My dismissal was the result of charges, trumped up, without any foundation in fact, maliciously concocted, and the outcome of as despicable, unjust, relentless, and bitter a persecution as ever disgraced the annals of our Army or any other. As was said at the time, it was better to sacrifice me than give publicity to an army scandal by trying and punishing the very party who had been guilty of incest with his own daughter. I was victimized; the other (God save the mark!) honorably retired. It was an infinite, dastardly outrage.
The officer who preferred the charges against me, on which I was dismissed, threatened, after the President had disapproved the proceedings, findings, and sentence in the former case, that he would follow me until he “did me up.” His charges were false and born of malice. The trial [the Dakota court-martial of 1880] was a mockery, the result a travesty upon justice, and an indelible wrong. I was misled and curtailed in my defense. There were several witnesses whose testimony was material and pertinent; but a prominent member of the court asked if the evidence of these witnesses would be in the same line as that already in—to effect that I was not under influence of liquor, as charged—and when the accused answered yes, he said it would only be a waste of the time of the court, and that he was satisfied. I concluded that he was satisfied of my innocence and that the other members were so, too; therefore did not call these material witnesses. This evidence would have established the proof of my innocence beyond any question; it would have given an overwhelming preponderance in my behalf. I consider and submit that this was a great wrong … .
This court was bent on conviction. Congressman Perkins’s paper at the time gave as an item that members of the court in Sioux City, en route to Yankton, expressed the opinion that it would probably go bad with Geddes on account of a former trial in Texas. This alone disqualified them to sit on the trial … .
During these last eighteen years I have suffered under this great wrong and injustice. Not an hour or day all those years that this outrage and disgrace have not been present; not a night that I have not in prayer appealed to Him that this burning stigma might be wiped from my name. It has covered me as with a pall of blackest night. In attempts to secure honorable position it has, Banquo like, risen to thrust me back and hold me down. It broke an aged, beloved, and Christian father’s heart. It has deeply hurt and pained dearly loved sisters, brothers, and friends, but thank God, never alienated their affection and respect, for they have ever believed in my innocence, truth, and manliness. Were I gifted with the language of a Milton or Macaulay I could not express the deep oh, the bitter humiliation and mortification of those eighteen long, saddened, heavy-laden years. Death has taken father, mother, brothers, sisters, a son, and two lovely little daughters. I believe that an all-merciful God has sustained me with the consciousness of my innocence and truth.
I was proud of my profession. My family for generations were soldiers. From 16 to 35 I had given my every thought to love of our flag and its service. Therefore it is that I appeal to the Congress and to the President to right as far as possible this great wrong; to take away from an honored name this blot; to at least, now that I am marching the downgrade of life to the inevitable “taps,” by this act of clemency, kindness, and justice make that forced march as light and easy as possible, enabling me at last to leave to wife and children a name cleared of dishonor and stain … .
With depth of feeling inexpressible, I appeal to you to remove this life sentence.13
At the time of the Texas court-martial Geddes was living apart from his wife, Florence Towers Geddes, and had no children. It seems impossible that Mrs. Geddes knew nothing of her husband’s philandering, or that, since they lived apart, they were a happy couple. In fact, Geddes had acknowledged his marital unhappiness in the 1879 trial, and Lillie’s testimony indicated that it was common knowledge at Fort Stockton: “I had been told that he did not love his wife and had been made to marry her.” Yet he and Mrs. Geddes apparently began to live together after his dismissal and relocation in Washington and had, in addition to the three children who died, a son and three daughters. Florence Geddes died in 1910.
The Senate Committee on Military Affairs followed its counterpart in the House in favorably reporting out a bill to authorize the President to place Geddes on the retired list with the rank of captain. Its report pronounced that “a great injustice has been done Captain Geddes in the action of the court-martial and that a full investigation of the facts will demonstrate to impartial men that his restoration to the Army, with the rank held at the time of his dismissal, is an act of simple justice.”14
In support of this action Geddes’s old commanding officer, now Brigadier General William R. Shafter, once more wrote of that long-ago time:
While under my command Colonel Geddes’s conduct was always exemplary … . Colonel Geddes’s war service is well known. He was one of the youngest officers of his grade in the Army, and as a mere boy, served as a commissioned officer with distinction.15
The passage of this bill in 1901 changed Geddes’s dishonorable discharge to retirement. The only real justice would have been the continuation of his military career without prejudice, but clearing his name was at least a partial reparation. He died in Washington in 1921 and is buried next to his wife in Arlington National Cemetery.
