Cyrus Trask

Cyrus Trask, the father of Adam and Charles Trask, is a figure of immense, self-invented authority whose life pivots on a single battlefield wound and a subsequent career of elaborate fabrication. He is introduced as a man who lost his right leg at the knee in a minor skirmish six weeks after his son Adam's birth in 1862, returning home on a crude beechwood leg he carved himself. From this modest beginning, Cyrus constructs a public identity as a military sage and a power broker within the Grand Army of the Republic, a transformation that shapes his sons' lives and leaves a legacy of wealth shadowed by questions of honesty.

Identity and Background

Cyrus Trask was born on a farm in Connecticut and was mustered into a Connecticut regiment in 1862. His military career was brief: he marched south with replacements, saw the enemy for the first time at eight o'clock one spring morning, and was hit in the right leg by a heavy slug at eight-thirty, an injury that required amputation. The wound gave him a wooden leg, which he made seem "jaunty and desirable," and a lifelong credential as a veteran. After the war, he married Alice Trask, a taciturn seventeen-year-old who bore him a son, Charles, and raised Adam as her own. Cyrus's energy, once expressed in wildness, turned to the cultivation of a new career as an old soldier. He began by timidly telling Alice about his campaigns, but as his technique grew, so did his battles; he soon convinced himself that every one of his stories was true. He bought every book about war, studied maps, and became an authority on battles, movements, and units, down to the regiments and their colonels. From telling, he became convinced he had been there.

Rise to Power and Influence

Cyrus never promoted himself beyond the rank of private, a clever strategy that made him the most mobile and ubiquitous private in the history of warfare. He managed to convey the impression that he was one of Lincoln's closest friends without ever saying so directly. He began writing letters and articles about the conduct of the war, and his conclusions were intelligent and convincing. His criticisms of the war and army organization were penetrating, and his letters to the War Department, printed simultaneously in newspapers, had a sharp effect on decisions about the army. With the Grand Army of the Republic assuming political force, Cyrus became a spokesman for a block of nearly a million men. He was consulted on matters of army organization, officer relationships, and personnel. He took a paid secretaryship in the G.A.R. and traveled the country attending conventions and encampments. His house and farm he organized on a military basis, demanding reports on the conduct of his private economy. He trained his sons in the manual of arms from the time they could barely walk, forcing them to carry knapsacks loaded with stones and to drill constantly.

Relationship with His Sons

Cyrus's treatment of his two sons was profoundly unequal and shaped their entire lives. He loved Adam better, a fact he admitted to Adam in a moment of brutal honesty: "I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but it's true." He punished Adam harshly, lectured him about the nature of soldiering, and ultimately forced him into the army. Charles, whom Cyrus did not love, was left to live his own life on the farm. Cyrus explained to Adam that Charles was not afraid and could never learn about courage, and that putting him in an army would be to "let loose things which in Charles must be chained down." This favoritism drove Charles to a jealous rage, culminating in a near-fatal beating of Adam and an attempt to kill him with a hatchet. Cyrus, upon learning of the attack, took his shotgun and went looking for Charles, intending to kill him or try to. Charles hid out for two weeks, and when he returned, murder had sunk back to simple anger.

Death and Legacy

Cyrus died of pneumonia in Washington D.C. around 1894. His funeral was a grand affair: he was carried on a caisson with a flag over it, the Vice-President was there, and the President sent a wreath. The newspapers carried pictures. After his death, his attorneys discovered that he had over ninety-three thousand dollars in the bank and ten thousand dollars in good securities, a fortune that astonished his sons. The money was left equally to Adam and Charles. Charles was tormented by the suspicion that Cyrus had stolen the money, pointing out that his father's discharge proved he had not been at any major battle of the war. Adam, however, chose to believe in his father's honesty, saying, "The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does." The question of whether Cyrus was a thief or a successful speculator is never resolved, but the fortune he left becomes a central moral and practical problem for his sons. In his final years, Adam, reflecting on his father, comes to believe that Cyrus was indeed a thief who stole from the G.A.R., a judgment that haunts him even as he lies paralyzed.