Ah, yes, the Fourth of July, and lucky us this year, ain’t it people?
Gas the cheapest its been in years, and the same with hamburgers!
Isn’t this a wonderful country we live in, then?
But if so, why aren’t we happy?
That’s right, people, according to a MARKETWATCH article by Quentin Fottrell published just before the Fourth of July on June 28, 2017, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which once used to be ours, at least pursuant to the Declaration of Independence, but who knows of that anymore, now seems more attainable overseas.
Think about that people, after fighting a War of Revolution in this country to gain the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness promised us in the Declaration of Independence on the very first Fourth of July in the country, we now need to go to some foreign country like Norway to get it today.
When it comes to happiness in the citizen body, the U.S. ranked No. 19 just behind the Czech Republic, Japan and France.
Now, think of this – according to that article, the U.S. has seen its happiness slide happiness over the last decade, which is the last ten years, or all of the Barack Obama years, plus the last two of George W. Bush, all of which have been war years, which are not conducive to happiness in a citizen body.
“The United States can and should raise happiness by addressing America’s multi-faceted social crisis — rising inequality, corruption, isolation, and distrust — rather than focusing exclusively or even mainly on economic growth, especially since the concrete proposals along these lines would exacerbate rather than ameliorate the deepening social crisis,†the report said.
America’s multi-faceted social crisis, people, and yes, it certainly does seem to be that way, at least to me who has seen seventy years go by now.
Rising inequality, corruption, isolation, and distrust — that is so us today in this country, people.
Just as it was us back in 1776 when the first Independence Day took place, with the reading of the Declaration of Independence to among others, the America militias fighting the British in Boston.
Today we look on the Fourth of July as the beginning of summer, and a day to party hardy, as if it was always that way right from the beginning, a day to celebrate freedom and democracy and all that stuff, but you know what?
It was not a day to party and celebrate, at all back in the beginning.
The Declaration of Independence and the first Fourth of July did not end anything, and it certainly did not give us freedom.
The Declaration of Independence was real serious business because it started a war of revolution which was to turn the world upside down for many, many people back then, which is something we no longer think about in this country today, although as we become more and more divided, perhaps we should.
With respect to the highly-divided nature of the fledgling nation back then, I would refer you to p.10 of the Minutes Of The Commissioners For Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies In The State Of New York – Albany County Sessions 1778-1781, where is found as follows with respect to the state of war that existed right here in this country as a direct result of the signing of the Declaration of Independence:
“There was a definite relationship among all the bodies growing out of the Revolution.”
“The Continental Congress stood at the head; then came the Provincial Congress or Convention, then the general committee on Tories, then the county committees, and at the base, the district committees.”
These various bodies varied in size, authority, procedure and effectiveness.
With the erection of Constitutional government in the State, Toryism was more clearly defined and handled in more summary fashion.
“The inquisitorial methods and machinery developed previous to the Declaration of Independence were continued by the Constitutional Convention and by the new state government,” citing from Flick, “Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution,” New York, 1901 (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, vol. xiv, no. 1), wherein the whole system of the inquisitorial bodies of New York is given in admirable detail.
Inquisitorial bodies, people, right here in the United States of America!
Tories, of course, were people in this country at that time who remained loyal to King George III in England, and that in turn made them enemies of those who called themselves “the American people” back then.
As to the “more summary manner” in which Toryism in New York was treated after the Declaration of Independence, that “more summary manner” can be seen clearly in this extract from CALENDAR OF HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS RELATING TO THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION IN THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE, ALBANY, NY, to wit:
Tuesday the 10th June 1777
The Court met pursuant to adjournment.
Present: Colonel STEPHEN J. SCHUYLER, President
Colonels:
Anthony Van Bergen
Jacobus Van Schoonhoven
Peter Vrooman
Peter Van Ness
Lieut. Col.:
Philip P. Schuyler
John H. Beekman
Henry K. Van Rensselaer
James Gordon
Cornelius Van Vechten
Majors:
Abraham Cuyler
Issac Goes
Captain:
Andrew Douw
Jacob Miller of Half Moon District in the County of Albany, being a Prisoner was brought before the Court & the Judge Advocate Exhibited the following charges against him Vizt
“You Jacob Miller stand charged for that you being a member of the state of New York, residing within the said state, protected by the Laws thereof & owing allegiance thereunto, on the 21st Day of March last and at Divers other days and Times both before & after and since the 16th Day of July 1776 at the District of Half Moon in the County of Albany, Wickedly, Traitorously & Treasonably & Contrary to your allegiance aforesaid Did levy war against the state of New York within the same whilst owing allegiance thereto, Enlist men for the service of the King of Great Britain now in actual war against the said state and being adherent to the said King of Great Britain & others the Enemys of the said state Contrary to the Resolution of the Convention of said state.”
The Prisoner pleads not Guilty to the Charge.
Friday 13th June
The Court met pursuant to adjournment.
Present as before.
The Judge Advocate having no further Evidence to produce the Court proceeded to the Consideration of the Evidence offered and are of the opinion that the Prisoner is Guilty of Levying war against the State & being adherent to the King of Great Britain and do sentence him to suffer death.
end quote
Do sentence him to suffer death by hanging for being loyal to an English king.
That is 10th June 1777, just shy of one year after the first Fourth of July in this country, people!
Serious business, indeed, which comes from these words of the Declaration of Independence:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.
We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.
We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
end quotes
Deaf to the voice of justice, people!
So that we must, therefore, hold them as enemies in war, and so it was to be, all because of the First Fourth of July in America.
For another glimpse at how divided the people of this nation were back then, I refer the reader to the HISTORY OF The Seventeen Towns OF Rensselaer County FROM THE Colonization of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck to the Present Time BY A. J. Weise A.M. AS PUBLISHED IN THE TROY DAILY TIMES TROY; N. Y. J. M. FRANCIS & TUCKER. 1880, wherein is provided as follows:
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TOWN OF BRUNSWICK.
TORYISM RAMPANT.
Peculiar to this portion of the manor of Rensselaerwyck a great number of the earlier settlers were Germans.
When Burgoyne invaded the province of New York, in the summer of 1777, many of them, on account of their national relationship to the Hessians, hired by British money to take an armed and offensive part against the Americans, manifested extreme partisanship toward the royal cause, which soon stirred up among the patriotic supporters of the continental rebellion considerable ill-will.
On the closer approach of the English forces many of the loyal farmers fled to Albany, and the royalists, believing that the English crown was about to conquer the rebellious Americans, committed many transgressions, both in the way of personal insults, appropriation and despoliation of property.
It is related that Abner Roberts, who belonged to the army of the North, was waylaid, murdered and scalped on the old Hoosick road, a short distance from Troy, by the Tories as they were called.
When, however, Burgoyne was forced to surrender to Gates at old Saratoga, (Schuylerville), these royalists were forced to flee to Canada, from which they never dared to return to enter again into the possession of their deserted farms.
end quotes
The royalists, believing that the English crown was about to conquer the rebellious Americans, committed many transgressions, both in the way of personal insults, appropriation and despoliation of property.
And that was right here in the United States of America, as a direct result of the first Fourth of July in America.
And Abner Roberts, who belonged to the army of the North, was waylaid, murdered and scalped on the old Hoosick road, a short distance from Troy, by the Tories as they were called.
Why?
Because the British coming down from Canada were paying money for rebel scalps is why.
But as we celebrate the Fourth of July today, I don’t think we as a nation are aware of any of that real history, what conflict in this country was really like as a result of the Declaration of Independence.
As for me, I was taught that history in grade school at the end of WWII, and I was expected to know it, and that was as a grade school attendee.
Why?
So that we as children at the end of a world war which should not have been would know the high price people pay for war in their nation, and thus, we would do our utmost to make sure those days of division in this country were never repeated.
But here we are, with Independence Day of 2017 now just a memory, with the nation again seeming to be on the brink of a civil war as we were in 1776, although for reasons far less clear today than they were back then, which has me wondering if, as a people, we should at all be cognizant of that Revolutionary War history I am citing above here?
Or is that history now to unpalatable for us, as it is too violent, so that it is no longer relevant in this day and age of an American president who TWEETS nonsense and inane gibberish in 140 characters or less to his TWITTERATI followers and adherents and acolytes in the TWITTERSPHERE of TWITTER, because that is all they expect of and from him?
Afterall, that I cite above admittedly does not readily lend itself to being TWEETED about, afterall, so perhaps it really is a dead letter among America’s younger generations.
But should it be?
So what does anyone think on that?
Should we know that stuff today?
As to tyranny, in “A Citizen of America: An Examination Into the Leading Principles of America,” the esteemed Noah Webster posited as follows on October 17, 1787, eleven years after the first Fourth of July in America, to wit:
But what is tyranny?
Or how can a free people be deprived of their liberties?
Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety.
A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.
This position leads me directly to enquire, in what consists the power of a nation or of an order of men?
end quote
In 1787, eleven years after the first Fourth of July in America, at the beginning of this nation’s political history, the esteemed Noah Webster raised that question, and then, in my estimation, anyway, as a conscientious American citizen, he never really answered it, nor could he have, really, again in my estimation, leaving it to us today in our own times to have to address the question.
So, people, in 2017, in what consists the power of a nation or of an order of men?
Is it the same as it was in 1776?
Or is it now different because we are no longer the same as those original Americans?
And here, I need to go back and make a correction or clarification in my above statement that the Declaration of Independence was real serious business because it started a war of revolution which was to turn the world upside down for many, many people back then, which is something we no longer think about in this country today, although as we become more and more divided, perhaps we should.
By the summer of 1776, at the time the Declaration of Independence was read to the American troops actually engaged in fighting with the British Army, American and British forces had already been engaged in armed conflict for fifteen months.
The battles of Lexington and Concord, where the mighty British Army, the most powerful land army in the world at that time, sent to confiscate colonial weapons, ran into an untrained and angry militia of as many as 3,500 militiamen firing constantly for 18 miles, which killed or wounded roughly 250 Redcoats compared to about 90 killed and wounded on the American side, proving they could stand up to one of the most powerful armies in the world, with news of the battle quickly spreading and reaching London on May 28, itself took place on April 19, 1775, while Bunker Hill, where some 2,200 British forces under the command of Major General William Howe and Brigadier General Robert Pigot landed on the Charlestown Peninsula and then marched to Breed’s Hill, where the actual battle took place, where when the Redcoats were within several dozen yards, the Americans let loose with a lethal barrage of musket fire, throwing the British into retreat, so that by the end of the engagement, the Patriots’ gunfire had cut down some 1,000 enemy troops, with more than 200 killed and more than 800 wounded, with more than 100 Americans perishing, while more than 300 others were wounded, took place on June 17, 1775.
So the first Fourth of July in 1776 did not start the fighting, that had been on-going in some fashion for some long time already; rather, on July 4, 1776, and this is important, or used to be, anyway, the Declaration of Independence changed the purpose and nature of that conflict.
With respect to that change in the nature and purpose of the conflict then existing on July 4, 1776, five days later, on July 9, 1776, in his General Orders for that day, George Washington, commanding general of the American forces, stated thusly on the subject:
The Hon. The Continental Congress, impelled by the dictates of duty, policy and necessity, having been pleased to dissolve the Connection which subsisted between this Country, and Great Britain, and to declare the United Colonies of North America, free and independent States: The several brigades are to be drawn up this evening on their respective Parades, at Six OClock, when the declaration of Congress, shewing the grounds and reasons of this measure, is to be read with an audible voice.
The General hopes this important Event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer, and soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms:
And that he is now in the service of a State, possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest Honors of a free Country.
end quotes
Ask not what the country can do for you, ask instead what you can do for the country, now that you have one.
That is what the first Fourth of July in 1776 did – gave the Americans, the rebels, a real country to fight for, instead of it being a fight of colonists in rebellion against a foreign king.
Psychologically, there is a huge difference between the two when it comes to maintaining fighting spirit in what was to be a long and difficult war.
With respect to that psychological change caused by the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, on July 10, 1776, Washington wrote to the Continental Congress concerning the Declaration of Independence, as follows:
Sir: I am now to acknowledge the receipt of your two favors of the 4th and 6th instants, which came duly to hand, with their important inclosures. I perceive that Congress have been employed in deliberating on measures of the most interesting Nature.
It is certain that it is not with us to determine in many instances what consequences will flow from our Counsels, but yet it behoves us to adopt such, as under the smiles of a Gracious and all kind Providence will be most likely to promote our happiness; I trust the late decisive part they have taken, is calculated for that end, and will secure us that freedom and those priviledges, which have been, and are refused us, contrary to the voice of Nature and the British Constitution.
Agreeable to the request of Congress I caused the Declaration to be proclaimed before all the Army under my immediate Command, and have the pleasure to inform them, that the measure seemed to have their most hearty assent; the Expressions and behaviour both of Officers and Men testifying their warmest approbation of it.
I have transmitted a Copy to General Ward at Boston, requesting him to have it proclaimed to the Continental Troops in that Department. . . .
General Mercer is now in the Jerseys for the purpose of receiving and ordering the Militia coming for the Flying Camp, and I have sent over our chief Engineer to view the Ground within the Neighbourhood of Amboy, and lay out some necessary Works for the Encampment, and such as may be proper at the different passes in Bergen Neck, and other places on the Jersey Shore opposite Staten Island, to prevent the Enemy making impressions and committing depredations on the Property of the Inhabitants.
The Intelligence we have from a few Deserters that have come over to us, and from others, is, that General Howe has between 9. and 10.000 Men, who are chiefly landed on the Island, posted in different parts, and securing the several communications from the Jerseys with small Works and Intrenchments, to prevent our people paying them a visit; that the Islanders have all joined them, seem well disposed to favor their Cause and have agreed to take up Arms in their behalf.
They look for Admiral Howe’s arrival every day, with his Fleet and a large Reinforcement, are in high Spirits, and talk confidently of Success and carrying all before them when he comes.
I trust through Divine Favor and our own Exertions they will be disappointed in their Views, and at all Events, any advantages they may gain will cost them very dear.
If our Troops will behave well, which I hope will be the case, having every thing to contend for that Freemen hold dear, they will have to wade thro’ much Blood and Slaughter before they can carry any part of our Works, if they carry them at all; and at best be in possession of a Melancholly and Mournfull Victory.
May the Sacredness of our cause inspire our Soldiery with Sentiments of Heroism, and lead them to the performance of the noblest Exploits.
With this Wish, I have the honor to be, etc.
end quotes
And the battle, not the party, was on.
Should we really be bothered with knowing any of this today?
Would it make a difference in our daily lives, which are already busy enough, if we didn’t know any of this stuff?
Yeah, okay, we get it, a lot of blood was shed by our so-called forefathers to give us a nation of our own but now that we have it, do we really need to know how it came into being?
What will that change today in this unhappy and highly divided nation at war with itself within?
A question for our times, indeed!
And staying for the moment with my above statement that the Declaration of Independence was real serious business because it started a war of revolution which was to turn the world upside down for many, many people back then, which is something we no longer think about in this country today, although as we become more and more divided, perhaps we should, as much as we might take it for granted today that separation from Great Britain was a foregone conclusion in this country, a review of actual history shows that such was not actually the case, and as late as 1780, one year before the Battle of Yorktown, here in Virginia, which began September 28, 1781, when General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, began the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and a contingent of 9,000 British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary War, the British still did not believe the Declaration of Independence had any validity or meant a word that it said, as can readily be seen in this following Proclamation from 1780 by his Excellency James Robertson, Esquire, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces, wherein was stated as follows:
The King having been graciously pleased to honor me with the care of a Province, where, in a long Residence, I have contracted an Esteem for some, and an Affection for many of its Inhabitants, I proceed with great Pleasure to announce his benevolent Intentions.
It is his Majesty’s wish by the revival of the Civil Authority, to prove to all the Colonies and Provinces, that it is not his Design to govern America by Military Law, but that they are to enjoy all the benefits of local Legislation and their former Constitution.
To this End I have brought out the Royal Appointments for forming the Council, and supplying the places of Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice.
And in Concurrence with the Commander in Chief of the British Forces, who is also his Majesty’s Commissioner for restoring Peace to the Colonies, I shall, as speedily as the public Exigencies will permit, Give Order for opening the Courts of Judicature, and convening the Assembly, and in general proceed to the Execution of the Powers reposed in me, for the free Course and complete Re-Establishment, both of the Legislative and Executive Authority.
I take great Satisfaction in the Anticipation of that happy Day, when Relations, Friends and Fellow-Citizens, having dismissed their gloomy Apprehensions, Shall re-embrace each other, and return to the Offices, Pleasures and Employments of Peace.
Your Country with your Ancient Privileges, will then participate in an extensive Commerce, and be exempted from all Taxations not imposed by Yourselves.
Until I meet you regularly in General Assembly for the Restoration of mutual Confidence, and the Remedying of private as well as public Evils I pledge myself to Men of all Classes, in every part of the Province, that it is the compassionate Desire of your Sovereign and of the Parent Country to unite in Affection as in Interest, with the Colonies planted by her Hand, and which have long flourished in her Care, that the Suggestions of her Intention to impair their Rights and Priviledges, are the Arts of Malice and Faction, and that every Insinuation made by the domestic Enemies of Great Britain, of her being disposed to abandon the Provinces to internal Anarchy, and the mischiefs of their jarring Interests and Claims, or to the fraudulent or ambitious views of foreign, popish and arbitrary Powers (of whom your Fathers had a wise and virtuous Jealousy) is equally false and malicious.
Happy herself, under a Constitution which is the Envy and Admiration of surrounding nations, She wishes to include in one comprehensive System of Felicity, all the Branches of a Stock, intimately connected by the Ties of Language, Manners, Laws, Customs, Habits, Interests, Religion and Blood.
I lament with the ingenuous Thousands of America who are irreconcilable to the unnatural Separation, so inauspicious to yourselves, as well as all the Rest of your Fellow Subjects in the other Quarters of the world, that the Few who have found Means to acquire a Sway in the Management of your Affairs, have been averse to every uniting System of Policy, and studiously shunned the Paths to Harmony and Peace.
But it is not my Aim to call them to a hopeless and mortifying Review of their Conduct.
Can they want Evidence at this Day of the Detestation of their Measures, by an increasing Majority of their own Countrymen?
And having every Thing to fear from their exhausted Patience, I warn them to desist from any future Attempts to restrain and seduce the Loyalty of others, and wisely to provide against their Resentment, by signalizing themselves, as heretofore in exacting, so now in closing the scene of their intolerable Calamities.
And I hereby give the strongest Assurances of effectual Countenance, Protection and Support to all Persons who avail themselves of the Proclamation issued by his Excellency Sir Henry Clinton, dated at James Island the third Day of March.
Less inclined to reproach than to conciliate, to aggravate than to forget even the Guilt of those, who, privy to the repeated Calls of Great Britain to Friendship, upon Terms adequate to the Desire and Expectation of their Constituents, yet nevertheless to forbore to reveal them that they might with the greater Ease, press the Ancient Enmity of foreign Foes, to the aid of their own Ambition and Avarice, I exhort them to seek an Early Refuge in the abundant Clemency of the Crown from the Perils to which they have exposed themselves, by Measures fraudulently concerted and tyrannically inforced, and affording by the complicated Miseries they have brought upon their country, and the mighty Ruin still impending irresistible Evidence of the Folly and Malignancy of the Councils by which its affairs have been conducted.
Towards redressing the Disorders, arising from the Loss or want of Charters, I recommend it to all concerned, to apply without Delay in the ordinary Course for Charters, which shall be granted as soon as Civil Authority takes place.
As to the Public Books of Record, so important to your Titles and Estates in all Parts of the Colony and formerly lodged in the Secretaries Office, I understand that they were separated from the Rest by the provident Circumspection of my Predecessor, whose Merits are above my applause and have often had yours; and having been afterwards sent Home for safe Custody, you may rely upon their being carefully preserved, and duly returned as soon as the Common Tranquility is restored.
I now call upon every Individual in the Colony to shew his Allegiance, Fidelity and Patriotism, by affording his Assistance towards accomplishing the Kings most gracious Design of restoring the Blessings of Peace and Good Government; and they who shall most distinguish themselves by their laudable Efforts for those good Purposes will most assuredly best recommend themselves to the Royal Approbation and Favor.
Given under my Hand and the Great Seal of the Province of New York, in the City of New York, the Fifteenth Day of April 1780, in the Twentieth year of his Majesty’s Reign.
JAMES ROBERTSON
By His Excellencys Command
Sam Bayard, Jun D. Secry.
God save the King
end quote
“God Save The King,” of course, is the tune to which the American anthem “My country Tis of Thee” is sung.
My country tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring!
Our father’s God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!
And such it was to be!
But is it anymore?
Another question for our times.
For anyone interested in the source of this Proclamation from 1780 by his Excellency James Robertson, Esquire, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces, it can be found at pp. 354-55 of a book available on-line entitled “CALENDAR OF HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS RELATING TO THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION IN THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE, ALBANY, N.Y.”
As to that Proclamation, dated the Fifteenth Day of April 1780, in the Twentieth year of his Majesty George III of England’s Reign, by his Excellency James Robertson, Esquire, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces, as if by 1780, the American patriots gave a damn about any of that royalty crap by then, wherein was stated, “It is his Majesty’s wish by the revival of the Civil Authority, to prove to all the Colonies and Provinces, that it is not his Design to govern America by Military Law, but that they are to enjoy all the benefits of local Legislation and their former Constitution,” what was going on in the fledgling nation at that time that would have any American, unless a Loyalist or Tory, believing that it was not his design to govern America by military law?
