Praxiteles Swan...

[Private Watkins]

This guy reminds me of Ole Praxiteles Swan (Lone Star Preacher, by John W. Thomason, Jr.). With his Bible in one hand, his gun in the other, and his D-guard tucked in the belt, he looks like a Texan who's ready to give some Yankee an Old Testament Smiting...

Anyone else have a period photo of a soldier with both Bible & Gun...??

 

[Private Watkins]

If you haven't read the stories about the Rev. Praxiteles Swan I would very much recommend... I happened upon them in an old book published in 1943, during WWII, with numerous patriotic war stories (The Fighting American, edited by F. Van Wyck Mason). I was delighted to just "happen upon" the story of Praxiteles Swan in the CW...

 

[Private Watkins]

From State of Mind: Texas Literature and Culture, by Tom Pilkington:
"The one certified (though minor) literary classic about Texans' military participation in the Civil War is John W. Thomason Jr.'s Lone Star Preacher (1941) subtitled, 'Being a Chronicle of the Acts of Praxiteles Swan, M.E. Church South, Sometime Captain 5th Texas Regiment, Confederate Provisional Army'... Lone Star Preacher is, more or less, a novel. I say more or less because the volume's various chapters were originally self-contained stories published in the 1930's in the Saturday Evening Post and other popular periodicals. Thomason describes his hero, Praxiteles Swan, as a "hot-headed and desirous young man, combatant officer in a most accomplished fighting army, and all his life a soldier of the cross." (pg. 85)

 

[Private Watkins]

State of Mind: Texas Literature (continued):
"Lone Star Preacher has a kind of antique air about it. It springs from a simpler, more naive time, when war and fighting were deemed to be glorious occupations, when the stacking of the dead and even the certainty of defeat could not quench a man's thirst for battle. In this regard the fictional Swan of the 1860's and the real-life John Thomason of the 1920's & 1930's seemed to share a common view. Both lived and fought, of course before the mass, anonymous slaughter that began in the final stages of World War II, before the advent of the ineffable horror of the possibility of nuclear destruction. Praxiteles Swan, in any event, is a memorable and representative Texan." (pg. 86)

 

[Allie]

Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[Private Watkins]

You are welcome!

Any other good period photos of Bible & Gun carrying soldiers...? North or South...

 

[AndyHall]

 

[Private Watkins]

Love it!! Thanks...

 

[Private Watkins]

Looks like this soldier has got his Bible but no gun...

 

[Private Watkins]

Found another potential Praxiteles Swan...

 

[Private Watkins]

And one more...

 

[hanna260]

Did anyone else when reading the threads title have this anticipation of actual swans in their head? Wow, I wonder how swans relate to the ACW!

*Slowly puts hand down, feeling like a bit of an idiot*

 

[Private Watkins]

Did anyone else when reading the threads title have this anticipation of actual swans in their head? Wow, I wonder how swans relate to the ACW!

*Slowly puts hand down, feeling like a bit of an idiot*

It's certainly a unique and unusual name...

 

[Private Watkins]

I found another Praxiteles Swan! A Good-Book toting blue bellie....
Expired Image Removed

 

[Poor Sharecropper's Son]

Looks like this soldier has got his Bible but no gun...
View attachment 71951

Not that I can cast any stones in regard to appearance, but I guess the flowing, almost, well, swan-like side hair was in an effort to confuse the enemy into firing at it and only harmlessly brushing it back instead of a more direct hit?

 

[Private Watkins]

Not that I can cast any stones in regard to appearance, but I guess the flowing, almost, well, swan-like side hair was in an effort to confuse the enemy into firing at it and only harmlessly brushing it back instead of a more direct hit?

I had not noticed the Swan like resemblance of his hair, but I do believe you make a good point!

 

[Nathanb1]

Private Watkins, I'm sure you'd enjoy visiting the John W. Thomason, Jr. Reading Room at Sam Houston. There are enough original renderings of old Praxiteles to keep us all happy. Thomason was a native of Huntsville and descendant of Thomas Jewett Goree, and his tales have figured prominently in Hood's Brigade Symposiums, which is why I'm so familiar with him. Some of those stories are not so fictional, in fact, and there has been an ongoing effort to match up the experiences in the book with actual letters and reminiscences from the Brigade.

I'm just glad someone else enjoys him! If we could have found another photo of my great-grandfather, Samuel H. Powers, I'm pretty sure he'd have been holding his Bible and gun!

 

[Nathanb1]

 

[Private Watkins]

Wow, sounds fantastic!! I bet that's right about there being a lot of truth in those stories...!

 

[Nathanb1]

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fth13

Enough to keep Dr. Ural and pals busy for several years.