Raymond Speer
2004-06-12 16:42:34 UTC
REPUBLIC BOOTH KINEMATOSCOPE
10001 Lesage Avenue
Lake Charles, Louisiana
Professor Horace P. Quimby
History Department
Interlochen Academy
Marquette, Michigan
June 5, 1958
Dear Professor Quimby:
We thank you for acting as historical advisor for our kenny on the life
on Chet Arthur. There have been many depictions of the Wild West and
its legends, but we want this production to be extra-exceptional in all
ways.
Ben Seigel has been signed as Chet, and he'll be matched with one of the
hottest kenny starlets of Lake Charles. We want the epic love story of
Chet Arthur and Emily Dickenson put down deep as it has never been put
down before.
Please send us your notes no later than the first of July, so that
revisions to the script can be done before the middle of July.
Sincerely Yours,
s/ Robie
Howard Robard Hughes
ENC. Script of _Axeman Arthur_
=============================
June 21, 1958
Dear Mr. Hughes:
There are a few revisions that could be made to bring history to this
kenny, and none of them should increase your budget.
The real Chester Alan Arthur was not a small farmer who lost his farm
when slave plantations outproduced him agriculturally. Arthur was the
son of a Baptist minister and was a college graduate and lawyer of
Albany, New York. Arthur's antipathy to slavery was not a vendetta
against slaveowners who were more successful than he was. It was a
moral understanding that the subjugation of any man -- even colored men
and women-- was morally wrong and unfit for America.
From the script, the audience might think that Arthur was native to
Kansas. Actually, he was a lawyer from New York State who traveled to
Kansas in 1856 to be an opponent to settlers who wanted Kansas admitted
as a slave state. The same was true for his partner, Henry Gardiner.
The compromise of 1856 (when President Davis traded the admission of
Kansas as a slave state for a guarantee that only the New Mexico
territory would have a slave code) was repugnant to Arthur's
sensibilities. In later years, Arthur often reflected that he should
have returned to New York as he had intended. But a posse of slave
catchers accused the "New York City lawyers" of stealing slaves and
stopped the carriage when Arthur embarked on his journey back East.
Arthur and Gardiner would maintain that, at the time of their initial
arrest, they had never taken a slave from his master. Arthur stated
that the posses commissioned by the Lecompton government were on a
rampage to expunge Free Soil sentiments from Kansas by foul means. In
Arthur's story, he and Gardiner were whipped almost to death by the
"slavers" but were rescued by John Brown and his boys. The documents
at Lecompton mention no maltreatment and cite Arthur and Gardiner as
members of the Brown gang.
Outside of dime novels, there is no evidence that Arthur used the axe he
carried as a weapon, much less that he threw his ax like a tomahawk or
boomerang and killed foes at a distance. Arthur used an axe to break
diown doors and break the fetters of the slaves he freed.
It is not true that Jefferson Davis ordered Colonel Lee to Kansas to
chase Arthur. At the time, Arthur was one of Brown's obscure
lieutenants. Davis served only a single term as President (1853 to
1857). Davis' successor, Stephen Douglas of Illinois, ordered Lee to
bring law and order to Kansas.
The Compromise of 1856 took much of the energy out of the Free Soil
movement, since few Northerners cared about what might transpire in
Kansas or New Mexico if the Upper Great Plains were free of Negroes.
John Brown had a plan of moving back East and instigating a general
slave uprising. While on a trip to raise men, munitions and money for
his grand project, John Brown visited Amherst College. Amid great
scandal and uproar, Emily Dickenson ( a grand-daughter of the college's
founder ) deserted her family to join the rebellion against the Slave
Power in the West.
A small woman with a poor complexion and recurring urinary infections,
Emily Dickenson was very likely not a lover of Chet "Axeman" Arthur.
When she was not conducting slaves on the Underground Railroad, she
drove wagons for an income. Her vocabulary coarsened by rough companions
and the idiom of her new trade, Dickenson was the Rabeleis of the
Frontier, initiating a new and ultimately respected phase of American
literature.
Lee caught up to Brown in 1859 in Platte City, Missouri, and Arthur and
Brown escaped the federal troopers with Arthur firing a rifle while
Dickenson drove a team of spirited horses. Their leader, John Brown, was
dead from a dozen bullets, and Arthur assumed leadership of the remnents
of the gang.
