Free Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

grandfather paradox poses this riddle: What if a person traveled back in time, encountered her grandfather, got into an argument with the grandfather, and then shot her grandfather to death, thereby ensuring that the granddaughter herself would never be born?
    What I like about the grandfather paradox is that it treats time travel not as some lofty exercise in cultural tourism — looking over Melville’s shoulder as he wrote Moby-Dick — but as a petty excuse to bicker with and gun down one’s own relatives.
    I just so happen to have a grandfather who deserved it, my great-great-grandfather, John Vowell. The reason why I would set the wayback machine for the sole purpose of rubbing him out is this:
    In the 1860s, the teenage John Vowell joined up with pro-slavery guerrilla warrior William Clarke Quantrill, who has been called the “most hated man in the Civil War,” which is saying something. On August 21, 1863, Quantrill led his gang, including my great-great-gramps, into Lawrence, Kansas, reportedly ordering them to “kill every male and burn every house.” By the end of the day, at least 182 men and boys were dead.
    Edward Fitch was shot in his own living room. His widow wrote this letter about witnessing his death: “My dear father and mother, I have been trying to summon strength to write to all the particulars of this sad, sad day…which has wrecked all my happiness. Never before did I feel the meaning of the word crushed.”
    Lawrence was a symbolic target for Quantrill and his men. Since before the Civil War, Lawrence had been the capital of abolitionism in the West. The town had been founded by Free-Soil New Englanders who settled in Kansas to vote to outlaw slavery in the new state. Lawrence had already been sacked once before by a pro-slavery mob in 1856, and in retaliation, the famed abolitionists John Brown and sons attacked a pro-slavery settlement, slaughtering five men as their families looked on. This spawned a grubby little guerrilla war between abolitionist Jayhawkers and the pro-slavery border ruffians of Missouri. Hundreds were killed on both sides in what became known as “Bleeding Kansas,” years before the official kickoff of Fort Sumter.
    If I were to travel back in time and confront my great-great-grandfather the terrorist, what would we have to say to each other? Remember that in the grandfather paradox, before I kill him, we get into an argument first. Would he defend his motives, tell me some chilling story about the Jayhawker who ruined his life, perhaps enumerate Quantrill’s overlooked good qualities? And how might I rebut? Recite “I have a dream”? Sing a few bars of “The KKK Took My Baby Away”? Or maybe I could tell him about the morning in September idealistic young men not unlike himself flew into the city where I live and taught me the meaning of the word crushed.
    After my great-great-grandfather and I have it out, let’s suppose that against all odds, a gun-toting bushwhacking guerrilla warrior could be overpowered by me, a former art history major. And what am I killing him for? Taking the law into his own hands, murdering people as a political act. This is where my grandfather paradox turns into the grandfather paradox paradox: to prevent my great - great - grandfather from doing wrong, I myself become a vigilante taking justice into my own hands, shooting somebody because I disagree with him. Which is, of course, wrong and exactly what he did.
    Curiously, if my great - great - grandfather’s friend Quantrill had gotten his way, my cashier, the great-great-granddaughter of Mudd, would not be spending her Saturday selling souvenir coasters depicting the room where Mudd doctored Booth. Legend has it Quantrill rode east in 1865, intending to assassinate President Lincoln. Quantrill was in Kentucky when he heard about Booth. Quantrill got drunk toasting Booth.
    Thus do I, descendant of racist, pro-slavery teenage terrorist, buy a copy of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd Family Home