To Seek Another's Profit:

American history No Responses »
Jan 292013
The Haole-American Revolution
 
“Instead of your shame you will…inherit a double portion in their land…” Isaiah 61:7
 
 
Whales brought white men to Hawai’i in the late 18th century, and with whaling, disease and missionaries alit.
 
The evangelists consecrated cemeteries that the diseases filled.  Just one quarter of Hawai’ians survived the unintentional germ warfare.
 
Whaling, too, expired in that time;  the south sea fishery gave way to commercial oil fields in Pennsylvania.
 
Whalers left, but white missionaries stayed to convert Christians — then cane, coffee and capitalism.
 
Mission schools taught republicanism and writing.  King Kamehameha III joined them with the Constitution of 1840, forfeiting absolute rule.
 
In 1848, the Great Mahele introduced land rights to compliment the new constitutional monarchy, but plots soon passed from native hands.
 
The California Gold Rush created a luxury market for Hawai’ian sugar, met by white capitalists acquiring native land.
 
The children of missionaries became a planter class, as their religious compounds transitioned to sugar plantations.
 
Workers from Asia and other Pacific locales replenished the agricultural labor supply to serve now-native born whites.
 
By the 1890′s, immigrants would outnumber native Hawai’ians 4:1, but the election of King Kalakaua brought a cultural resurgence first.
 
A new palace replaced grass huts and a wooden ceremonial hall during the renaissance, but the monarchy was made of lesser bricks.
 
Economic power and the rule of law allowed white businessmen a path to oligarchy. The Big Five sugar companies dominated with dollars.
 
The Hawai’ian League — a secret organization of haole (white residents) — formed a militia to supplement that economic power with force.
 
Under duress then, the king signed a “Bayonet Constitution” (1887), disenfranchising Asians and poor Hawai’ians via voting requirements.
 
A new queen replaced the last king; briefly did she reign, her constitutional reformation cut short through occupation by US Marines.
 
Forced to choose between her people’s rights and their blood, Queen Lili’oukalani surrendered her throne to haole with guns.
 
From ‘Iolani Palace, President of the new “republic” Sanford Dole (a missionary’s son) governed, with the queen imprisoned upstairs.
 
It has been 172 years since the father brought the Gospel, and 120 + 1 day since the son, an American Revolution.
 
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Mess With Texas

American history No Responses »
Nov 192012
Hands down, the best political ad of the 2012 election season was Oklahoma 2nd Congressional District candidate Rob Wallace’s, featuring a very thinly veiled threat of armed combat with the State of Texas over water rights.  As Wallace says, some things in life just aren’t negotiable – and enabling thirsty Texans, turning their Lone Star wastelands into tourist-attracting fountains and making that craptastic beer possible is where you have to draw the line.  In case you didn’t get the point, at the end Wallace pulls out his trusty rifle and takes aim at a water jug with a picture of the Buffer State on it.  Take that, Oops Perry!

Those filibusteros are always trying to steal shit.  They stole their damn state from the Spanish, and again from the Mexicans.  Then, there was that time they tried to take over our bridge.  Maybe they just always assume they’ll get their way, but, in the latter case, Governor Alfalfa Bill Murray gave them a lesson in state sovereignty, Oklahoma-style.

Back in the days when our government really was small and didn’t even provide basic infrastructure, geography impeded easy commerce between Texas and Oklahoma.  The Red River divided us, and our conjugation depended on flow and ferries.  Demand dictated the more convenient bridge, and over time an ad hoc supply developed at the hands of a few enterprising local entrepreneurs.  They built bridges in several places across the river and then charged tolls of users to cross them.  Grateful states granted them permits to operate in the public interest.

When the Great Depression hit some years later, putting angry young men with too much time on their hands to work in remote locations seemed wise.  They called it a stimulus and sent them off to build dams and parks and roads very far away from banks and Chambers of Commerce offices.  Luckily, this surplus of labor coincided with the spread of a new belief that the government ought to do something for you – or rather for businesses.  It became the state’s job to foster business development by providing roads and bridges, and suddenly they had just the unemployed workers to do it.

The State of Oklahoma partnered with that self-important republic to the south to build a bridge across the Red River between Denison and Durant (on highway 75), and it would operate without a toll when it opened in July, 1931.  The free ride was a result of the growing public conviction that transportation should be a not-for-profit benefit from the state and a requirement for taking federal money for the project.  The point was to facilitate commerce, not fund Austin and Oklahoma City.

When the completion date neared, the Red River Bridge Company of Texas, which owned the existing toll bridge nearby, ran to the federal district court in Houston and got an injunction to prevent the free-way from opening.  It seems that in order to deter political opposition there the Texas Highway Commission had promised to buy out the bridge company – since the new free span would drive it out of business – but it hadn’t actually done so.  The federal court ordered Texas not to open the bridge until the matter could be heard, and state employees put up barricades to comply in the meantime.