Emily Dickenson stopped her activities as an outlaw in 1865, when a
bomb thrown by a Pinkerton man into a beseiged house took off her leg.
(That bomb killed Hard Harry Gardiner, Arthur's right hand man.)
Imprisoned until her death in 1882, the defiant Dickenson put her
thoughts to writing. Her long poem _The Ballad of Missouri State
Penitentiary_ is still in print, and, of course, her novel _Mandingo_ is
widely considered the single greatest novel in American literature. (My
colleague, Professor Ernest Hemingway of the Interlochen department of
English, is the editor of the definitive and uncensored edition of that
novel.)
Police pressure drove Arthur and his associates from Kansas to the new
state of New Mexico. Arthur was the mentor of America's most notorious
generation of criminals --- William Bonney aka Billy the Kid, the Earp
Brothers (Wild Wyatt and Murderous Morgan), Dock Spurlock, and
Scribbling Sam Clemons. The Axeman's Gang robbed banks and trains, but
their long term purpose was to liberate slaves and send them to safety
over the border to Mexico. No fewer than 5,000 Negroes, and probably
more, found freedom in Mexico, thanks to what was reputably the fiercest
band of outlaws in the world.
But the lawmen had greater resources on their side. US Marshal Frank
James and his deputy, Jesse, his younger brother, lead the final
campaign against New Mexican crime and cornered Arthur in the
Superstition Mountains. At the stone monolith of Arthur's Mountain
(vulgarly called Arthur's Member) was the last shot-out of a long and
spectacular career. Arthur's Last Stand of July 2, 1881, is an icon
of American history, so I do not understand why the scriptwriters felt
it necessary to give the posse cannons. In the kenneys, as in real life,
gatlingers should be the way that Arthur is blasted to pieces.
Since there are no Negroes in America since the passage of the
Europeanization Laws of the 1930s sent such ex-Americans to Garvey's
Blackland colony in Africa, I understand why Lake Charles in not anxious
to emphasize the ideology that motivated Arthur and many of his
companions. In hindsight, they fought a pathetic and foredoomed crusade
whose only trace are the ghetto negros of Mexican metropolitan areas. I
suppose that is why the script people gave Arthur an ahistorical grudge
against slavery over a failed farm rather than bringing back long
buried controversies.
Yours Truly,
Horace Quimby
10001 Lesage Avenue
Lake Charles, Louisiana
Professor Horace P. Quimby
History Department
Interlochen Academy
Marquette, Michigan
June 5, 1958
Dear Professor Quimby:
We thank you for acting as historical advisor for our kenny on the life
on Chet Arthur. There have been many depictions of the Wild West and
its legends, but we want this production to be extra-exceptional in all
ways.
Ben Seigel has been signed as Chet, and he'll be matched with one of the
hottest kenny starlets of Lake Charles. We want the epic love story of
Chet Arthur and Emily Dickenson put down deep as it has never been put
down before.
Please send us your notes no later than the first of July, so that
revisions to the script can be done before the middle of July.
Sincerely Yours,
s/ Robie
Howard Robard Hughes
ENC. Script of _Axeman Arthur_
=============================
June 21, 1958
Dear Mr. Hughes:
There are a few revisions that could be made to bring history to this
kenny, and none of them should increase your budget.
The real Chester Alan Arthur was not a small farmer who lost his farm
when slave plantations outproduced him agriculturally. Arthur was the
son of a Baptist minister and was a college graduate and lawyer of
Albany, New York. Arthur's antipathy to slavery was not a vendetta
against slaveowners who were more successful than he was. It was a
moral understanding that the subjugation of any man -- even colored men
and women-- was morally wrong and unfit for America.
From the script, the audience might think that Arthur was native to
Kansas. Actually, he was a lawyer from New York State who traveled to
Kansas in 1856 to be an opponent to settlers who wanted Kansas admitted
as a slave state. The same was true for his partner, Henry Gardiner.
The compromise of 1856 (when President Davis traded the admission of
Kansas as a slave state for a guarantee that only the New Mexico
territory would have a slave code) was repugnant to Arthur's
sensibilities. In later years, Arthur often reflected that he should
have returned to New York as he had intended. But a posse of slave
catchers accused the "New York City lawyers" of stealing slaves and
stopped the carriage when Arthur embarked on his journey back East.