Referring to the website “The American Revolution Month-by-Month August 1780” by Andrew “Andy” Stough, that same month, the fall of Charleston, South Carolina left a large void in the southern patriot military, while the bulk of Patriot General Benjamin’s Lincoln’s army had been eliminated as a fighting force.
However, there still remained small scattered remnants that had been outside Charleston at that time, and they had survived not only the immediate battle but the hunting down of small units by that “Hound from Hell” Banastre Tarleton.
For those unfamiliar with Banestre Tarleton, as a British military commander he was the subject of a rebel American campaign which claimed that Tarleton’s British Legion had massacred surrendering Continental Army troops at the Battle of Waxhaws, South Carolina, in 1780, this at a time when George III of England, who many believe was mentally deranged, was trying to convince the “colonies and provinces” that he really was a nice, benevolent dude.
In the 19th century those killings became known in American history as the “Waxhaws Massacre”.
In the biography “The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson” (1957), by Robert D. Bass, Tarleton is identified as the ‘Bloody Ban’, the ‘Butcher’, and ‘The Green Dragoon’.
In American popular culture those nicknames were the result of Col. Tarleton’s reputation for brutality during the War of Independence, whilst the colonial Loyalists and the British hailed and praised Tarleton as an outstanding leader of light cavalry, and as an officer of great tactical prowess and soldierly resolve, especially against superior numbers of enemy.
Tarleton’s cavalrymen were called ‘Tarleton’s Raiders’.
Indefatigable in his search for any remaining forces, Tarleton seemed, like a hound, able to smell out the small scraps of a defeated army to put them to the sword in an effort to destroy any southern resistance.
Any who survived had primarily moved north to the mountainous regions of North Carolina and areas that were loyal to the Revolution.
After becoming commander of the British Legion, a force of American Loyalist cavalry and light infantry, also called Tarleton’s Raiders, Tarleton went to South Carolina, at the beginning of 1780.
There, Tarleton’s Raiders supported Sir Henry Clinton in the siege operations that culminated in the capture of Charleston, which siege and capture of the city were part of the British strategy in the southern military theatre meant to restore royal authority over the southern colonies of British North America.
So much for alleged mad king George III’s wish, by the revival of the Civil Authority, to prove to all the Colonies and Provinces, that it was not his Design to govern America by Military Law, but that they were to enjoy all the benefits of local Legislation and their former Constitution.
The Battle of Waxhaw Creek took place on 29 May 1780, shortly after that Proclamation was issued, in Lancaster County, South Carolina
On 29 May 1780, Colonel Tarleton, with a force of 149 mounted soldiers, overtook a detachment of 350 to 380 Virginia Continentals, led by Colonel Abraham Buford, who refused to surrender or to stop his march.
Only after sustaining many casualties did Buford order the American soldiers to surrender.
Nonetheless, Tarleton’s forces ignored the white flag and massacred the soldiers of Buford’s detachment; 113 American soldiers were killed, 203 were captured, and 150 severely-wounded soldiers.
The British army casualties were 5 soldiers killed and 12 soldiers wounded.
From the perspective of the British Army, the affair of the massacre is known as the Battle of Waxhaw Creek.
In that time, the American rebels used the phrase ‘Tarleton’s quarter’ (a high-rate of casualties) as meaning ‘no quarter offered’.
In the 19th century, American historians represented Tarleton as a ruthless butcher, whilst the perspective of some contemporary historians has changed in this regard.
An eye-witness, the American field surgeon Robert Brownfield, wrote that Colonel Buford raised the white flag of surrender to the British Legion, “expecting the usual treatment sanctioned by civilized warfare”; yet, while Buford called for quarter, Colonel Tarleton’s horse was shot with a musket ball, felling horse and man.
On seeing that, the Loyalist cavalrymen believed that the Virginia Continentals had shot their commander — while they asked him for mercy.
Enraged, the Loyalist troops attacked the Virginians with an “indiscriminate carnage never surpassed by the most ruthless atrocities of the most barbarous savages”; in the aftermath, the British Legion soldiers killed wounded American soldiers where they lay.
Colonel Tarleton’s account, published in 1787, said that his horse had been shot from under him, and that his soldiers, thinking him dead, engaged in “a vindictive asperity not easily restrained”.
On the other hand, Tarleton advocated repression, and criticized the mildness of Lord Cornwallis’s methods, because moderation “did not reconcile enemies, but . . . discourages friends”.
Regardless of the extent to which they were true or false, the reports of British atrocities motivated Whig-leaning colonials to support the American Revolution.
In the event, on 7 October 1780, at the Battle of Kings Mountain, South Carolina, soldiers of the Continental Army, having heard of the slaughter at Waxhaw Creek, killed surrendering American Loyalists, after a sniper killed their British commanding officer, Maj. Patrick Ferguson.
end quotes
Americans killing other Americans, people.
In some cases, brother killing brother.
Are there any lessons in any of that for us in our own times in this highly divided nation at war with itself?
Something to think about, anyway.
In “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam,” Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman presents us with what is said to be her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government.
Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives.
In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam.
As to delusion in government, that can readily be seen in the above Proclamation from 1780 by his Excellency James Robertson, Esquire, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, so he thought, anyway, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces, wherein was stated as follows:
The King having been graciously pleased to honor me with the care of a Province, where, in a long Residence, I have contracted an Esteem for some, and an Affection for many of its Inhabitants, I proceed with great Pleasure to announce his benevolent Intentions.
end quotes
Benevolent intentions?
In 1780, four years after the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776?
Who, one must wonder, did he think was going to buy into the crap spew, besides some Tories and Loyalists?
Were the people in rebellion against the king since 1775 going to be deluded enough in 1780 to believe that George III of England, who was characterized in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, as “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” was capable four years later, in 1780 of acting towards them in a benevolent manner, when the Facts submitted to a candid world in 1776 stated thusly about his lack of benevolence at that time:
* For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
* For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
* He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
* He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
* He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
* He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
end quotes
Benevolent, people, where “benevolent” is defined as “well meaning and kindly?”
How about not hardly!
As we celebrate the Fourth of July today in what is essentially a nation at peace, although not with itself, and here let me say how glad I am that the Fourth was a success down this way (I took the banjo out in the countryside, myself, and played patriotic old-fashioned tunes such as “My Country Tis of Thee,” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “The Star-Spangled Banner”), we forget, or in so many cases with younger people, never even knew what a bloody time in America that was back then when the first Fourth of July was occurring.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
Was that just some hype, does anyone think, thrown in there as a drama statement or sympathy grab?
With respect to the Declaration and the Fourth of July today, only a literal handful of the states in this country even have a Revolutionary War history, so that the roots of the Fourth of July for people in those states that did not exist at the time of the Revolution for them are simply lost in the mists of antiquity, and thus are totally irrelevant – who cares how the country came into being, let’s party!
But was it always that way?
To answer that question, at least in part, let’s drop back in time to 1880 and “The HISTORY OF The Seventeen Towns OF Rensselaer County FROM THE Colonization of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck to the Present Time” BY A. J. Weise, A.M., AS PUBLISHED IN THE TROY DAILY TIMES, TROY; N. Y., wherein is found as follows:
CHAPTER VIII – FOURTH OF JULY FESTIVITIES.
The return of the anniversary day of our national independence was yearly honored after the revolution by the people of Schaghticoke.
The following are parts of the recorded proceedings of the citizens of the town July 4, 1798:
A respectable number of the inhabitants of the town of Schaghticoke convened at the house of Jesse Jadwin on the 4th of July, 1798, to celebrate the anniversary of American independence, where they partook of an elegant dinner and spent the day in conviviality and merriment, and received a federal salute from a number of militia, who attended on the occasion.
Among the toasts of the day were:
May we never pay tribute to any nation except in powder and ball.
May the tree of liberty, which blossoms with the American cockade, flourish triumphantly in the soil of America and root out all foreign obnoxious weeds.
Another company assembled at Mr. Viele’s for the celebration of the birth of our national existence.
“The ceremonies were introduced by a song, wherein was developed the progress of the Revolution, etc.”
“Mr. Howell Gardner then delivered an oration pertinent to the occasion; after which a song, composed for the day was sung.”
“The company then partook of a repast of the delicious bounties of nature, the rich reward of independence.”
end quotes
May the tree of liberty, which blossoms with the American cockade, flourish triumphantly in the soil of America and root out all foreign obnoxious weeds, as we are reeling today in this country with allegations of our American president being a tool and lackey and dupe of Mother Russia, which happens to be one of the nations funding the government of this nation in Washington, D.C.
With regard to the “benevolent” intentions of George III of England in 1777, and those large Armies of foreign Mercenaries sent here by George III to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation, and what those people in the town of Schaghticoke who convened at the house of Jesse Jadwin on the 4th of July, 1798, to celebrate the anniversary of American independence were actually celebrating, that same history source cited above tells us this:
THE INVASION OF BURGOYNE.
When in the summer of 1777 Gen. Burgoyne was making almost an unopposed invasion of the northern part of New York from Canada, the people of the Hoosick valley were greatly alarmed by the reports of the barbarous cruelties of the Indians which the British commander had sent forward as a band of terror to the rebellions people.
end quotes
Talk about acting against your own interests, Burgoyne did that for the British in 1777 by bringing on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, was an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, who ended up scalping a woman named Jane McCrea for the bounty on her scalp being paid by the British, and that inflamed passions against the British all the way down here to Virginia and galvanized the resistance that was to meet Burgoyne and turn his world upside down at a place known as Stillwater on the Hudson, north of Albany, New York in the fall of 1777, the year after the first Fourth of July.
Getting back to that history:
In the vicinity of Fort Edward he (Burgoyne) dispatched Col. Frederick Baum on a “secret expedition to the Connecticut river,” having been informed that the Americans had gathered together there “a considerable depot of cattle, cows, horses and wheel carriages, most of which were driven across the Connecticut river from the provinces of New England; and, as it was understood to be guarded by a party of militia only, an attempt to surprise it seemed by no means unjustifiable.”
He received of Burgoyne instructions on August 9th, that he was “to try the affections of the country; to disconcert the councils of the enemy; to mount the Riedesel’s dragoons; to complete Peters’s corps; and to obtain large supplies of cattle, horses and carriages.”
end quotes
In other words, he was sent to pillage.
Getting back to history:
Having performed these and other things mentioned in the Instructions he was then, in order to form a junction with the main army of Burgoyne, to proceed expeditiously with his force “by the great road to Albany.”
end quotes
Now, with respect to the bloody times spawned by the first Fourth of July in America, consider this:
Col. Baum departed on this mission with about 900 Hessian mercenaries, Canadians, tories and Indians and two cannon.
Col. Philip Skene accompanied Col. Baum for the purpose of advising him “upon all matters of intelligence.”
On the 14th of August, Baum reached the little settlement at Sancoik.
Here, in a grist mill, on Little White creek, a small stream emptying into the Walloomsac, he wrote a letter to Burgoyne regarding his progress:
Sancoik, 14th August, 1777, 9 o’clock— I have the honor to inform your excellency that I arrived here at eight in the morning, having had intelligence of a party of the enemy being in possession of a mill, which they abandoned at our approach, but, in their usual way, fled from the bushes and took their road to Bennington.
end quotes
“But in the usual way, they fled from the bushes” – that is a lament heard from American soldiers in Viet Nam in the 1960’s complaining of the Vietnamese who would not stand and fight, as the Americans would not generally stand and fight the British in the Revolution, how unfair it was for them to skulk and attack from ambush.
Getting back to history:
A savage was slightly wounded; they broke down the bridge, which has retarded our march over an hour; they left in the mill about 78 barrels of very fine flour, 10 bushels of wheat, 80 barrels of salt, and about £1,000 worth of pearlash and potash.
I have ordered 30 provincials and an officer to guard the provisions and the pass of the bridge.
By five prisoners taken here, they agree that from 1,500 to 1,800 are at Bennington, but are supposed to leave it on our approach.
I will proceed so far to-day as to fall on the enemy early tomorrow, and make such dispositions as I may think necessary from the intelligence I may receive.
People are flocking in hourly, but want to be armed.
The savages cannot be controlled, they ruin and take everything they please.
I am your excellency’s most humble servant, F. Baum.
end quotes
The savages cannot be controlled, they ruin and take everything they please, and that was to spell the end for Baum and Burgoyne, as we can see from the following:
THE BATTLE OF WALLOOMSAC.
On the night of the 14th of August, Baum “bivouacked at the farm of Walmscott, about four miles from Sancoick, and three from Bennington.”
On the 15th there was “a perfect hurricane of wind,” and a great fall of rain.
During the day the skirmishers of the provincial militia under Gen. John Stark several times drew the fire of the British pickets.
Meanwhile Col. Baum took a position on an eminence near the “farm of Walmscott.”
He posted here the dragoons, with a portion of the marksmen on their right, in rear of a little zig-zag breastwork, composed of logs and loose earth.
Such of the detached houses of which there were about half a dozen log ones as came within the compass of his position he filled with Canadians, supporting them with detachments of chasseurs and grenadiers, likewise intrenched behind breastworks; and he kept the whole, with the exception of about 100 men, on the north side of the stream, holding the woods upon his flanks, in his front and rear by the Indians.
Gen. Stark with his brigade of Mew Hampshire militia and a number of companies of Vermont and Massachusetts militia, on the morning of the 16th, moved against Baum in the position taken by the latter on the 14th.
Gen. Stark, in his report of the engagement, says:
I divided my army into three divisions, and sent Col. Nichols with 260 men on the rear of their left wing.
Col. Iftoriok in the rear of their right with 300 men.
In the meantime I sent 800 men to oppose the enemy’s front to draw their attention that way.
Soon after I detached the Cols. Hulbert and Stickney on their right wing, with 200 men to attack that part, all of which plans had their desired effect.
Col. Nichols sent me word that he stood in need of a reenforcement, which I readily granted, consisting of 100 men, at which time he commenced the attack, precisely at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, which was followed by all the rest.
I pushed forward the remainder with all speed.
Our people behaved with the greatest spirit and bravery imaginable.
Had they been Alexanders or Charles of Sweden they could not have behaved better.
The action lasted two hours, at the expiration of which time we forced their breastworks at the muzzle of their guns, took two pieces of brass cannon, with a number of prisoners, but before I could get them into proper form again I received intelligence that there was a large reinforcement within two miles of us, on their march, which occasioned us to renew our attack.
But lucky for us. Col. Warner’s regiment came up, which put a stop to their career.
We soon rallied, and in a few minutes the action began very warm and desperate, which lasted till night.
We used their own cannon against them, which proved of great service to us.
At sunset we obliged them to retreat a second time.
We pursued them till dark, when I was obliged to halt for fear of killing my own men.
We recovered two pieces more of their cannon, together with all their baggage, a number of horses, carriages, etc., killed upwards of 200 of the enemy in the field of battle.
The number of wounded is not yet known, as they are scattered about in many places.
I have one lieutenant-colonel, since dead, one major, seven captains, fourteen lieutenants, four ensigns, two cornets, one judge-advocate, one baron, two Canadian officers, six sergeants, one aid-de-camp and seven hundred prisoners.
I almost forgot one Hessian chaplain.
Our wounded are forty-two.
Ten privates and four officers belonging to my brigade are dead.
The dead and wounded in the other corps I do not know, as they have not brought in their returns yet.
In the engagement Col. Baum was shot through the body and mortally wounded.
end quotes
Good-bye, Col. Baum, and soon after, good-bye Burgoyne and the British army.
So much for the good intentions of George III, then, three years later in 1780.
Such is history, people?
Should we be aware of it?
Only you can decide.
As George III proved beyond a shadow of a doubt back in 1780 with that above Proclamation from his Excellency James Robertson, Esquire, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces, wherein was stated “The King having been graciously pleased to honor me with the care of a Province, where, in a long Residence, I have contracted an Esteem for some, and an Affection for many of its Inhabitants, I proceed with great Pleasure to announce his benevolent Intentions,” you really didn’t need to have a brain in your head to be king of England, none at all.
Did George III and his Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces James Robertson, Esquire really think in 1780 that the people of America would have forgotten Burgoyne coming south from Canada just three years earlier, unleashing his Indians on the people of New York state as he did so?
As this 1777 letter from Revolutionary War General Horatio Gates to General George Washington, then with the army, in Bucks county, in Pennsylvania, makes clear, only a deluded fool would have thought so:
Van Schaick’s Island, August 22,
Sir: Upon my arrival in this department I found the main body of the army encamped upon Van Schaick’s island, which is made by the sprouts of the Mohawk river joining with the Hudson river, nine miles north of Albany.
A brigade under Gen. Poor encamped at Loudon’s ferry, on the south bank of the Mohawk river, five miles from hence; a brigade under Gen. Lincoln had joined Gen. Stark at Bennington, and a brigade under Gen. Arnold marched the 15th inst. to join the militia of Tryon county, to raise the siege of Fort Stanwix.
Upon leaving Philadelphia the prospect this way appeared very gloomy; but the severe checks the enemy have met with at Bennington and in Tryon county have given a more pleasing view to public affairs.
Particular accounts of the signal victory gained by Gen. Stark, and the severe blow Gen. Herkimer gave Sir John Johnson and the scalpers under his command, have been transmitted to your excellency by Gen. Schuyler.
I anxiously expect the arrival of an express from Gen. Arnold with an account of the total defeat of the enemy in that quarter.
By my calculation he reached Fort Stanwix the day before yesterday.
Cols. Livingston’s and Courtland’s regiments arrived yesterday and immediately joined Gen. Poor’s division.
I shall also order Gen. Arnold, upon his return, to march to that post.
I cannot sufficiently thank your excellency for sending Col. Morgan’s corps to this army.
They will be of the greatest service to it, for until the late successes this way I am told the army were quite panic-struck by the Indians and their tory and Canadian assassins in Indian dresses.
Horrible, indeed, have been the cruelties they have wantonly committed upon many of the miserable inhabitants, insomuch that it is not fair for Gen. Burgoyne, even if the bloody hatchet he has so barbarously used should find its way into his own head.
Gov. Clinton will be here to-day.
Upon his arrival I shall consult with him and Gen. Lincoln upon the best plan to distress, and I hope finally defeat the enemy.
I am sorry to be necessitated to acquaint your excellency how neglectfully your orders have been executed at Springfield—few of the militia demanded are yet arrived, but I hear of great numbers upon the march.
Your excellency’s advice in regard to Morgan’s corps, etc., etc., shall be carefully observed.
My scouts and spies inform me that the enemy’s headquarters and main body are at Saratoga, and that they have lately been repairing the bridges between that place and Stillwater.
As soon as time and circumstances will admit I shall send your excellency a general return of this army.
I am, sir, your excellency’s most obedient humble servant,
Horatio Gates.
His Excellency, Gen. Washinqton.
end quotes
The Col. Morgan mentioned therein, of course, was Col. Daniel Morgan of Virginia, who was one of the most gifted battlefield tacticians of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).
After the American Revolutionary War began at the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the Continental Congress created the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, calling for the formation of 10 rifle companies from the middle colonies to support the Siege of Boston.
Accordingly, late in June 1775, a little more than a year before the first Fourth of July, Virginia agreed to send two, and the Virginia House of Burgesses chose Daniel Morgan to form one of these companies and become its commander.
Morgan had already been an officer in the Virginia militia since the French and Indian War, and he recruited 96 men in just 10 days and assembled them at Winchester, Virginia on July 14.
He then marched them 600 miles (970 km) to Boston, Massachusetts in 21 days, arriving on Aug. 6, 1775.
His company of marksmen was nicknamed “Morgan’s Riflemen.”
In 1777, a year after the first Fourth of July, a detachment of Morgan’s regiment, commanded by Morgan, was reassigned to the army’s Northern Department and on Aug. 30 he joined General Horatio Gates in New York state to aid in resisting Burgoyne’s offensive.
Morgan led his regiment, with the added support of Henry Dearborn’s 300-man New Hampshire infantry, as the advance to the main forces.
At Freeman’s Farm, which is a part of the Saratoga Battlefield National Park today, Morgan’s troops into the advance of General Simon Fraser’s wing of Burgoyne’s force.
Every officer in the British advance party died in the first exchange, and the advance guard retreated.
Morgan’s men charged without orders, but the charge fell apart when they ran into the main column led by General Hamilton.
As the British began to form on the fields at Freeman’s farm, Morgan’s men continued to break these formations with accurate rifle fire from the woods on the far side of the field.
They were joined by another seven regiments from Bemis Heights.
For the rest of the afternoon, American fire held the British in check, but repeated American charges were repelled by British bayonets.
Burgoyne’s next offensive resulted in the Battle of Bemis Heights on Oct. 7, 1777.
Morgan was assigned command of the left (or western) flank of the American position.
The British plan was to turn that flank, using an advance by 1,500 men.
This brought Morgan’s brigade once again up against General Fraser’s forces.
Passing through the Canadian loyalists, Morgan’s Virginia sharpshooters got the British light infantry trapped in a crossfire between themselves and Dearborn’s regiment.
Although the light infantry broke, General Fraser was trying to rally them, encouraging his men to hold their positions when Benedict Arnold arrived.
Arnold spotted him and called to Morgan: “That man on the grey horse is a host unto himself and must be disposed of — direct the attention of some of the sharpshooters amongst your riflemen to him!”
Morgan reluctantly ordered Fraser shot by a sniper, and Timothy Murphy obliged him.
With Fraser mortally wounded, the British light infantry fell back into and through the redoubts occupied by Burgoyne’s main force.
Morgan was one of those who then followed Arnold’s lead to turn a counter-attack from the British middle.