Only, they didn’t know who they were messing with.  Reformed Texan, outspoken white-supremacist, and country lawyer, Alfalfa Bill Murray wasn’t going to take that nonsense.  He was a militant with a penchant for declaring martial law to keep order and to monitor sales of OU football game tickets.  Of course he wasn’t going to take some court order lying down.

Based on his legal expertise, Murray concluded that treaties pertaining to the Louisiana Purchase actually granted the State of Oklahoma the territory up to the south bank of the Red River, so the bridge was technically in our state and under Alfalfa Bill’s control.  Further, he determined that though the bridge was a joint project, the shares ran north and south.  Texas might not be able to operate its side because of the federal injunction, but Oklahoma wasn’t bound by that (even when the federal court in Muskogee issued an injunction against us too).  Highway crews from our state marched right across the bridge and tore down the barricades.  Governor Sterling of Texas had them rebuilt and sent some Rangers to stand guard.

In response, Ol’ Alfalfa Bill went inexplicably Amazonian on him:  bizarrely suggesting that an “army” of women from Oklahoma and Texas rise up and occupy the bridge – for a quilting bee, of course – and he assured that his men would be glad to open the way for them, out of chivalry.  Sterling issued a statement huffing and puffing about law and order and Texas’ profound respect for womanhood and its support for opening the bridge, if only the court would allow it.  Murray cut to the chase.  He declared martial law, and the papers called it a “bridge war.”  The governor personally led the troops, stationed on the northern side of the “war zone,” in his signature white suit, with his outdated revolver in hand.  Of course, those chicken-shit Rangers backed down when facing the mustachioed old man and his antique firearm.  Oklahoma guardsmen crossed the bridge and Texans fretted about the “invasion.”  The Texas legislature, meanwhile, called a special session to approve a bill to let the Red River Bridge Company sue the state for its promised funds.  The toll bridge operators would get their money, and in August, Murray recalled the troops – he needed them to enforce the martial law he had then declared in the Oklahoma oil fields – but not before the story made TIME and Life magazines.

Funny thing is, the old man was right about the border.  He may have been a crazy fascist, but he was a good lawyer.  He was an expert on the territorial dispute – and outrageous enough in his actions to attract press from across the country to it.  Later, Alfalfa Bill tried to ride that national notoriety into the White House, but he couldn’t woo delegates from other states.  Maybe that’s because one of his plans to cut spending was to offer pardons to prisoners who would move out of state.  You know some of them went to Texas.

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Founding Pessimism — Part II

American history No Responses »
Nov 042012

We Hate The Governed

 

Halloween has past, and that means the Christmas shopping season has begun here in the States.  As is usual, Thanksgiving is mostly overlooked in anticipation of the most significant commercial activity of our year.  Christmas music pipes through the malls now, holiday decor already sits out, and the war on Christmas 2012 has surely begun.  This means the traditional kvetching of evangelical pastors is near at hand as well.  Cue their endless efforts to reframe Christmas as a Christian holiday.  God love them, they fight the good fight — but in the US, Christianity is a false cover for the worship of Mammon.

Mammonism is the basis of our civics and culture.  As outlined in our Constitution, the main purpose of our federal government is to promote and protect our economy.  The heart of our political system is commerce;  the economics and the politics are inseparable.  This is the source of our dollar diplomacy and the justification to stand our ground.  It’s no wonder the Supreme Court has determined that corporations are people in our country, because personhood here means “property owner.”  Our Founders were influenced by John Locke’s political theory, in which property was fundamental and ownership a natural right.  Commercial activity rather than the Soul defines the political being then.  True citizenship comes with the standing to make a binding contract.  When you can sign for a loan, they let you vote.  We aren’t the citizenry; we’re the “private sector.”

When Alexander Hamilton was drafting his plan to create a financial program for this country (one that privileged the elite investor class), this view of citizen-contractors infused it.  Hamilton recognized that the key to creating wealth was spurring labor.  It was essential to get Staters to produce for the market in order to develop manufacturing and commerce (and to provide investment opportunities for those “best men” and financiers).  Self-sufficiency led only to sufficiency.  Excess — profit — required more.  Hamilton’s concern, then, was to encourage citizens to engage in market activity, and against that action stood anti-materialism, laziness, and the ideal of the proud independent yeoman.  The anti-Federalists had insisted on checking the government’s power over the people, so how could Hamilton and his cronies compel them to pursue commerce?  Perhaps Congress’ most fundamental and unquestioned power was to tax, and therein lay the answer.

