You already love Colm Meaney's critically lauded portrayal of Thomas Durant -- want to know more about the complicated figure at the head of the Union Pacific Railroad? Here's a quick sketch:

Dr. Thomas Clark Durant was an American financier and railroad promoter with an insatiable appetite for business. His primary venture was serving as vice-president of the Union Pacific -- controlling the company from the initial government contract awarded by President Lincoln in 1864, until his railroad met the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit in 1869.

During that time, Durant found several ways to manipulate the railroad economy in order to maximize personal profit. Durant fleeced the American Government by creating a construction company called "Credit Mobilier," effectively allowing Durant to pay himself to build the railroad with government subsidies. Durant also manipulated public investors, heading a stock swindle that made him $5 million in a single week -- still called by many the "smartest operation ever done in stocks."

Check out photos of the real Thomas Durant.

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In the Hell on Wheels Handbook, AMCtv.com takes a closer look at the tarring and feathering that Sean and Mickey arrange for The Swede in the Season Finale.

Tarring and feathering is a gruesome form of mob vengeance that began during Europe's Middle Ages. Its emergence in the United States dates back to the American Revolution, when Patriots inflicted it on British Loyalists and tax collectors. The practice flourished into the 1800s and was commonly used on the American frontier, where community members meted out the punishment as a way to drive the victim out of town or teach a lesson.

Tarring and feathering is primarily meant to humiliate. After the victim is stripped down to his waist, the mob proceeds to paint the victim with pine tar (which does not burn) then pitches feathers or forces the victim to roll in the feathers until they stick. As a final indignity, the mob chases/parades the victim through the streets.

Tarring and feathering was never a legal form of punishment, but citizens frequently used it as a form of vigilante justice. "Such a process may be treated as a jest," wrote historian Philip Henry Stanhope in 1851, "but attended as it was too commonly with blows and violence, it put its victims to considerable suffering as well as to shame."

Thanks to the Hell on Wheels Handbook, you can learn more about Joseph Black Moon's burial ritual for Pawnee Killer in Episode 9.

During the 1800s, the Cheyenne  laid their dead to rest in the trees. In the absence of a suitable tree, mourners constructed a scaffolding with four wooden posts staked into the ground. A wood platform for the body was then laid across the posts, resulting in a structure, typically 8 to 10 feet high.

The corpse, fully shrouded in cloth (ideally, a red or brightly colored blanket) was accompanied by personal items -- pipes, weapons and, even, the dead person's hair. Mourners then placed the body on the raised platform amid a chorus of wailing women.

Continue reading "Hell on Wheels Handbook - Cheyenne Tree Burial" »

In the Hell on Wheels Handbook, AMCtv.com delves into the backstory of Native American warriors like Pawnee Killer and his band of raiders.

The Dog Soldiers were the most powerful and militant of the Cheyenne tribe's six military societies. The society came to prominence during the Indian resistance against American expansionism in the mid-1800s.

While some Cheyenne council chiefs were open to diplomatic talks with white leaders, Dog Soldiers preferred to respond to expansionism with raids and battles. "The Dog Soldiers attracted all those who were unequivocally hostile to the 'encroachments' and who chose war as the means to repulse this invasion of Indian country," writes historian Richard S. Grimes.

Named after a Cheyenne legend in which dogs transformed into fierce fighters, Dog Soldiers wore large feather headdresses with bird-bone whistles around their necks. The most elite Dog Soldiers wore "Dog Ropes," which were sashes made from buffalo skin and decorated with porcupine quills, feathers and beads. During battle, the soldier would stake his Dog Rope to the ground and fight from that location through the end of the battle. He could not leave the site until the battle was over and a fellow soldier had unpinned his sash.

Continue reading "Hell on Wheels Handbook - Dog Soldiers" »

In the Hell on Wheels Handbook, AMCtv.com takes a closer look at the real history behind Thomas Durant's infamous stock scheme in Episode 7.