Burgoyne retired to his starting positions, but about 500 men poorer for the effort.
That night, he withdrew to the village of Saratoga, New York (renamed Schuylerville in honor of Philip Schuyler) about eight miles to the northwest.
During the next week, as Burgoyne dug in, Morgan and his men moved to his north.
Their ability to cut up any patrols sent in their direction convinced the British that retreat was not possible.
The result was Burgoyne being trapped with winter coming on, and accordingly, he was forced to have to surrender his army, which was a real turning point in the American Revolution, as it proved Americans could in fact stand up to and beat an army from the world’s greatest superpower.
Such is the stuff that American history is made of.
Could George III of England have been ignorant of all of that history in 1780 when his Excellency James Robertson, Esquire, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces, issued his Proclamation wherein was stated “The King having been graciously pleased to honor me with the care of a Province, where, in a long Residence, I have contracted an Esteem for some, and an Affection for many of its Inhabitants, I proceed with great Pleasure to announce his benevolent Intentions?”
For that matter, could his Excellency James Robertson, Esquire, Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of New York, and the Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the same, and Major General of His Majesty’s forces have been ignorant of it?
Or were they simply deluded?
A question for our times.
So why do we need to know all this “Revolutionary War” stuff then, especially on the occasion of the Fourth of July, which didn’t end that war, but got it started on a grand scale, instead, with 25,000 Revolutionary Soldiers dying during the war while 25,000 Revolutionary Soldiers were estimated to have been wounded or maimed and 24,000 British Soldiers were killed during the war with 100,000 Loyalists fleeing to Canada, the Bahamas and England during the war with 3 million being the estimated population of America in 1776, as compared to 300-plus million today?
So what, people?
To celebrate the Fourth of July today, do we really need to know that some 1,547 known military engagements occurred during the Revolutionary War subsequent to the first Fourth of July, with 6.5% as the population participation rate during the war, higher than any American war since WWII, including Viet Nam, with the cost of the war of the Revolution being $151 million?
And that answer is of course not.
To celebrate the Fourth of July today, and here you have to say, even if you are an atheist, “God bless America for the freedoms we enjoy today,” because it is so true, what with the cost of both gas and hamburger being down this year thanks to Wall Street and the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, which has our best interests as American people at heart, especially when it is the Fourth of July and the official start to summer; all you need to know is that it is a holiday and let’s party!
And that is it.
So simple, isn’t it, as it should be in a democracy!
There is no requirement to play or sing “My Country Tis of Thee,” which is based on the music of “God Save The King,” which we took over on and made ours after kicking the king out, or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” or the “Star-Spangled Banner” which is based on the music of another British drinking song we took over on after kicking the Brits out, along with their king.
In fact, you don’t even have to know those songs exist to celebrate the Fourth of July today, especially if you are into Bruce Springsteen or Lady Gaga or Katie Perry, instead.
So why then, is it necessary at the time of the Fourth of July celebration we are privileged to have today to know that in 1777, Timothy Murphy, a rifleman in the American Revolutionary War at the Battle of Bemis Heights, shot British General Simon Fraser, Burgoyne’s “fighting general?”
Do we today have any possible reason, outside of curiosity, to know that on June 29, 1775, shortly after the start of the American Revolutionary War, Timothy Murphy and his brother John enlisted in the Northumberland County Riflemen, specifically Captain John Lowdon’s Company, and that their unit saw action in the Siege of Boston, the Battle of Long Island, and “skirmishing in Westchester?”
What, afterall, does that have to do with the price of a gallon of gas, or a pound of hamburger?
And that answer is nothing, so why then should we be bothered to know that Murphy was promoted to the rank of sergeant in the Continental Army’s 12th Pennsylvania Regiment and fought at the battles of Trenton and Princeton, or that Murphy was an “expert marksman”, defined as being “able to hit a seven inch target at 250 yards?”
Or that in July 1777, this skill led to Murphy joining Virginian Daniel Morgan’s newly formed Morgan’s Riflemen and that he was selected as one of 500 handpicked riflemen to go with General Daniel Morgan to Upstate New York to help stop General John Burgoyne and the British Army?
Why do we need to know that?
What possible relevance could that possibly have to how we celebrate the Fourth of July today?
As we party hearty today on the Fourth of July as we are privileged to do in this country, perhaps thanks to Timothy Murphy so many years ago shooting Simon Fraser, should we take a moment to reflect on the fact that a year after the first Fourth of July, as the battles around Saratoga raged, the British had been pushed back, which was not believed possible by the British, who held the Americans in contempt as a rag-tag army, just as we dismissed the Viet Cong, nor was that supposed to happen; to the contrary, the Americans were supposed to break and run, but they didn’t, in large part because of the scalping of Jane McCrea?
Does it make a difference to us today that the fleeing British were being rallied by Brigadier General Simon Fraser when Benedict Arnold rode up to General Morgan, and pointed at Fraser and told Morgan the man was worth a regiment, so that Morgan then called on Murphy and said: “That gallant officer is General Fraser, I admire him, but it is necessary that he should die, do your duty,” which caused Murphy to scale a nearby tree, take careful aim at the extreme distance of 300 yards, and fire four times, with the first shot a close miss, the second grazing the General’s horse, and the third tumbling Fraser from his horse, shot through the stomach, while the fourth shot hit British Senior officer Sir Francis Clerke, General Burgoyne’s chief aide-de-camp, as he galloped onto the field with a message, killing him instantly?
Would that make an ice-cold beer taste any better, and a hamburger on a bun any juicier?
And once again, I would say, of course not.
So why should we know such things?
Because if they hadn’t of happened, or if they had happened differently, if Timothy Murphy had missed Simon Fraser, for instance, there wouldn’t be a Fourth of July to celebrate today and instead of “My Country Tis of Thee,” we would still be singing “God Save the King,” or “God Save the Queen.”
So there is a reason, but it isn’t the most important.
As it was told to me when I was young and learning the significance of the Fourth of July to our lives as American citizens back then, after the close of WWII, we were to know those things because of what James Madison of Virginia meant when he said, “Do not separate text from historical background, if you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
Once upon a time in America, that meant something to us as citizens – to understand our form of government, you had to understand our specific history and how we came into being as a nation, and that history was one of years of hardship, misery and bloodshed with people like Timothy Murphy fighting to give us the liberty to celebrate the Fourth of July in America today, so that as we celebrated the Fourth of July, and this was years ago now, before the Fourth of July became the rip-roaring, let’s party holiday that it has become today, and God bless America again for that, and for giving us Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga in our times, we were asked to give a moment’s thought to those sacrifices that gave us our freedom that we enjoy today.
That’s why.
As hard as it is to believe in this day and age of an American president who has to communicate with his followers by resorting to 140-character TWEETS to the TWITTERATI in the TWITTERSPHERE serviced and kept informed by TWITTER, which actually has become a totally new language in the United States of America today called TWITTERESE that is used by hundreds of millions of people, it is said, to communicate with each other because they know no other means of doing so, not being conversant in the Old American that I continue to use in here, with words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs being utilized to convey meaning, because I am totally illiterate when it comes to employing TWITTERESE in a TWEET, and thus, cannot understand a word that American president Donald Trump is trying to convey with his TWEET STORMS, assuming there are even coherent thoughts buried in there somewhere, just beyond my ken, there once was a time in America, and this is admittedly a long time ago now, in years and centuries and even millennia, when people en masse used words and sentences and paragraphs to convey their thoughts and ideas to each other, because they had not yet been taught to TWEET, which requires an ability to assimilate TWEETERESE, and that takes us back to these words from Virginia’s own Jemmy Madison, who went on to be an American president himself, to wit:
“Do not separate text from historical background, if you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
end quote
When I was young, and yes, I do understand, that was in a different century and things have changed since then and now are different, and if I don’t like it, tough luck, that’s what I get for getting old, those words were taught to me as an admonition, which is an authoritative counsel or warning, and that from my teachers, who were the women of the community setting the community’s values beginning in kindergarten, as the duty of each and every citizen of this nation, including us, which is why we were there to be educated – not so that we could get rich, not so that we could compete for jobs with kids of other nations, but that we could be productive, useful citizens, instead.
This was back, of course, in a time when character still mattered, before discussing character of politicians in America became politically un-correct to do, and it was based on character out in the country where I was raised that people were judged, so if you didn’t want to be judged harshly, then don’t be of such character as would draw that opprobrium on you.
And we were expected when young to become discerning judges of character, especially when it comes to picking elected officers.
And to be a discerning judge of character, it was necessary to read and know history, which meant back then that one had to learn Old American, because that was the common language back then that ideas and thoughts were conveyed in, and here, I make reference to a writer named Caesar in Letter II posted in the Daily Advertiser in New York City, on October 17, 1787, before the United States Constitution was ratified, wherein he stated as follows in keeping with the admonition to us young Americans when I was young of Virginia’s Jemmy Madison above to not separate Constitutional text from historical background, for if we were to do so, and that has been done since I was young, we would have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which has been done, and accordingly, has given us the distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government we are now suffering under in this country, with the gridlock caused by the faction fighting between the worthless Republicans in Congress and the equally worthless Democrats, who have just adopted as their latest slogan, “A BETTER DEAL,” as if they were now competing with McDonald’s for the hamburger trade in America, to wit:
I viewed the public mind as wound up to a great pitch of dissatisfaction, by the inadequacy of the powers of the present Congress to the general good and conversation of the union.
I believed then, as I do now, that the people were determined and prepared for a change.
end quote
That is in 1787, people, two hundred thirty (230) years ago now, in the beginning days of this nation’s history, and speaking of Democrat slogans, doesn’t that remind you of the Marxist Barack Hussein Obama’s slogan of “Change We Can Hope For,” and for the same reasons as 230 years ago – because the public mind was once again wound up to a great pitch of dissatisfaction by the inadequacy of the powers of the present Congress to the general good and conversation of the union, which remains the case today under the casino operator/reality TV star/U.S. president Donald Trump.
As to character when it comes to politics, and the need for an educated citizenry, this is what Caesar had to say to us young Americans on that subject all those years ago:
I am not one of those who gain an influence by cajoling the unthinking mass (tho’ I pity their delusions), and ringing in their ears the gracious sound of their absolute Sovereignty.
I despise the trick of such dirty policy.
I know there are Citizens, who, to gain their own private ends, enflame the minds of the well-meaning, tho’ less intelligent parts of the community, by sating their vanity with that cordial and unfailing specific, that all power is seated in the people.
For my part, I am not much attached to the majesty of the multitude, and therefore waive all pretensions (founded on such conduct), to their countenance.
I consider them in general as very ill qualified to judge for themselves what government will best suit their peculiar situations; nor is this to be wondered at.
The science of government is not easily understood.
Cato will admit, I presume, that men of good education and deep reflection, only, are judges, of the form of a government; whether it is constituted on such principles as will restrain arbitrary power, on the one hand, and equal to the exclusion of corruption and the destruction of licentiousness on the other; whether the New Constitution, if adopted, will prove adequate to such desirable ends, time, the mother of events, will show.
end quotes
Cato will admit, says Caesar 230 years ago in America (yes, there was an America back then, it is not a new invention just recently sprung on the world) that men of good education and deep reflection, only, are judges, of the form of a government and whether it is constituted on such principles as will restrain arbitrary power, on the one hand, and equal to the exclusion of corruption and the destruction of licentiousness on the other, and that is why, as young Americans, we were supposed to know all that history I cite above, and more, so that we too could become men and women of good education and deep reflection, as citizens of a functioning republic like the United States of America must be for it to stay functioning.
As to whether the New Constitution, if adopted, would prove adequate to such desirable ends, restraining arbitrary power, on the one hand, and equal to the exclusion of corruption and the destruction of licentiousness on the other, only time, the mother of events, would show, and 230 years later, people, that ball is in our court and the answer is a resounding NO – the Constitution which was new in America 230 years ago, when Caesar was writing his essay in 1787, has been an abject failure when it comes to restraining arbitrary power, on the one hand, while excluding corruption and destroying licentiousness (disregarding accepted rules or conventions), on the other.
Getting back to the need for an educated and informed citizen body in this nation, Caesar stated as follows:
When a new form of government is fabricated, it lies with the people at large to receive or reject it – that is, their inherent right.
Now, I would ask (without intending to triumph over the weaknesses or follies of any men), how are the people to profit by this inherent right?
By what conduct do they discover that they are sensible of their own interests in this situation?
Is it by the exercise of a well-disciplined reason, and a correspondent education?
I believe not.
How then?
As I humbly conceive, by a tractable and docile disposition, and by honest men endeavoring to keep their minds easy, while others, of the same disposition, with the advantages of genius and learning, are constructing the bark that may, by the blessing of Heaven, carry them to the port of rest and happiness, if they will embark without diffidence and proceed without mutiny.
end quote
While others, of the same disposition, with the advantages of genius and learning, are constructing the bark that may, by the blessing of Heaven, carry them to the port of rest and happiness!
What a thought that is to ponder, all these years later, as we decry the lack of such people in our federal government, people with the advantages of genius and learning who were supposed to be constructing the bark that may, by the blessing of Heaven, carry us to the port of rest and happiness!
Instead, for all to many of us, thanks to the denizens who now inhabit MORONICA on the Potomac, as the former Washington, D.C. is now known, the bark that was, by the blessing of Heaven, to carry us to the port of rest and happiness, is smashed on the rocks of partisan political strife, instead!
Which takes us to these words of Caesar 230 years ago, which still apply to us in this country today:
There are always men in society of some talents, but more ambition, in quest of that which it would be impossible for them to obtain in any other way than by working on the passions and prejudices of the less discerning classes of citizens and yeomanry.
end quotes
To which I answer, yes there are, and we are now swamped by them at the federal level in this country, to our detriment.
And perhaps a large part of the reason for that is because we as a people have become so ignorant in this country that we can no longer read, let alone assimilate the meaning of words formed into sentences and paragraphs to convey thoughts and ideas.
With respect to all this Revolutionary War stuff I have brought into this discussion above, Caesar said this in 1787:
I venerate the memory of the slaughtered patriots of America, and rejoice as much as Cato that they did not bleed in vain, but I would have America profit by their death in a different manner from him.
I believe they sought to obtain liberty for no particular State, but for the whole Union, indissolubly connected under one controlling and supreme head.
end quotes
And there is where it all began to break down, right at the very beginning, in my estimation, anyway, because America was never something concrete, only an idea, and as Caesar makes clear above here, that idea was never commonly shared, which brings us to the highly divided nation that we are today.
Just a thought, anyway.
When I posted the start of this thread three years ago on July 9, 2017, and titled it “On the Fourth of July, Now Past and Gone,” little was I to know just how true that was to be only three years later, as we witness the Fourth of July fading into obscurity because it is a racist holiday that celebrates white supremacy, and thus is offensive to all the people in America who do not like racism or white supremacy, and want every trace and possible symbol of either completely erased and excised from our American history, so people who have sensitive emotions will not have to know any of it ever happened, which will make them feel good about themselves and all warm and squishy inside knowing they live in a world where no bad things have ever happened and never will, because they are in control of what is thought and said, for the good of the rest of us who don’t know better, which happens to be the Democrat “mudsill theory” from pre-Civil War days brought forward in time to today.
The Fourth of July has to go because let us face it, it is a symbol of the beginning of WHITE SUPREMACY here in America, and no greater symbol of that have we than the Fourth of July, even more so than the Confederate Flag or statues of Bobby Lee or Jefferson Davis.
If it was not for the Fourth of July, there would be no white supremacy here in America today, so the two are inextricably linked, which makes it only fair that the Fourth of July and the white supremacy it represents are consigned to the trash bin of history, along with pretty much everything that happened since that the people of color want abolished, and that Juneteenth become our nation holiday, instead, as the Democrats in Congress are pushing for right now.
When I was young, I honestly did not know that the Fourth of July was a racist holiday to celebrate white supremacy in this country.
And truly, how would you know?
When I was young, the Fourth of July was called INDEPENDENCE DAY!
There were no racial overtones to the holiday back then, and how could there have been, given there really is nothing racist about the holiday!
The racial overtones concerning the Fourth of July have come into the picture only recently, a fact that I was “woke” to by Albany, New York Democrat Mayor Kathy Sheehan issuing an executive order demanding that a statue of Revolutionary War general Philip John Schuyler be removed from a park across from her city hall in Albany, because she finds it offensive to her sensitive sensibilities because Philip Schuyler owned black people as slaves.
That is when I finally made the connection and said, “My God, what on earth could I have been thinking, thinking people like Philip Schuyler are American heroes, when Kathy Sheehan is making it real clear that because he owned slaves he really was a bad person we should have nothing to do with, with his role in American history being totally erased, along with his name and story, which is intimately and inextricably tied up with the Fourth of July!
So if we cannot remember Philip Schuyler because he is a racist white supremacist, then it only logically follows that anything he was associated with, starting with the Fourth of July has to be racist and white supremacist by association.
As to Philip Schuyler, who we no longer can remember or talk about, because the name offends the more sensitive among us, he was born on November 11, 1733 in Albany, New York to parents Johannes “John” Schuyler Jr. and Cornelia Van Cortlandt.
Schuyler’s family has migrated from Amsterdam, Holland in 1650 and were related to the families of the old Dutch aristocracy.
Schuyler’s second great-grandfather was the first mayor of Albany, New York, the place of his birth.
Philip Schuyler began his military service during the French and Indian War as a captain and was later promoted to major.
He partook in the battles of Lake George, Oswego River, Ticonderoga, and Fort Frontenac.
After his first stretch in the military, Schuyler ventured into politics.
He began his tenure as a New York State Assemblyman in 1768 and served until 1775 when he was selected as a delegate to the second Continental Congress in May of that year.
On June 19, 1775, he was commissioned as one of only four major generals in the Continental Army.
He established his headquarters in Albany, NY and began planning an invasion of Canada.
Early into his campaign he was plagued with a medical condition that caused command to be deferred to General Richard Montgomery.
After leaving his regiment he returned to Fort Ticonderoga and then later to his hometown of Albany.
He remained there for the winter of 1775 to 1776 where he collected supplies and forwarded them to Canada.
He also aided the American effort in subduing British forces in the Mohawk Valley region of Western New York.
Schuyler’s original plan to invade Canada fell short upon the death of General Montgomery and the Patriot force’s failure to capture Quebec.
Upon the American troops’ retreat to Crown Point and the evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga, General Horatio Gates attempted to claim precedence over Schuyler and sought Schuyler’s dismissal from service.
The matter was taken up in front of Congress and Schuyler was superseded in August of 1777.
Schuyler requested a trial in military court to prove his case.
Schuyler was acquitted on all charges in 1778, but his reputation was still damaged.
He resigned from military service in April of 1779.
Upon his departure from military service he reentered politics and served first as a delegate from New York to the Continental Congress from 1797 to 1781 and then three terms in the New York State Senate from 1781 to 1997.
He served a term as a United States Senator from New York but lost his seat to Aaron Burr, who’s campaign was backed by enemies of Schuyler.
Alexander Hamilton was enraged by the Schuyler’s loss, as Hamilton backed his campaign due to his support of New York ratifying the Federal constitution.
In addition to being a political ally of Schuyler’s, Alexander Hamilton married Schuyler’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1780.
Once Hamilton regained control of New York State politics, Schuyler won back his seat in the United States Senate from Aaron Burr in 1797.
Schuyler served only a few years of his term before resigning due to poor health.
Philip Schuyler died on November 18, 1804.
end quotes
But forget all of that.
It is American history that Democrat Mayor of Albany, New York Kathleen Sheehan finds offensive, because she believes Philip Schuyler is a racist, white supremacist.
And being the mayor of Albany, she is the authority on the subject, so that is that – the Fourth of July is a racist holiday that celebrates white supremacy, which is why it should be abolished!
What follows is to me an intelligent and thoughtful and thought-provoking editorial that was posted to the internet on a site devoted to the members of the 2d of the 12th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division in the Viet Nam war by Arnold Krause, the author of a recently-released book about the Viet Nam conflict entitled “Young Men In Harm’s Way” as a Fourth of July message, which deserves to be heard by a far greater audience than will be the case on that site, so here it is, courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror, for the candid world to read and consider, to wit:
Hello Fellow Veterans and Friends
As we celebrate the Fourth of July this day, we have much to be grateful for, being blessed to live in a country where we have been granted so many freedoms and opportunities.
Lately however, we have never seen more troubling times than what we are witnessing now and what we have seen over the past month and counting in the cities across America.
What’s playing on my mind……..
America certainly has had it’s issues throughout our history and over time has taken action to address many of them, some driven by social change or pressure and opinion.
They are complex in nature.
Slavery was certainly at the top of that list.
Our founding fathers recognized that fact and knew it would take time to institute change among the people.
Slavery was an institution not just here in the Colonies, but was a prevalent evil activity in much of the world back in the 1600’s when a privateer brought slavery to the British Colony at Jamestown in 1619.
Slavery continues today.
Man has been preying on each other for centuries.
When the draft of the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson, a slave holder in his own right as were some of the founding fathers, many of these men at the time thought that slavery was abominable, so why did they continue the practice?
Maybe it was social pressure knowing many in the South opposed the idea of terminating the practice and without their support, passing any kind of proclamation supporting that concept would never pass and thus, we would never achieve the goal of separating ourselves from British rule.
So, yes in many ways they were hypocritical.
Jefferson was keen to address how our future should look however, knowing that by putting thoughts to paper, that certain rights which did not exist at that point in time could be found in our future.
Our new and young nation would strive to achieve them.
Those words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It would take from 1775 until 1861 and the Civil War to truly address the issue of slavery.
When Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation at Gettysburg, PA., which granted freedom to slaves in the Confederate States, but not in the Union border states, and not until the end of the Civil War in 1865 and beyond when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were passed by Congress did the part of the Declaration of Independence hold true pertaining to “equal rights”.
It was an end to slavery and the beginning of true freedoms for all, and it put us on a path and journey that we continue to make progress with as we work to achieve total equality within our lands.
I hope and pray that “OLD GLORY” and this republic will be able to defend herself for what we stand for as a democratic nation during these trying times.
Where does the truth lie and where do we find reality to many of the questions being asked today?
It certainly is different from person to person and town to town.
The majority of Americans appear to be uncertain about how to react and what to say to what is taking place today when every opinion or action, past and present is being construed and judged through the prism of color and racism by the social platforms, the newspapers and cable news networks not to mention the “Cancel Culture” that wants to remove every monument and statue that represents our history, both the good and the bad, but that is how we learn and advance as a society.
It’s not a bad thing to be reminded of where we came from so we can compare it to where we are today.
We live in what is considered by most, the greatest nation in the world which was founded on a platform of liberties unequaled by most countries.
From where we started to where we are today has been a remarkable journey by any stretch of the imagination and should be celebrated from that point of view.
Being a diverse country of so many different cultures is a challenge.
The one defining symbol that should bind us together is to be called an American and embrace all it stands for.
How we conduct and comport ourselves in our daily lives should be done as Americans, a nation of people that sees ourselves as lacking in color, not defined by color if we are ever to live in peace and harmony with each other.
I hope that everyone gives pause to reflect on this holiday while you’ve enjoying and celebrating over food, drink and friends while practicing social distancing.
What the Fourth of July truly represents to this Nation’s history was being granted by proxy, life, liberty and the freedom to choose and make our own happiness, however you want to describe it.
Happy Independence Day, America, our 244th Birthday.
Sarge
And getting back to the Fourth of July being considered a “racist” holiday because it celebrates “white supremacy,” we have more on that subject from Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, a self-proclaimed expert on that subject of which she is entirely ignorant, in the Albany, Times Union article “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, to wit:
ALBANY — The complicated legacy of Maj. Gen. Philip J. Schuyler, a Revolutionary War hero and former state senator whose family’s heritage is enmeshed in the history of Albany and the nation, was officially etched into the city’s landscape in 1925 when a statue in his honor was erected in front of City Hall.
end quotes
And that is bull**** media hype by Brendan J. Lyons because there really is nothing “complicated” at all about the legacy of Maj. Gen. Philip J. Schuyler if one is sane and rational and in control of one’s emotions as opposed to being overly emotional bordering on paranoiac hysteria.
Getting back to the narrative, for narrative it is, we have further as follows:
But like many leaders of the American Revolution, Schuyler’s ownership of slaves has for some, including Mayor Kathy Sheehan, tainted his legacy and led to her recent order that the statue be removed and relocated, possibly to a state museum or the nearby historic Schuyler Mansion.
end quotes
For the record, Albany, New York mayor Kathy Sheehan has proven by her words and actions that she is possessed of a very small and closed mind that she wishes to keep that way, and she is also quite ignorant of not only the history of her city, but of America, as well, and with respect to the presence of slavery in her city of Albany, which goes far beyond Philip Schuyler, let’s go to an article in the Albany Times Union entitled “Database documents Albany’s slave owners” by Paul Grondahl on Feb. 23, 2018, where we have as follows, to wit:
In the public imagination, slavery was long considered a scourge of the South, perpetuated by white slave owners who ran vast cotton and tobacco plantations that exploited shackled Africans bought and sold as property.
In reality, as a new publicly searchable database reveals, wealthy Dutch merchants in Albany routinely owned slaves that they used for domestic chores and to run their farming operations outside the city.
There were 3,722 slaves of African descent listed in the 1790 census in Albany County, for instance, the most of any county in the state at the time.
end quotes
So, if Kathy Sheehan wants to scrub the history of Albany to remove all traces and mentions of slavery, I would say she and her Black Lives Matters controllers have their work cut out for them, as we see by going back to that article as follows:
“These records are an extremely important contribution to our understanding of slavery in New York.”
“They will help us tell the history of enslaved people in a more complete and compelling way,” said Heidi Hill, site manager at the state-run Schuyler Mansion in Albany, home of Revolutionary War Gen. Philip Schuyler, who was the father-in-law of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.
The database shows that Schuyler owned 13 slaves at his South End mansion in 1790 and another four slaves worked on his farm in Saratoga County.
The state historic site had not tried to hide the Schuyler’s slave-owning past, according to Hill.
end quotes
I am over 70 years old, and all my life, I have known since I was a child that at one time in New York state history, especially when it was a British colony, which it was at the time of the original Fourth of July in 1776, that there were slaves in New York state, as there were in the rest of America, and a large part of the world, including among the native Americans and in Africa, because nobody ever tried to hide any of that history.
So given that, why is Democrat Kathy Sheehan all of a sudden trying to scrub and cleanse our American history to remove every trace of slavery from it, as if it never happened?
According to that same article, Abraham G. Lansing, a prominent merchant in Kathy Sheehan’s lawless sanctuary city of Albany, New York, where the blacks slaughter each other on a daily basis, because to them, black lives ain’t worth spit, owned six slaves who worked at his mansion on Market Street.
So how come she isn’t screeching to have all records of him expunged from history?
And the so-called “good patroon” Stephen Van Rensselaer, whose name is on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, just across the river from Albany in Rensselaer County, which also bears his name, as does the City of Rensselaer, owned 15 slaves in 1790.
So why isn’t Kathy Sheehan screeching about him, as well in her bid to cleanse Albany history and New York state history and American history of all references to slavery and the names of the white men who owned them, or will he be next?
As to the lives of slaves in Albany at that time, here I refer to numerous scholarly works on what is known to those who bother to know history, and this excludes Albany, New York Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan who is a creature of the howling mobs, such as “The Conflagration of 1793,” or as it was called by Don R. Gerlach, biographer of General Philip Schuyler, in an article published in the Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Mar., 1977), pp. 301-312, “Black Arson in Albany, New York – November 1793,” where we learn about the lives of slaves of Albany, as follows:
The fire was so plainly the work of an incendiary, that not only were several slaves arrested upon suspicion, but subsequently a meeting of the common council was held and an ordinance passed forbidding any Negro or mulatto, of any sex, age or description whatever, from walking in the streets or lanes after 9 o’clock in the evening, or from being in any tavern or tippling house after that hour, under penalty of twenty-four hours confinement in the jail.
end quotes
Clearly, from the history of Albany, New York that Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan is ignorant of, those called “slaves” actually has a lot of freedom granted to them, as we also see from an article in Historic Hudson Valley entitled “What is Pinkster?” where we learn further as follows:
Pinkster is a holiday that was celebrated over several days by African and Dutch New Yorkers throughout the 1700s.
The holiday was brought to the New World by Dutch settlers in the 1620s and flourished in the areas of heaviest Dutch settlement: the Hudson Valley, northern New Jersey, and western Long Island.
These same areas also had significant populations of enslaved Africans from the 1600s until emancipation in New York in 1827.
For enslaved people, the year offered few holidays or breaks from tedious and often grueling work.
For rural captives in particular, who were often isolated from larger African communities, Pinkster became the most important break in the year.
Despite Pinkster’s Dutch origins, Africans in New York and New Jersey were so successful at incorporating their own cultures into the celebration that by the early 1800s, Pinkster was actually considered an African-American holiday
Pinkster was celebrated over several days.
The Dutch observed Pinkster by attending church services, and important church functions like baptisms and confirmations were often held during the festival.
Neighbors visited one another, and children dyed eggs and ate gingerbread.
Slave-owning families granted time off to captive men and women.
The Pinkster holiday afforded enslaved Africans the opportunity to reunite with loved ones and family members who often lived some distance away.
Many journeyed from rural areas into New York City, with its significantly larger population of both free and enslaved Africans.
By the mid-1700s, markets in New York and Brooklyn were attracting large gatherings at Pinkster time.
Enslaved men and women sold such items as berries, herbs, sassafras bark, beverages, and oysters at these markets, and in turn used the money earned to participate in the Pinkster celebration.
Africans and Europeans alike enjoyed drinking, game-playing, dance, and music at these gatherings.
Vendors adorned market stalls with greenery and flowers (azaleas are associated with Pinkster), and European vendors hired skillful African dancers to draw crowds to their booths.
Dances such as the “jig,” “breakdown,” or “double shuffle” synthesized African and European elements with newly invented steps and were the forerunners of tap and break dancing.
Pinkster as an African-American creative expression reached its zenith in Albany during the period between 1790 and 1810.
In the weeks prior to the holiday, temporary shelters woven from brush and clearly based on African forms were set up on three sides of a square at the top of “Pinkster Hill” (the present-day site of the New York State Capitol).
During these years Pinkster was always presided over by King Charles, a figure of great local renown and preeminence within Albany’s African community.
Charles, an Angola-born captive claimed by the Mayor of Albany, was tall, handsome, an athletic and tireless dancer, and a gifted speaker.
As the Master of Ceremonies, he was responsible for directing the event and keeping up the spirits of participants during the long sessions of drumming and dancing that crowned the celebration.
The style of dance and the complex layering of contrasting rhythms by the drummers and clappers attest to the survival and retention of West African traditions.
Although Pinkster still attracted African Americans, Euro-Americans, and Native Americans to its festivities, by the early 1800s it was viewed by observers as a primarily African-American holiday.
The Dutch had shifted their focus to newer American holidays like Election Day and Independence Day.
Pinkster meant different things to different people.
To Dutch celebrants, Pinkster was a religious holiday, a break from work, and an opportunity for visiting.
For enslaved people, gathering in rural areas or at urban markets, the holiday was all this and more.
African men and women enjoyed temporary independence, made money, and purchased goods.
More importantly, Pinkster meant the opportunity to reunite with family and loved ones and the chance to preserve, reshape, and express African traditions despite the restrictions of enslavement.
During the late 1700s and early 1800s, the festival in Albany was presided over by a King who was himself a captive – an inversion of the usual social order.
The crowning of the Pinkster King, like the election of generals or governors during other holidays celebrated by African people elsewhere in the northeast, invested respected members of the African community with symbolic power over the whole community and with distinction within their own community.
Celebrations featuring this sort of inversion of rank can be traced both to West African and European antecedents.
Pinkster is related in this way to more famous New World festivals such as Mardi Gras.
Another significance of Pinkster was the opportunity for enslaved Africans to slyly mock their white captors through caricatures of European fashions and behavior, and to voice their own anguish through speeches, storytelling, and improvised call and response singing.
Two important descriptions document Pinkster at Albany, including details about the character and role of King Charles.
A detailed account appeared in the Albany Centinel in June 1803.
In the same year, a pamphlet appeared in Albany entitled “The Pinkster Ode,” written by Absalom Aimwell (probably a pseudonym).
This lengthy poem has satiric elements, but also a strong abolitionist viewpoint.
It was reprinted in 1952 in the New York Folklore Quarterly, Vol. Eight.
Another eyewitness account is provided by Dr. James Eights in “Pinkster Festivals in Albany Sixty Years Ago,” which appeared in Collections on the History of Albany, Vol. 2 (Albany, 1867).
end quotes
Which raises the question of how much of that history now has to be scrubbed from the historical record as well, along with Philip Schuyler, to appease the Black Lives Matter crowd that wears Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan like a finger puppet on its right hand?
Stay tuned for more on this subject of the Fourth of July now being a racist holiday that celebrates white supremacy which is why it must be abolished and replaced with Juneteenth as our national holiday.
“They went to war for white people!”
That, people, is Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, who is emotionally disturbed to the point of being irrational, and who hasn’t a clue as to what she is talking about, which doesn’t stop her from saying it, anyway, speaking to the Hearst publication the Albany, New York Times Union, which also does not have a clue, in a recent interview memorialized by ace Times Union reporter Brendan Lyons in the Times Union article “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” on July 5, 2020, where mayor Sheehan was talking about Revolutionary War figures, and why their statues should come down, and why July Fourth should be considered a racist holiday that should be abolished because, as the Democrat mayor says, it celebrates white supremacy here in the United States of America.
Says the mayor to the Times Union, which prints every word the mayor says as if it were the absolute, irrefutable truth: “We would not be the nation that we are if it were not for slave labor to allow these men to be fed and clothed and housed because they had slave labor.”
What on earth she is trying to say there with that inane statement, nobody knows, starting with the Times Union.
And where she gets these outlandish, absurd and crazy ideas from, nobody really knows, and being irrational, the mayor herself is unable to say, but regardless, she will swear it is the truth all the same, simply because she said it, which is good enough for Brendan Lyons and the Times Union.
“She’s the mayor, folks, she said it, thus, it is true, so don’t question it!”
History by fiat, people, or imperial decree!
Which really makes life a lot simpler for all of us when you think about it – instead of having to study a lot of history books to know and understand what really happened in American history, now all we need do is to listen to Democrat Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan who tells us what history is going to be on a daily basis by executive order, as she is doing right there, before our eyes, plain as day!
Forget everything about American history that you once knew, because it is no longer true, and listen to mayor Kathy, instead, for the straight scoop, as we have as follows:
“… It represents a very different idea of the rule of law because it represents an individual who was able to own people and sell them and buy them.”
end quotes
WOW!
Talk about twisting, warping, bending, revising and distorting American history to make it totally ugly and therefore unpalatable as a reason to totally reject it, and erase it from the history books forever, along with the history books themselves, and the Christian Bible, for that matter, as it clearly condones slavery, which history is to be replaced by a version of history invented on the fly by Democrat mayor Sheehan, there we have it, writ large for all to see by the Albany, New York Times Union, itself a real bastion of freedom here in the United States of America!
To say that I am totally flabbergasted by mayor Sheehan’s version of American history would be the understatement of the century!
Here I am, over 70 years of age, and just now I am learning from Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan and the Times Union through which she speaks how much I was lied to by my teachers and by my community growing up, about the meaning of the Fourth of July and what it was those people back then were really fighting for.
Never did I know, until reading this Times Union article by the intrepid Times Union reporter Brendan Lyons, that the American revolution was fought for white people!
I have read the Declaration of Independence many times, especially those words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and never did I realize, until “woke” to the fact by mayor Sheehan and the Albany Times Union, that those words are really code for “only white men are created equal, all else aren’t equal.”
Reading the Declaration of Independence, which I now realize isn’t at all true, thanks to Mayor Kathy, I honestly thought they went to war because of the tyranny of a foreign king, to wit:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
end quotes
Now, here, people, is where we have to read between the lines and do some finagling with words in order to see American history as mayor Kathy of Albany demands we see it, buy executive decree of herself.
In mayor Kathy’s version of American history, where the Declaration of Independence says
“(W)hen in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” the words “one people” really should say “white people,” instead, which would make it read as mayor Kathy says it should, to wit:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for white people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle those white people, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
end quotes
And thus, in the mayor’s view, out of that comes white superiority, and white privilege and white entitlement, and her assertion that “They went to war for white people!”
But what about the Tuscaroras and the Oneidas of the Iroquois Nation in New York state who fought alongside those “white men” in the American Revolution against the British?
They were red skins, not white people, nor were they slaves!
They were a free people with their own nation which still exists today, welcoming in the white man and everybody else for that matter into their three gambling casinos in New York state east of Syracuse where the white man’s money is as good as anyone else’s.
How does mayor Kathy deal with them?
She doesn’t!
In her warped and twisted version of history, their role in winning the American Revolution simply doesn’t exist.
And how about the Treaty of Watertown on July 19, 1776, fifteen days after the Fourth of July and the Declaration of Independence, which was a treaty of alliance and friendship signed between the Micmac and Maliseet tribes and the United States?
Or how about General George Washington on December 24, 1776 writing to the Passamaquoddy tribe a letter asking them to send him warriors, to which the Penobscot tribe and the Passamaquoddy responded by providing 600 warriors?
Ah, but that really never happened, because it spoils the narrative of mayor Kathy, and the Times Union, so that has to be scrubbed out, along with pretty much everything else that happened back then to make mayor Kathy’s assertion that the Revolutionary War was fought for white men, not an end to the tyranny of a foreign king in England as the Declaration of Independence implies.
And what about Chief Francis Joseph Neptune of the Passamaquoddy tribe reportedly firing one of the first shots of the Battle of Machias in Maine in August of 1777, hitting and killing a British officer standing on the deck of the British frigate Mermaid at a considerable distance?
Scrub that, too, along with the Massachusetts government throughout the Revolution continuing to provide the Passamaquoddy with supplies and ammunition in recognition of their service.
All of that and more has to go to make what mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany wants us to believe about American history to be true.
Now, is that history pretty?
Of course it isn’t, because people are not perfect.
As Frederick Douglass, a free black man living in Rochester, New York, said in his famous speech on July 5, 1852 at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, held at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?
I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
end quotes
Except in 1852, there were no slaves in New York state, nor were there any in mayor Kathy’s city of Albany, New York, and in just eight years from that speech, on December 20, 1860, the Democrat-controlled slave states of the south began to secede, which was to start the Civil War between north and south which was to give those slaves in the south the same freedom that Frederick Douglass, a black man, enjoyed in the north.
For those who don’t know the name, and this would start with mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey; c. February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman, who, after escaping from slavery in Maryland, became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings.
Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.
Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
Douglass wrote several autobiographies, notably describing his experiences as a slave in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), which became a bestseller, and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).
Following the Civil War, Douglass remained an active campaigner against slavery and wrote his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
First published in 1881 and revised in 1892, three years before his death, the book covers events both during and after the Civil War.
Douglass also actively supported women’s suffrage, and held several public offices.
Douglass became the first African-American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate and Vice Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull, on the Equal Rights Party ticket.
Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, be they white, black, female, Native American, or Chinese immigrants.
He was also a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, as well as in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution.
Where is Frederick Douglass when we need him today?
Oh, right, Kathy Sheehan scrubbed him from the history books, as well, because the word slave so offends her that she can’t stand to see it in print, and he goes against her narrative of the black man being oppressed by the white man who didn’t see him as human, an affliction of the Democrats in America up into the times of my youth!
So what has happened here?
What has set off Albany, New York’s Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan that has her erasing all of our American history, including the Fourth of July?
For that answer, we first need to go to an Albany, New York Times Union article by Chris Churchill, the self-proclaimed “conscience of all America,” for some real in-depth analysis in the Times Union article “Churchill: Saying goodbye to Philip Schuyler statue – Did Albany Mayor Sheehan make right call by ordering removal? What’s next?” on June 13, 2020, where we learn more, much more, min fact, on the subject of why our history has to be suppressed and erased, as follows, and this as it has become a HATE CRIME to deface BLACK LIVES MATTERS statues or murals, to wit:
ALBANY — Not many men can get away with wearing a cape, but Philip Schuyler has been pulling it off in front of City Hall for nearly 100 years.
Schuyler looks dashing and heroic up on his pedestal, but his days there are numbered.
On Thursday, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan ordered the statue removed for a painful reason: Schuyler owned slaves.
In the late 1700s, in fact, he was the largest slave owner in Albany.
end quotes
A painful reason?
Now, if we bother to put this into some kind of perspective, which is getting more and more dangerous as the clamp-down on how we can think and what we can think about gains momentum, according to the New York State Museum website, in 1790, the time frame in question, New York ranked fifth among the American states with a population of 340,120 inhabitants – a total that included 21,324 slaves and 4,654 free people of color.
So Philip Schuyler was but one among many, and if we actually bothered to study a bit further, we would find that the famous Mohawk Native American chief Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant owned up to 40 slaves, and in Kathy Sheehan’s sanctuary city of Albany, where criminals of all stripes are welcome and protected, on Broadway, there is a statue of a Native American, which mayor Sheehan is curiously silent about.
And in no way am I defending slavery as an institution.
But I am also not getting all freaked out and hysterical and emotionally overwrought like mayor Kathy over something that was in fact universal at that time.
If one bothered to study this subject, and as children, we did so that we could understand the world we had just come into as the close of WWII, where the Nazis, who used slave labor, had just been defeated by the adults we were surrounded by when I was young, we would know that the first mention of slavery goes back to the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu which includes laws relating to slaves, written circa 2100 – 2050 BCE, which happens to be FOUR THOUSAND (4000) years ago.
For those unfamiliar with Sumeria, it was an ancient civilization founded in the Mesopotamia region of the Fertile Crescent situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Known for their innovations in language, governance, architecture and more, Sumerians are considered the creators of civilization as modern humans understand it.
Their control of the region lasted for short of 2,000 years before the Babylonians took charge in 2004 B.C.
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That “civilization” the Sumerians, who were not white, created included slavery.
So there is some more history that mayor Kathy of Albany, New York is going to have to scrub and erase, especially as it goes against her narrative that in America, only white people owned slaves.
Sumerian Civilization
The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, dating to c. 1700 BCE, also makes distinctions between the freeborn, freed and slave, and the Babylonians also were not white folks.
Getting back to present times, and why the Fourth of July has to go along with the rest of our history, we have:
Gen. Philip John Schuyler is better known as a prominent figure of the American Revolution who served in the state Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
He was among the men who made Albany, where he was born and died, and is an integral part of the city’s rich history.
end quotes
Philip Schuyler is known for his role in the American Revolution precisely because there was no United States of America before the American Revolution, a distinction mayor Kathy and Chris Churchill of the Times Union seem totally unaware of.
But I digress.
Getting back to history as Chris Churchill of the Times Union tells it, to justify removing the name of Philip Schuyler from the history books forever, we have:
We tend to forget, though, that enslaved men and women also made Albany and are just as central to its story.
end quotes
How I hate these universal “we’s” this hacks in the main-stream media throw at us, as if we were all as stupid and ignorant of pretty much everything as they are.