Taxes would drive production by necessity.  Citizens would have to obtain some means to pay their taxes — bartering, which worked within their local communities, would not suffice to meet this burden.  (Gone were the feudal and post-feudal European practices of paying one’s lord in kind; accordingly, the merchant became the essential third party who offered credit and converted goods to coin for the Treasury.)  Staters would have to engage in some commerce to pay their obligations, and the greater the liability, the more they would need to produce to earn the means to pay.  Further, Hamilton counted on natural greed to compel market activity.  When one was inclined to a certain standard of living and the government reduced one’s take through taxation, only additional production would return one to the level desired.  Rather than punishing one for hard work, taxation here drives it.  Hence, Hamilton advocated funding the national debt — or working out a perpetual payment system on federal obligations so that interest payments were met but the principle was never paid in full.  Thus, there would always be an obligation requiring taxation and a burden that forced market activity on the citizenry.  Continued debt and productivity would create wealth for the state and for the investor class obtaining the profits.

Clearly, this view of the people was neither noble nor generous.  It relied on the worst of human beings — greed — to overcome the other vices of laziness and pride.  The system was built to pit immorality against iniquity.  In no sense did the ideology rely on the goodness of humankind or attempt to leverage good against evil or encourage  righteousness.  In this way, the anti-Federalists’ hatred of government was matched by the Federalists/pre-capitalists’ disdain for the people — only the small government forces meant to apply the rein, while the statists wanted the whip.  Between the two parties, there was loathing for both the members of our confederacy and the mechanism of that body politic.  It would seem, then, that the pessimism of our Founders drove them to create this great commercial system, this imperial market, this model of plenty.  Had they any goodwill toward humankind, it might all be different, and we might have escaped the service of Mammon.

“They spend their days in prosperity, then go down to hell in peace.” — Job 21:13

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Founding Pessimism — Part I

American history No Responses »
Sep 102012

We Hate Government

 

Our nation was founded on hate.  It’s a sad truth.  Rebellious English colonists hated the way they were treated by the mother country, and by extension, its crown head (king and country being one under the monarchy, acts by the government were ascribable to His Majesty — though the monarch’s power was no longer absolute even in those days).  They despised the government that took from them privileges to which they felt entitled.  That last bit is important because that was the crux of the issue.  Under the rule of the king, citizens had no rights of their own.  Liberties were strictly privileges granted by the king’s permission.  In England, a powerful noble class had developed upon which the king relied — for money, support, and military might — and he was forced to make concessions in order to keep its allegiance.  These concessions were outlined in the Magna Carta (1215), which required the Crown to forfeit some of its rights and subject itself to the law (the law no longer being whatever the king declared).  A constitutional monarchy slowly developed, wherein His Majesty’s whims were limited and then replaced by the power of a republican parliament which codified entitlements and responsibilities — an effort at regulated and durable jurisprudence.  In 1689, this parliamentary arrangement was formalized in writing in the English Bill of Rights.  As for the colonies, the distance between North America and Great Britain allowed for a good deal of self-direction and initially, the colonies were largely left to their own devices.  The colonists developed a number of their own traditions then — based on necessity and theoretical shifts resulting from their experience in self-governance — and their attachment to these prompted their resistance to efforts to bring them under greater English control later.  They resented the change, and eventually enough of them grew to hate it so badly that actual insurrection by arms resulted.

So it was, a nation was born of hatred of government.  Only, then, the rebels found they needed a government.  They’d justified the split with Great Britain by arguing that human beings are not dependent on any regime for their liberties;  certain privileges are actually rights and they are due to everyone by virtue of their birth.  If it is the case that all citizens (or, white men) are individual sovereigns, what does government do but encroach upon their rights?  It does just this, so it requires careful restriction to keep it from inserting itself too much and into areas in which it does not belong.  Thus, our Founders drafted a Constitution to guide us that would limit government to the least intrusions necessary: conducting international diplomacy, providing for military defense, settling disputes between citizen-sovereigns and various governments, establishing uniform naturalization requirements and copyright/patent protections, and regulating and facilitating commerce.  This is it.  That is, boiled down, the full power of the federal government under the Constitution.  To the administrative branch went diplomacy and defense; to the judiciary, the weighing of suits and review.  What was left was essentially economic power, and it went to the Congress.

The representational legislature was to fund the activities of the other branches and organize them at the outset.  It was to establish those uniform rules that would remove disparities between the states for citizenship and bankruptcies and protect the ownership rights of creative and inventive citizens — who would, of course, then be empowered by the force of law to benefit financially from their products.  This leads to the main of the congressional duties: enabling commerce.  The Founders did not charge the Congress with protecting citizens from domestic dangers or ensuring justice or promoting virtuousness.  Rather, the Founders were mainly interested a federal system that would promote trade (those other duties fell to state and local governments or individuals), and they recognized that the economy required the assistance of government to succeed.  This was no free market ideology.  Theirs was a government whose only legitimate purpose was to aid the public in making money — it was necessarily a patron to the rich, then (as well as, to a lesser degree, others).  Beyond this, governmental intrusion would be tyrannical and oppressive.

