In News of the World, Captain Kidd travels through Reconstruction-era Texas while reflecting on a lifetime in service to the American military. In various wars since his youth, the elderly man has served as a runner and a manager of communications, tasks that play on his physical and professional skills and have given him a sense of purpose. However, in the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Kidd sees that although the Union army has prevailed in battle, it’s unable to solve the complex issues that caused the war, from slavery to discord among the states. This disillusioning experience forces the captain to reconcile the sense of purpose that war has given him personally with the ambiguous success of Reconstruction in Texas. Ultimately, Captain Kidd concludes that war is not an effective tool to address the social issues that are deeply embedded in his society.
Born at the turn of the 19th century, Captain Kidd has fought in three wars by the time he reaches old age, and his experiences in battle have given him a sense of purpose. As a teenager, Captain Kidd was a messenger with the U.S. Army in the War of 1812, fighting British-allied Native Americans in Alabama. This work built on his capacity for running long distances and his ability to manage danger and hardship; the captain reflects that his time in the army brought him a “lifting, running joy.” When the Mexican War breaks out, Captain Kidd is a successful printer in San Antonio. The army asks him to manage communications, a prestigious job that allows him to express his cunning, common sense, and professional capabilities. Later, he lives through the Civil War, seeing one of his sons-in-law die and the other lose an arm. In his old age Captain Kidd isn’t very talkative, but he does enjoy regaling younger men with tales of his wartime experience. This shows that his time in the military has shaped Captain Kidd personally and allowed him to believe that his life has direction and meaning.
However, the personal satisfaction Captain Kidd derives from military service clashes with his dawning realization that war is an ineffective method of solving social problems. Captain Kidd has fought against the Native Americans and Mexicans, but he’s also married a Mexican woman (the late Maria Luisa) and taken tender care of Johanna, a young girl completely immersed Kiowa culture. His own cultural fluidity contrasts with the ethnic and racial divisions that have both caused and been perpetuated by the wars of his youth, and his personal life makes him doubt the meaning of these endeavors.
In the present, Captain Kidd travels through Reconstruction-era Texas, witnessing the social repercussions that linger long after wars are over. Union forces have dissolved all Confederate local governments and are attempting to replace them with more loyal administrators. But the Reconstruction governments are wildly corrupt and insensitive to the needs of local people, as the fight between senators Davis and Hamilton shows. Meanwhile, hostility towards the 15th Amendment and the racism faced by Britt Johnson and his men show that the Union’s victory by no means assures good conditions for former slaves or a cultural transformation in the defeated Southern states.
As a young man, Captain Kidd took great satisfaction from serving as a soldier; his wartime experiences are among the most fulfilling of his life until he takes on responsibility for Johanna. However, the unglamorous aftermath of the Civil War requires Captain Kidd to reevaluate the validity of war, despite its personal meaning to him, and conclude that it’s not an effective means of solving larger social problems like national loyalty or systematic racism.
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War and Reconstruction Quotes in News of the World
Then at last he was doing what he loved: carrying information by hand through the Southern wilderness; messages, orders, maps, reports […] Captain Kidd was already over six feet tall and he had a runner’s muscles. He had good lungs and he knew the country.
If people had true knowledge of the world perhaps they would not take up arms and so perhaps he could be an aggregator of information from distant places and then the world would be a more peaceful place […] And then he had come to think that what people needed, at bottom, was not only information but tales of the remote, the mysterious, dressed up as hard information.
Captain Kidd said, It has been said by authorities that the law should apply the same to the king and to the peasant both, it should be written out and placed in the city square for all to see, it should be written simply and in the language of the common people, lest the people grow weary of their burdens.
