acknowledgement tomorrow morning.
As always, the newsletter and any errors in it are ours alone, and though we are employed at the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office, no one should mistake the newsletter for any kind of an official County communication.
Great article. Really like the tidbits. Thank you. I read a lot of tidbits each day. Hard to remember what I read until someone asks a question that stimulates my brain enough to respond. Only problem is that the old brain sometimes muddles the reply.