Government is evil, then, unless it promotes the pursuit of wealth (that is, the key to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).  It must secure the nation from attack and promote its interests abroad — and to a good extent these are economic — and facilitate commerce.  Good government is really just a tool for promoting a market economy in this view.  That is its proper purpose, and when it strays from that it becomes monstrous and oppressive and must be opposed.  This negative view of government and it’s narrow value says much about our Founders and the motive behind their anti-government sensibilities.  More so, it belies any claim to a nobler national purpose. This is no City on a Hill, but a storefront in a commercial zone.

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil…” 1 Timothy 6:10

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Bitter Sorrow, Bad History

American history, current events No Responses »
Apr 182012
When you enter the Gates of Time — at 9:01am and 9:03am respectively — you enter a space where a minute exists in perpetuity.  For as long as you remain between the gates, you are suspended in memoriam in a moment that no longer is.  Yet, though seventeen years have passed, that minute endures there, through varying seasons and politics and time.  Those sixty seconds alone do not change.  They are always with us — between the gates, as scars on our hearts, and branded onto our memories.  The physical space where time continues suspended is defined, but the memory of that moment travels beyond Oklahoma City, the State, and any circumscribed border.  Wherever Oklahomans are — or go — that minute is present.
 
Because it is always with us, it’s all the more painful when, for others, it seems so unremarkable.  It hasn’t even been twenty years.  Are your memories so short?  Was that moment so inconsequential in your lives?  For us, it haunts — no, not haunts — more like it aches, even in spite of the years of healing and growth that have come after.  We’ve had a measure of revenge.  We’ve honored (and still do) those we lost.  We’ve built a place to remember that is a model for the world in how to prioritize humanity in memorials to inhumane tragedies.  Whatever else we fail at, our remembrance — our historical tribute — excels in nobility and sophistication.  Our grief is dignified and remains authentic even after all these years.
 
Our profound sorrow turns bitter, though, when we see how little the history means elsewhere.  It’s tough to choke down the truth that others remember the event so poorly.  And, then, for that bad history to be used as a justification for systematized civic injustice…  Insulting fails to characterize the effect properly.
 
Ironically, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy studied history as an undergraduate.  One would tend to assume then that he would be careful with historical facts.  Maybe he spends all of his time in the thrall of James Madison and other Founders though, or perhaps he prefers ancient history to current events.  Whatever the case, the painful, stinging reality is that his recall of the Oklahoma City bombing is flawed and fuzzy.  If Kennedy did not sit on the highest court in the country, his poor historical understanding would only prick the hearts of Oklahomans, but he does, and instead that history has become a tool in a far-reaching legal dispute.  Kennedy’s recent opinion allowing strip searches of those arrested for any reason — no matter how trivial the charge and without reasonable suspicion — springs from his law-and-order orientation, but it was in his bad historical understanding that he found justification for this broad, intrusive governmental power.  Kennedy rationalized his position by noting that Timothy McVeigh was arrested for driving without a license plate — this minor offense led to the apprehension of a mass murderer, and thus, since little violations can aid in arresting dangerous criminals, intrusive searches based on the same are permissible.
 
Only, McVeigh wasn’t arrested simply because the car he was driving was missing its tag.  That was why the state trooper first pulled him over — but this offense doesn’t always warrant arrest in Oklahoma.  McVeigh might only have been ticketed and his car towed….except.  Except that during the traffic stop, the trooper noticed a bulge in McVeigh’s jacket, which turned out to be a loaded semi-automatic handgun.  Once Trooper Hanger discovered this — which McVeigh did not have a license to carry concealed in Oklahoma — he immediately pulled his weapon, disarmed his suspect and placed him in handcuffs.  This was the point at which McVeigh was formally detained.  The arrest was precipitated by the gun — not the missing tag.
 
Clarity on this detail is important,and scrutiny of the facts is more than scholastic hair-splitting.  Firstly, it insists that we remember the history and do so properly — something that may not mean much to others but is greatly significant to the people of Oklahoma.  Is it really so much to ask that you remember this most horrific and horrible event accurately?  We cannot forget it.  It hurts that we have to remind you of it and that you recall it so badly.  Further, it cuts that a poor history of this event be used to justify governmental intrusion into the personal privacy of those who survived it.  The victims are now potential peers of the bomber.  Somehow, they have become an equivalent threat if they accumulate too many parking tickets or write a bad check.  How oblivious is Kennedy to the irony of his use of McVeigh’s misguided attack against tyrannical government?  The incongruity bends back upon itself.  The history just bends over, a malleable narrative used to make silly law.
 
But, that is outside.  Within the Gates, it is still 9:02am and the world is shattering.  The minute is the present past and not yet written in books.  As McVeigh makes his way out of downtown with his weapon concealed, papers are still falling, concrete yet buries adults and children alive, and Oklahomans teeter on the brink of collectively meeting their great sorrow.
 
