Class conflict on the rails

HELL ON Wheels, a show whose first season ended in December, managed to win my enduring interest for reasons that no other "Western" movie or show I've previously seen could.

Though most of its characters are fictional, Hell on Wheels accurately captures the "progress" of rapacious westward capitalism and the many social conflicts born of the Civil War. [Note: The following paragraphs contain multiple "spoilers."]

Many stories unfold, including the real-life exploits of railroad baron Thomas C. Durant, owner of the Union Pacific railroad and architect of the later infamous Credit Mobilier scandal, one of many corruption scandals of the Reconstruction period. Other major players in this drama include former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon, whose wife is murdered by Union troops in Meridian, Mississippi during the war.

Perhaps what sets this Western apart is its look at emerging class and racial conflict sprung from slave emancipation.

Though the setting of Hell on Wheels is far from the violence-wracked Reconstruction South of the same period, the building of the Union Pacific captures the conflict between freed slaves seeking better conditions out West and the waves of European immigrants who competed with them for work.

Musician-actor Common plays Elam Ferguson, a former slave whose struggles against racism and inequality within the Hell on Wheels settlement come to represent the many more emancipated slaves working for the Union Pacific.

As the series progresses, the fates of Bohannon and Ferguson become entangled in a bizarre, constantly clashing relationship. Moreover, the consequences for Native Americans form a huge part of the backdrop in the show.

As the opportunistic Durant struggles with the costs of building his railroad, the resistance of the Cheyenne, whose land he intends to take at all costs, constantly besets him. At the outset of the series, Joseph Black Moon, son of a Cheyenne chief, converts to Christianity under the guidance of Rev. Nathaniel Cole, a former abolitionist who rode with John Brown in Kansas before the war.

Joseph struggles throughout the series with his new identity as a Christian and the racism and violence against his people. What brings these and other characters together is the actual "Hell on Wheels" encampment, the name deriving from actual tent towns that followed the construction of the railroad, including saloons, makeshift churches, houses for prostitutes and other business seekers.

THE SERIES begins with former slave owner Bohannon venturing west in search of the former Union troops who raped and murdered his wife.

As he arrives at Hell on Wheels, the foreman, a former federal officer involved in the murder, gives him a job as overseer of the all-Black "cut crew," who prepared the land for laying track. After a Black laborer is murdered because of the intransigence of the foreman, his friend Elam Ferguson seeks vengeance, killing the foreman before Cullen can get the name of the other Union troops involved in the murder of his wife.

This sets in motion a complex relation between former slave and former slave owner that escalates throughout the series. Believed to be the foreman's killer, Bohannon is apprehended by Durant's authorities. He manages to escape and negotiates with Durant, who makes him the new foreman.

Conflict ensues between Cullen and Elam as the all-Black "cut crew" protests their being subject to a former slave owner. Later in the series, their struggle escalates into a boxing match between Cullen and Elam, set up by Durant to distract his workforce from lack of pay.

Parts of this interesting relationship are questionably accurate. According to the story, an older female slave had raised Bohannon, who eventually grew into an owner who treated his slaves well. He freed his slaves before the war started in 1861 and fought for the Confederacy until the end.

Throughout the series, he is portrayed as a more "enlightened" foreman in contrast with the racist Irish, seeking only what Durant expects of him: the building of the railroad. Cullen and Elam grow closer when Bohannon stops Irish laborers from lynching Elam over his sexual encounters with a white woman.

It is entirely plausible that Cullen Bohannon was the (rare) kind of slave owner the story suggests, not necessarily plagued by the violent racial hatred exhibited by Durant's immigrant labor, most of whom came from poor northern cities where racism against Blacks was as virulent as anywhere else.

I suspect this was not at all the reality for Union or Central Pacific foremen, however.

After a band of Cheyenne warriors derail a train, Cullen asks Elam to join him and a group of federal troops to hunt them down at Durant's request. Tension builds between the former Union officer and Cullen as they clash over their involvement at the battle of Antietam in 1862.

The memory of the still-recent war remains a constant point of discord throughout the series.

And yet, even if a de facto army of liberation during the war, afterwards the Union Army's guns would be fixed on the removal and extermination of the plains and other western Indians, the Cheyenne, Lakota, Apache, among others. Such an endeavor united northerners, southerners, as well as former slaves in some instances.

At some points, I felt the portrayal of Cheyenne resistance questionable. The first episode features the massacre of a Union Pacific surveying encampment by Cheyenne, leaving the impression of unprovoked killings, though this seems unlikely to have been the intention of the producers. Critics of the show have also pointed out that Chinese labor, so instrumental in the building of the transcontinental railroad, is entirely absent.

Chinese workers were mostly employed by the Central Pacific, which finally met the Union Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. The producers have stated an interest in joining the Central Pacific story, begun in California and building eastward, with that of the Union Pacific in future seasons of the show.

Criticisms aside, Hell on Wheels captures the contradictions and conflicts of people thrown into a chaotic period of relentless capitalist development and the political corruption surrounding the profit bonanza of America's first gilded age. It allows us a sympathetic visual of the resistance of Native Americans to the blatant robbing of their land and livelihoods at the behest of the United States government.

It is a story of class conflict and racial strife in a dramatically altered United States following a revolutionary Civil War. It will be a must-watch show this fall as the second season debuts.
Greg Love, from the Internet