Ungentlemanly Acts Read online

  THE COMMANDER OF FORT STOCKTON

  When Major McLaughlen became ill early in 1879, he was replaced as commanding officer of Fort Stockton by Lieutenant Colonel Matthew M. Blunt. Neither of the judgmental Fort Stockton diarists liked Blunt. True to form, Captain Armes dismissed him as “a cowardly sneak and an imbecile,” while Lieutenant Bigelow preferred charges against Blunt for having reprimanded him in front of enlisted men. Blunt had taken an extended leave shortly afterward, and the charges appear to have gone astray in departmental headquarters, either intentionally or by chance. Bigelow seems to have accepted lack of closure on what he regarded as Blunt’s insult, but he continued to make disparaging remarks about the post’s commanding officer in his diary. On one occasion “the Col’s weakness made me inclined to take him by the nape of the neck & shake him.” Beyond his personal antipathy for the man, Bigelow chafed under the command of an infantry officer who, he felt, knew nothing about the needs of cavalry.53

  Having to testify in the Geddes trial must have been a distasteful business for Blunt, who was called first by the prosecution and then by the defense. It had been to Blunt that all three parties—Lieutenant Orleman, Captain Geddes, and Lillie Orleman in succession—had first officially told their stories.

  As a prosecution witness, Blunt dutifully recalled these events. On March 12, around 5 p.m., Orleman had come to Blunt with his story, which stressed the immediate danger of Geddes’s abduction of Lillie that evening. Blunt responded by sending his adjutant, Lieutenant Sweet, to tell Geddes that he could not leave on the stage that night. Geddes came to Blunt around 6 p.m., accompanied by Friedlander. He told his version of events and Blunt asked him no questions. Around 8:30 p.m. Lillie came to Blunt’s quarters with her father. In her statement she “confessed an attachment” for Geddes and admitted to having written him two notes.aa About the “secret of her life in these notes,” Blunt said she told him she meant “the harsh treatment of her father, he refusing her permission to go out with the young officers, and keeping her in great restraint.” This first official telling of Lillie’s story was the only instance that her father’s treatment was characterized in this particular way—as restraining Lillie from seeing young officers. In her court testimony Lillie said that she had begged Geddes not to tell Blunt this secret, yet she herself told him.

  For the defense Blunt admitted that Geddes’s reputation for “truth and veracity” was good, and—most significant—that he would believe Geddes if he testified under oath. In the army hierarchy, Blunt’s opinion would ordinarily have carried great weight since he was the highest-ranking officer at Fort Stockton as well as the post’s commanding officer. Moreover, he had been the first to hear the antagonists’ competing stories. The best that the prosecution could do with Blunt’s testimony was to bring out that Geddes had not served under him for a long period of time—first in 1875 and then in 1879 for only the few months preceding the trial.

  The time and sequence of the three visits to Blunt on the evening of March 12 invite speculation. Orleman went alone at five. Three and a half hours after his initial visit, he returned with his daughter. What happened in the interval? Lillie had hoped to leave Fort Stockton with Geddes, but without speaking against her father. By going to Blunt, Orleman had moved events into a public sphere where Lillie must support her father or be the agent of his and the family’s ruin. Was time needed to persuade Lillie to support Orleman’s story? There was certainly time for the Orlemans to agree on the details and for Lillie to rehearse her own account before her meeting with Blunt.

  5

  THE DEFENSE

  Geddes began to testify on August 4, 1879, the fifty-fourth day of the trial. On June 27, he had written to an acquaintance at Fort Stockton to say that “Miss Lillie had tripped three times already on the direct examination, and that he would come out all right.”1 But by the time he was able to tell his story, his confidence must have been shaken by the court’s constant denial of defense objections and requests for witnesses.