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Hello, My Declaim Is…

American history No Responses »
Mar 082012
I love studying history, but I hate telling strangers that.  When I meet new people, I always brace myself when the topic comes up.  Invariably, other history lovers will reveal themselves.  They will then gush over the latest best seller about John Adams/George Washington/Teddy Roosevelt or some other great American leader.  Or, a review of their favorite visits to various historical sites, complete with superlative descriptions, spills forth inevitably.  Perhaps they made a trek to the Capital and must wax poetic about the memorials they saw there — although interestingly enough, they never have visited the monument I think is most important.  I appreciate their enthusiasm.  I wish Americans had more of a historical orientation, and these individuals clearly care.
 
Still, I never know how to respond.  Invariably, the history they love is that traditional founder-worshipping kind of propaganda I despise — and probably not coincidentally, the people I’m talking about here are usually men.  Seriously, do you guys take a class or something where you learn to venerate the founders?  Is it genetic?  I don’t get it, and I don’t know what to say.  I probably couldn’t care less about how impressed you were by the Washington Monument.  I’m actually disappointed that you would rather go there or to the Jefferson Memorial or the World War II one than the Lincoln, which invites substantive reflection on race relations and political schism.  I kind of assume this means you aren’t interested in serious thought about our history — that you just want the celebratory booster crap.  To be honest, that leaves me empty.  I am not the least bit interested and I don’t want to be a buzzkill by dropping that in a conversation with someone I just met.  But, I’m not going to be chatty about your interest either.  I’m going to smile and nod my head while you talk.  Inwardly, I am rolling my eyes and wishing it were over already, but there you go.
 
It would be lovely if ever I was pleasantly surprised to have a stranger go on a crazy anti-Hamilton rant or critique of the Progressives after first meeting them and learning of our mutual affection for history.  What wonderful astonishment that would bring.  It would be especially awesome if it were an old lady that appeared mainstream and respectable — an outspoken lefty grandma all blue hair and bluster.  I guess I will just have to be the change I want to see in the world.
 
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A Bitter Birthday, Fondly Remembered

American history No Responses »
Nov 212011
 
Forty-eight years ago, at the hopeful and ignorant age of twenty, JoAnn Roxbury was a young wife recently transplanted to Houston, Texas from her native Michigan.  She worked for a company that made oil field equipment in their Accounts Payable Department, coding invoices for data entry by a co-worker.  The office was in downtown Houston, although in one of the smaller high-rises there in the heart of the city.  On her birthday, November 21, 1963, she was greatly excited because the President was coming to town and she would see him in person — something at the time that was rare for average citizens in the heartland and a special treat for a girl from a small town still getting used to urban life.  The staff members in her office were notified by the management that they were closing the office early that day, due to the President’s visit.  They were told that there had been a threat against the President’s life and extra security measures were being taken as a result.  Previously, when parades had passed through downtown, the employees opened windows and threw confetti down on the participants below (like the Colt 45′s/Astros and other local teams/dignitaries); however, this time, they were informed that windows were to remain closed and everyone was prohibited from throwing anything out the windows.  In the end, they closed the building altogether and the employees were forced to leave.
 
The motorcade itself passed in mid-afternoon (around 3:00pm), and it consisted of four or five cars.  The Kennedys were in one car — a convertible (which Roxbury recalls as a Cadillac), and the Governor, Mayor, and other persons of note were in accompanying vehicles.  There was a motorcycle escort from the Houston police and other officers and Secret Service members walked along with the cars.  One of these was black and had darkened windows, which indicated it was a Secret Service vehicle.  A large crowd packed both sides of the street, and this included people of all ages.  In the heart of downtown, the faces were mostly white, but as the motorcade moved farther to the edges of downtown, it passed into a largely African-American part of the city.  This is actually where young Roxbury (who is white) watched the President and First Lady pass.  Although some of her co-workers stayed by their office and watched together, Roxbury’s husband fetched her in their Corvair and drove further out to try and avoid the worst of the crowd.  Eventually, they were unable to continue on due to street closures, so they parked and got out to watch.
 
Roxbury was too young to vote in the 1960 election (when one had to be 21 to vote), but she liked the Kennedys very much.  They were young and stylish, with a family.  She saw them as a breath of fresh air in politics and admired them greatly.  In particular, Jacqueline Kennedy seemed an elegant change from the dowdiness of Mamie Eisenhower, whom Roxbury did not particularly like.  Houston was a Democratic bastion then and a port city, so there was quite a demographic mix there.  It had a significant black population — as well as Hispanics and immigrants.  The main of the town, then, was eager to see the President and his wife as they drove from the airport to wherever they were staying (which was never announced to the public).  The Kennedys were to attend a fundraising dinner that night, Roxbury thought.  She was very eager to catch a glimpse and was thrilled to find herself about fifteen yards from the Kennedys’ car as it passed.  Being the only white people in the crowd at that part, Roxbury and her husband stood out — and she thought it was because of this that she caught the Kennedys’ attention.  Looking over, Jackie Kennedy eyed her directly and waved, smiling brightly.  Roxbury thought Mrs. Kennedy looked very elegant in her suit and hat.  People around them were calling out to the President and First Lady, cheering, and talking excitedly.  It was quite a treat for the young wife’s birthday, and she looked forward to telling her family back home about it later.
 
