Soldiers beat their swords into plowshares

For The Madera Tribune

Although Frederick J. Quant’s tombstone says he served with the 2nd Mass. Cavalry during the Civil War, the inscription is misleading. He fought with the California 100, which was attached to the 2nd Mass. Cavalry. Quant and his comrades from California fought under the California Bear Flag and kept their separate identity.

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Frederick Quant and George Mordecai were bitter enemies. They just didn’t know it. Given half a chance, either man would have killed the other, for they were soldiers who were on opposite sides in the American Civil War. In April of 1865, these two corporals squared off for one final showdown at Appomattox and thereby wove a patch of irony into the fabric of Madera’s history.

George Washington Mordecai was a native of Richmond, Virginia. For the first 16 years of his life he learned the ways of the Old Dominion - manners, respect, and duty — from his closely-knit family. He was just one month into his 17th year when he enlisted in the elite 2nd Company of Richmond Howitzers and marched off to war on May 17, 1861.

Mordecai saw action in some of the most active theaters of the Civil War. He fought in the Peninsula campaign, the seesaw battles in the Shenendoah Valley, and was wounded at Spotsylvania in 1864.