  And by another matter: the openly partisan stance of the powerful departmental commander, General E.O.C. Ord. When faced with the possibility of another trial seven months after the conclusion of his court-martial, Geddes was to write that he couldn’t get a fair trial in a department commanded by General Ord.2 And he was probably right. His repeated efforts to bring Ord’s actions before the court, including calling Ord as a witness, were rebuffed. A special plea in bar of judgment made during the trial—in effect, a call for a mistrial—referred to two partisan gestures Ord had made. He had told Friedlander’s brother William, a post trader at Fort Clark, “that he should or ought to advise his brother Joseph Friedlander … to keep away from the accused as he might injure himself by having anything further to do with him, the accused, or words to that effect.” Further, the defense had learned that “during the progress of the present trial,” Ord had sent “a written or verbal message to 1st Lt. L. H. Orleman, Tenth Cavalry, expressive of his sympathy and that of his staff for Lieutenant Orleman and his family on account of sickness growing out of the incidents in this case.”3

  Ord had also furnished Geddes’s confidential deposition to the retiring board considering Orleman’s application to retire on grounds of disability. Here, too, Geddes tried to make this action a trial issue and was frustrated by the obvious solidarity of Ord’s subordinates, who testified that no violation of Geddes’s rights had occurred.4

  A man such as General Ord would have been repulsed by the very idea of incest, surely the most taboo subject in American discourse. Psychologically as well as institutionally, it would have been much simpler for Ord to believe that Orleman was a good father like himself rather than a man who would sexually abuse his own daughter, a child who—like Ord’s own daughter Bertie—had leaned with confidence against her father, the blue-coated stalwart protector.

  But there may have been a more overt and palpable reason for Ord to side so blatantly against Geddes—a reason that had nothing to do with Orleman. It had surely come to Ord’s attention before the arrival of Geddes’s deposition that the young captain had been having an affair with his commanding officer’s wife—a scandalous affair that produced a child and sent the errant wife back to her relatives in disgrace. The cuckold was an old and highly valued officer, Napoleon Bonaparte McLaughlen, a brigadier general of volunteers during the Civil War and an admired Indian fighter in the Department of Texas. R. G. Carter describes him as “with the exception of Captain Wirt Davis, probably the best pistol and carbine shot in the Army.”5

  Carter relates a dramatic incident in which McLaughlen faced down the renowned Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, who led his troops illegally across the border in 1873 to attack a village of raiding Indians. When McLaughlen discovered the lack of authorization for the raid, he told Mackenzie that had he known, he would not have gone. Mackenzie replied that he would have shot any officer who refused to cross the Rio Grande with him. At this McLaughlen “snapped out sharply, ‘That would depend, Sir, upon who shot first!’” Mackenzie did not reply.6

  The next year, however, McLaughlen commanded a battalion in Mackenzie’s famous fight with the Comanches in Palo Duro Canyon. Carter refers to him here as “a gallant officer of long service and much experience.”7

  By early 1879 McLaughlen was clearly feeling the effects of his years of campaigning and, possibly, his personal troubles as well. On January 9, Ord sent him a solicitous telegram admonishing him for risking his health by working too hard:

  When you left here Doctor Taylor told me you were too sick to go to duty, and should take a leave; and now, Dr. Price tells me that you are tasking yourself beyond a proper regard for your health. I assure you I appreciate the resolution which inspired you to stick like a true soldier to your post, but we want your services too much to let you remain, when your own good health requires a change.8

  Ord was getting McLaughlen away from Fort Stockton and away from the man who had recently cuckolded him.ab He assigned McLaughlen to cour
t-martial duty in San Antonio, to be followed by a lengthy leave, and replaced him at Fort Stockton with Colonel Matthew Blunt.