After this momentous and special birthday event, Roxbury reported to her office as usual the next day.  She stayed in for lunch.  Returning co-workers brought devastating news:  going on to Dallas for a visit that morning, President Kennedy had been shot as his motorcade went through town there.  Roxbury was stunned.  But, she had just seen him the day before.  He was so young and healthy-looking.  She and her co-workers pressed their boss’ secretary to turn the radio on in his office (they didn’t have any TV’s there), and the woman finally relented.  Initial news reports said that the Governor had been shot and killed, while Kennedy was rushed to the hospital with a bullet wound.  About 1:30pm, they got the news that, instead, the President was dead.
 
The office fell strangely silent.  The employees were shocked and stunned;  some were crying.  It seemed so unreal that they had just seen the President the day before, and the next, he had been brutally and shockingly assassinated.  Again the office closed early for the day — and it remained closed for the next few days.  In downtown Houston, people poured out of office buildings into the streets.  Many stood around in a daze.  This was America — not some unstable third world country.  Roxbury thought:  Aren’t we supposed to be better/more tolerant than this?  Are we resorting to violence to settle our political disputes now?  It was too much — and it would get worse as she watched the President’s assassin killed himself on live TV the following day.  ”What have we become?” she asked, just a day after the joy of seeing the head of the great Republic and marking her entry into her second decade.  It was all hope and tragedy, and she was starting out.
 
–  Oral history with JoAnn Roxbury, 11/21/2011, Tulsa, OK
 
(Happy Birthday, Mom.)
 
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United States of Debtors

American history, current events No Responses »
Jul 202011
 
I don’t know where exactly Americans get the idea that our country wasn’t built on credit.  I think people assume that debt is a relatively new concept or just operate on the assumption that our early days were ones of rugged self-sufficiency.  Perhaps since historians don’t put it in blunt terms, they just don’t think about it, but the truth is that debt is part of the American way.
 
During the revolution, our motley collection of colonies hardly had the financial means to fight a war against one of the greatest empires of the age.  If France and Spain had not subsidized, supplied, and even fought our war, we would never have tasted national independence.  We kicked in a little, to be sure, but the amount of money available then was so small that the states and the federal government relied heavily on loans to bear our share.  Therein, a pattern was set that would last almost uninterrupted until today.  The federal government was still paying off the war debt when Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana and piled on more deficit.  Before that debt could be retired, the War of 1812 came along and brought with it even more obligations.  A continuation of wars — with the Spanish, Mexicans, and Indians — meant that military spending continued to grow.  Back then, the federal government relied on tariffs for income, and that limited what the national budget could cover.  The coming of the Civil War brought a whole new level of expenditures and debt — warranting the introduction of the income tax for the first time.  National projects — parks, canals, railroads, and the like — meant continued government spending into the 20th century.  The development of the regulatory state expanded the size of the government and, of course, required more financial support then.  Successive world wars and a cold one, combined with a space race, assured mushrooming costs at the federal level.  Throughout all of these periods, outlays exceeded income, and the result was never-ending national debt.  Only once in our 235 year history has the government not been in debt — including the days of “smaller government.”  It is unrealistic, then, to expect it to function otherwise now and unhistorical to think this has not always been the case.
 
As to the popular fiction that Americans themselves manage their financial affairs differently, the history doesn’t back that up either.  Sure, credit card and student loan debt are new, but U.S. citizens relied on credit heavily even before these sources were available.  As soon as Henry Ford, et al, introduced the automobile to the public, they learned that the only way to get volume sales was to offer buying on time.  Ford wanted consumers to pay first and drive later, but when he started losing business to those who would let people drive the car while they paid it off, he too changed his policy.  In short, the story of the 20th century was the expansion of consumer credit in order to spur an economy supported by buyers.  Without it, there simply was no market.  Even before that, though, Americans relied heavily on credit.  It wasn’t until 1920 that the majority of people in the U.S. lived in cities.  Before that, rural life was the norm and most worked on farms or ranches with their families.  Agriculture was the main industry, and most wealth was in the form of real estate (land or slaves usually).  The average farmer or even plantation owner didn’t have cash to buy seed, supplies, and whatnot every year.  So, banks and merchants provided tools and other necessities on credit to be paid off when the harvest came in.  Often, the money made from this essentially just wiped the slate clean (or established a line of credit to draw from).  People rarely got rich off of farming — even Thomas Jefferson constantly struggled with debt for his plantation.  Mechanization in the 19th century would ultimately lead to the development of agribusiness, but that generally also ushered in the demise of the family farm, which went hand in hand with urbanization and the development of consumer culture.
 
