Tag Archives: slavery

The Arrogance of Now

Each year I prepared for two major wars, the finale if you will, of second semester US History. With a combined sense of dread and anticipation, I led the kids through the causes, and progression of the Civil War (with 10th graders), and WWII (with my Juniors). 

A lifetime of study in these eras, especially Antebellum America, tells an anxious story, as two passionate belief systems came to blows. Sophomores learned that our nation, a democracy born in such promise, plunged into the abyss over America’s original sin, slavery.

Meanwhile, for Juniors, the failures of the uneasy peace that followed WWI shaped a broader corrosion. The world after 1919 disintegrated into deadly factions, underscored by exaggerated entitlement, racial hate, and lust for revenge.

Much like America’s 19th Century plunge into the breach, the 20th Century also debased human life, sliding into scapegoating, unthinkable cruelty, and massacre. This record is hard to face, let alone study. 

Real monsters masqueraded as heads of state; Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and the War Lords of Japan. All, to varying degrees, convinced regular people that the “worth” of others was suspect, and targeting civilians an acceptable strategy. Yet, as awful as both conflicts were, it’s hard not to stare, and to hopefully recognize the signs when hate again emerges as a justification for horror.

The heresy of exceptionalism, normalizing violence on the vulnerable, and extremism, unleashed evil on the world. Andersonville Prison, Fort Pillow Massacre, the Rape of Nanking, Bataan, the Warsaw Ghetto, and death camps. More than one a student wondered aloud, how could that happen?

In increments.

These signs are clear again. Those same pre-conditions have resurfaced, right now, here in our communities, states, and nation. 

A white nationalist parade in Charlotte that kills one, where there were “good people on both sides.” Normalized daily murders of people of color, and incendiary rhetoric that ends with an attack on the US Capitol, killing five. All offenses excused and minimized by a once great political party, that has forsaken its moral underpinnings. 

The only difference between the Proud Boys and the Brown Shirts is the Brown Shirts didn’t wear Carhartt and flannel.

This endless playlist has looped over repeatedly, cursed by the “blind arrogance of now.” But dear reader, now is then, and deluded people do not change with time. The descent into barbarity is more predictable than exceptional. 

When reasonable folks are manipulated by the chorus of the Big Lie, the era doesn’t matter. Society inevitably falls into depravity.   

Gail Chumbley is a career history educator, and author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both titles on Kindle.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

Richer Than Myth

We all closed our eyes and directed to imagine a stage play. The lights dim to darkness and the curtains open revealing a maid busy at a fireplace feather dusting the mantel.

I dutifully shut my eyes envisioning white marble and busts of philosophers as the servant did her thing.The instructor asked us to further imagine the play’s star dramatically entering from the wings. She asked what would we do as an audience? Clap of course, because the story is about to begin.

Right?

And that dear reader is the model history educators have employed for eons. America was just waiting for white folks to appear, so the story could begin. The implication is that nothing of significance had yet happened. Just the maid dusting the mantel.

To accept that John Wayne or James Arness won the west is but a myth for films and television. American history in noway resembles an episode of The Waltons. The reality of the narrative, stripping away the fiction is much richer when including the whole story.

Mining and ranching customs in America are largely of Spanish origin. Standard size horses spread northward from Mexico as escapees from Hernan Cortes and other conquistadors. The rendezvous system came to be under the French, and their Huron fur-trading partners. From totems, to kivas, to longhouses indigenous people developed distinct cultures. New World foods like corn and potatoes conquered Europe, and African exploitation introduced American traditions in music, food and language.

In short, the story of America didn’t start with Plymouth Rock, nor Jamestown. It isn’t sunbonnet madonnas, bravely trudging west, or white hatted heroes saving the day.

No clear lines separate villains from heroes. If the myth makes you feel good, watch “Lonesome Dove,” or “The Alamo.” Keep in mind both are works of fiction. If it’s accuracy you’re after, crack a history book, or catch a Ken Burns documentary.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Both available on Kindle.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

Breaking Point

The American system of government requires reasonable, motivated legislators. And no, there is nothing quick about lawmaking. That a Congressman or Senator will get all they want is another no. The legislative process requires willingness, study, and compromise. It is little wonder citizens become frustrated with the pace, but that is American lawmaking. And despite the drawbacks, our frame of government is the best that exists in the world. Period.