  At the very moment that the Geddes-Orleman affair was reaching a crisis point, a doctor found Major McLaughlen to be seriously ill:

  [He suffered] a serious impairment of the functions of his nervous system, accompanied with occasional attacks of loss of consciousness, loss of voluntary motion, and of sight at times. He has frequently fallen when walking and has a disposition to pitch forward when the eyes are closed. His ultimate recovery is very remote and uncertain. A change of climate and associations are imperative in my opinion.9

  The last sentence, and particularly the word “associations,” lingers: a man who had just discovered his wife’s infidelity might well need a change of climate and associations and might also display symptoms that suggest a psychological component.10

  McLaughlen was rarely well after 1879, and in January of 1882 the general who replaced Ord as commander of the Department of Texas, Christopher C. Augur, supported his request to retire, citing his “long and faithful service in the Army, and his impaired state of health.”ac At the same time, a medical report indicated “a general breaking up of his whole constitution, the result both of his age, 60 years, and his long and arduous service in the US Army.” Attacks of dizziness heralded “impending if not present cerebral disease.” In his retirement application McLaughlen cited his desire “to establish a home and provide for the education of his children.”11

  McLaughlen would have a limited time to do this. On October 27, 1884, his wife notified the Army that she had been made trustee of his estate, her husband having been declared insane and confined to an asylum. He died at this institution on January 27, 1887. In April of 1892 a lawyer for his wife wrote requesting information about his pension.

  Whether or not McLaughlen was its cause, Ord’s partisanship was a formidable obstacle to Geddes’s defense and must have dashed his spirits. Captain Armes noted in his diary entry for July 11 that he had spent most of the evening with Geddes in his room at the Menger Hotel. He then added, “There seems a determination to force him out of the Army if possible on the false charges they have trumped up against him.”12

  The major theme of Geddes’s testimony was his version of his relationship with Lillie, as described in his deposition and Lillie’s letters to him. But in addition to presenting himself as a rescuer, Geddes had to rebut the charge that his motive had been Lillie’s seduction. After their introduction at the hop—where he said that he made no overtures of any sort to her—he described her as having initiated a conversation when they were standing on their adjacent porches. He was reading a letter from his sister. She asked questions about the sister. She wished that she had had a big brother. When she learned that the sister was “eighteen or twenty, she volunteered that this was just about her own age, but—‘I have had the experience of a woman of forty.’” She said that she was unhappy, that she never expected to be happy again, and that the cause of her unhappiness was a secret “that concerned only herself and her family.”

  Geddes stressed that at this time his friendship was with both Orlemans: “Lieutenant Orleman was frequently in my quarters. We used to play chess together.” He denied that he had ever been alone with Lillie in her quarters during the period between the hop and the trip to Fort Davis. When he encountered her several times a day, on the porch they shared, the conversation was general.

  Geddes said Orleman had fondled his daughter’s breast during the February journey between the two forts, and that she had rebuked him for it with the words “Papa, quit!” In her testimony Lillie had denied this, but said that Geddes had pressed her knees between his under cover of a cape. Geddes claimed that it would have been

  a physical impossibility to do it without placing myself in such a position as would have been noticed by all in the party … . I should have had to move my whole body forward to the edge of the seat on which I was sitting, or else let my body drop down in a crouching position in order to cover the distance that intervened between the knees of the parties sitting opposite each other and in the usual position when riding.

  Neither side introduced actual measurements of the vehicle’s interior to prove or disprove Geddes’s assertion.

  Joseph Friedlander’s testimony gave yet another version of the trip to Fort Davis:

  Lieutenant Orleman reached down and put his hand under his daughter’s clothes and took hold of her leg. She, Miss Orleman, looked over at me and looked very much embarrassed and said, “Papa, don’t.” Lieutenant Orleman then said, “What a big leg you have, Lillie,” then told the following smutty story: “There was once a young couple just got married and the first night that they got into bed, he says to her, ‘Honey, put your little footsie-tootsies into my lap and let me warm them for you.’ About three months afterwards he says to her, ‘Keep your dirty old cold feet away.’” While this was being related, Miss Orleman was very much embarrassed as well as myself.

  Orleman was never asked if he had told such a story but it’s likely he would have denied it. The only point of agreement among the four occupants of the army ambulance was the seating arrangement.