After his retirement from active duty in 1879, Louis Orleman immediately left the state of Texas and took up a position as military instructor at Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York, where he remained, rising to the position of commandant in 1890. In that year, according to a surviving catalogue, the school had 130 students. It was inspected by an officer on the Inspector General’s staff who gave Orleman an enthusiastic evaluation:
The military professorship is in charge of First Lieutenant Louis H. Orleman, U.S. Army (retired), who is an officer of fine ability, and zealous and conscientious in the discharge of the duties confided to him. He gives entire satisfaction to the authorities, and, so far as I can see, they have every reason to congratulate themselves on the possession of so industrious an officer.16
One of Orleman’s younger daughters graduated from the Academy in 1897, the only female student in the class. She went on to Cornell.17
Orleman’s health began to deteriorate early in the twentieth century. In 1901 he asked to be relieved of his Peekskill duties because of “facial paralysis, neuralgia of the head, and heart trouble.” 18 In 1906 he requested permission from the Army to leave the United States for health reasons. Five years later, his daughter Daisy wrote to the Adjutant General that her father’s mental condition was “disturbed.” He had been talking about resigning, but Daisy wanted the Adjutant General to understand that this was “the result of his condition” rather than a genuine intention.19 By 1916 his son Carl, by then acting as his guardian, referred to Orleman as “mentally incapacitated.”20 He was to live another twenty years in that condition.
When Orleman died at Atlantic City on December 27, 1936, at the age of ninety-four, he was described in a newspaper account as leaving four daughters, two of whom—Daisy and Violet—were physicians.21
Lillie, who had settled in Peekskill, was also named as a survivor. She remained single until late in life and evidently had lived with her family until the late 1920s, when she married a widower eight years her junior. By 1935 the Peekskill directory listed her as a widow.22
Lillie’s life between her role in the Geddes trial and her late marriage generated no, publicity. Given the drinking that was observed in Texas, she might have been a quiet alcoholic all those years, but this is mere speculation. Did her father’s abuse continue? Were possible suitors repelled by what they knew or conjectured about her situation? Geddes had testified that Lillie had told her father that she would never marry without first telling her prospective husband what her father had done to her, whereupon Orleman had replied, “You little fool! Nobody will know it—nobody can tell it.” Whatever her later life, in 1879 Lillie was the victim of a code that was officially devoted to pro
tecting women but was willing to sacrifice them for male satisfactions. Even if her father had been innocent of “criminal intimacy” with Lillie, he might have placed her good above his own desire to defeat Geddes with public vindication. Having already been exonerated of wrongdoing by the retiring board, he might have eschewed charges against Geddes that would subject his daughter to the painful experience of testifying before the all-male court—not to mention those repeated gynecological examinations.
In his determination to triumph over his adversary, Orleman acted as Wade Hampton did when he circulated explicit charges against James Henry Hammond, the uncle who had abused Hampton’s daughters. Hammond’s biographer writes that “out of either allegiance to the former governor or more general feelings of delicacy, most legislators had declined to examine the materials Hampton had made available.” While Hammond rode out the storm, Hampton’s daughters were ruined: “Their father had won a victory of sorts … but the father triumphed at his children’s expense: Harriet, Catherine, Ann, and Caroline were far more vulnerable than their uncle.”23
If Lillie paid the price of victimization, the sister she had wanted to shield was a success. According to her entry in the Dictionary of American Biography, Daisy Orleman Robinson became a prominent dermatologist and surgeon as well as a wife. Among a number of achievements, she was decorated by the French government for her work in France during World War I.
Geddes’s defense attorney in Texas, George Paschal, went on to become a leading citizen of San Antonio and to have a successful public career there. He was elected district attorney in 1885, the same year in which his was the first signature on a telegram signed by members of the San Antonio bar recommending that John Clous be promoted to major.aq An obituary notice described Paschal as “the best prosecuting attorney the district had ever had … [he] made a statewide reputation as a fearless and fearful prosecutor and state’s advocate, his very name being a terror to all evil-doers, and his record of convictions being one of the largest in the annals of courts of law.”24
By the time of his death in 1894 at the age of forty-six, Paschal had established a reputation for two qualities, legal brilliance and courage: “[He] had no fear to do what he thought was right.” Eventually he served as a popular mayor who inaugurated “a great many improvements and many radical reforms.” A victim of Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment, he died unexpectedly in office. Paschal was attended in his final illness by Dr. George Cupples, one of the San Antonio doctors who had testified on virginity for the defense at the Geddes trial.25
General E.O.C. Ord found himself abruptly retired by President Hayes on December 6, 1880—much against his will and that of the people of Texas, where his vigorous pursuit of border raiders had made him popular. It was now a different era, and even his old friend Sherman was no longer interested in defending Ord against the criticisms of the Army’s second general, Philip Sheridan. When Sheridan wrote “that it is my belief that we cannot have any quiet or peace on the Rio Grande, as long as Ord is in command of Texas,” Sherman promptly agreed with him: “I am more than convinced that a cool and less spasmodic man in Texas would do more to compose matters on that border than the mere increase of the cavalry.”26
Ord’s beautiful daughter Bertie, who married the Mexican general Gerónimo Trevino in 1880, died in 1883, the same year as her father.