When factions choose violence, know this, insurrection is no solution. Never has been. Acts of brutality, in fact, mangle the fabric of our society. The Far Right, along with their gutless congressional enablers will, sooner or later, reap the consequences of their lawless behavior.

As Tom Petty aptly titled the mindset, these are Rebels Without a Clue.

South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, in 1856, felt much the same. This impetuous “gentleman” possessed a velcro sensibility to perceived slights, and could lash out unexpectedly. Raised in the Southern canon of the code duello, Brooks believed physical retribution a mandatory response in defense of reputation and honor. Years earlier young Brooks had traveled to Washington DC in order to challenged another he believed had insulted his father, Whitfield Brooks. For this impulsive action young Preston hobbled on a cane, limping for the rest of his short life.

Hate was in the very air of Capitol Hill during the 1856 session of Congress. The “irrepressible conflict,” of slavery, weighed as heavily as the damasked draperies in the US Capitol.

The question at that moment concerned the extension of slavery into expanding territories. One law after another had either permitted, or limited the peculiar institution onto the western prairies. This was also when Brooks arrived to take his new seat in the House of Representatives.

The admission of Kansas cut from Nebraska Territory drove the headlines of that moment. Would the Nebraska Territory split into two new states, one free, and one slave? The decision weighed heavily, challenging the delicate equilibrium in the Senate.

Into this tinderbox stepped Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and his powerful speech that gripped not only Congress but the whole, volatile nation. Titled “The Crime Against Kansas,” this fiery abolitionist and orator cursed the institution of slavery belittling southern defenders as enamored with the “harlot slavery.”

That oratory lit the spark igniting Congressman Preston Brooks.

Following Senator Sumner’s two-day denunciation, the chamber quieted, and members wandered in and out, chatting or working at their fixed desks. Charles Sumner himself, was seated on the Senate floor, focusing on the papers before him. That was the moment Representative Brooks sidled up behind the preoccupied lawmaker.

Brooks made some remarks at the Senator’s desk, then lifted his cane and came down hard on Sumner’s head. Over and over the enraged South Carolinian beat his quarry, Sumner struggled, trapped halfway between his chair and bolted-down desk. Finally the cane cracked, and Brooks strolled out of the Senate Chamber.

Sumner lay groaning on the Senate floor, a bloody mess.

In the days following, Preston Brooks was both reviled and feted by enemies and compatriots. As a point of order, the young Congressman resigned his seat and left for home.

Gifts of canes were sent to this Southern hero who had taught those Yankees the physical price of loose talk.

This episode accomplished nothing of substance. A mini Civil War exploded on the Kansas Prairie, and Brooks died from some ailment. And Charles Sumner? He survived the assault, later to lead a Jehovah-like revenge on the Reconstructed South.

Why does this matter? How does this concern today? Because America is a nation of laws, the same slow, thoughtful process designed by the Framers. When agitators choose the path of violence, the recoil whipsaws uncontrollably. The Sumner Brooks episode provided a prelude to Civil War. Lasting stability rests on methodical lawmaking through thought, analysis, and compromise.

Take it from me, the past does portend the future.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, River of January and River of January: Figure Eight. Both titles are available on Kindle. Chumbley is also the author of two plays, “Clay” on the life of Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears,” exploring the beginnings of American racism and slavery.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

He Wrote for the Ages

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For starters, I am not a fan of Thomas Jefferson. In fact, the more I know of this founding father, the less I like him. The Sage of Monticello routinely had young male slaves beaten for no better reason than custom, and lay the foundation for secession in 1798 with his Kentucky Resolution.

Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Polish hero of the Revolutionary War, once offered to liquidate land holdings in the Northwest Territory to pay Jefferson to free some of his slaves, and Jefferson declined. Disillusioned, Kosciuszko condemned Jefferson as a fraud for once insisting “all men were created equal,” and not practicing that “truth.”