Now, Chris, WE do not tend to forget that there were slaves in Albany.
We do not forget that there were slaves in Albany, as well as everywhere else in the world, starting with AFRICA, where the black folks sold each other as slaves, because in Africa, black lives were worthless to other blacks who captured them and sold them for trinkets and beads, because unlike you and mayor Kathy, we are not history scrubbers.
We just DO NOT OBSESS about it, given that slavery in Albany ended long before any of us were born, and hence, is really not an issue at all today, except for the mentally and emotionally disturbed like yourself and Kathy Sheehan who are mired so far in the past you don’t know the day of the week, or the month or year you are living in.
Getting back to more obsessing about the past from Chris Churchill, we have this drivel, to wit:
We don’t talk about the city’s history with slavery much, and we rarely honor the labor of those black men and women.
end quotes
HUH?
When slavery in Albany ended by the early-1800s, which is pushing TWO HUNDRED years now, why today, 200 years later, when there are a lot more serious problems confronting us, like the packs of savages roaming free in Albany, killing people in acts of wanton violence, and looting and engaging in other acts of lawlessness and wanton violence, would we be talking about slavery in Albany over 200 years ago?
And to whom?
Who wants to know about it today?
More to the point, who cares?
And as to this mindless spew of Churchillian crap that we rarely honor the labor of those black men and women who were slaves over 200 years ago, that is likely because unlike Chris Churchill and Kathy Sheehan, a hack newspaper writer and hack politician, respectively, most normal people have to get up each day and go to work and care for their families and take care of business, which means they have to have their minds in the present, looking to the future with an aim to making it better, as opposed to going back in history hundreds of years ago, searching out every perceived injustice ever inflicted on the black folks by somebody in America with white skin, to give them something to screech about, in the case of the emotionally-immature Kathy Sheehan, or something to write about in the case of Chris Churchill of the Times Union.
Seriously, people, this is like a descent into madness here, what is going on all around us with this scrubbing of history that a small group of emotionally-disturbed people like Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York do not want talked about or mentioned in any way, which is a form of TYRANNY!
And here for the moment, I will rest.
And as we watch American history falling before our eyes, to cleanse it of all mention of the past, this mention above of slavery going back to the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu which includes laws relating to slaves, written circa 2100 – 2050 BCE, which happens to be FOUR THOUSAND (4000) years ago, takes us back to the Times Union article “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by ace Times Union reporter Brendan Lyons on July 5, 2020, where Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, in talking about Revolutionary War figures, and why their statues should come down, and why July Fourth should be considered a racist holiday that should be abolished because, as the Democrat mayor says, it celebrates white supremacy here in the United States of America, stated as follows, to wit:
“We would not be the nation that we are if it were not for slave labor to allow these men to be fed and clothed and housed because they had slave labor.”
“… It represents a very different idea of the rule of law because it represents an individual who was able to own people and sell them and buy them.”
end quotes
And indeed it does, mayor Kathy, whether you like it or not.
For FOUR THOUSAND YEARS, in fact, there existed a very different idea of the rule of law that allowed individuals to be able to own people and sell them and buy them, starting in the Middle East some 4,000 years ago, and in East Africa, specifically Madagascar, where some of Philip Schuyler’s slaves were supposed to have come from, some 2,000 years ago, according to the established history that mayor Kathy of Albany, New York wants to scrub from the historical record because it offends her sensibilities, which are very sensitive.
As to all the history of slavery as an institution all over the world that mayor Kathy is going to have to expunge from the record to finally satisfy herself, she is going to have to attack with her meat axe an article in the Canadian Encyclopedia entitled “Black Enslavement in Canada” by Natasha L. Henry, updated by Celine Cooper, and published online June 16, 2016, and last edited on June 9, 2020, where we learned about our neighbor to the north, as follows:
In early Canada, the enslavement of African peoples was a legal instrument that helped fuel colonial economic enterprise.
The buying, selling and enslavement of Black people was practiced by European traders and colonists in New France in the early 1600s, and lasted until it was abolished throughout British North America in 1834.
During that two-century period, settlers in what would eventually become Canada were involved in the transatlantic slave trade.
Canada is further linked to the institution of enslavement through its history of international trade.
Products such as salted cod and timber were exchanged for slave-produced goods such as rum, molasses, tobacco and sugar from slaveholding colonies in the Caribbean.
In the early 17th century, colonizers in New France practiced chattel slavery, in which people were treated as personal property that could be bought, sold, traded and inherited.
The first slaves in New France were Indigenous peoples a large percentage of whom came from the Pawnee Nation located in present-day Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas.
Many were captured during war and sold to other Indigenous nations or to European traders.
Some French colonists acquired enslaved Black people through private sales, and some received Indigenous and African slaves as gifts from Indigenous allies.
Out of approximately 4,200 slaves in New France at the peak of slavery, about 2,700 were Indigenous people who were enslaved until 1783, and at least 1,443 were Black people who were enslaved between the late 1600s and 1831.
The rest of the slaves were from other territories and other countries.
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So, will mayor Kathy issue one of her famous executive orders or imperial decrees condemning Canada, as she is condemning Philip Schuyler?
As to mayor Kathy’s statement, “… It represents a very different idea of the rule of law because it represents an individual who was able to own people and sell them and buy them,” who can forget (high school history here, people) the Black Codes of 1685 in France, whose sixty articles regulated the life, death, purchase, religion, and treatment of slaves by their masters in all French colonies.
It provided that the slaves should be baptized and educated in the Catholic faith.
It prohibited masters from making their slaves work on Sundays and religious holidays.
It required that slaves be clothed and fed and taken care of when sick.
It prohibited slaves from owning property and stated that they had no legal capacity.
It also governed their marriages, their burials, their punishments, and the conditions they had to meet in order to gain their freedom.
Interestingly, in France, as opposed to Albany, New York, where history is being suppressed by the dictatorial and emotionally-disturbed mayor Kathy Sheehan, on May 10, 2001, the French Parliament adopted Law 2001-434 known as the “Taubira law,” after the deputy who introduced it before the National Assembly, which law required the introduction to the school history curriculum in France of courses on slavery and the establishment of a Slavery Remembrance Day to ensure that the “memory of this crime lives forever in future generations” (Articles 2, 4), which is the way it was here in America, back when it still was America, and for the same reasons – so we would always remember and not forget.
So much for that now.
Which raises the question of does a nation exist if it has no history?
There is something truly bizarre going on here, not only in Albany, New York, but elsewhere in the U.S., as well, with this scrubbing from our history all mention of slavery, and the names of those who owned slaves, people like Philip Schuyler of Albany, when at the same time, as we learn from a scholarly article on the subject of slavery from Rochester University Press entitled “Slavery and Post-Slavery in Madagascar: An Overview” by Denis Regnier and Dominique Somda submitted on 16 Nov 2018, countries in Africa where the slave trade flourished are using their history of slavery as a tourist attraction, to wit:
As Igor Kopytoff has well shown, historians were the first to document the specificities of African and Asian systems of slavery in the mid of the 20th century.
Anthropologists at that time were reluctant to tackle this subject since they were preoccupied with rehabilitating the much-maligned reputation of the people they studied.
As their unease with the topic faded away, a number of pioneering studies appeared that dealt frontally with slavery.
In the mid nineties, however, the research agenda on slavery was significantly impacted and reshaped by a major UNESCO project, launched in 1994 and called ‘The Slave Route’, which supported the worldwide organization of academic conferences and exhibitions on slavery and the slave trade, and the publication of books on the subject.
Indeed, during this period ethnographies and historical accounts dealing with slavery increasingly focused on its remembrance.
These global trends have also been followed in Malagasy and Indian Ocean scholarship.
In Madagascar, two major conferences were organized as a direct consequence of the UNESCO project: the first, held in Antananarivo in 1996, commemorated the 100th anniversary of the colonial abolition and was mostly concerned with documenting past slavery and its legacy in the present; the second, held in Toamasina in 1999, addressed the topic of slavery and the slave trade on the East Coast.
Another important aim of the project was to foster the development of a ‘roots and heritage’ tourism around significant sites of memory in the islands of the southwestern Indian Ocean.
Many African countries, on both western and eastern coasts, have tried to develop the potential for tourism of slave trade’s sites, the most famous case being probably that of the Island of Gorée in Senegal.
Yet despite the geographic proximity of Reunion and Mauritius, which are home to a large number of slaves descendants tracing their origins to Madagascar, the efforts deployed by the UNESCO project – especially in the South-east of Madagascar, near Tôlañaro (Fort-Dauphin) – have not yet materialized in noticeable slavery-related touristic developments.
Although this question would require further investigation, we believe that the relative failure of these attempts at establishing memorial sites in Madagascar is linked to the widespread ‘silence’ on slavery, a topic to which we will come back.
end quotes
Note the phrase “widespread silence” on slavery, which is something Democrat Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan is promoting, at the cost of stripping us of our history in the course of so doing, while at the same time, the African nations, where the slave trade flourished, are breaking their silence, which seems to have mayor Kathy on the wrong side of history as well as way out of step with the times we are in.
As to that history of slavery which mayor Kathy of Albany wants to suppress, we have from that same article as follows, to wit:
Slaves have been traded in the maritime networks of the western Indian Ocean for at least 2000 years.
In Madagascar, the existence of slavery may date back to the first Southeast Asian settlements, which probably occurred between the 4th and 6th century.
Scholars seeking to reconstruct the early occupation of the island find it plausible that slaves were among the South-East Asian settlers, since ship crews from Indonesia were probably made of people with different social statuses and may have included slaves who were left behind in the semi-permanent settlements of this remote colony.
If not earlier, slaves probably made an important part of the population of Madagascar as early as in the 10th century.
By that date, two main commercial systems existed in the western Indian Ocean.
One was in the hands of Muslim merchants from the Persian Gulf, southern Arabia and the Swahili coast who traded along the shores of East Africa and in the northern Indian Ocean, and the other was in the hands of the Southeast Asians who sailed to the Comoros and Madagascar.
It is likely that slaves circulated in both systems, since during this period Muslim merchants sent East African slaves to southern Arabia and the Gulf, while the South-East Asians probably used slave labor in the iron industry of their settlements.
end quotes
For the record, in the tenth century A.D., there was no United States of America, and as we can clearly see, the ones engaged in the slave trade at that time, and this is according to the established history that Albany, New York’s Kathy Sheehan wants to suppress, were not white people like Albany’s Philip Schuyler.
In fact, getting back to that history, before Kathy Sheehan has it erased from the history books forever, we have:
Between 1785 and 1820, Sakalava and Betsimisaraka launched slaving raids in northern Madagascar, the Comoros and the coast of Mozambique.
end quotes
As to the Sakalava, who are black folks, not white, they are an ethnic group of Madagascar found on the western and northwest region of the island, in a band along the coast.
As the history Kathy Sheehan of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York wants scrubbed informs those of us who don’t wish to be ignorant as Kathy Sheehan would have us be, African slaves were brought to the island in increasing numbers between the 15th and the 18th centuries, particularly to the region where Sakalava people now live.
As history further tells us, the founder of Sakalava legacy was Andriamisara, and his descendant Andriandahifotsy, after 1610, then extended his authority northwards, past the Mangoky River, aided by weapons obtained in exchange for slave trading.
For the record, Philip Schuyler of Albany wasn’t born until November 20 1733, over a hundred years later.
Getting back to history while we still can, the demand for slaves by first Omani Arabs who controlled the Zanzibar slave trade, and later European slave-traders, led to slave raiding operations and exercise of control on the major ports on the north and northwest region of Madagascar.
Initially the Arabs exclusively supplied weapons to the Sakalava in exchange for slaves.
These slaves were obtained from slave raids to Comoros and other coastal settlements of Madagascar, as well as from merchant ships arriving from the Swahili coast of Africa.
The Sakalava kingdom quickly subjugated the neighbouring territories in the Mahafaly area, starting with the southern ones.
The Merina oral histories and documents in Comoros mention series of annual expeditions by Sakalava slave raiders against their villages through the end of the 18th century.
These expeditions were aided by guns obtained from the Arabs, a weapon that both Comoros and Merina people lacked.
The largest and one of most favored ports for slave trade on Madagascar was the Sakalava coastal town of Mahajanga.
The Sakalava had a monopoly on slave trade in Madagascar till the end of the 18th century.
Although smaller by population, their weapons permitted them wide reach and power, allowing them to force other more populous ethnic groups to pay tribute to them in the eighteenth century.
The Merina king Radama I bought guns in late 18th century, launched a war with the Sakalava, which ended the hegemony of the Sakalava kingdom and their slave raids.
The Merina then reversed the historical enslavement their people had faced, and began supplying slaves.
As to the Betsimisaraka, who are also black folks, they are the second largest ethnic group in Madagascar after the Merina and make up approximately fifteen percent of the Malagasy people, occuping a large stretch of the eastern coastal region of Madagascar, from Mananjary in the south to Antalaha in the north.
The presence of natural bays along the northern coastline that became the port towns of Antongil, Titingue, Foulpointe, Fenerive and Tamatave favored the economic and political development of the Antavaratra Betsimisaraka and villagers in the areas surrounding the ports exported rice, cattle, slaves and other goods to the nearby Mascarene Islands.
Around 1700 the Tsikoa began uniting around a series of powerful leaders, and Ramanano, the chief of Vatomandry, was elected in 1710 as the leader of the Tsikoa and initiated invasions of the northern ports.
According to oral histories, Ramanano established an armed militia at Vohimasina which he sent on incursions to burn neighboring villages, desecrate local tombs, and enslave the women and children, contributing to his reputation as a cruel and unpopular leader.
And that history of slavery as practiced by the black folks of Africa goes on and on and on.
So why is Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York trying to suppress that history?
Stay tuned, for more is yet to come on that subject.
So why today does Philp Schuyler have to be removed from public view, other than that it is a presidential election year where the Democrats are trying to paint the sitting incumbent as a “racist” (what a stupid and empty term that has become as we shall see in but a moment), which means the Democrats need to whitewash their own “racist” past as a party and as a people?
As to the “racist” past mayor Kathy of Albany is trying to pin on Philip Schuyler, there is an interesting historical anecdote regarding Philip Schuyler and the Oneida Indians (Native Americans) that ties in directly to mayor Kathy’s stupid and ignorant statement that the Revolutionary War was fought for “white people,” a specious claim so downright stupid it is positively imbecilic.
By way of background, and again, we are talking about grade school and high school history here, long before the American Revolution, when the “states” were still British colonies governed by Royal Governors beholden to the King in England, people in the Mohawk Valley west of mayor Kathy’s sanctuary city of Albany, and traditional home of the Iroquois nation or confederacy, of which the Oneidas were a part, began sorting themselves out as for or against British rule as embodied by Sir William Johnson, who was of Irish descent.
Here it must be remembered that Kings George I, George II and George III were German, not English, and as a result, the Palatines (German) fleeing endless war in what was to become Germany in a later age, first went to England for sanctuary, before being sent to the colony of New York by the king to serve as a buffer between the French and their Indians, and the settled part of the colony, which centered around Albany.
Many ordinary citizens of the valley, many of whom were Palatines, also called “Dutch,” who spoke German, resented the wealth and power of Sir William who in his turn looked down on the Palatines as second-class citizens.
Billy Johnson controlled the land west of Albany by virtue of his government position (Indian Superintendent).
He planned and built the country of Tryon County, named for the Roual Goivernor at that time, then named it for himself (Johnstown).
He owned the county jail, courthouse, and Anglican church.
In local elections, Sir William determined both the candidates and the voters.
Since Sir William was the colony’s biggest land owner, anyone hoping to get rich through land speculation in Indian land had to enjoy his favor.
Iroquois people (Native Americans) viewed Sir William favorably if, like the Mohawks of Canajoharie, they enjoyed his personal patronage.
Others living farther away were impressed by Sir William’s promise, on behalf of the British Empire, to safeguard Indian land from the depredations of American frontier settlers and squatters.
Oneidas, however, had reason to be skeptical of such promises.
Most land they lost went not to individual settlers but to Sir William himself in quasi-legal transactions.
For example, in the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty, intended to establish a permanent line (Line of Property) between Indian and non-native territories, the Oneidas gave up a vast acreage that became the property of Sir William and other land speculators.
As a result of that extensive history, during the Revolutionary War, the Oneidas bound themselves “to hold the Covenant Chain with the United States, and with them to be buried in the same, or to enjoy the fruits of victory and peace.”
Choosing to ally with the young United States, the Oneida Nation served the American cause with fidelity, effectiveness, and at terrible cost.
As the Oneidas expressed it: “In the late war with the people on the other side of the great water and at a period when thick darkness overspread this country, your brothers the Oneidas stepped forth, and uninvited took up the hatchet in your defense.”
“We fought by your side, our blood flowed together, and the bones of our warriors mingled with yours.”
So much then, for the stupid and ignorant assertion of Democrat Kathy Sheehan that the American Revolution was fought for white people.
As to the anecdote, as a result of their adherence to the cause of LIBERTY for foreign tyranny, Joseph Brant, a famous Mohawk (the Mohawks, also members of the Iroquois Confederacy who fought for the English), who himself owned slaves, went to war against them and burned them out, leaving them destitute.
Thus, and this is grade school stuff, in November of 1780, the remnants of the Oneidas and Tuscaroras Nations who supported the Rebels congregated outside Schenectady, New York, to the west of Albany because their villages and food had been destroyed during Joseph Brant’s raid in the summer.
The Rebel General Philip Schuyler, whose statue is being hidden away from public view by imperial decree of Albany’s mayor Kathy because she thinks he was a “racist,” was appalled at their condition of poverty and as a result, he took it upon himself to petition Congress to, as our history mayor Kathy is trying to sweep away, to aid these people (Native Americans) who had fought “readily and loyally” for the Rebels.
He felt the United States was “bound by every principle of honor” to come to the aid of a people who had been reduced to their desperate condition solely through their attachment to the cause of American liberty.
That is what I remember, and that is what mayor Kathy of Albany is trying to sweep away, so she can maintain her political fiction of Philip Schuyler as being a “racist.”
If Philip Schuyler had been a “racist” as Democrat mayor Sheehan would have us believe, who in her words looked at those who were not white as “not human,” he would have said “**** the Oneidas,” and that would have been that – he could have let them starve and freeze, but chose to stand with them, instead.
So again, why?
Why today has Albany’s mayor Kathy Sheehan jumped up on her high horse to order them removal of Philip Schuyler from public sight?
And for that answer, we must go back to the Times Union article “Churchill: Saying goodbye to Philip Schuyler statue – Did Albany Mayor Sheehan make right call by ordering removal? What’s next?” by Chris Churchill on June 13, 2020, where we have as follows, to wit:
Many Americans want to believe that this country’s ugly racial past is just that — a thing of the past, best forgotten.
But the racist killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has shown the lie of that, reminding us of the racism all around us.
end quotes
“Racist” killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which is 1,223 miles to the west of Albany in another state?
And what “racist” killing?
Where is Chris Churchill coming up with that description?
Is he now a mind reader, in addition to being the “conscience” of all America?
As to this alleged “racist” killing of George Floyd, let us not forget for even a micro-second that while the white cop was murdering George Floyd, looking on with approval while it was happening was another cop who just happened to be an African-American like George Floyd.
So what is up with that, people?
Why is Chris Churchill of the Hearst publication the Albany Times Union leaving his role in the murder of George Floyd out of the picture?
Because it spoils the narrative he and Kathy Sheehan of Albany are trying to create of white people being “racists” is why!
Stay tuned, more on this story is yet to come.
Talk about a narrative spinning off into the wild blue yonder heading towards the insane and totally bizarre, with crazy talk in the Albany, New York Times Union from a hysterical correspondent about the “racist” killing of George Floyd which was witnessed by an African-American cop who did nothing to stop it, an indication of how little black lives mean to other blacks, while at the same time being chock full of talk of “white privilege” and “white guilt” and “white entitlement” and “implicit bias” and “racism,” all the modern buzz-words that are intended to lay a heavy guilt trip on all people with skin of white within the sound of the Heart publication the Albany, New York Times Union’s powerful coast-to-coast and then some voice, which it claims is the only voice of reason in town, and everybody who doesn’t accept their view of history is wrong, it is this one of the need to remove the statue of Revolutionary War figure Philip Schuyler from where it stands on the top of State Street Hill in Albany, New York which incidentally, for those of us who do know the history of this land, as opposed to those who write for the Times Union, was where the Mohicans (Native Americans) had their council fire until they were largely exterminated by the Mohawks in a territorial dispute as is laid out for the candid world to see in its technicolor glory in the Times Union article “Churchill: Saying goodbye to Philip Schuyler statue – Did Albany Mayor Sheehan make right call by ordering removal? What’s next?” by Chris Churchill on June 13, 2020, where we are all told in a stern, lecturing tone that “(M)any Americans want to believe that this country’s ugly racial past is just that — a thing of the past, best forgotten, but the racist killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has shown the lie of that, reminding us of the racism all around us,” starting in the confines of the Times Union, itself.
With respect to the Mohicans, there is an interesting anecdote concerning the Dutch in Albany siding with the Mohicans in their ill-fated war against the Mohawks that goes thusly:
Commandant Daniel Krieckebeeck, the Dutchman in charge of Fort Orange, as Albany was then known, was induced by the neighboring Mohicans to join one of their war parties against the Mohawks, with whom the Dutch had sat around the council fire at Tawasentha in 1618.
