Reading Wednesday: Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth

Born In the USA On The Fourth Of July

     . . . .  In some ways, the 4th here was anything but pleasant.  That yesterday's reading during the birthday of the nation, July 4th, started with the late 19th century Red River Valley, * switched to Springsteen's autobiography, Born to Run, then moved on Holger Hoock's Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth, likely contributed to the disquiet.

What is so disturbing when contemplating the initiation of our national independence from Britain, isn't so much what happened between the two opposing armies and what they did to each other, as what took place on the ground, among our own civilians: those who were determined to break away from the Crown, those who wished to stay with England, and those who really had no skin in the game at all and didn't give a damn either way.  Those who were not for it were harassed at best, tortured and murdered at worst, and in very terrible ways.  Their families lost everything including loved husbands, fathers, siblings, mothers and sons and daughters

Then, today, a New Mexico amigo forwarded this, which exacerbated my unrest:

"Albuquerque’s hot summer of angst, decay and politics"
nmpolitics.net
As the administration of Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry enters its final months, histories of critical times are being recorded.

Moving to Albuquerque way way way back in the day was my initiation into the public violence * * that is this nation from the beginning. I'd been shielded from that previously because where I had been living, violence for people like me was confined to the home, at the hands of the family, not in the public realm.

Reading this piece brought back those first years in New Mexico where all the public realm violence I've ever experienced, from break-ins to beatings and rape, happened to me. Just about woman I knew had been a victim of rape, break-ins, thefts, street harassment, etc. And the women I knew who had been fortunate enough to not have been victims of this violence had dedicated their lives to trying to stop it, and to help victims heals.

I've never forgotten the 1980 New Mexico State Penitentiary Riot.  (A BBC history of the Penitentiary Riot can be watched here on Youtube.)  This inhuman horror remains probably the most violent and terrible prison riot in the history of the US. Recalling the accounts of that terrible event still make me literally ill. It's astounding-- or not, this being the USA, about which history I know intimately now in detail, breadth and scope that I didn't then -- that it hasn't changed in all these years, just intensified.

Boston Patriots destroy Governor Hutchinson's home; The family just barely escaped with their lives.  The history of Massachusetts that Governor Hutchinson had been working on much his life, drawing on primary documents in his family's possession, was destroyed, along with all the family papers, that dated from the founding of the Massachusetts colony.

Mobs attack a Tory 1775

 A "kingsman', tarred and feathered.
This was a very popular, and gruesome form of public humiliation . The naked body of the victim was scalded from head to toe with hot tar, then rolled in bird feathers.  The victim was usually further shoved upon a rail and paraded throughout the town for hours, and then expelled, still naked and covered in tar and feathers.

Throughout the career of the Sons of Liberty the organization enjoyed the quiet blessing of the well-to-do and politically active that backed separation from Britain. In essence, the Sons of Liberty became the extralegal enforcement arm of the American cause against Parliament.  Support us or this and worse will (and did) happen to you!

Though smaller in scale, many of the many violent actions, i.e. criminal acts,  with which the Patriots, Sons of Liberty and other well organized mobs forced everyone living in the 13 colonies to war with Britain were as sickeningly vicious as the New Mexico State Penitentiary Riot of 1980.

By now, I thought, reading again accounts of these actions, it seems the nation as a whole has caught up with Albuquerque, and many other towns in places like Arizona, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, etc., all of which have been following in the footsteps of the start of Independence.

Yes, the nation has actually gone to hell.

Funny. I don't think I mean by the country's gone to hell what my relatives have meant, as they've repeated for decades that 'this country's gone to hell' in that special tone of flat fury. I'm sure they're now pleased as punch that they've made a paranoid, deranged, ignorant, lazy, greedy, lying, arrogant, vengeful, obsessive, cowardly, racist, woman-hating, narcissist bully, who hates everyone who isn't him, asshole in chief of the USA.  He's just like us!

Yah, looking over the news today, July 4th, 2017 was a Greeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat Day in the USA.

Just look at these asshole minions' response to the NPR tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence every July 4th on Morning Edition. when this year NPR's twitter feed put the Declaration of Independence up:

Ay-up this country's gone to hell and the minions have driven it there with every breath they take.

We now even have our own national religious patriotism totalitarian bloviating hymn to national violence.  (It can be seen and heard here, on Youtube.  I'm only putting the link here, as I cannot bear putting a grab of the video itself on my blog.  How many words does this travesty have? 20? Come on guys, you surely are smart enough to know that one teeny tweak and 'great again can be white again. Come on, you know you want to!

Ask Jared Yates Sexton. America's violent spirit is alive and kicking, especially kicking anyone it perceives as Not It.