However, the reality remains that Jefferson did indeed, pen those words, and generations of Jeffersonian disciples have insisted those words are enough to maintain his venerated place in American history.

And I agree. His adulators are correct. Jefferson’s words are enough. His phrasing, painstakingly composed in 1776 has ignited the world on the ultimate quest to actualize Jefferson’s “unalienable” assertions. 

Abraham Lincoln took Jefferson’s sentiment to heart, and his devotion moved Lincoln to action. The foundation of the Republican Party rested partly upon removing artificial impediments restraining upward mobility, and Lincoln believed slavery such an obstacle, the most malignant bar to individual betterment. (Duh). In 1859 he stated in a speech, “We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better.” And Lincoln made it his aim to realize that betterment, first with Emancipation, then the 13th Amendment.

There could be no better description for America than a people steadily discarding artificial barriers. Women, Native Americans, LGBTQ Americans, Latino Americans: all of us freed to reach our highest potential. Annoying bigotry places a drag on the process, but justice still manages to surge steadily on, inspired by the words of the Declaration of Independence–Jefferson’s words. 

In reality, Jefferson had meant to argue white wealthy Colonials were of equal standing to Great Britain’s landed aristocracy. Despite his original intent, the promise of those words have outlived that specific moment. 

Understandably, Thaddeus Kosciuszko gave up in the face of Jefferson’s outrageous duplicity. And this generation of fanatics desperately promote Jefferson’s original racism. But, kids, we have inherited an obligation to continue this journey, not only for ourselves but to light the way for our children’s children.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the World War Two-era memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both are available on Kindle, and hard copies at http://www.river-of-january.com

gailchumbley@gmail.com

 

The American Gentry

 

Note: My students used to ask how the planter aristocracy persuaded poor whites to fight for their interests in the Civil War. I think the answer lies in the power and position that the underclass envied and hoped to attain.

Please permit me to reintroduce these four figures from America’s antebellum period.

Thomas Jefferson Best recognized as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third president of the U.S., and the man behind the 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory.

Andrew Jackson The celebrated hero of the Battle of New Orleans, noted Indian fighter, and seventh president of the U.S.

John C. Calhoun Congressman, turned Senator from South Carolina, who served two separate administrations as Vice President.

Jefferson Davis, a former soldier in the Mexican War, one-time Secretary of War, and later President of the Confederate States of America.

These four men forged political careers prior to the Civil War that fully embraced the social norms of early America. To a man, all hailed from the Old South, where each man shaped distinguished reputations, built spacious mansions, entertained illustrious guests, all on the backs of slave labor.

Ironically if one asked these men’s occupation, not one would have mentioned politics. Instead, each would have replied, “I am a farmer.”

To modern ears that answer feels a bit misleading and absurd. However, in the early nineteenth century, exercising dominion over large tracts of land, and cultivating crops as far as the eye could see, was viewed the most noble and honorable of pursuits. But a gnawing truth lay behind the practiced manners and broad, fertile fields. A profound self deception had also taken root, sowing an overblown sense of racial superiority, and human oppression of nightmarish proportions.

That these “farmers” were all slave masters is the cruel truth–Lords of the Lash, who derived a living “wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces,” (As Lincoln so eloquently phrased).

These four planters also minimized the brutal underpinnings which sustained each man’s fiefdom. Jefferson, Jackson, Calhoun, and Davis capably hijacked, and sheltered behind “republican virtues,” including freedom and the social contract to suit their own interests.No higher authority held any sway over these planters–they were marked as privileged.

The patriarch of this sophistry was Thomas Jefferson.

Esteemed as the “Sage of Monticello,” Jefferson brilliantly articulated a vision of America where all lived freely upon private land, untroubled by outside interests. Residing upon acres of personal liberty, this master managed his estate immune from any overreaching government. For Jefferson, he and his fellow planters were the “natural aristocrats,” of the new nation, meaning they held the only legitimate claim to power. Only the elite of the community, like Jefferson, knew what was best for all.