Arthur and Gardiner would maintain that, at the time of their initial
arrest, they had never taken a slave from his master. Arthur stated
that the posses commissioned by the Lecompton government were on a
rampage to expunge Free Soil sentiments from Kansas by foul means. In
Arthur's story, he and Gardiner were whipped almost to death by the
"slavers" but were rescued by John Brown and his boys. The documents
at Lecompton mention no maltreatment and cite Arthur and Gardiner as
members of the Brown gang.
Outside of dime novels, there is no evidence that Arthur used the axe he
carried as a weapon, much less that he threw his ax like a tomahawk or
boomerang and killed foes at a distance. Arthur used an axe to break
diown doors and break the fetters of the slaves he freed.
It is not true that Jefferson Davis ordered Colonel Lee to Kansas to
chase Arthur. At the time, Arthur was one of Brown's obscure
lieutenants. Davis served only a single term as President (1853 to
1857). Davis' successor, Stephen Douglas of Illinois, ordered Lee to
bring law and order to Kansas.
The Compromise of 1856 took much of the energy out of the Free Soil
movement, since few Northerners cared about what might transpire in
Kansas or New Mexico if the Upper Great Plains were free of Negroes.
John Brown had a plan of moving back East and instigating a general
slave uprising. While on a trip to raise men, munitions and money for
his grand project, John Brown visited Amherst College. Amid great
scandal and uproar, Emily Dickenson ( a grand-daughter of the college's
founder ) deserted her family to join the rebellion against the Slave
Power in the West.
A small woman with a poor complexion and recurring urinary infections,
Emily Dickenson was very likely not a lover of Chet "Axeman" Arthur.
When she was not conducting slaves on the Underground Railroad, she
drove wagons for an income. Her vocabulary coarsened by rough companions
and the idiom of her new trade, Dickenson was the Rabeleis of the
Frontier, initiating a new and ultimately respected phase of American
literature.
Lee caught up to Brown in 1859 in Platte City, Missouri, and Arthur and
Brown escaped the federal troopers with Arthur firing a rifle while
Dickenson drove a team of spirited horses. Their leader, John Brown, was
dead from a dozen bullets, and Arthur assumed leadership of the remnents
of the gang.
Emily Dickenson stopped her activities as an outlaw in 1865, when a
bomb thrown by a Pinkerton man into a beseiged house took off her leg.
(That bomb killed Hard Harry Gardiner, Arthur's right hand man.)
Imprisoned until her death in 1882, the defiant Dickenson put her
thoughts to writing. Her long poem _The Ballad of Missouri State
Penitentiary_ is still in print, and, of course, her novel _Mandingo_ is
widely considered the single greatest novel in American literature. (My
colleague, Professor Ernest Hemingway of the Interlochen department of
English, is the editor of the definitive and uncensored edition of that
novel.)
Police pressure drove Arthur and his associates from Kansas to the new
state of New Mexico. Arthur was the mentor of America's most notorious
generation of criminals --- William Bonney aka Billy the Kid, the Earp
Brothers (Wild Wyatt and Murderous Morgan), Dock Spurlock, and
Scribbling Sam Clemons. The Axeman's Gang robbed banks and trains, but
their long term purpose was to liberate slaves and send them to safety
over the border to Mexico. No fewer than 5,000 Negroes, and probably
more, found freedom in Mexico, thanks to what was reputably the fiercest
band of outlaws in the world.
But the lawmen had greater resources on their side. US Marshal Frank
James and his deputy, Jesse, his younger brother, lead the final
campaign against New Mexican crime and cornered Arthur in the
Superstition Mountains. At the stone monolith of Arthur's Mountain
(vulgarly called Arthur's Member) was the last shot-out of a long and
spectacular career. Arthur's Last Stand of July 2, 1881, is an icon
of American history, so I do not understand why the scriptwriters felt
it necessary to give the posse cannons. In the kenneys, as in real life,
gatlingers should be the way that Arthur is blasted to pieces.
Since there are no Negroes in America since the passage of the
Europeanization Laws of the 1930s sent such ex-Americans to Garvey's
Blackland colony in Africa, I understand why Lake Charles in not anxious
to emphasize the ideology that motivated Arthur and many of his
companions. In hindsight, they fought a pathetic and foredoomed crusade
whose only trace are the ghetto negros of Mexican metropolitan areas. I
suppose that is why the script people gave Arthur an ahistorical grudge
against slavery over a failed farm rather than bringing back long
buried controversies.
Yours Truly,
Horace Quimby