  Geddes had not heard the story or seen Orleman grasp his daughter’s leg because he had been walking at the time as the ambulance slowly negotiated the road through Limpia Canyon. Taking a stage through the canyon in 1868, San Antonio Herald correspondent H. C. Logan noted that “the scenery in viewing the mountains is no longer just beautiful; it is sublimely magnificent.” 13 The ambulance arrived in the canyon at sunset, and Geddes remained outside for at least a half hour, easily keeping ahead of it as it negotiated the rough terrain.

  Friedlander also testified that Orleman touched his daughter’s breasts on the return trip to Fort Stockton: “He would take her in his arms, put his hands around her and fondle or rub her breasts.”

  Aside from the major areas of contention, there were some minor yet possibly significant discrepancies in the four stories. The Orlemans had said that on the trip to Fort Davis Geddes covered his and Lillie’s legs with his officer’s cape. Both Geddes and Friedlander testified that the legs of all four passengers were covered by a large buffalo robe. The overcoat worn by Lillie on the return trip was described by Geddes as being merely thrown around her shoulders and entirely unbuttoned, as opposed to her father’s account that she had been so encased that it would have been impossible for him to fondle her breasts.

  Geddes further testified that he did not call on Lillie Orleman during the time the party spent in Fort Davis: “I saw her, however, nearly every day to merely say good morning or good evening.” While there she had been escorted by Lieutenant Landon, and possibly by other officers. Another Fort Davis officer, Lieutenant Scott, testified that he had gone horseback riding with Lillie during her Fort Davis visit. Earlier in the month, when he had accompanied her to the Fort Stockton hop, he had urged her to get to know Geddes. At Fort Davis she told Scott that she had done so, and “had found Major Geddes all that I had said of him. He was a perfect gentleman in every sense of the word.” Lieutenant Landon testified that Lillie had complained that Geddes was distant toward her, “albeit a perfect gentleman.” Just as Orleman’s character witnesses repeatedly described him as a gentleman and an excellent father, so Geddes’s witnesses reiterated that he was a “perfect gentleman.”

  After the Fort Davis trip at the end of February, the next significant date was March 2, when Geddes supposedly heard and witnessed the activity that prompted his accusation. As officer of the day he was required to make periodic checks of post activities for a twenty-four-hour period. That evening he heard voices from the Orlemans’ bedroom. He had had suspicions before, “but actually did not credit them, did not think it possible and did not wish to harbor or entertain that such a thing as criminal intercourse was going on between them.”

  His curiosity piqued by what he had overheard, Geddes began his evening rounds by looking in the Orlemans’ bedroom
window. He saw Orleman in his nightshirt get on top of Lillie. They appeared to have intercourse. Orleman got off and seemed to be removing a “covering.”ad He asked Lillie if she wanted a drink and she replied “No.” Orleman then crossed the room and poured out a drink which he brought back to Lillie, telling her she would sleep better if she took it, which she did.

  The following morning Geddes made this speech to Lillie: “If ever you want a friend under any circumstances whatever and no matter for what, let me know. Don’t hesitate to call upon me, and I will do all or anything in my power to protect you and for you.” He also exclaimed, “Poor little girl, how I pity you.” Later, when they were alone together in her quarters—at her insistence, according to Geddes—she asked him what was wrong. He finally told her, “I don’t think your father is treating you right.” She pressed him for an explanation, and he added, “‘Your father is not treating you as a father should a daughter.’”

  At this slightly more explicit utterance, Lillie reportedly “jumped up from her chair, threw up her hands, and said, ‘My God, my secret is known,’ and would have fallen if I had not caught her. She cried very bitterly, hysterically repeating several times, ‘for God’s sake don’t tell. I knew it would come out at last.’” In Geddes’s account, Lillie quickly understood his reference to Lieutenant Orleman not treating her right and acknowledged its truth:

  Miss Orleman then told me with some preliminary remarks that this thing between herself and [her] father had been going on since she was thirteen years of age … . She said that he first brought it to her mind by talking to her about such things when she was eight years old, that he accomplished his purpose when she was thirteen.