The Sedition Act, passed by Congress in 1798, moved Thomas Jefferson to show his true political colors. President John Adams had wanted to silence political critics of his administration, and jammed this dubious legislation through Congress. In reply Jefferson authored a protest titled the “Kentucky Resolution.” In his tract, submitted to the Kentucky Legislature, Jefferson introduced the concept of ‘nullifying’ Federal law. Specifically, when a majority of state delegates, assembled in special convention, renounced a Federal statute, the law was rendered null and void within that state.

For the first time, in one pivotal moment, Jefferson’s insidious principle found its way into the bloodstream of American politics.

Ironically Andrew Jackson didn’t care for the intellectual, and philosophical Jefferson. Still, despite temperamental differences, Jackson did share Jefferson’s world view of complete dominion over his land and “people.” A ferocious master, Jackson answered to no civil law, but his own. Dabbling in both horse and slave trading, Old Hickory frequentlyoften challenged any man who questioned his conduct or honor.

To his credit Jackson did not pretend to care about high brow thinking or civic virtue. His philosophy was simple; the master was never wrong.

Before Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina soured into a states’ right’s militant, his political outlook had been national in scope. With unusual candor a very young Congressman Calhoun self-consciously confessed that slavery was a “necessary evil,” vital to South Carolina’s prosperity. But his marriage to a wealthy Charleston cousin elevated his social status, which in turn, adjusted Calhoun’s thinking. Assuming the role of a gentleman, while cultivating a prominent political reputation, Calhoun also became a slave master. Much like Jefferson’s Monticello, or Jackson’s Hermitage, Calhoun’s plantation, Fort Hill, was an ever-expanding operation, endlessly renovated using teams of slaves who also tended his fields.

In 1829, as Jackson’s new Vice President, Calhoun quickly butted heads with America’s new President. Steadily embittered by Jackson’s arbitrary, monarchial style, and indifference to law, Calhoun resigned the vice presidency and returned to Fort Hill an angry man. His stance on slavery hardened as well, leaving him a vitriolic defender of the practice. Under increasing pressure from Northern abolitionist, Calhoun, picked up his pen and insisted that slavery was not evil after all, but a ‘positive good.’

When Congress passed a protective tariff for northern goods, this former Vice President organized a state convention to fully resist the new Federal law. Calling his defiance “nullification,” Calhoun put into action Jefferson’s “resolution” that refused obedience to Washington.

Fortunately this particular crisis was averted by cooler heads in Congress, delaying the curse of fraternal bloodshed for a later generation.

By 1860 nullification had bloomed into full secession. No longer would the planter class tolerate insults or challenges to their natural superiority and authority.

It came as no surprise when South Carolina became the first of the eleven states to secede from the Union. Delegates attending a state convention in Columbia did not wait for the final electoral results to reject the election of Abraham Lincoln. So enraged were these aristocrats that Lincoln’s name had not even appeared on the ballot in most southern states.

I’ve added Confederate President Jefferson Davis to this piece because of his later role in perpetuating the genteel myth of the South. After four years of bloody battle and countless bullets finally settled the issue of Federal authority, Davis, released from jail began a writing career. He first penned, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, followed later by A Short History of the Confederate States of America. In both of these works, Davis invented a romantic world of gentlemen, belles, and contented slaves in the fields. The fantasy was bunk, but Davis, the onetime master of of Belvoir, and Brierfield, Mississippi, somehow got in the last word.

Davis’s fanciful yarn was only concocted as a charming fable to disguise a legacy of hubris, power, greed, hate, racial exploitation, and violence.

In answer to the question posed by my history students, poor whites defended the southern gentry because they wished to live just like them.

Gail Chumbey is the author of the two-part memoir,  “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” available on Kindle.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

Waves

 

 

Preaching in 1630, Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop, declared the new Puritan settlement a godly utopia, “A City on a Hill.” Since that time Winthrop’s assurance of purpose and perfection has shaped the narrative that is American history. For over two centuries the United States pushed forward striving to make real those founding aspirations. Many Americans, either in groups or as individuals have fought the good fight to extend liberty for all: the most notable example being the abolition of slavery. Yet the path toward realizing the dream of heaven on earth has been many times interrupted with progress’s nemesis—armed warfare.

