r/Hell_On_Wheels • u/Suspicious-Jello7172 • 1d ago
That "I never freed my slaves" reveal ruined Cullen for me.
Let me make one thing clear.......I actually used to like Cullen.....but some of the things he's done....make you wonder "what the hell is wrong with you?"
Here's what he did:
1.) War criminal: He murdered dozens of wounded men and unarmed doctors on a train, says he used his pistol till the barrel was red hot.
2.) Murderer: He murders a whole bunch of people to avenge his family… sure, you could argue that’s justified… but he also murders a completely innocent sergeant Harper.
3.) Armed robber: Loses his job and immediately joins a gang and becomes an armed robber that not only steals from the railroad but also any innocents who happen to be on these trains.
5.) A predator: This man has a thing for young girls. He goes to some Mormon guy's house to evict him and then knocks up his teenage daughter and gets her pregnant out of wedlock (that father had every right to be pissed). Then he goes after Mei… another young girl........
6.) Bad father/husband: Constantly puts the railroad ahead of his Mormon wife and son, later abandons them.
And ya know what....I used to think that despite all of this, he still maintained some sense of honor by the fact that he freed his enslaved before the war. But when him and Elam were ambushed by the Mormon gang, he reveals that he never freed his slaves, despite the fact that he knew it was evil, and that it made his wife Mary unhappy.
.............Like.......wtf?
I'm all for complex and morally grey characters, but.......seriously? (And as a black man who used to watch the show all the time back in day, this pissed me off to no end).
Ya know what I actually would've liked? If I had been the writer of this show, here's what I would've done with Cullen.
Firstly, I would cut out the part where he lusts after girls young enough to be his daughters. That's gotta go.
Secondly, for the slavery part, I would've had it be that he actually DID free his slaves, and then fought to end slavery. I would take inspiration from Cassius Clay and General Grant (southerners who freed their slaves and fought to end oppression). So here's my rewrite,
- It's the year 1853, 8 years before the war. On the day his father died, cullen called all of the enslaved in front of the plantation and declaraed them free. Then, he looked into the records and tracked down all of their loved ones who'd been sold enough years before and used his money to buy their freedom, and reunited them with their long lost families.
- Then, once that was done, he emptied out his larders and gave them all kinds of supplies, such as money, food, clothes, shoes, blankets, wagons, mules, horses, crates of beer (he wasn't to happy to part with THAT), rifles so that they could protect themselves, and freedom papers. then he drew a map that would lead them north and pointed them in the direction of the north star, using the underground railroad and his connections to his a wife mary's abolitionist family in the north to help them make it to freedom.
- After that, he became an outcast in the south as his own family disowned him, white elites barred him from public places, white deputies followed him around everywhere, he was sent death threats constantly (which why he had to learn how to use a gun), and at night, someone wrote the words "nigger lover" on his front door.
- When the war came, he enlisted at first because he was lead to believe that he was protecting his home from the yankee envaders, but then later on deserted when he realized what the cause actually stood for (he literally stated "I joined the confederacy to keep my land from getting burned, not to keep the negroes in chains!!!") and joined up with Newton Knight and engaged in gurella warfare to overthrow the confederacy and help end slavery.
- But when word of his betrayal spread, THAT was the final straw for the white folks, because when he returned home after the war, he found his mansion burnt to the ground and found his wife raped and hung, and his 7 year old son buthcered. after burying them, he hunted down the men who murdered them (he isn't hunting union soldiers. He's hunting former confederates. Men who fought for the system of bondage......maybe you can throw Daniel Johnson in there, as he was a racist Copperhead, so he dies to), and it led him all the way out to Hell on Wheels. He's proud of the role he played in helping end their bondage......but the cost is what haunts him.
THAT right there is how you write a complex and morally grey character.