Krieckebeeck set out with six of his Dutch musketeers and the party of Mohicans.
A few miles from Fort Orange they were met by a war party of Mohawks, armed with bows and arrows, who defeated their enemies, the Mohicans, in a sharp battle.
Krieckebeeck, three of his men, and a number of Mohican warriors were killed, while the rest fled for their lives.
The Mohawks then ate their first and only known meal of roast Dutchman, which was Commandant Daniel Krieckebeeck.
Of course, that is a story the bleeding hearts of the Times Union like to leave that part of the history concealed, that the Mohawks roasted and ate their enemies, because it spoils their narrative of the poor oppressed Native Americans, which is as far from the truth as one can get when talking about New York state, history, anyway, which is one of the main advantages for those who work for such “main-stream” media outlets as the Hearst publication the Albany, New York Times Union, the Constitutional freedom given or granted to them to be able to lie with impunity, to warp, twist, bend and distort history and to practice intellectual dishonesty with impunity.
Getting back to the present moment and Philip Schuyler of Albany, who is about to disappear from the historical record along with any hints that the Mohawks practiced cannibalism, back to the Chris Churchill story we go, as follows:
In retrospect, it should have been obvious the Schuyler statue would come down once a Black Lives Matter banner was strung across the front of City Hall on Monday.
end quotes
As that story and others that follow make clear, City Hall in Albany, New York is not for everybody now; it is for BLACK LIVES MATTER, as the huge threatening and intimidating banner over the entrance to Albany City Hall made incandescently clear to anyone with the eyes to see.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/As-statues-tumble-relatives-of-Gen-Philip-15384999.php
Getting back to the Times Union article, we have:
The irony of that banner behind a slave owner was obvious.
The contrast was too big to hold.
end quotes
If you look at the pictures of that threatening and intimidating BLACK LIVES MATTER banner strung across the front of Albany City Hall at taxpayer expense, where everybody even walking near City Hall has to see it, you will see what Chris Churchill means when he talks about the contrast, how intimidating and threatening that banner is, compared to the sedate expression of the face of the staue of Philip Schuyler, especially after BLACK LIVES MATTER just got done rioting and looting in downtown Albany, destroying and looting the property of others, which they don’t give a damn about.
Getting back to the background here as presented by the Times Union, we have:
Still, Sheehan’s announcement that the statue would be moved, likely to a museum, took many by surprise.
But Sheehan said the statue had been on her mind for some time, because city residents and employees had often mentioned the hurt it causes.
The George Floyd killing and subsequent protests convinced the mayor of the need to act now.
end quotes
So, people, there we have it, because George Floyd, a black man, was murdered by a white cop while an African-American cop looked on in approval in Minneapolis, which is 1,223 miles to the west of Albany in another state, our history in New York state has to be stripped from us, because Kathy Sheehan of Albany thinks that is so, which is all that is needed in Albany to make it so, which takes us back to the Times Union for more bizarrity, as follows:
“When you get approached by city employees who say that every time they walk by that statue they feel unwelcome, it can’t be ignored,” Sheehan told me Friday.
“We’re causing pain for people.”
end quotes
So now, mayor Kathy is making more people feel very, very unwelcome, and threatened, and intimidated, by that BLACK LIVES MATTER banner she had strung across the front of City Hall in Albany.
And now, we are going to get a lecture on “sensitivity” from Chris Churchill of the Times Union, to wit:
A few years ago, I argued that Schuyler’s slave-owning past should lead the Albany school district to rename the majority-black Philip Schuyler Achievement Academy.
I said then that the statue should stay.
But I don’t feel that way anymore.
I agree with Sheehan that it should go.
It isn’t an easy call, and I understand why many disagree, but I’m looking at it this way: If I were a black resident of the city, how would I feel walking with my daughter past that statue?
Would I want to explain to her that a man who owned little girls like her is still being given the hero treatment?
Of course I wouldn’t.
end quotes
To which I can only reply, what rubbish!
First off, Philip Schuyler isn’t given the “hero treatment,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
To my knowledge, nobody leads pilgrimages to the top of State Street hill in Albany to pay homage to Philip Schuyler.
Nobody goes to Albany to adulate Philip Schuyler, and if you were to stand there by the statue and conduct a poll of passerbys, you would find most people don’t even know who is, nor do they care.
If you talk about the “Revolution,” they look at you as if you were daft, and remark, “that’s a long time ago, you know!”
So Chris Churchill is simply blowing smoke with that “hero treatment” crap, and what father is going to be telling his children that Philip Schuyler owned little black girls as slaves?
Getting back to the sensitivity lecture from Chris Churchill, we have:
And if we’re going to get anywhere in this country, we’ll have to start seeing things through other people’s eyes.
end quotes
Oh, really, Chris, do tell.
Are they going to see things through our eyes, as well, or are we talking about a one-way street here, especially with that menacing and intimidating BLACK LIVES MATTER banner staring us in the face if we dare to go to our state capital for any reason that takes us to the top of State Street hill?
As to where this is all going, we have as follows from that same article, to wit:
There is a wee problem, though.
Streets and places named for slave owners are ubiquitous in this region, illustrating just how big slavery’s role really was.
Must we also rename the Ten Broeck Triangle, where the mayor lives?
And Washington Park?
And Madison Avenue?
And on and on?
Yes, said Derek Johnson, who is black and represents the South End on the Albany Common Council.
“If we’re going to be consistent, all of them should be changed,” Johnson told me.
“Right is right.”
end quotes
Yes, indeed, American history is ugly, those who founded this country were racist monsters who owned little girls as slaves, so burn the history books and destroy all the statues, like ISIS did in Syria and Iraq.
Getting back to the Churchillian horsecrap one more time, we have this nonsensical drivel, to wit:
History is complicated, in other words.
So are the flawed people who make it.
But Sheehan isn’t an historian or a professor.
end quotes
No, Chris, nor does she need to be, because this is ALL grade school and high school history and as somebody who professes to have a high school education as does the mayor, she should know this history cold.
So why doesn’t she?
Why is she so ignorant, Chris, of the city she is the mayor of?
Moving right along, because that is a question that will never be answered, the Times Union tells us this:
She’s the mayor of lively, ever-changing city where roughly a third of the population is black.
She wants those residents, she said, to be as welcomed in the city as anyone else.
And so, Sheehan felt Schuyler couldn’t remain at City Hall’s entrance.
end quotes
Instead, a huge BLACK LIVES BANNER in front of City Hall now makes two-thirds of the population of the city who aren’t black, especially those whose properties were looted and destroyed by BLACK LIVES MATTER, feel very unwelcome in the city, which mayor Kathy feels is a fair trade-off.
But as I say, this story is just getting going, so stay tuned for more of the on-going saga of the racist slave-owner Philip Schuyler in Albany, New York, where if you don’t truckle to BLACK LIVES MATTER, and you are white, you are not welcome.
And to see the direction this story is taking us as a nation and as a people, let us go back to the Albany Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, we find ourselves confronted with the following, to wit:
Although (Kathy) Sheehan has been mayor of the city (Albany) since 2014, the recent protests in Albany and across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer prompted her call for the statue’s removal at a time she believes everyone should embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.
end quotes
Now, focus in on these words from the Democrat mayor of the capital city of the Democrat-controlled state of New York, to wit: she believes everyone should embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.
Oh, really mayor Kathy?
Does she mean everybody in Albany?
Or does she mean everybody in the United States of America?
And why?
Why should everybody in the United States of America want to embrace a movement that is a virulently anti-white hate group that uses violence to achieve its political aims, such as putting a white businessman in Schenectady, New York who runs an ice-cream stand out of business?
According to its own website, in 2013, three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter.
Why, mayor Kathy, are you telling We the American People that we should “embrace” this “Black-centered” movement building project called BLACK LIVES MATTER?
Can you give us even one valid reason, and fear of retaliation by a BLACK LIVES MATTER mob is not a valid reason.
Moving along here, on its website, mayor Kathy, https://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/ we American people are told that BLACK LIVES MATTER is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise, which I think is absolute horse****.
I don’t believe for a minute, mayor Kathy, that I or we live in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.
So why then, mayor Kathy, would I or We the American People want to embrace an ideological political movement that is based on an outright lie?
The only black lives I am aware of that are being systematically and intentionally targeted for demise are the ones that are being targeted by the black gangs in Albany who are gunning them down with regularity in your city, without a peep ever being heard from BLACK LIVES MATTER in protest when the victims fall.
And where Albany has a black police chief, the BLM argument that Black Lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise is shown to be patently absurd, unless they are alleging that the black police chief of Albany is systematically and intentionally targeting Black Lives for demise as a matter of official city policy.
Would that be true, mayor Kathy?
Do you have your black police chief systematically and intentionally targeting Black Lives in your city for demise as a matter of official city policy?
That is an answer the candid world would like to hear.
Getting back to the Times Union article, we have further as follows:
Earlier this month, Sheehan authorized city workers to paint a giant “Black Lives Matter” mural on Lark Street in the Center Square neighborhood.
end quotes
Personally I consider that to be an intimidating act on the part of the mayor, spending public money to glorify a group that says it intends to end “white supremacy” forever, which takes us back to the Times Union, as follows:
While a few leaders of Black Lives Movement groups have promoted violence, or have a history of violence themselves, the mayor said it is time for the nation to embrace that cause.
end quotes
So there, people, we have a clarification from Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York – everybody in the United States of America should embrace the cause of BLACK LIVES MATTER, not just the people of her lawless sanctuary city of Albany, New York, which again takes us back to the Times Union, to wit:
“To me, saying that Black Lives Matter is not a political statement,” she said.
end quotes
And in saying that, all mayor Kathy is doing is demonstrating to the candid world just how out of touch with reality she really is, because as we can clearly see from its website, BLACK LIVES MATTER is a political statement, to wit:
As organizers who work with everyday people, BLM members see and understand significant gaps in movement spaces and leadership.
Black liberation movements in this country have created room, space, and leadership mostly for Black heterosexual, cisgender men — leaving women, queer and transgender people, and others either out of the movement or in the background to move the work forward with little or no recognition.
As a network, we have always recognized the need to center the leadership of women and queer and trans people.
To maximize our movement muscle, and to be intentional about not replicating harmful practices that excluded so many in past movements for liberation, we made a commitment to placing those at the margins closer to the center.
As #BlackLivesMatter developed throughout 2013 and 2014, we utilized it as a platform and organizing tool.
Other groups, organizations, and individuals used it to amplify anti-Black racism across the country, in all the ways it showed up.
We particularly highlighted the egregious ways in which Black women, specifically Black trans women, are violated.
#BlackLivesMatter was developed in support of all Black lives.
end quotes
If that is so, mayor Kathy, then how come we never see BLACK LIVES MATTER around when it is the black folks gunning down other black folks in your lawless city, and Chicago, and in Atlanta?
If #BlackLivesMatter was developed in support of all Black lives, then why the silence when Black lives are snuffed out on the streets of the lawless city of Albany by other Black lives?
If Black lives matter, then why do they kill each other, including little girls?
Getting back to the Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, we find next from mayor Kathy of Albany as follows:
“To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history.”
end quotes
HUH?
Our history?
What history, mayor Kathy?
What history requires ALL the people of the United States of America to have to drop everything else they are doing, or thinking about, to go out and howl and bay at the moon and chant in unison “BLACK LIVES MATTER” over and over, when from the fact that they keep killing each other, they clearly don’t?
Why do you want us to embrace a lie?
Getting back to mayor Kathy’s political harangue, we have:
“I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences.”
end quotes
And there you have gone too far out into outer space for me to follow, anyway, mayor Kathy, whether anyone else in the nation wants to follow you or not, and you are demonstrating to the candid world that your grip on sanity itself is quite tenuous, because the 400 years of “white supremacy” are in your mind, which takes us back for more political drivel from Kathy Sheehan, to wit:
“We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union.”
end quotes
Uh, right, right, mayor Kathy, whatever you say!
Hands in the air, don’t shoot!
Which takes us back to the BLACK LIVES MATTER website, to wit:
In 2014, Mike Brown was murdered by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
end quotes
Except he wasn’t murdered by Ferguson police officer DarrenWilson, and that is a blatant lie by BLACK LIVES MATTER, which is why I and so many other people in America who don’t embrace lies cannot embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER and want nothing to do with them, which takes us to an opinion piece in The Jackson Sun by Walter E. Williams, a black man who is a professor of economics at George Mason University, entitled “Al Sharpton’s racial slurs get overlooked” published Jan. 7, 2015, where we have on the Michael Brown lie being peddled by BLACK LIVES MATTER, as follows:
The news media’s narrative about the police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., is that a white cop shot and killed an unarmed black man who was holding his hands up.
The news media people and their liberal allies know the facts, but they need to promote the appearance of injustice to keep black people in a state of grievance.
During grand jury testimony about the Ferguson incident, seven black witnesses testified that Michael Brown was charging the policeman when he was shot.
The autopsies, performed by three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Brown’s family, confirmed Officer Darren Wilson’s version of the event.
Both Brown and Garner would be alive today if they had not resisted arrest.
But pointing that out would not serve the purpose of keeping blacks in a perpetual state of grievance.
end quotes
And if that is not enough to expose the BLACK LIVES MATTER lie, let us go to a Marketwatch article entitled “Justice Department finds no evidence for ‘Hands Up, Don’’t Shoot’” by Steve Goldstein published Mar. 4, 2015, where the facts Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York and BLACK LIVES MATTER choose to ignore are laid out as follows:
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — “Hands Up, Don’’t Shoot” became a rallying cry in protests last year over racially motivated police brutality — but a Justice Department report released Wednesday says the facts don’t support the alleged incident at its heart.
end quotes
The Justice Department at that time was headed up by a black man named Eric Himpton Holder, Jr., so Kathy Sheehan and BLACK LIVES MATTER, which is a fraud, cannot claim a whitewash by a white man to protect a white cop!
Getting back to that story, we have:
The Justice Department released a report on the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson.
To be sure, the report finds “widespread racial bias” in the department and unreasonable use of force, as well as a focus on revenue over public safety.
But it did not back the narrative that helped spur the protests in the city and around the country — namely, that Brown had effectively surrendered peacefully to Wilson.
As the report states: ““Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson.”
“As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time.”
“Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media.”
While some witnesses say Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward “for a brief moment,” the same witnesses said Brown then charged Wilson, according to the report.
The prosecutors “concluded that Brown did in fact reach for and attempt to grab Wilson’’s gun, that Brown could have overpowered Wilson, which was acknowledged even by Witness 101, and that Wilson fired his weapon just over his own lap in an attempt to regain control of a dangerous situation.”
“Witness 101” said Brown was shot in the back, but three autopsies concluded Brown had no entry wounds in his back, the report said.
Even clearer was this footnote: “The media has widely reported that there is witness testimony that Brown said, ‘Don’t shoot’ as he held his hands above his head.
In fact, our investigation did not reveal any eyewitness who stated that Brown said, ‘Don’t shoot.’ ”
end quotes
Because BLACK LIVES MATTER is based on a blatant lie, I have absolutely no intention whatsoever to “embrace” the movement!
What say you, People of America?
Which way will you go?
Which side will you be on?
Philip John Schuyler, Revolutionary War general and senator from New York, has been a piece of Albany’s history for more than a quarter of a millennium.
And now that the Black Lives Matters protests have sparked fresh reflection on history — now that Mayor Kathy Sheehan has promised to remove the statue — now that the Philip J. Schuyler Achievement Academy has resolved to change its name — now that the lens we train on history is focusing more closely on slavery, Schuyler’s own enslaved servants and the persistent systemic racism borne of same — we can’t disown him.
And we shouldn’t.
I explained all this, or tried to, in emails to an angry reader who’d reached out to gripe about my recent piece on Juneteenth celebrations marking the end of slavery nationwide.
I was baffled by his claims that the holiday “means nothing at all” in New York and his refusal to acknowledge the crushing, enduring evils of an institution built on the denial of all human rights.
Or he acknowledged them, but only in the context of the more limited narrative first absorbed in his youth, the one that downplayed New York’s participation and the Black people who suffered.
He couldn’t see any of that.
He only squinted at history through that single, narrow lens.
And through that lens, the past itself is being attacked.
The response to such views, Mackay said, should be an expanded conception of history.
end quotes
That, people, is a very powerful and moving political speech by a polished political commentator for the Hearst Publishing’s Albany, New York Times Union named Amy Biancolli, who was born in Queens, grew up in Connecticut and holds degrees from Hamilton College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in a Times Union article entitled “Biancolli: As we get rid of Schuyler statue, we need to own his history” by Amy Biancolli on July 8, 2020.
A former movie critic for the Houston Chronicle, she first wrote for the TU from 1991-2000 and bounced back into the local-arts beat in 2012.
And the so-called, alleged “angry reader who’d reached out to gripe about” her recent piece on Juneteenth celebrations marking the end of slavery nationwide happens to be me, I am proud to say, because what I actually reached out to say to her is that I don’t like her revisionist version of history she is imposing on us in the Times Union, to wit:
Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2020 5:03 PM
Dear Amy:
If you had ever bothered to study history in high school, which subject you apparently missed, you would know that in New York state, on March 31, 1817 to be exact, the New York legislature ended two centuries of slavery within its borders, setting July 4,1827 as the date of final emancipation and making New York the first state to pass a law for the total abolition of legal slavery.
When Emancipation Day finally arrived, the number of enslaved men and women freed was roughly 4,600 or 11% of the black population living in New York and the black community and its supporters held joyous celebrations and parades throughout the state.
Juneteenth in New York means nothing at all.
The Emancipation Proclamation itself means nothing in New York, because New York wasn’t one of the Southern states in rebellion, in fact, New York state fought on the side of the Union, and by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, there were no slaves to be freed.
Why are you ignorant of this?
I was taught this history starting in kindergarten, and I have never forgotten it, while it appears that your education was quite faulty, as you never seem to have learned it.
end quotes
Which brings us back to this statement from her July 8, 2020 polemic. to wit: “And now that the Black Lives Matters protests have sparked fresh reflection on history …”
There, people is really what this is all about – what our American history is going to be in the future being dictated to us by BLACK LIVES MATTER as a part of their radical political agenda which includes “ending white supremacy forever,” whatever in the end that is supposed to mean, while the history I grew up with is to be erased, because it is the history of “white supremacy,” which in actual fact, if one knew my educational background starting when I was young, is pure hogwash, given that I knew more about Native Americans when I was young than I did about the “white man” and his white supremacy, because without the Native Americans, the white man could not have survived here when the first colonies were formed, something Amy Biancolli of the Times Union is grossly ignorant of.
In her polemic, she states, “I was baffled by his claims that the holiday ‘means nothing at all’ in New York and his refusal to acknowledge the crushing, enduring evils of an institution built on the denial of all human rights.”
And of course, she is being overly emotional there and quite melodramatic, because nowhere in my correspondences with her was there a “refusal” on my part to acknowledge what she calls the “crushing, enduring evils of an institution built on the denial of all human rights.”
To the contrary, on Monday, June 22, 2020 @ 01:39:30 PM EDT, Ms. Biancolli of the Times Union responded to me, as follows:
Hello, Mr. Plante.
Thanks for the reading my story, though I’m not sure why you feel the need to disparage me personally.
I am obviously not a historian, nor do pretend to be; that’s why I sought out an interview with UAlbany Prof. Jennifer Burns in my story.
Nor did I have room in that story to detail the history of other, earlier, Northern-state holidays, New York’s “Freedom Day” included, that predated Juneteenth.
But two years ago, I wrote a series of articles on the history of slavery in New York State.
In my research and reporting, I learned that loopholes following the 1827 NYS abolition allowed Southerners to bring their enslaved people into the state for nine months without setting them free; and then, in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act compelled New Yorkers to apprehend any Southern runaways from slavery.
So. . . yes, Juneteenth is a cause for celebration in New York State.
It means way more than “nothing at all.”
Many thanks,
end quotes
So there we have it, people – history itself really means nothing anymore – to the contrary, it is how people want to feel about history that now determines what history should mean, and in this case, because Amy Biancolli says Juneteenth means “way more than nothing at all, ” that is the way it is, and there is no other way than that – end of story!
Which takes us back to this ridiculous assertion from her concerning myself and my views on early history, to wit:
Or he acknowledged them, but only in the context of the more limited narrative first absorbed in his youth, the one that downplayed New York’s participation and the Black people who suffered.
end quotes
Now, let me say that that is a prime example of what is called “PURE INVENTION,” as we clearly see from what follows to her from myself as to what she calls “the more limited narrative first absorbed in his youth,” keeping in mind that Amy Biancolli does not know me from Adam, and so she has no clue as to what narratives I absorbed in my youth, to wit:
Monday, June 22, 2020 2:47 PM
Thank you for a most gracious response.
It is appreciated.
No offense intended, but I am talking about 7th grade history, at the latest, so one hardly need be a historian to know these things.
This is America, a land I fought and bled for, as did many slaves during the American Revolution http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/revolution/revolution_slavery.cfm as a matter of fact, and in America, one gets to believe and believe in anything they want, which in your case happens to be this Juneteenth thing.
To me, it is a false history that serves to degrade the character of the slaves in colonial and Revolutionary War times.
As to the Schuyler slaves, they were hardly wretched creatures as an exhibit at the Schuyler Mansion in Albany, which includes an image of Gen. Philip Schuyler, at left, and a family slave, a butler named Prince, who is portrayed by an actor on a video screen at right, and my goodness but doesn’t Prince look very well-dressed, very pampered, and indeed very well fed, n’est-ce pas?
https://www.timesunion.com/living/article/New-York-s-slave-past-unearthed-12620012.php
Prince was a butler at the Schuyler Mansion, where he tended to the family and their guests at the Georgian-style manse built in the 1760s for Gen. Philip Schuyler and his wife, Catherine.