Burning black Tulsa, June, 1921

Chicago, Red Summer 1919, race riots -- meaning white people rioted, black people were murdered.

These people are just waiting -- itching -- for Someone to give them the signal to start the killing -- again.

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* Lest one think that the Red River Valley in North Dakota back in 1888 was free of racial and other violence, my reading yesterday included accounts of killing Sioux who lived a bit further north in Pembina Cty.,  an  Italian immigrant discovered dead -- and robbed of his wages from working all spring, summer and fall on a Bonanza farm -- in a granary of wheat, and offhand remarks about Jews, and how often men got drunk and beat their wives and children -- particularly on the holiday of the 4th of July.

**  For me, public violence = crime, concentration camps, genocides, prisons, riots.

Turn: Washington's Spies - Season 2

~ ~ ~ ~        This is the AMC series about spies for Washington, and spies for the King, and spies and betrayals of everyone by everyone, from King George to General George Washington.

Season 1 was hard, due to pacing and  the difficulties getting  a handle on characters and their relationships, as well as a sense of location, despite having handy screen scrawls informing us where and when. CGI sets don't help with this kind of thing.

However, Season 2 was much improved (if no more historically accurate in many details and characters). There's less sex, but the sex is more  plausible -- indeed the sex is between John Andre, British officer, spy and prisoner, and  infatuated Peggy Shippen, a Philadelphia Tory, works very well, between the characters and in terms of the plotting -- and betrayals too.

The returning spy ring characters, and the new characters from the other side, such as John Andre, Benedict Arnold and Peggy Shippen, are a lot more interesting in themselves and in their relationships with each other.

         Recurring figure, British Major Hewlett, in particular deepens and broadens, which additionally illustrates how a long occupation in a fairly isolated place can and will blur the lines of 'sides' , at least among certain naturally compatible people, and loyalty, friendship and affection naturally springs up. We the audience begin to share sympathy with him as much as some of Turn's characters on Long Island.

General George Washington

In this season General Washington gets a fair amount of screen time; beyond that, he is shown taking the reins of the war as well as spying in his own hands.

Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold is played very much as I've always understood him to be. But where is Hamilton? Perhaps he's left out as an aide-de-camp in order to have room for Major Benjamin Tallmadge, Washington's Intelligence Officer, an historical member of the Culper spy ring -- though Hamilton also had some business in the surveillance of NYC's British military occupants?  Lafayette is in Valley Forge though, and the French fleet has arrived by the end of the season.

Washington is shown to be the most devious of them all -- which, whether or not there's historical evidence for this particular incident, I really like.  For American historians, Washington's a frustratingly illusive figure, in spite of how much is known. Why was he the most successful politician of them all, even Jefferson, for whose devious duplicity there is much documented evidence?  That Washington was as shrewd, cunning and devious as Jefferson does not necessarily change facts that he was -- as far as a slaveowning Virginian could be who was as obsessed with manufacturing his image and place in history as Jefferson-- an honorable, courageous and fair man, who genuinely believed it was his destiny and obligation to bring the states together, and to hold them together.  (Jefferson would have preferred to be separate from New England, except the south = Virginia couldn't afford it, either economically or politically in the larger world.)

Caleb Brewster is more than a spy. He likes gadgets and machines.  In season 2 he gets into British occupied New York harbor in a bathyscope machine. In the New Jersey battle set as a trap for Washington and the Continental Army he employs something like a grenade thrower.

My favorite single, recurring character is the Ring member, rough and ready, always loyal, acutely witted, Caleb Brewster.  However, Abraham Woodhull, as he's portrayed in this television series, is the most inept spy in the history of spying, partly because sex (which was a huge part of the difficulties with season 1's writing -- it just didn't work).  The historical Woodhull, though, was so cautious as to refuse to do anything at all for months, and even years.

Peggy Shippen (Ksenia Solo) and her true love, Major John Andre. Andre takes over Benjamin Franklin's house in British occupied Philadelphia.  When Philadelphia is retaken by the Patriots, Andre takes many of Franklins inventions and possession with him to New York, which Peggy awkwardly explains to Arnold, who takes the house in turn,  was "for safe-keeping," 

Adoration goes to the actress who arrived this season 2 to play Philadelphia Tory, Peggy Shippen. She is written here as really wanting John Andre, but got foisted upon Arnold to persuade him betray the U.S. and Washington (according to some, anyway). Peggy's played by Ksenia Solo, from the Canadian fantasy series, Lost Girl, which I adored, silly as it was, and much of the reason for loving it was Ksenia Solo and her character, Kenzie. (I'm still waiting for the last season to show up on netflix -- where the frack is it?)

Ksenia Solo plays Peggy Shippen so convincingly that it's a lovely watching experience. Once again Solo proves to be a skilled actress and does not need to depend on the mannerisms that made the Kenzie character so liked by so many, including me.

