Rifles for Watie

Harold Keith published Rifles for Watie in 1957; the book earned a Newbery Medal in 1958. The novel mixes historical fact and fiction, and tells the story of Jefferson Davis Bussey, a 16-year-old Kansas boy who enlists in the Union army in 1861 and serves until the war ends. Jeff begins his service as an infantryman. He falls in love with a Confederate girl and eventually becomes a scout, infiltrating the rebel camp. He joins the army led by Stand Watie, a Cherokee colonel and historical figure who fought for the Confederacy, spying to learn information to aid the Union cause. Ultimately, Jeff exposes a Union officer who is betraying the Federal army by selling rifles to Watie and his men. Jeff grows from an optimistic boy who wants nothing more than to see the excitement of battle to a young adult who understand the horrors and injustices of war. Keith prefaces the book by informing readers that the main story, including the plot to illegally sell weapons to Stand Watie, is fictional. However, “[t]he eagerness of northern manufacturers to sell arms to the seceding states resulted in a traffic so common that it became a national scandal” (8). Keith adds that he “found it necessary to alter the lives of [major historical figures] only when they came in direct contact with [his] hero, Jeff Bussey” (8).

In his Author’s Note, Keith, who lived his entire life in Oklahoma, writes that “Rifles for Watie was faithfully written against the historical backdrop of the conflict in this seldom-publicized, Far-Western theater” (6). He devoted several years to research, reading journals kept by soldiers who fought in Kansas and the surrounding states depicted in the novel, visiting historical sites, and conducting interviews with veterans of the Civil War. Two of the soldiers he interviewed fought in units led by General Stand Watie. While writing his master’s thesis in history at the University of Oklahoma, Keith interviewed on multiple occasions an Oklahoma man named George W. Mayes who knew Watie personally. The fictional story presents historical figures through the eyes of a naïve, young soldier. The novel humanizes Civil War-era leaders that have become either mythicized or forgotten by time. Additionally, Rifles for Watie depicts the involvement of Native American tribes in the war, an aspect of the Civil War that is often erased or overlooked. Through Jeff’s perspective, the novel questions the efficacy of war as a method for promoting peace, and the problems with enlisting the young and innocent to fight and die.

Rifles for Watie shows the brutality of war and the realities of serving in a combat zone as opposed to the romanticized myth of war as adventure or as a rite of passage. Although Rifles for Watie and its protagonist ultimately stand firmly on the side of the Union, the novel offers critical generosity in its portrayal of those who fought for and supported the Confederacy. As an undercover Union scout, Jeff lives with the rebel army for over a year. Although he begins the novel with the belief that the Confederate army is lawless and malicious, he learns over the course of the war that the rebels are just as human and passionate about their beliefs as he is. In the final chapter, Jeff reflects that he “thought the South had been wrong to start the war, but now that it was over and the Union restored, he didn’t want to see the rebels punished unreasonably. He hoped the country would be united again, bigger and stronger than ever, North and South” (382). The novel presents war as a necessary evil, criticizing the tendency of those who fight and disagree to dehumanize one another.