He arrived there after issuing a 1776 appeal to “the Honourable Lady Schuyler,” explaining the dire circumstances under his current owner and asking the Schuylers to take him on.
He “has quite lost the use of my limbs with cold for want of Cloaths or Blanket,” he wrote — or perhaps someone else wrote on his behalf.
“I am very willing to go to work for his Excellency the General at any sort of employ or any of the inhabitants in the town for my victuals & Cloaths.”
Of all the slaves in the Schuyler manse, said Heidi Hill, historic site manager at Schuyler and Crailo, “We know the most about Prince.”
Not everything: His age was unknown.
But Prince must have been on in years by the time Angelica Schuyler Church wrote to her mother from London, asking: “How is old Prince?”
“When I don’t see the old man’s name I think he is dead.”
Church’s letter is quoted in a 1911 book by Georgina Schuyler that tracks the mansion’s history from 1762 to 1804.
The author notes: “Prince was an African, a slave.”
“It was reported soon after he became a member of the household that he refused to eat with the other negroes on the ground that he was their superior in rank in Africa.”
“… Soon he was promoted, and he became a trusted and faithful servant.”
Prince was such a fixture in the household that no less than John Jay himself — Founding Father and second governor of New York state — used his name as a cipher.
“Let the Keyword be the name of the man who so long and regularly placed every day a Toot-pick by Mrs. Schuyler’s plate,” he explained in a 1780 letter to Philip Schuyler.
“Written backwards, that is — The last letter in the Place of the first, and so on.”
end quotes
Sounds like Prince had upward social mobility for a slave.
And then there was Captain Samuel Schuyler https://www.albany.edu/arce/Schuyler26.html , a very successful black man who may have been a Schuyler slave.
This is a man who didn’t wait around for DE GREAT MASSA in Washington. D.C. to give him his freedom on Juneteenth, he had his freedom and he did something with it besides moan and whine and cry about DE WHITE MAN KEEPING DE PO’ BLACK MAN DOWN.
These are the people in New York state whose lives I celebrate.
Just a difference of opinion in how we see the world and those in it.
end quotes
Which takes us back to her July 8, 2020 polemic in the Times Union, to wit:
He couldn’t see any of that.
He only squinted at history through that single, narrow lens.
And through that lens, the past itself is being attacked.
The response to such views, Mackay said, should be an expanded conception of history.
end quotes
Actually, I like that line – “He only squinted at history through that single, narrow lens.”
Which takes us back to Amy Biancolli on June 22, 2020 at 3:58 PM, as follows:
Hello, Mr. Plante.
By saying I’m not a historian, I wasn’t trying to explain what you regard as my failure to comprehend history.
I am a reporter.
I am paid to ask questions, listen and learn; in this case, I learned from not just a black scholar on American history but other black voices describing the importance of Juneteenth.
When I worked on that slavery series, I listened to many voices describing many truths of slavery that have been overlooked for generations.
As a white person covering a diverse community, I must always listen to black voices.
White people have controlled the conversation around race for too long.
And if so many black people around the Capital Region and NYS celebrate Juneteenth — finding inspiration in its history and the ongoing struggle against racism — why shouldn’t their voices be heard?
Why don’t they matter?
Why is that, as you say, “nothing at all”?
I am not going to pick apart and rebut every point in your latest emails.
But just one more thing, regarding Prince: He wasn’t considered a human being.
That’s what so little is known about him.
He was owned.
Once again, I am grateful to you for reading my story and reaching out.
end quotes
Which correspondence elicited this response from myself, to wit:
June 22 at 5:56 PM
And Amy, seriously, I don’t think there is anybody out there who doesn’t make the connection that as a slave, Prince was “owned,” as you say.
We’re back to 7th grade and the difference between slaves and indentured servants.
And when the Christian Bible admonishes people in several different sections to be good slaves, that is precisely what it is getting at – focus on the fact that you are owned and have a master.
The fact that Prince was “owned,” however, doesn’t mean the Schuylers didn’t consider him a human being – that is your spin on things based on your own biases which I don’t share.
How Prince came to be owned by the Schuyler’s puts the lie to the statement that the Schuyler’s didn’t consider him a human being.
The same with Sibby.
Glad to help you out here to see history as it happened, as opposed to how you would have it be.
end quotes
Which was followed by this on June 23, 2020 at 5:44 AM, to wit:
To close out this high school history lesson, if you had ever bothered to crack a book when you were in high school, you would know that Isaac Jogues, a white man, was a slave of the Mohawk Indians, as slavery was a universal thing back then, especially with the Native Americans.
If you had ever bothered to check your facts, instead of being ruled by your emotions, you would know that the blacks in Africa owned and sold slaves, which is how they ended up here.
If you tried to keep up with the news, you would know from Obama’s Africa speech that the Obama’s themselves were slave owners:
Remarks by President Obama to the People of Africa
Mandela Hall
African Union Headquarters
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2:07 P.M. EAT
THE PRESIDENT: As parents, Michelle and I want to make sure that our two daughters know their heritage — European and African, in all of its strengths and all of its struggle.
So we’ve taken our daughters and stood with them on the shores of West Africa, in those doors of no return, mindful that their ancestors were both slaves and slave owners.
end quotes
So much for “He only squinted at history through that single, narrow lens,” in the context of the more limited narrative first absorbed in his youth, the one that downplayed New York’s participation and the Black people who suffered.
When someone is so emotionally overwrought about things they say happened 400 years ago as is Amy Biancolli of the Times Union, there is simply no way of talking to them rationally, and that is simply that.
As Albany’s Democrat mayor says, “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences,” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union.”
Except there is no civic discourse going on here, at all!
And as this series of communications between myself and Amy Biancolli of the Albany Times Union makes clear, there won’t be any discourse in the future, either!
Just history by fiat as BLACK LIVES MATTER wants it to be!
White people have controlled the conversation around race for too long, people, if you can imagine that!
So says Hearst Publishing’s Albany, New York Times Union’s own Amy Biancolli, who was born in Queens, New York, where in 1771, while New York was still a British colony with a Royal Governor named Lieutenant General William Tryon (8 June 1729 – 27 January 1788), a British Army general and official who served as the 39th governor of New York, 20.4 percent of the population of 10,980 was African-American, most of whom were slaves, which is where Amy Biancolli apparently gets a huge dose of her very bad case of “WHITE GUILT,” caused by her obvious “WHITE PRIVILEGE,” and where in 1786, slaves constituted 16.3 percent of the population of 13,084 individuals; who grew up in Connecticut, where slavery dated back to the mid-1600s so that by the American Revolution, 1776, Connecticut had more enslaved Africans than any other state in New England, history Amy Biancolli must own, which in turn heaps a whole lot more “WHITE GUILT” on poor Amy’s sagging shoulders, because as we can see, unlike those poor slaves in Amy’s home state of Connecticut back in 1776. Amy was highly “WHITE PRIVILEGED” and as a result, and due to her “WHITE PRIVILEGE” that the slaves of Connecticut didn’t enjoy, holds degrees from Hamilton College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in a very powerful and moving political speech by a polished political commentator in a Times Union article entitled “Biancolli: As we get rid of Schuyler statue, we need to own his history” by Amy Biancolli on July 8, 2020.
And speaking of her “WHITE PRIVILEGE,”Amy was a former movie critic for the Houston Chronicle.
Which takes us back to her inane statement that “(W)hite people have controlled the conversation around race for too long!”
What conversation, Amy?
And besides you from your TWITTER and Times Union BULLY PULPITS, what white people are controlling the conversation around “race?”
That you think white people have controlled the conversation around race for too long, Amy, seems to be a sign that you are suffering from some kind of paranoid delusions, because there are no white people controlling the conversation around race because there isn’t one, except in your mind.
There are not “white people” controlling the conversation around race, Amy, precisely because sane and rational white people who aren’t suffering from “WHITE GUILT” caused by “WHITE PRIVILEGE” know that there is but one race, the human race, and that is that – NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT, Amy!
So why are you talking as if the black folks were some other race than human?
That is the true racism staring us in the face there people, this belief Amy Biancolli of the Albany Times Union holds that the black folks aren’t human, but are some other race, instead, maybe a type of money or ape!
So no wonder she suffers from an extreme case of “WHITE GUILT,” which in a series of TWEETS to her multitude of followers on TWITTER, she tried to transfer over onto me by making me out as a (SHUDDER, SHUDDER, BAD MAN) as a “RACIST,” to wit:
“Juneteenth in New York means nothing at all”
– a reader, citing NYS abolition of slavery in 1827.
I cited back:
A) loophole letting Southerners keep enslaved ppl in NY for 9 mos;
B) 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, forcing NYers to apprehend escapees.
I didn’t say: WHAT? THE? HELL?
1:56 PM · Jun 22, 2020
Amy Biancolli @AmyBiancolli
end quotes
Now, suffice to say that I did not know that Amy Biancolli was TWEETING the above, because I don’t waste my time on TWITTER, but more to the point, I find it interesting that she did choose to TWEET it, because in the end, it makes her look like the fool I originally told her she was in my first e-mail sent Saturday, June 20, 2020 5:03 PM, to wit:
Dear Amy:
If you had ever bothered to study history in high school, which subject you apparently missed, you would know that in New York state, on March 31, 1817 to be exact, the New York legislature ended two centuries of slavery within its borders, setting July 4,1827 as the date of final emancipation and making New York the first state to pass a law for the total abolition of legal slavery.
When Emancipation Day finally arrived, the number of enslaved men and women freed was roughly 4,600 or 11% of the black population living in New York and the black community and its supporters held joyous celebrations and parades throughout the state.
Juneteenth in New York means nothing at all.
The Emancipation Proclamation itself means nothing in New York, because New York wasn’t one of the Southern states in rebellion, in fact, New York state fought on the side of the Union, and by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, there were no slaves to be freed.
Why are you ignorant of this?
I was taught this history starting in kindergarten, and I have never forgotten it, while it appears that your education was quite faulty, as you never seem to have learned it.
end quotes
None of that ever got TWEETED by Amy, however.
Instead, she chose to make this a TWITTER MELODRAMA, as follows:
Jun 22
@AmyBiancolli
More back-and-forth emails with this guy.
He’s adamant that enslaved people in NYS, including the servant Prince in the Schuyler Mansion, were well treated, so, you know, that somehow made their enslavement kinda okay?
My response: *He was owned.*
I need to say this??
Really??
Amy Biancolli @AmyBiancolli
end quotes
Did I say melodrama, people?
How about a melodrama extravaganza because that is what Amy of the Times Union is dishing up here for us on TWITTER, in the show that never ends, to wit:
Jun 22
Part of me feels like it ain’t worth arguing with the guy.
And part of me wonders why I’m maintaining civility.
But I can’t *not* call him out.
And if I don’t engage in quasi-civil back-and-forth, he won’t listen.
Maybe he will.
Maybe he won’t.
But I gotta try, right?
Amy Biancolli @AmyBiancolli
end quotes
Actually, if you like real campy melodrama, this is some great stuff, especially where she is veering off into this dissertation on the psychotherapy she has immersed herself in as she tries to come to terms with losing her whiteness so she can finally be free of “WHITE GUILT” by becoming black!
Getting back to the melodrama:
Jun 22
“As to the people of color, I am happy for them if Juneteenth makes them feel good about themselves, especially the ones in Albany doing all the killing.”
— his latest email.
So the exchange did have one positive effect: It brought his racism to the fore.
That’s it for me.
Amy Biancolli @AmyBiancolli
end quotes
And there, people, is how you become a “RACIST” in the America of people suffering extreme “WHITE GUILT” like Amy Biancolli – you simply make mention of the black folks killing other black folks, because to the black folks, black lives ain’t worth doodly-squat, and is it.
So now, for thinking that way, I am branded by Amy Biancolli on TWITTER a “RACIST”, which is a dog whistle to the howling BLM mob – “he’s a RACIST, go get him!”
Which takes us to the last of the script, to wit:
Jun 23
Though I’ve stopped replying, he’s still emailing me.
One screed after another, lecturing me about my ignorance of “history” and failure to listen in 7th grade.
For too many people, History = What They Learned As Kids.
And that’s it.
No room for the voices of people of color.
end quotes
As I say, people, paranoid delusions!
And while we are on the subject of people in America only squinting at history through a single, narrow lens, as we see pretty much on a daily basis here in America, for too many people, history does indeed equal what they learned as kids, and as we see here in America, especially in the case of the Albany, New York Times Union’s own Amy Biancolli who holds degrees from Hamilton College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism who was a former movie critic for the Houston Chronicle, what they learned about history as kids was pretty much nothing at all beyond “in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and now, as a result, we have some of the best shopping opportunities in the history of the world, bar none.”
In my experience, I have found that to many people, a majority of those I have met, and especially those who profess to be educated, they have no time for history, or an interest in learning it or studying it, because, let’s face it, history is in the past and most people, those who have to function normally by getting up in the morning and going to work to provide for their families, are focused on what they have to do that day, not something that happened four hundred years ago, which for them is an un-needed and un-wanted distraction.
The study of history is a luxury they either cannot afford, already having a full plate before them in the present moment, or do not wish to invest time in, already having more than enough to occupy their mind preparing for the future, which for most people, keeps coming day after day after day, whether they want it to or not.
As I said in a post in here @ July 20, 2017 at 6:49 pm:
So why do we need to know all this “Revolutionary War” stuff then, especially on the occasion of the Fourth of July, which didn’t end that war, but got it started on a grand scale, instead, with 25,000 Revolutionary Soldiers dying during the war while 25,000 Revolutionary Soldiers were estimated to have been wounded or maimed and 24,000 British Soldiers were killed during the war with 100,000 Loyalists fleeing to Canada, the Bahamas and England during the war with 3 million being the estimated population of America in 1776, as compared to 300-plus million today?
So what, people?
To celebrate the Fourth of July today, do we really need to know that some 1,547 known military engagements occurred during the Revolutionary War subsequent to the first Fourth of July, with 6.5% as the population participation rate during the war, higher than any American war since WWII, including Viet Nam, with the cost of the war of the Revolution being $151 million?
And that answer is of course not.
To celebrate the Fourth of July today, and here you have to say, even if you are an atheist, “God bless America for the freedoms we enjoy today,” because it is so true, what with the cost of both gas and hamburger being down this year thanks to Wall Street and the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, which has our best interests as American people at heart, especially when it is the Fourth of July and the official start to summer; all you need to know is that it is a holiday and let’s party!
And that is it.
So simple, isn’t it, as it should be in a democracy!
end quotes
So much for history, then, people, it is superfluous, un-needed and un-wanted baggage in American life today!
To live what would be considered a “normal” life in America today, it is not necessary to know a single thing about American history, or more properly, history as it happened in America from the time of its beginning as a nation and before, and so people don’t.
As I also said above @ July 20, 2017 at 6:49 pm:
As it was told to me when I was young and learning the significance of the Fourth of July to our lives as American citizens back then, after the close of WWII, we were to know those things because of what James Madison of Virginia meant when he said, “Do not separate text from historical background, if you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
Once upon a time in America, that meant something to us as citizens – to understand our form of government, you had to understand our specific history and how we came into being as a nation, and that history was one of years of hardship, misery and bloodshed with people like Timothy Murphy fighting to give us the liberty to celebrate the Fourth of July in America today, so that as we celebrated the Fourth of July, and this was years ago now, before the Fourth of July became the rip-roaring, let’s party holiday that it has become today, and God bless America again for that, and for giving us Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga in our times, we were asked to give a moment’s thought to those sacrifices that gave us our freedom that we enjoy today.
That’s why.
end quotes
But as I say, that is now long ago, in a different century and millennium, and now, much has changed in America with regard to knowledge of the past, which more and more has become useless knowledge, so that all of this history that I talk of above no longer has relevance in the lives of most people in America.
So what is up then with this business of Albany, New York’s Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan telling us “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences,” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union?”
Four hundred years of white supremacy?
Where was that happening?
And why do we today have to own four hundred years of history that preceded our existence on this earth of ours?
How does that become our possession?
And if we have to own the consequences of four hundred years of “white supremacy,” should we also be owning the consequences of over several centuries countless East Africans being sold as slaves by Muslim Arabs to the Middle East and other places via the Sahara desert and Indian Ocean?
Afterall, if one were to look through the wide open lens of history, instead of squinting through a tiny peephole, the sale of African slaves can be traced back to antiquity, becoming popular in the seventh century when Islam was gaining strength in North Africa, seven centuries before Europeans explored the continent and ten centuries before West Africans were sold across the Atlantic to America.
So why then are we only going back four hundred years?
If we are going to “own” the consequences of history, then why are we stopping at four hundred years in the past?
Stay tuned, more to come on that essential existential question in our lives, courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror.
Going back to this business of Albany, New York’s Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan telling us “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences,” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” logically speaking, if we want to be rational about it, as opposed to driven by mindless emotion as is Albany’s mayor Kathy, for us to be able to “speak of those consequences” of what Kathy Sheehan says are 400 years of white supremacy, we would first have to have a clue as to what she is even talking about with this blather of 400 years of “white supremacy,” and where she thinks that might have happened, because it sure as heel didn’t happen here in what is now the United States of America, which nation has only been in existence for 244 years, which leaves 156 years of alleged “white supremacy” the consequences of which mayor Kathy says we have to “own,” as if we are attainted today because somebody with white skin somewhere in the world four hundred years ago did something Albany’s mayor Kathy doesn’t like today, and wants white people today to be responsible for, which is hog crap.
If we go back in time 400 years, that takes us back to 1620 by my math, and looking through the lens of history that I learned back in the 7th grade, back when you actually were required to know these things, the settlement of present Albany, mayor Kathy’s sanctuary city, by Hollanders in 1614, marks an epoch in the history of the United States, because the location there of Fort Nassau in 1614 and of Fort Orange in 1623 formed the beginnings of a center which was destined to become the historical keystone of the Colonies, with Revolutionary War figure Philip Schuyler being born there 119 years later on November 20, 1733.
According to the history I learned in 7th grade, never realizing at the time it was “white supremacist” history, Albany was the fourth important American city in order of settlement, being preceded by Jamestown in 1607, Quebec in 1609 and New York in 1613.
So where is the 400 years of “white supremacy” coming from whose consequences we, the American people who are white are supposed to “own,” whatever on earth that stupid expression is supposed to mean?
If we actually bothered to research the history of Albany in terms of this so-called “white supremacy” mayor Kathy of Albany is on about, we would find that if there was any kind of “supremacy” in Albany 400 years ago, it was “Red Supremacy,” not white supremacy, at all, to wit:
The Mohicans were then the overlords of the Albany neighborhood.
They received the Dutch kindly and gave them the land on which Captain Corstiaensen built Fort Nassau.
end quotes
For the record, the Mohicans were red skins, not white skins, and 400 years ago in Albany, it was they and not the white man who were supreme, which blows a huge hole in mayor Kathy’s specious premise about 400 years of “white supremacy” in America, as we can clearly see from this excerpt from “History of the Mohawk Valley: Gateway to the West 1614-1925,” edited by Nelson Greene (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1925), to wit:
From this wilderness life among the Indians, many of the early pioneers of Fort Nassau and Fort Orange are said to have become more like Indians than Hollanders.
In this way they acquired Indian traits, Indian habits of thought and deed and skill in woodcraft, qualities which left an impress upon their descendants and which transmitted certain Indian traits into the early American character.
end quotes
But scrub that because it spoils the narrative of 400 years of white supremacy of mayor Kathy Sheehan of the Democrat-controlled sanctuary city of Albany, New York, where if you have white skin, you are not really welcome, or safe.
And now we pause for station identification and a word from our sponsors before resuming our series on “Weird Tales From Albany, New York,” so stay tuned for the next episode and don’t touch that dial.
So as we can clearly see by looking through the open lens of history, as opposed to squinting through the tiny partisan peephole employed by Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan to warp and twist and distort and pervert American history, or more properly, the history that occurred in what is now the United States of America since ten of twelve thousand years ago when the glaciers that covered the state of New York and the city of Albany finally receded, 400 years ago in America, in 1620, there was no white supremacy, at all, nor was there much of it anywhere else in the world for that matter.
In fact, if we bother to go back to our 7th grade history lessons, we will recall an incident involving U.S. president Tommy Jefferson and the Barbary Coast pirates involving the members of the U.S. Navy being held as slaves on the Barbary Coast of North Africa by people who were not white.
If we bothered to not be stupid like these idiot hack politicians like Kathy Sheehan of Albany, and her ridiculous and empty blather about 400 years of white supremacy, we could recall our high school history which would take us to Wikipedia to refresh our memories and there we would find that slavery on the Barbary Coast was a form of unfree labour which existed between the 16th and 18th centuries in the Barbary Coast area of North Africa.
In other words, people, those people who were slaves were “owned” by people who didn’t even consider them to be human beings, if you can imagine that.
So who were these people who were slaved in North Africa?
Let’s go back to Wikip0pedia to see what we can see, which is as follows:
According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and The Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.
end quotes
Europeans?
Do they mean white people?
And of course they do, which is exactly6 what we learned in school when I was young.
Getting back to the history of hundreds of years of the Brown and Black Supremacy mayor Kathy of Albany wants buried because it upsets her narrative about a non-existent 400 years of white supremacy, from bases on the Barbary coast, North Africa, the Barbary pirates raided ships traveling through the Mediterranean and along the northern and western coasts of Africa, plundering their cargo and enslaving the people they captured.
