..

Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy

of the movies and TV is actually the New West of American development. Just inland of the Tidewater was the land of the logger and the grazier from the beginning of America. In the Piedmont of Virginian and The Carolinas, in the Wiregrass of Georgia, the the Uplands of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and ultimately Texas. Texas is when the ever-wandering frontier herder intersected with mass communications and the beginning of modern transportation. The “cowboy” of the late 1600s in the Piedmont of Virginia brought us Bacon’s Rebellion over the Tidewater aristocrat’s control of the land, bruising terms of indenture, and a lackadaisical attitude toward Indian incursions on the frontier. The same guy’s descendents joined with the last of the Mohicans in the uniquely American contribution to the French and Indian War. His descendents pressed further over the Appalachians and took a little time out to be rangers and such in the Revolution.

After the Civil War, the cowboy might be one of those itinerant herders or he might be a recently freed slave or former USCT, many of the cowboys, and much of the Cavalry that came of the hill in just the nick of time were Black, and many more were former Confederates; some with nothing to go back to, some who’d decided to study war no more and who went to the Yankees who would allow them to serve in US frontier units. Some cowboys were even Indians.

With the end of The War, the telegraph, the mass distribution magazine and newspaper, the Cowboy became the American icon. But in reality, he was the archetypal American from the very beginnning; not the fortunate son or minor nobility of the Coast and the Tidewater, but the hard handed man who made the uniquely American identity in the hard land of the frontier.

But as Waylon said:
Mammas don’t let your babies be cowboys/
Make ‘em be lawyers and doctors and stuff.

And he goes on to sing about how they’ll always
Play them ole guitars and drive them ole trucks.

Although I’ve watched a slew of Clint Eastwood movies with my husband that have made me see many of the same qualities in him. I loved how you characterized today’s military as the modern day version of the cowboy spirit.

When I was a child, my dad took us to see John Wayne’s movies and I used to see my dad as in the same group of men as John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Mitchum, all the greats of the silver screen. My dad fulfills all the cowboy code criteria and is a World War II veteran of the Army, 110th Mountain. He is my ideal of a good man.

My favortie cowboy was and still is my Dad. He was born in OK in a small town that no longer exists, went on a cattle drive at age 16, served during WWII, he could rope the cattle and I saw him do it often. John Wayne was the cowboy I watched on TV with my Dad. There is more than just working cattle in a true cowboys heart there is the set of principles and the code they live by that makes us all proud to have had the honor to know them. I also watched Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry… I still watch reruns of some of those shows! We could use a few more cowboys in this country today. I am so thankful for our Veterans and those currently serving who stick to the same code the cowboys did!