As Revolutionary War zeal subsided in the late 1700’s, a series of remote camp meetings sparked a movement called the Second Great Awakening. (Yes there was a First) The popularity of these rousing evangelical revivals lit an impassioned fire that called Americans, mostly Northerners to eradicate sin in the shiny new republic. Determined reformers such as Charles Grandison Finney, Frederick Douglass, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton labored tirelessly to rid America of her shortcomings; drunkenness, degrading of women, punitive treatment of the mentally ill, racial inequality . . . in order for the country live up to its charge as a “called nation.”

Despite the diversity of causes and legions of faithful supporters, slavery alone came to dwarf all other movements and to ultimately divide the country. Early instances of violence in the effort to end slavery offered a taste of the violence to come in the Civil War; Abolitionist-editor, Elijah Lovejoy was shot dead in the doorway of his newspaper office, while another anti-slavery editor, William Lloyd Garrison found himself tarred and feathered repeatedly by those who hated his militancy. Zealot John Brown hacked to death five pro-slavers in an episode known as “Bleeding Kansas.” In these instances, “the writing on the wall” had truly been composed in blood.

When hostilities began in April, 1861 the energy of a nation fixated on the course of each battle, fear and resolve ebbing and flowing with each outcome. The shape of America’s future waited in the balance. Finally, after four ghastly years of bloody fighting, Southern hopes of an agrarian, slave-ocracy died, and as President Lincoln so eloquently phrased it, America found “a new birth of freedom.”

Left unaddressed were those other reforms, forgotten in the war. The mentally ill remained behind bars, incarcerated alongside dangerous criminals. Women were legally considered wards of their husbands, with no more standing than dependent children. Countless young children toiled endlessly in textile mills and coal mines, exploited by owners, deprived of any chance for an education. And the legions of former slaves faced a new form of slavery, Jim Crow and sharecropping.

Reform again gathered momentum in the late 19th Century. Aiming once more for that ‘city’ aspiration, the Progressive movement took shape, carried on by a new generation of the faithful, imbued with a sense of social justice to confront the many wrongs left unaddressed from an earlier time, and new issues related to urban growth. Notables from this post bellum movement include; Jane Addams, one of the founders of American Social Work, writer Upton Sinclair and his shocking expose’ The Jungle a condemnation of the meat industry, and John Dewey who normalized public education with coherent curriculum’s and compulsory school attendance. Dewey believed, as had the founders of America, that the nation relied upon and deserved an educated electorate to safeguard the promise of America into the future.

This movement found a great deal of success in improving the country and the lives of its citizens. Building safety reform came on the heels of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911. The Jungle brought about the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration, while political reforms included the secret ballot, limiting “Bossism,” and other forms of political corruption.

Then, in 1914 Europe went to war. By 1916 Progressive President, Woodrow Wilson committed America to join in, asking for a declaration against Germany, sending American soldiers into the trenches. And once again, when the guns silenced progressive reforms disappeared as if they had not existed. On the imaginary road to “Normalcy,” the wealthy and powerful misused the country as a personal piggy bank, plundering and cheating with no legal check.

After a decade long litany of economic abuses tanked the Stock Market in 1929, the nation once again turned toward progress, this time on an unparalleled scale. The advent of Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, to the White House marked a revitalization of reshaping America to benefit all Americans. The New Deal remembered for its alphabet agencies, aimed to recover the devastated economy and ward off future abuses that had nearly destroyed the well being of the Republic.

America’s entrance into World War Two bucked the pattern of a reactionary pushback. FDR remained at the helm, until Harry Truman took the reins of government, continuing the tradition of affirming change. GOP President Dwight David Eisenhower kept a moderate hand on the tiller, particularly in the realm of Civil Rights, enforcing the Brown V. Board of Education decision to desegregate public schools.