In 1863, President Lincoln declared that the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific railroad would be Council Bluffs, Iowa. Thomas C. Durant, vice president of the Union Pacific, had other ideas in mind.

Against the President's orders, Durant instructed his engineer Peter Dey to start the rail line in Omaha, Nebraska, across the river from Council Bluffs. Dey presented him with several route options, only for Durant to shift the terminus again to De Soto, which lay 20 miles north of both Omaha and Council Bluffs. "It is difficult to make surveys without forming some idea of what you are doing and what it is for," a bewildered Dey wired to Durant. It turns out Durant's decisions may have been motivated not by pragmatics, but by a highly profitable stock scheme.

Continue reading "Hell on Wheels Handbook - Durant's $5 Million Stock Scheme" »

In the Hell on Wheels Handbook, AMCtv.com takes a closer look at Reverend Cole's reference to Bleeding Kansas in Episode 4.

Bleeding Kansas was a series of battles between anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces, fought during the mid-1850s. The issue? Whether the territory of Kansas should become a free state or a slave state. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 dictated that the question be resolved by popular vote, prompting thousands of "Free Staters" and pro-slavery men -- also known as Border Ruffians -- to flock to Kansas to rally for their causes. The result was chaos and violence.

On May 21, 1856, a group of Border Ruffians invaded the town of Lawrence, where they destroyed two newspaper offices. "The presses were in each case broken to pieces, and the offending type carried away to the river," said one eyewitness. They also burned down the residence of Gov. Charles Robinson and looted and vandalized shops. The fight didn't end there either. Up on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks attacked Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, beating him with a cane over their divergent political views.

Continue reading "Hell on Wheels Handbook - Bleeding Kansas" »

In the Hell on Wheels Handbook, AMCtv.com reveals the story behind Eva's chin tattoo.

In 1851, the Oatmans -- a pioneer family from Illinois -- embarked to California in search of gold and a Mormon paradise. Tragedy struck when they encountered some Yavapai Indians at the Gila River in present-day Arizona. The Yavapais attacked the family with clubs and knives then ransacked their supplies. Olive Oatman, 14, and her sister Mary Ann were spared as the rest were left to die. "I distinguished the groans of my poor mother," Olive later wrote. Lorenzo, 15, also survived, despite a bloody blow to his head.

The Yavapais enslaved Olive and Mary Ann for a year -- they "took unwarranted delight in whipping us on beyond our strength," Olive wrote -- but eventually traded the girls to the Mohave Indians for two horses, three blankets, vegetables and beads. Life with the Mohaves was a major improvement. They treated Olive as one of their own, bestowing her with Mohave names like "Aliutman," "Olivino" and "Spantsa." (Though Olive never admitted to it, historians believe she was sexually involved with tribe members.)

Continue reading "Hell on Wheels Handbook - Olive Oatman, a Historical Counterpart to Eva" »

In the Hell on Wheels Handbook, AMCtv.com takes a deeper look at the real history behind The Swede's story about Andersonville Prison in Episode 2.

The Andersonville Civil War Prison (also known as Camp Sumter) was one of the largest Confederate prison camps during the Civil War. Over the course of 14 months, 45,000 Union soldiers passed through the prison -- and nearly 13,000 of them died from conditions like diarrhea, dysentery and starvation. When Harper's Weekly published photos of prisoners after the war, Americans were shocked to see POWs reduced to skin and bones.

The 16-acre prison opened in Andersonville, GA, in February of 1864, intended to hold 10,000 prisoners. By June, the population had ballooned to twice that size. "Place so full can Scarcely Walk," wrote one miserable prisoner. Confederates hastily built an extra 10 acres, but the prison was still overcrowded and low on resources. Food was especially scarce; a typical daily meal for the prisoners was a slice of cornbread and a paltry piece of pork, and the food was often rotten. "This is no other than a place of Starvation -- a disgrace to any Government," the same prisoner wrote.

Continue reading "Hell on Wheels Handbook - Andersonville Civil War Prison" »