Perhaps the Big Plot in season 3 will be BA's plans to turn over West Point to the British and Peggy play-acting bonkers to save him and herself, while he escapes just by the bare skin of his britches to NYC and the British?  That will be tense! Their lives after this treasonous conspiracy were discovered weren't particularly or happy or prosperous.

I hope the series continues to feature a fair amount of Washington, which hardly any television or film does, because he's such a sacred figure. But I wish they hadn't made him hallucinate and be crazy -- and for no reason. That isn't helping. ​

Rachel spying on Major Andre

It would be terrific if Turn could do more for African American actors and actresses, beyond showing them silent and omnipresently laboring, or having a particularly talented warrior fairly new from

Historical Major Simcoe; more about him here. Don't believe everything about him seen on Turn.

Africa recruited into the British psychopath Major Simcoe's Queen's Rangers. Though the writers are trying to show an African American in Major John Andre's house spying on the behalf of the Patriots, it's awkward. That's because there really wasn't anything in the move to independence from Britain by the colonies for African Americans.  It was no revolution for them, and certainly no independence and freedom. Everything stayed the same for them. Those who joined the British and escaped with them after the war were the ones who found freedom.  It took the War of Southern Rebellion to make the real revolution for African Americans -- and it was when the Union armed black men it really began to win.

Season 3 of Turn: Washington's Spies, premieres next month along with a whole lot of shows, which I shan't see until they're on dvd from netflix.

Hermione

The Hermione, a replica of the three-masted frigate that returned Lafayette to the colonies in 1780, to fight against England and to assist General Washington with the French Navy he'd persuaded the king to send, sailed into NY Harbor yesterday, all 32 cannon firing. She's currently achored at the South Street Seaport, with free tours.

 "Yo! George!  I gotcha the King's navy!  Who's your boy, George?  Who's your very best boy? Ha!"

The Hermione is doing an Atlantic coast tour, so others will also see her.

After the war, alas, by 1824 when the Marquis de Lafayette was able to get to America again, much had happened including Lafayette's downfall by the French Revolution and the Terrorist era. Washington had long been moldering in the Washington family tomb. The older and younger men had been very dear friends and comrades. Lafayette was one of several worthy younger men, including Alexander Hamilton, with whom Washington developed strong surrogate father-son relationships.

The very young, handsome, charming, brave, loyal Marquis de Lafayette

The Marquis, on a year's return to France, welcomed his son into the world, naming him in honor of his American military father: Georges Washington Motier de Lafayette. Washington did what he could as president to get Lafayette out of the Austrian prison where the French Revolution landed him*, got money for his wife to live on in Europe during those wars and paid the fees for Georges at Columbia, I think, and gave him an introduction to Alexander Hamilton, who had him to stay in his house. Hamilton's behavior with Georges rather puts a lie to the widely held belief that during the War of Independence Hamilton was jealous of Lafayette.

Later, when public opinion had turned against France, Washington brought Georges to the President's House in Philadelphia, and then to Mount Vernon.

The Lafayette issue was a very delicate diplomatic situation for the President to deal with, as Jefferson, and for a while the people of the new U.S. wanted to side with France, Washington and the Federalists did not want to -- distrusting the French Revolution and believing France was attempting to manipulate the young, weak United States into another war with England. During that period of enthusiastic Jacobin Clubs violence erupted in the colonies -- for and against France --, including Philadelphia, via the clandestine, anonymous help and encouragement of Jefferson, as part of his war on the Federalists including undermining Washington. (Ultimately this led to a breach between the two; Washington refused to have anything more to do with the man who betrayed him in so many ways, and continued to lie to his face about doing so.)

Fun Fact: the famous Freemason apron in which Washington was often painted, that he wore when dedicating the corner stone of Washington D.C. in a 100% Free Mason ritual, and in which he was buried, had been embroidered by Lafayette's wife, Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles, Marquise de La Fayette, as a gift to General Washington.

The Hermione will lead a flotilla around the Statue of Liberty (gift of France!) and then up the Hudson to where the Intrepid is anchored.  It's supposed to go around Lady Liberty at 10:30 AM.  I'd love to see this, but I'm sure the crowds will be so dense that I, with the bad back, who can't stand long, will not be able to view the spectacle, that, in reality, after all this time swimming in American History, means something very large to me.

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*  Lafayette and his family were attempting to leave Paris and France at the height of the Terror, get to England and from there to the young U.S. and buy a farm close to Mount Vernon.  He was very fortunate to have been arrested outside of France, otherwise he and his family would surely have been executed as were other members of his family.  As it was, he spent most of his five-year imprisonment in dreadful conditions and barely survived.