But with JFK’s murder, the wheels once again came off social progress. As much as LBJ tried to give America all he could; The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Highways Beautification Act, Head Start, Medicaid, and many more pieces of his Great Society legislation, Vietnam eroded all the good.

That endless nightmare of a stalemate in Southeast Asia worked at cross purposes for bettering society. The daily body count, student protests, war atrocities, such as the My Lai massacre, or the shock of the TET Offensive in 1968 sapped America’s desire to do anything but find a way out of the jungle.

Promoting the general welfare came nearly to a complete halt by 1980. The advent of the Reagan Revolution, and subsequent downsizing of the federal government left the vulnerable largely on their own. School lunch programs were cut, the mentally ill let out on the streets of America, while the armament industry threw the nation into deep deficits.

On this Memorial weekend it might be good to consider the potential of America when at peace. Trapped today in an endless cycle of war, this nation struggles to find her soul, to embrace together the light of our national promise. Two military presidents, our first, General George Washington and our thirty fourth, General Dwight D. Eisenhower pleaded with America in their farewell remarks to avoid war as the worst use of our best abilities. Both men, forged in the adversity of difficult wars, recognized the wasteful distraction and deadly allure of war. Washington cautioned against “entangling alliances, and Eisenhower “the military-industrial complex.”

Ultimately, those who know war grasps what is truly lost. Every weapon produced in a munitions factory most certainly casts a wrench into the wheels of human progress. Winthrop meant his reference from the book of Matthew to inspire an example to the world. Forcing Americanism by the barrel of a gun is born to failure, achieving nothing lasting but resentment abroad, and stagnating injustice at home.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the memoir, River of January, also available on Kindle.

Justice as a Force

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President Andrew Jackson has stopped spinning in his grave. Finally. He hated paper money with all the fiber in his being, and now thankfully for him, no longer tacitly endorses its use. Jackson was a sound money man and believed gold the only genuine medium of exchange . . . weigh-able, bite-able gold; good ole “cash on the barrel-head.” In fact, the President believed so passionately in the principle of gold bullion that he banned any use of paper money for any transaction whatsoever. This same policy, in the end, torpedoed the US economy and triggered the Panic of 1837.

That financial disaster held on for over five chilly years.

But the day has arrived, America has finally heard Jackson’s cries of anguish from the great beyond, and removed his likeness from that raggedy heresy of ersatz value. Still, one has to wonder. What would General Jackson make of runaway slave, Harriet Tubman taking his place on legal tender?

Ms. Tubman, as a woman, and as a slave, lived invisibly in Jackson’s world. The only notice a planter like Jackson would have made was Tubman’s incorrigible practice of stealing another master’s property. For a man of deep passions, of violent loves and hates, her offense would have pissed this president off, and sent him into a dangerous rage. In his world of master and slave, her offenses allowed no mercy, no reprieve.

As for Tubman? She understood a truth that Jackson could never, ever have comprehended—that justice was a force that bore no designation to color, gender, or appraised value. A mighty truth reigned far above the limited aspirations of General Andrew Jackson, killer of banks, Natives, and the hopes of the hundreds he held in bondage.

Tubman’s idea of honorable behavior had nothing to do with white men firing pistols on dueling grounds, and that white social conventions which condemned her to servitude were wholesome and noble. The human condition, as Tubman understood the meaning, held a deeper significance, an importance that required a profounder appreciation. The world of plantations, race hatred, whip wielding overseers, and economic injustice held no real sway, and certainly possessed no honor.

Jackson’s opinions truly hued in only black and white, and that outlook wasn’t limited to skin color. Abstract ideas like ‘humanity’ didn’t resonate in his mind, too ethereal for a man who loved gold coins. Banks were bad, women were ornaments, Indians were fair game, and blacks were slaves. That simple. Of course at the same time, this limited world view gave a figure with Tubman’s vision the edge. If a man of Jackson’s time and station caught a glimpse inside the real thoughts of his “family” members living over in the slave quarters, his mind would have been blown.