Often, in the 18th and 19th centuries (and even some into the 20th), people got by without having cash at hand.  They bartered and traded for goods and services and used store credit.  Actual money was scarce in the early days.  Under the British colonial system, gold and silver (what we call “specie”) was hoarded in the home country.  In America, paper money — which functioned as an IOU for specie printed by individual banks, states, and others — was often used in lieu of gold or silver coins.  Counterfeit bills were a significant problem then, but it still was a long time until the federal government took sole responsibility for printing and backing money (in the 1860′s).  Before that, since there were few coins and not a whole lot of valuable paper money around, again, people got by on credit, trading and bartering.  However, trading and bartering in a seasonal/agricultural economy often also really meant delayed payment until the harvest (i.e. credit).  This kind of debt was considered productive credit as opposed to the consumer kind of the 20th century, but it was a burden of obligations nonetheless.
 
So, the average American household and the government have a long history of reliance on credit.  Essentially, ours has always been a nation of debt, and it’s best not to delude ourselves about it.  How much debt and what kind is a choice for us to make, but going without would be, well, un-American.
 
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A Rebellion of Slavers

American history No Responses »
Jun 222011
 
If the North’s first impulse in fighting the Civil War was to save face and preserve the union, the South’s was to protect slavery.  I am certain a mad chorus of opposition would greet this statement from those who stalwartly believe that the rebels broke with the country their fathers and grandfathers died for because they were ardently defending the states’ sovereignty rights.  They want to deny that slavery was the cause of the war.  I would not say that the Union fought the war over slavery, but I would say the Confederates did so.  This isn’t to say that the rebels didn’t believe in the states’ rights argument — they did.  They just didn’t believe in it enough to go to war over it.  Now, slavery was a completely different matter.
 
As the ink was drying on the Constitution, our country was headed to a showdown over the sovereignty of the federal government and the states’ relationship to that.  To get the Constitution ratified, the federalists had to make concessions to the anti-federalists by adding the Bill of Rights as a check on the national government’s powers.  Of course, number ten of these amendments made specific reference to the authority of the states.  Our country was still young when our second President, John Adams, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Although rarely used, this legislation strengthened the authority of the federal government (in addition to suppressing Adams’ political opposition), and anti-federalists balked at this new power.  Thomas Jefferson and James Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in response.  These argued that the states were sovereign and the only powers belonging to the federal government were those granted it in the Constitution and/or by the states.  It was this states’ rights argument that James Calhoun would revise later to fight the tariff in the 1820′s.  Calhoun’s South Carolina Exposition and Protest would recycle the states’ rights argument and principle of nullification.  These three important statesmen and southerners promoted the notion that the states had the power to nullify laws to which they objected.  When Jefferson and Madison proposed it, the argument went nowhere because no one was willing to have an out-and-out fight over the Alien and Sedition Acts — and Jefferson became president shortly thereafter, leading to a republicanism that was friendlier to the states.  Calhoun, however, stirred up his constituents in South Carolina and they fully intended to fight the federal government in the streets over the hated tariff (which was economically harmful to them but beneficial to northern industry).  President Andrew Jackson called their bluff and began prepping for battle.  A former war hero, he was certain to pursue a military resolution in the matter.  Calhoun, et al blinked first, and the rebellion died before it began.  Calhoun managed some artful diplomacy that at least allowed them to save face, but the gig was up.  Again, the issue wasn’t enough to go to war over.  The citizens of South Carolina knew they couldn’t beat the union single-handedly, and no one else was willing to fight over it — even the other southern states to whom the tariff was also a blight.
 
Slavery, on the other hand, was a whole other matter.  This was the basis of the southern economy and social structure.  Even those who did not have slaves benefited financially from slavery — through commerce with those who were slavers — or socially from it because it gave poor whites a higher social standing than enslaved blacks at least.  As the aftermath of the Civil War showed, to eliminate slavery was to destroy and undermine southern antebellum life.  Quite literally, the south was not the same after the war.  Maybe they didn’t know how exactly it would change, but southerners knew before the war that slavery was central to their lives and eliminating it would cause upheaval.  This absolutely was something to go to war for.  So, when Republicans talked about containing slavery and abolitionism became more and more vocal, the slavers broke out the old states’ rights argument again to justify their position.  It was an intellectual cover for their social and economic wants in the same way that notions of the social contract justified American revolutionists’ refusal to pay taxes and answer to the King of England.  When it came to slavery, however, South Carolina was no longer alone.  This time, when it actually seceded, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas quickly followed suit.  It was not coincidental that 43% of the households in these states held slaves.  As such, the stakes were high for them.  Their economies were the most dependent on slave labor.  Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee seceded shortly thereafter, and the rate of slave ownership in these states was about 36%.  Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware — although slave states — never seceded, but there only approximately 22% of the citizenry held slaves.  It wasn’t as necessary to their economic stability then.  The correlation between the rates of slave ownership and secessionism demonstrates that slavery was the real motive for the rebellion.  The states’ rights argument was the intellectual justification, but it had been around for a long time and had not led to war before.  The difference in 1860 was that the issue was not about the power of the government to tax or to suppress opposition.  It was purely about slavery, and that was the cause that was finally enough to make the south rebel.
 
