#goodnight ref

[adigeon]

1ltreede replied to your post: villa-kulla: I love in the scene by the campfire...

And Goody is the one to tell Sam not to chase after the past. Because Goody has been there. He lives there. He literally can’t escape it and he doesn’t want Sam to suffer the same way he does

wow i truly love suffering

[adigeon]

hmmmmm so if goodnight had been 18 when he’d enlisted, assuming that happened the same year as the battle of bull run, he’d be 36 during the events of the movie, which, well, he sure looks older -- he’s 22 at the battle of bull run, then he’s 40 during the events of the movie, which, well, ethan hawke is older than that, but the character goodnight robicheaux woulda weathered years of confederate rations and sun exposure, of course he’d look old for his age, i could see that

(he’d be born in 1839 to have him 22 at bull run the first)

[adigeon]

idle louisiana tigers research/ref:

“[The original Louisiana Tigers] were a potpourri of high-society lawyers, merchants and planters’ sons, combined with low-life pickpockets, gamblers and thieves. One company, the Tiger Rifles, adopted the Zouave uniform and was said to have been partly recruited from New Orleans’ jails. Like other units raised in New Orleans, many of Wheat’s men were of foreign birth...Louisiana was the only Southern state that was predominantly Catholic, and it had the highest number of newly arrived immigrants. In fact, when the Civil War began nearly one half of New Orleans residents had been born outside the United States.” (x)

Louisiana battalions had a bad rap for drunken misbehavior, but the future Louisiana Tigers were considered the worst of all: “Coppens’s Zouaves had hijacked their troop train on the way to Virginia and looted Montgomery, Ala., while drunken members of the 14th Louisiana rioted and attacked their officers on the way to the Old Dominion. In the latter incident, the regiment’s officers had to kill several of the men to regain control. Nonetheless, Wheat’s Battalion [i.e. the Tigers] became the most notorious of all, creating so much mayhem in Virginia that Gen. Richard Taylor claimed “every commander desired to be rid of it.””

“Within six months after arriving in Virginia, members of Wheat’s Battalion engaged in a drunken street brawl in Lynchburg, fought the First Kentucky with rocks in camp, and lit into the 21st Georgia when the Georgians ran off with the Louisianians’ whiskey bottle.”

“ Later, when the army captured a large quantity of whiskey, the officers dumped it in the ditch to keep it away from the men. One soldier reported the Louisiana Tigers got down on their hands and knees 100 yards down the road and lapped the whiskey up like dogs as it ran by.”

“So terrible was the Tigers’ reputation that one poor Pennsylvania woman fainted from fright when the Rebel who was politely asking her for something to eat made the mistake of telling her he was from Louisiana.”

“The Louisianians fought in every major battle in the Virginia theater and they suffered appalling casualties. When Lee surrendered at Appomattox after four years of war, only 373 Tigers remained on duty.” 

“The Tigers made up two brigades in Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s corps, and at Antietam they were held in reserve a few hundred yards behind the front line that ran through D. R. Miller’s cornfield: Gen. William E. Starke’s brigade was positioned west of the Hagerstown Pike, while Gen. Harry T. Hays’s brigade was to the east.” (x)

During one part of the Battle of Antietam, “Of the approximately 100 men in Colonel Strong’s Sixth Louisiana [i.e. Tigers], 11 were killed and 41 wounded. Of the regiment’s 12 officers, 5 were dead and 7 wounded.”

Also at Antietam, “In the brief time Starke’s Louisiana brigade was engaged in the fight it lost 81 dead, while 189 were wounded and 17 were left missing. Some companies simply ceased to exist as fighting units; Sgt. Edmond Stephens reported that the Ninth Louisiana “is almost destroyed.” Stephens’s company had lost 20 of 32 men, and another company had 10 killed and 8 wounded among its 18 members.”

In the aftermath of Antietam, “One Union soldier wrote that “the piles of dead . . . were frightful.” After the battle, a path had to be made by dragging bodies out of the road and placing them along the fences. The Sixth Wisconsin’s Edward S. Bragg claimed, “I counted eighty Rebels in one row along the fence in front of us, lying so thick you could step from one to the other.”

[adigeon]

so if goodnight was one of the original louisiana tigers, he probably fought first at bull run (july 21 1861), killed kearny at chantilly (september 1 1862), then -- two and a half weeks later -- fought at antietam (september 17 1862), could have been enlisted all the way through ‘65. damn.