So it is with some satisfaction that Harriet Tubman replaces Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. But not only because she’s a woman, nor only because she’s black. The star she followed may have literally sparkled in the northern sky, but every footstep she trod signified progress on the road to realizing the immeasurable value in us all.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the memoir River of January

“Set their Feet on the Firm and Stable Earth”

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My mother has made it quite clear that she wants to live at home until the very end. Any member of our family daring to even think ‘assisted living’ can expect a reaming on the scale of a super nova. Mom has no reason to transplant elsewhere. She has her recliner, her adjustable mattress, her crossword puzzles, and her memories in that house. After 53 years under the same roof there is no other place–that home is the center of her universe.

Oddly enough her story somehow broaches the subject of why people do move—in this instance, the story of immigration to America.

The 19th Century American humor magazine, Puck once declared that “Princes’ don’t immigrate,” and that truth has found a lot of support in our historic record. Just a glimpse of current film footage along southern European borders powerfully demonstrate this 19th century truism. The vulnerable from Syria and other destabilized regions of the Middle East grapple with hate, fear and barbed wire to carry their families to safety.

Immigrants to American shores have all shared similar reasons to exchange the familiar, for the unknown. A brief look at America’s earliest settlers well illustrates this dynamic from 1620 to the present.

Some folks were pushed, some were pulled, but all European newcomers set foot on Atlantic shores because there was no reason to remain in the familiar.

Challenges to the Catholic Church provided the first steps toward the flow of populations to leave Great Britain. The Protestant Reformation essentially secularized the English Church, rejecting and replacing the Pope for the British sovereign as leader. Devout believers felt that King Henry’s English Reformation did not go far enough in ridding sacraments for deeper Biblical understanding. This faction became known as “Puritans,” those who wished to cleanse the English Church of all vestiges of Catholicism.

The religious struggle in the British Isles was long and complicated, but ultimately resulted in systematic Puritan persecution. Two phases of believers departed Great Britain as a consequence. First, were the Separatists led by William Bradford, who believed England was damned beyond redemption. This group settled first in Holland, then acquired funding for a journey on the Mayflower to Massachusetts Bay. Americans remember these folks as the Pilgrims.

Almost ten years later another group of mistreated reformers made landfall further north, closer to Boston. This wave of settlers, unlike the small trickle in Plymouth, came to Massachusetts Bay in a metaphoric deluge. Thousands upon thousands of Puritans departed England, driven out by an intolerant, albeit re-Catholicized crown. Called the Great Puritan Migration, refugees from religious bullying settled from Cape Cod, to the Caribbean.

The Quakers, or Society of Friends, made up another group pushed out of England. In a stratified culture of forced deference to one’s “betters,” this faith recognized the innate equality in all people. Quakers, for example, refused to swear oaths or ‘doft’ their hats in the presence of “gentlemen,” and that impudence made the sect an intolerable challenge to the status quo.

William Penn (Jr.) became a believer in Ireland, and found this punitive treatment of Quakers unjust. However, as a wall to wall adherent to peace and brotherhood, Penn used his childhood connections to the aristocracy to depart to America. King Charles II granted Penn a large tract of land in the New World, where Penn and his followers settled in the 1660’s. “Penn’s Woods,” or Pennsylvania set up shop establishing the settlement upon the egalitarian principles of Quakerism.

The father of President Andrew Jackson, Jackson Senior, stands as an excellent example representing another wave of humanity dispensable to the British Crown. Dubbed Scots-Irish, these were Scotsmen who resisted British hegemony and unification for . . ., for . . ., well forever. (Think of Mel Gibson in Braveheart.) First taking refuge in Ireland, this collection of rugged survivors, by the 1700’s, made their way to America. Not the most sociable bunch, these refugees found their path inland, eventually settling along the length of the Appalachian Mountains. Tough and single minded this group transitioned from exiles to backcountry folk.

Now the settlers in Jamestown and Georgia offer a different explanation for permanent human migration.