When George Armes appeared at Geddes’s trial as a witness for the defense, he noted that his testimony seemed to offend Judge Advocate Clous: “I am satisfied,” he told his diary, “he will watch his chance to get me the first opportunity that occurs.”27 This was not long in coming. Three months later, Clous arrived at Fort Stockton in connection with a prospective court-martial of Armes. “Clous is going among my men,” Armes wrote, “manufacturing all the evidence he possibly can to win the case. He has sufficient control of those negro soldiers to make them swear to anything that he may fix up.”28
A week later Armes was accusing Clous of “an underhanded and villainous act,” an attempt to obtain evidence by subterfuge. A month later he wrote that many had predicted his acquittal, “but knowing Clous as I do and his underhanded way of managing cases and picking his courts, I feel that I have been found guilty … . Clous is a man I cannot expect justice and fair dealings from, and having full control of the court, he handles the members as if they were his puppets.”29
Since Armes had as much genius for getting out of trouble as for getting into it, he continued to survive encounters with military law and to meet his enemy in new judicial proceedings. On July 31, 1880, he wrote in his diary about the beginning of still another trial, “I objected to Clous on the ground that he was not a gentleman, or a man who could be relied upon under any circumstances .”30
Eventually, even luck and political pull were not enough to keep Armes in good standing. After “twenty-three arrests, eight trials,” and a sanity hearing, he was forcibly retired.31 Once his stormy army career was over, Armes settled in the Washington area and made a fortune in real estate. His dislike of John Clous endured beyond his separation from the military. When he heard that Clous might be promoted, he wrote to the Secretary of War:
Believing you do not wish to reward dishonest persons, who happen to be shielded by a uniform, is one of my reasons for calling your attention to a character who is a disgrace to the service, and at the same time manages to escape the punishment he justly deserves.32
His fellow diarist, John Bigelow, Jr., continued an army career of solid accomplishment. He finally saw action in 1898 in the Cuban campaign, where he was wounded and awarded the Silver Star for gallantry. After his retirement in 1904 he taught French, studied strategy, and wrote books. His Principles of Strategy was reprinted as late as 1968.33
Victorio, the Apache who had bedevilled Mexico and the Southwest for so long, was finally killed in Mexico on October 29, 1880. The fight on January 29, 1881, against the remnants of his band was the last Indian battle fought on Texas soil.
Fort Stockton, having outlived its purpose, was abandoned in 1886. The town remains, now a community of 8,524.ar Like so many frontier communities, it never achieved the large-scale development and population dreamed of in the heyday of expansion. Today Fort Stockton has modest tourist attractions, among them a larger-than-life statue of a roadrunner and “Historic Fort Stockton” —a few original buildings, some that have been reconstructed, and the old fort cemetery. The Texas State Travel Guide notes that the birth and death dates on the gravestones here show that few people lived beyond the age of forty, an “indication of hardships among those who opened and settled this harsh country.”34
And Clous. Three years after the Geddes case he served as the judge advocate in a court-martial that would live on in history, the trial of the first black graduate of West Point and first black army officer, Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper. While Flipper had been acting commissary of subsistence at Fort Davis, a sum of government money in his charge disappeared, and he was tried for embezzlement and conduct unbecoming (because of misleading statements he made about the money). Flipper believed that a cabal of prejudiced white officers had taken the money, a hypothesis that seems plausible but could not be proved. Although no one thought he had actually embezzled the missing funds, Flipper was found guilty of prevaricating about the incident and was cashiered—a harsh penalty since there were instances of admitted white embezzlers in the Army who had received lesser punishment. The case lived on as an example of racism in the American military until its final disposition in 1999.as35
Clous’s rise was steady, if not spectacular. From 1886 to 1890, he served as assistant judge advocate general, the next in line to head the Judge Advocate General’s office. Then he was an instructor at West Point from 1890 to 1895. At the very end of his career, when he had reached mandatory retirement age, he was appointed Judge Advocate General for a few days so that he could retire from that position. He died in 1908 at the age of seventy-one.36
For a man as methodically ambitious and
as “zealous” as John Clous, not attaining the highest position in his field until it meant nothing more than a few days served to inflate his pension must have been a cruel disappointment.
In Clous’s voluminous army file there is nothing for the year 1879.
EPILOGUE:
INCEST AND JUSTICE
A Scots gentleman named Bell Macdonald who subscribed to papers from all over the British Isles between 1839 and 1862 amassed a nine-million-word collection of clippings related to police and trial accounts. In addition to violent crime, these newspaper stories enshrine “a compendium of vice, including seduction, rape, adultery, transvestitism, illegal abortion, prostitution, bigamy, sadism, and indecent exposure.”1 Everything but incest. Yet at the same time, the practice flourished in nineteenth-century pornography: “The violation of man’s sacred taboo, especially on the part of virile father and pubescent daughter, offers dependable pairings sure to keep the reader’s interest at a high pitch.”2 But not until the 1970s, almost a century after the Geddes court-martial, did incest begin to appear in public with increasing frequency: on the criminal court docket, in scholarly investigation, and in a spate of books and articles, both popular and learned. Most state statutes against incest received their current formulation in the 1970s.3
Until then, incest was generally brought up and dismissed as the supreme taboo of humanity. In Peter Gay’s words, “civilization … is among other things a moat against incest.”4 But however prohibited in practice, incest has mystified and provoked the attention of numerous fields of inquiry from anthropology to psychoanalysis. It has been theoretically explained in countless ways, although the prominent sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson wrote in 1983 that “to a large degree the taboo has defeated all such attempts to understand it.”5
Ungentlemanly Acts: The Army's Notorious Incest Trial Page 20