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The War for Emancipation

American history No Responses »
Jun 092011
 
I see on the interwebs that there is a great public debate underway as we mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War about the cause of that conflagration — or I should say Cause of it, with a capital C and great emphasis.  States’ rights some argue;  No!  Slavery and slavery alone, comes a reply.  I think it’s fine that we have this earnest conversation, because this is civic engagement.  This is patriotism — to mull and to exchange ideas about our past.  It’s part of understanding who we are.  Americans are so often content to be uncritical or unreflective about ourselves.  I love dearly when we attempt to be thoughtful — when being American is more of an activity than waving a flag or singing an anthem.  This is the meat of citizenship, or rather, intellectual citizenship.  So, we have the two camps faced off against one another in an interpretive engagement…perhaps mirroring the partisan differences of the war itself.
 
I don’t want to take sides (mostly because I think they are both wrong).  To those who claim that slavery was the sole cause of the war, however, I would like to point out the obvious:
 
Major General John Fremont — a southerner, hero of the Mexican-American war, and radical Republican — commanded the Department of the West in the early days of the war.  Specifically, he was charged with eliminating secessionist threats in Missouri (which was a slave state) and assuring it stayed in the Union.  In August of 1861, he ordered the emancipation of the slaves belonging to secessionist rebels in that state.  President Lincoln first asked and then ordered Fremont to rescind his proclamation.  When he did not, Lincoln relieved him of his command on November 2, 1861 — clearly, Lincoln was having no abolitionism from his subordinates. (The radical Republicans would later nominate Fremont for president to challenge Lincoln, with whom they were dissatisfied.)  In May of 1862, General David “Black Dave” Hunter — a Yankee, graduate of West Point, and originally a subordinate officer under Fremont — freed the slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida when he took command of the Department of the South.  Again, Lincoln intervened and rescinded that emancipation proclamation — for fear of angering the border states and losing popular support for the war.  He was not wrong in his assessment, for the Democrats were still a strong political force and did not support abolition.  They gained seats in Congress during the 1862 elections and in 1864 put up General George McClellan against Lincoln. (Lincoln had previously relieved McClellan from his position as General-in-Chief over the army because of his poor success and a concern over the general’s dedication.)   McClellan and his fellow Democrats were opposed to wholesale emancipation.
 
The Congress — which was largely dominated by Republicans — was not so reticent.  On April 10th of 1862, it  passed legislation calling for voluntary manumission and providing for reimbursement for slave owners who did the same.  On the 16th, Congress ended slavery in the District of Columbia and compensated the former owners there.  (Many northern states like Massachusetts had abolished slavery well before the war.)   Congress stopped short, however, of legislating emancipation for the whole nation.  It wasn’t until January 1, 1863 that Lincoln finally got on board and issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation — freeing slaves in the rebel states (but not those in Union territory — again for fear of angering Union slave owners and sympathizers).  By this time, Lincoln realized that ending slavery was necessary to winning the war (and appeasing European allies).  In a letter to famed newspaperman Horace Greeley, Lincoln plainly stated that his purpose in emancipation was strictly to save the Union — not to benefit the slaves.  So much for the federal commitment to emancipation, which didn’t kick in until the war was almost half over.  The slave states followed slowly, as the war dwindled and perhaps the handwriting was on the wall.  Over the course of 1864, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Maryland abolished slavery in their states.  The following year, Missouri and Tennessee followed suit.  In December 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — ending slavery throughout the country — was ratified.  Later, former rebel states would have to adopt this amendment as a condition of readmission.
 
It is very clear from these events that the Union was not fighting a war to free slaves at the outset.  In the beginning, the purpose was to respond to the rebels’ offensive act at Ft. Sumter and then to keep the nation one and indivisible.  It wasn’t until later that pride and nationalism was joined by abolitionism.  Even when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, many Union citizens objected and the states where slavery remained legal were slow to embrace it.  It would be false to say then that this was a war of slavers versus abolitionists.  Certainly, the northern forces were not a liberation army.  Abolition was an outcome in the end, but it was not the reason the Union undertook its mission and, as James Garfield complained in his civil war letters, it wasn’t the thing the average soldier saw as his purpose.  Those who would claim that the issue of slavery was first and foremost what the war was fought for would be incorrect then.  This was no war for emancipation.  It would be wrong to credit the Union too much.
 
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