The London Company of Virginia, a corporation, funded an expedition to Jamestown in 1607. Soldier of Fortune, Captain John Smith and his compatriots crossed the Atlantic to get rich. Inspired by the example of Spanish finds in Mexico, these English mercenaries were hopeful of finding golden cities of their own. Almost a disastrous failure, the Jamestown colony survived, not by precious metals, but from cultivating a Native crop . . . tobacco. Eventually arrivals outnumbered departures in the stabilizing Virginia settlement, and the addictive crop paid handsome dividends for London investors.

Georgia, the most southern colony came last, founded in 1732. The brain child of social reformer, James Oglethorpe, this colony of red clay became a dumping ground for victims of England’s byzantine criminal codes. Those of the lowest rungs of English society, from petty pickpockets to hardened felons found themselves “transported” to Oglethorpe’s colony for second chances, and out of the hair of English jailers.

On a side note, slavery explicitly was forbidden in the Georgia charter. And that raises the issue of the last group forced to American shores; African slaves. These unfortunate souls did not want to leave their homes in West Africa. Much like my mother, this group did not wish a new life in a new land. Economic demands brought about this “Middle Passage,” the despicable trade in human cargo, kidnapped for the New World. Force, brutality, and exploitation wrenched these people from their lands to serve those who for contrasting reasons came to live in America. The injustice of this “African Diaspora” still plagues an American society grappling to resolve this age-old injustice.

Caution ought to guide current politicians eager to vilify and frame immigration as an inherent evil and subverting occurrence. No one lightly pulls up roots. Leaving all that is familiar is an act of desperation, a painful and difficult human drama.

Americans today view our 17th Century forebears as larger than life heroes, but their oppressors saw these same people as vermin–as dispensable troublemakers who threatened good social order. This human condition remains timeless, and loose talking politicians and opportunists must bear in mind the story of the nation they wish to lead.

Oh, and my 84-year old mother just remodeled the house, keeping her Eden fresh and new.

Gail Chumbley is the author of River of January, and the newly published River of January: Figure Eight.

We All Knew

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One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war . . . .If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due . . .Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865

Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the early 19th Century. Both men, devout followers of the Methodist faith, often found personal worship disrupted by white parishioners, bent on limiting black presence and participation. Enduring decades of bullying by white clergy, these men and their followers established their own church in Philadelphia, “Mother Bethel.” At this site Allen and Jones, with their congregation witnessed the racial turbulence of the antebellum period, with the rise of Abolitionism, and finally culminating in bloody Civil War.

Richard Allen and his congregation were forced to draw away from the established Church because they longed for freedom of worship. And though this schism seems small today, the move toward religious independence indicated the real need for black equality in all spheres of life, but especially in this case of spirituality. “Mother Bethel,” and many more churches like it supplied the moral courage to risk all in the pursuit of public justice.

It was from African-American Churches, (all rooted in rejection by white congregations) that real advances began. Richard Allen and the AME is one example. But Dr. King provided the same succor for the next social-political push in the Civil Rights era of the 1950-1960’s. Faith and song propelled this hopeful movement forward, lead by blacks for blacks.Though a Lutheran, Rosa Parks was approached by the leaders of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to ride that bus in Montgomery and not be moved.

The African-American church was the anchor feeding the spirit of justice.

But yesterday a serpent was welcomed (with love) in to this timeless sanctuary of solace. This lost soul, channeling the rage of hundreds of years of hate, sprayed deadly venom to try and kill the timeless promise of hope. The message registered–we know hate still runs riot among the fearful. The church is no safe place from the legacy of ignorance and racism in America.

President Lincoln grasped that truth–slavery presented the worst kind of sin, a sin of such magnitude that oceans couldn’t wash America clean. He states in his Second Inaugural that “we all somehow knew.” And we indeed do know that racism is the defect that turns us into monsters. The president implored Americans to accept that racial conflict is our nation’s Achilles Heel, and it won’t go away without courageous action.

We must deal with inequality on a national level, a state level, and each in our own hearts. White and Black. Folks, the strife will not go away on it’s own–it never has.

And, yeah, maybe Rachel Dolezal has identity issues, maybe she acted the fool in front of us all. But I would suggest that we could all make a little effort to generate some empathy for the guy next to us.

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Gail Chumbley is a historian and author of River of January