From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids along seaside towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children.
end quotes
They especially liked blond, white skinned girls as harem slaves.
Getting back to the history mayor Kathy of Albany wants scrubbed from the record, in 1784, the first American ship was seized by pirates from Morocco and by late 1793, a dozen American ships had been captured, goods stripped and everyone enslaved.
So much then for 400 years of “white supremacy,” and its consequences, people!
Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states had amounted to 20% of United States government annual revenues in 1800, and it was not until 1815 that naval victories ended tribute payments by the United States.
That was 205 years ago, and there we finally see some “white supremacy” starting to kick in.
However, some European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s, and the white slave trade and markets in the Mediterranean declined and eventually disappeared only after the European occupations of North Africa.
As to the narratives of these white slaves, we have Joseph Pitts (1663–1735?) who was an Englishman was taken into slavery by Barbary pirates in Algiers, Algeria in 1678 at the age of fourteen or fifteen.
During his time in captivity, Pitts went through three masters over the course of more than fifteen years, with whom he travelled to Cairo and Alexandria.
In his “A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans,” written about his time as a slave, Pitts encounters violence against women several times in his account, most notably when describing the Imperial Turkish camps where he wrote that the soldiers are “apt to drink, and are abominably rude, insomuch that it is very dangerous for any woman to walk in any by-place but more dangerous for boys, for they are extremely given to sodomy…”
Pitts also details a visit to a slave market in Cairo while he is on the hajj with one of his masters.
In the market place, Pitts observes the selling of women and men.
While men are forced to act out tricks to show off their strength and abilities like a horse show, the women are treated in a different manner.
Women would be dressed in fine clothing when being exposed in markets, in hopes of catching a buyer’s eye.
Pitts says that while the women’s faces were veiled, men were allowed to freely view their faces, to feel the inside of their mouths and teeth, and to caress their breasts.
If a woman’s virginity was questioned, slave traders would sometimes permit a potential buyer to escort the she-slave into a private tent, allowing the customer to discover the answer to the question themselves.
He noted that many of the slaves are women and children as the men are kept as rowing slaves aboard ships.
He also described many of the people as “Muscovites and Russians, and from those parts and some of the emperor of Germany’s parts.”
These slaves have lighter skin, and they are dressed in fine clothing so they will fetch a higher price at auction.
The slaves are examined much like animals; buyers are allowed to checked their teeth, muscles, and stature to get an idea of the overall health of a slave.
asters[edit]
As to Pitts himself, he served a total of three masters, with varying degrees of treatment.
His second master, Ibrahim, treated him very poorly.
At the beginning of Pitts’ capture, he mentions the poor diet that he and the other slaves were fed.
But of course, that is because he was owned, and was not considered as a human being.
So in talking about the consequences of slavery, why is it that we leave all of this history out?
Why are we told by hack politicians like mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York that it is only the black folks who have suffered from being slaves when that clearly is not the case?
If we are going to talk about the evils of slavery, then why are we told to limit the discussion to only the black people who were slaves, and in fact, held slaves, themselves?
What is up with that?
Now, with regard to the empty-headed Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan telling us that “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences,” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” which is an unintelligible mix of hobble-gobble and malarkey, while Albany, New York Times Union political writer Amy Biancolli adjures us to “own” the history of Philip Schuyler, who has been dead since November 18, 1804, we really need to go back to Clause 2 of Section 3 of Article III of the United States Constitution which states thusly, to wit:
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
end quotes
Focus in on those words “Corruption of Blood,” because that is exactly what is going on here where we persons with white skin are being told that we are responsible today for the acts of people we did not know and were not related to four hundred years ago.
Because we are white, our blood is now corrupted, according to mayor Sheehan and Amy Biancolli of the Albany Times Union, which is a load of horse**** and nothing more, which thought takes us to a scholarly article on the subject from the St. John’s Law Review, Volume 23, Number 2 Volume 23, April 1949, entitled “The Spectre of Attainder in New York (Part 2)” by Alison Reppy, where we had as follows:
THE SPECTRE OF ATTAINDER IN NEW YORK
V. FROM THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN 1789 TO 1830
A. Federal and State Constitutions
As we have previously observed, the New York Constitution adopted at Kingston, April 20, 1777, in Article XLI had provided: “that no acts of attainder shall be passed by the legislature of this state, for crimes other than those committed before the termination of the present war; and that such acts shall not work a corruption of blood.”
The Federal Constitution contained three provisions having a bearing on our topic.
Article III, Section III, Clause 2, provided that “No Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”
Article I, Section IX, Clause 3, provided that “No Bill of Attainder or Ex Post Facto law shall be passed,” and Article I, Section X, Clause 1, provided that “No state shall . . . pass any Bill of
Attainder. . . .”
Thus the prohibition as to the exercise of this device of tyranny was made good both as against the State and the Nation, and even in a case of treason corruption of blood was not to extend beyond the life of the person attainted.
end quotes
And focus in on the words “this device of tyranny,” because that is exactly what we are seeing here when the mayor of a city in the United States, any city, tells us that we have to “own” the consequences of what they are calling, without proof, 400 years of white supremacy.
We do not, and they cannot make us do so, end of story.
As to attainder and corruption of blood, in English law during the late Medieval and early modern period (from 1321 to 1798), it was possible for Parliament to pass a “Bill Of Attainder” which declared a person guilty of a crime, often treason, by legislative act, without any trial or other legal process.
That is in essence what mayor Kathy Sheehan of the Democrat-controlled sanctuary city of Albany is doing here with her claim that we today who have white skin are responsible for what she says are four hundred years of crimes against black people.
Getting back to English law, which we threw off on July 4, 1776, often a Bill of Attainder not only decreed that a person (or people) was guilty, but also confiscated the convicted person’s property, preventing his (or rarely her) heirs from inheriting, and possibly rendering those heirs ineligible to hold public offices or peerages.
The heir would also be prevented from inheriting through the attainted person.
For example, property held by the father of the attainted person would not pass to the child of the attainted person.
This was called “corruption of the blood”, and was viewed with particular horror by many during the colonial period and before.
It effectively treated the heirs of the attainted person as illegitimate.
The US constitutional provision prohibits declaring people guilty of crimes by legislative act.
Thus, mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York cannot hold those of us who white today responsible in any way for what she says are crimes committed by people alive before we were even born.
And that takes us to the Albany, New York Times Union article “Biancolli: As we get rid of Schuyler statue, we need to own his history” by Amy Biancolli on July 8, 2020, where we had as follows:
Philip John Schuyler, Revolutionary War general and senator from New York, has been a piece of Albany’s history for more than a quarter of a millennium.
end quotes
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Philip John Schuyler is simply a figure in American history, for good or for bad.
He does not belong to the city of Albany – he belongs to the history of the United States of America.
Getting back to that article:
We’ve been proud to embrace that history.
Schuyler’s ours.
We own him.
end quotes
“We have been proud to embrace that history?”
Not anybody I know of, including myself.
And what does that even mean in rational terms – “proud to embrace that history?”
Outside of Amy Biancolli, I don’t know of anyone else who would admit to that, and in fact, most people do not know what that history she is talking about even was.
So, outside of the fact that Philip Schuyler played a part in freeing what became the United States from the tyranny of an English king, how does that make him “ours,” so that we now “own” him?
Getting back to that article, it continues as follows:
And now that the Black Lives Matters protests have sparked fresh reflection on history — now that Mayor Kathy Sheehan has promised to remove the statue — now that the Philip J. Schuyler Achievement Academy has resolved to change its name — now that the lens we train on history is focusing more closely on slavery, Schuyler’s own enslaved servants and the persistent systemic racism borne of same — we can’t disown him.
And we shouldn’t.
end quotes
Talk about hobble-gobble, there is a huge dose of it right there for all to see.
First of all, Black Lives Matters protests HAVE NOT sparked any fresh reflections on history that I am aware of.
The only reflections they have sparked are on just how ignorant of history people in this country really are, starting with Black Lives Matter and Amy Biancolli.
And while the tiny lens that Amy Biancolli trains on history might be focusing more closely on slavery, the fact is that the rest of us who were not raised to be stupid and ignorant have always been aware that slavery existed in this country at the time of separation from England.
Those of us who were not victims of a supposed educational system that turned out droves of pathetically ignorant people like Amy Biancolli clearly recall from our high school history lessons the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, 63 years before the Declaration of In dependence and the creation of the United States of America, wherein Philip Schuyler played a role, which treaty granted Britain an Asiento lasting 30 years to supply the Spanish colonies with 4,800 slaves per year.
Those are some of the “crimes” that Kathy Sheehan is trying to hold us guilty of today, if we happen to have skin that is white.
As those of us who paid attention in high school clearly recall, the Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715.
Before Charles II of Spain died childless in 1700, he had named his grandnephew Philip of France as his successor in his last will.
However, Philip was a French prince, grandson of Louis XIV of France and also in line for the French throne.
The other major powers in Europe were not willing to tolerate the potential union of two such powerful states.
Essentially, the treaties allowed Philip to take the Spanish throne in return for permanently renouncing his claim to the French throne, along with other necessary guarantees that would ensure that France and Spain should not merge, thus preserving the balance of power in Europe.
The treaties between several European states, including Spain, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Savoy and the Dutch Republic, helped end the war.
That at one time, before gross ignorance became the norm, was basic high school history which helped to explain the world we had inherited all those years later.
Getting back to the Asiento, which Kathy Sheehan holds us guilty for, according to its terms,
Britain was permitted to open offices in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Cartagena, Havana, Panama, Portobello and Vera Cruz to arrange the Atlantic slave trade.
One ship of no more than 500 tons could be sent to one of these places each year (the Navío de Permiso) with general trade goods.
One quarter of the profits were to be reserved for the King of Spain.
There was provision for two extra sailings at the start of the contract.
The Asiento was granted in the name of Queen Anne and then contracted to the company.
By July the South Sea Company had arranged contracts with the Royal African Company to supply the necessary African slaves to Jamaica.
Ten pounds was paid for a slave aged over 16, £8 for one under 16 but over 10.
Two-thirds were to be male, and 90% adult.
The company trans-shipped 1,230 slaves from Jamaica to America in the first year, plus any that might have been added (against standing instructions) by the ship’s captains on their own behalf.
On arrival of the first cargoes, the local authorities refused to accept the Asiento, which had still not been officially confirmed there by the Spanish authorities.
The slaves were eventually sold at a loss in the West Indies.
In 1714 the government announced that a quarter of profits would be reserved for Queen Anne and a further 7.5% for a financial advisor, Manasseh Gilligan.
Some Company board members refused to accept the contract on these terms, and the government was obliged to reverse its decision.
Despite these setbacks, the company continued, having raised £200,000 to finance the operations.
Anne had secretly negotiated with France to get its approval regarding the asiento.
She boasted to Parliament of her success in taking the asiento away from France and London celebrated her economic coup.
In 1714, 62 years before that was a United States of America, and 19 years before Philip Schuyler was born on November 20, 1733, 2,680 slaves were carried, and for 1716–17, 13,000 more, but the trade continued to be unprofitable.
An import duty of 33 pieces of eight was charged on each slave (although for this purpose young slaves were counted only as a fraction of a slave, depending on the person’s condition and age).
It has been estimated that the company transported over 34,000 slaves with deaths comparable to its competitors, which was taken as competence in this area of work at the time.
end quotes
So tell me, people, are we with white skin in the United States of America today who were not alive in 1714 responsible for any of that?
Do we “own” that history of slavery, which despite the maunderings of Amy Biancolli, was never a secret?
Must we “own” that history because the Democrat mayor of Albany, New York tells us we have to?
Of course not!
Don’t be silly!
And stay tuned, while we open the lens of history on this subject of who is responsible for slavery, which clearly is not us today, despite the mindless drivel that Amy Biancolli and Kathy Sheehan are trying to sell us!
Not at all surprisingly, yesterday, I got some serious push-back from the main-stream, read “corporate” media, because I am doing the unthinkable in here – I am using the “press” as it was described in a political essay entitled “A Republican I: To James Wilson, Esquire” on October 25, 1787, to wit:
The press is the scourge of tyrants and the grand palladium of liberty.
end quotes
“Palladium” in that sense has its historical meaning as “something that affords effectual protection or security,” and in this case under discussion in here where Albany, New York Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan is trying to pin the blame for what she calls 400 years of white supremacy, a very stupid term if there ever was one, when one uses actual and not contrived history as their guide, on those of us with white skin alive today, who is getting the security and protection of the main-stream media, in this case the Hearst publication the Albany, New York Times Union, is the tyrant Kathy Sheehan.
And that according to the modern rules of the game is to be accepted, because they all do it, so that makes it right.
Except as an American citizen, I don’t believe that at all, or accept it, and so I have chosen to stand up, as an American citizen should, all American citizens, starting with members of the press to challenge that perverted use of the press in this country – to be the mouthpiece for a politician, as opposed to watching the politician like a hawk as the scourge of tyrants so as to be a real grand palladium of liberty, as opposed to being a hollow mockery of one, as is the case here with the Albany Times Union defending Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan laying the blame for all the woes, real or imagined, of the black folks onto the shoulders of the white folks today, as if we were all guilty of “owning” black people as our slaves.
As to who Kathy Sheehan is in a nation of Rule of Law, according to the City of Albany, NY Charter Article III, “Executive Branch,” Section 301, Mayor’s Powers and Duties Generally, we have as follows:
(a) There shall be a Mayor who shall be the chief executive officer and administrative head of the City government.
The executive power of the City is vested in the Mayor and in such executive offices and departments as are presently set forth in the Code of the City of Albany, or as subsequently created, modified, combined or discontinued by a duly enacted local law of the Common Council.
(b) The Mayor shall be responsible for the day to day administration and supervision of all City affairs, executive officers, and departments, offices and agencies of the City, except offices headed by an elected official.
(c) (1) The Mayor shall have sole authority to appoint and remove all nonelected City department and office heads, who shall serve at the pleasure of the Mayor.
Effective January 1, 2007, the Mayor’s authority to appoint all nonelected City department heads (Department of Water and Water Supply, Department of Assessment & Taxation, Department of Youth & Workforce Services, Department of General Services, Department of Recreation, Department of Development & Planning, Albany Police Department, Albany Fire Department, Department of Administrative Services, Department of Law, Department of Public Safety, and such other departments that are created from time to time) shall be subject to the advice and consent of the Common Council.
This advice and consent authority shall be applicable to new appointments after January 1, 2007, only.
The Common Council must either confirm or reject any such appointment within 45 days of the Mayor’s filing of a written notice of appointment with the City Clerk.
In the event the Common Council fails to timely approve or disapprove the appointment, the appointment shall be deemed confirmed.
In the event the Common Council timely rejects the appointment, the Mayor shall make a new appointment for such position, which shall also be subject to confirmation pursuant to the above procedure.
(2) Within 30 days after first taking office, the Mayor shall designate a deputy to perform any of the Mayor’s duties, with the exceptions outlined above, during a limited period of absence or inability to perform, by filing a written notice with the City Clerk.
(d) The Mayor shall take care that the laws of the state, together with all local laws, resolutions and ordinances of the Common Council are faithfully executed and enforced within the City.
(e) The Mayor shall appoint the members of all boards, authorities and commissions, except as otherwise required by State or local law The Mayor’s appointment of members to the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Planning Board shall be subject to the advice and consent of the Common Council.
The Common Council must either confirm or reject any such appointment within 45 days of the Mayor’s filing of a written notice of appointment with the City Clerk.
In the event the Common Council fails to timely approve or disapprove the appointment, the appointment shall be deemed confirmed.
In the event the Common Council timely rejects the appointment, the Mayor shall make a new appointment for such position, which shall also be subject to confirmation pursuant to the above procedure.
No such appointee shall hold office beyond the term of the Mayor by whom the appointment was made, except as otherwise provided by state law or local law.
Any such appointee may be removed for cause by the Mayor, following notice of the grounds for removal and an opportunity to be heard.
No City employee shall be appointed to serve on a board, commission or authority which has a fixed term of office, unless the enabling legislation for such board, commission or authority so authorizes.
(f) The Mayor may examine the books, vouchers and papers of any board, commission, department, officer or employee of the City and by the issuance of a subpoena, summon and examine under oath any person in relation thereto.
The Mayor may require a member of any board, office, commission or department of the City to furnish the Mayor with any information, data and reports; neglect or refusal to furnish the same shall be deemed misconduct or incompetence on the part of the official or person neglecting or refusing to comply.
The authority conferred upon the Mayor by this section shall not extend to the Common Council or Council Members.
(g) On or before October 1st of each year, the Mayor shall submit a proposed budget to the Common Council for the ensuing year as provided in Section 603 of the Charter.
(h) Except as otherwise provided by law and this Charter, the Mayor shall negotiate and execute on behalf of the City all contracts and agreements required to be executed as an act of the City.
(i) The Mayor shall have such other powers and duties as are provided by state law, this Charter, local law, ordinance or resolution.
end quotes
So, where then does mayor Sheehan, who pursuant to the Charter of the City of Albany shall take care that the laws of the state, together with all local laws, resolutions and ordinances of the Common Council are faithfully executed and enforced within the City, get any authority, jurisdiction or discretion to order the removal of the statue of Philip Schuyler in front to Albany City Hall?
According to its history, dedicated on June 14, 1925, the monument was donated by George C. Hawley to commemorate his wife Theodora M. Hawley.
So, does Kathy Sheehan “own” the statue of Philip Schuyler?
And if it is not her personal property, then where does she get the authority, jurisdiction and discretion to order its removal, as if she were Catherine the Great of Russia, instead of simply Kathy Sheehan, mayor of Albany, New York with authority, jurisdiction and discretion limited by the Albany County Charter, as well as state law, local law, ordinance or resolution?
The answer is she is just taking that power, as if she really is the equivalent of Catherine the Great of Russia, while the Times Union cheers her on.
Just as she is taking it on herself telling the people of America to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER, which is a political movement antithetical to our American values, which are being dismissed out of hand by Kathy Sheehan as being racist and white supremacist.
So as an American citizen using the opportunity afforded me by the Cape Charles Mirror to have a voice equal to that of Kathy Sheehan, who has the Albany Times Union as her organ of dissemination of her propaganda on behalf of BLACK LIVES MATTER, I stepped up to the plate to call her out, and in the course of doing so, I not only stepped on sensitive toes at the Times Union, I actually did a bit of a fandango on them, in a very public way, calling out a political correspondent for the Times Union by name, which just is not done today in the media biz.
Except, I am a citizen, not a “professional” journalist in the main-stream corporate media of today, and so, I am bound in no way by those artificial rules where people in the media biz don’t say “bad things” about other people in the media biz.
And for that transgression on my part, I got hollered at, but good.
So, being an American citizen, I took that as another opportunity to make clear exactly what it is that is going on here by first stating that this is hardly about Amy Biancolli of the Albany Times Union who is simply a bit player in this on-going drama.
Nor is it about me, when you come right down to it, other than as an American citizen who adamantly refuses to heed the message of Kathy Sheehan to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Rather, it is about the perversion and distortion of OUR American history for partisan political reasons.
I explained that the Albany Times Union obviously has a political agenda, which is their privilege here in the United States of America pursuant to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
But, this being America until it isn’t, as an American citizen, I have the right to challenge that agenda, with facts to counter their distortion of facts, including their assertions about Philip Schuyler, a bit player in American history himself, in the end, best known, right or wrong, for losing Fort Ticonderoga when Johnny Burgoyne came south, which then allowed Burgoyne to make it to Stillwater and the Battle of Saratoga.
The 1777 Siege of Fort Ticonderoga occurred between 2 and 6 July 1777 at Fort Ticonderoga, near the southern end of Lake Champlain in the state of New York.
Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s 8,000-man army occupied high ground above the fort, and nearly surrounded the defenses.
These movements precipitated the occupying Continental Army, an under-strength force of 3,000 under the command of General Arthur St. Clair, to withdraw from Ticonderoga and the surrounding defenses.
Some gunfire was exchanged, and there were some casualties, but there was no formal siege and no pitched battle.
Burgoyne’s army occupied Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, the extensive fortifications on the Vermont side of the lake, without opposition on 6 July.
Advance units pursued the retreating Americans.
The uncontested surrender of Ticonderoga caused an uproar in the American public and in its military circles, as Ticonderoga was widely believed to be virtually impregnable, and a vital point of defense.
General St. Clair and his superior, General Philip Schuyler, were vilified by Congress.
Both were eventually exonerated in courts martial, but their careers were adversely affected.
Schuyler had already lost his command to Horatio Gates by the time of the court martial, and St. Clair held no more field commands for the remainder of the war.
So much for Philip Schuyler’s role in American history!
Certainly nothing to embrace with any kind of pride.
Outside of the Times Union, which has made a huge thing out of Philip Schuyler, lacking anything better to write about, nobody cherishes Philip Schuyler or his memory, and outside of the Times Union and Kathy Sheehan, who is now a national news figure along with the mayors of Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, and Chicago, Illinois and Minneapolis, Minnesota, nobody notices his statue, one among many in Albany.
So what this is really all about is Kathy Sheehan of Albany putting white lives in jeopardy with her truckling to Black Lives Matter, which more than anything today epitomizes just how abominably ignorant people in this country have become, starting with people in the media.
So, so long as the mayor of Albany chooses to make this into an incipient race war as she is doing by putting her political backing behind BLACK LIVES MATTER, thereby putting the lives of white people and especially white cops in jeopardy, and the Times Union chooses to be her ally in promoting gross falsehoods and distortions for partisan political purposes and the promotion of BLACK LIVES MATTER, the push-back from myself will continue.
As I say, this is still America, until it isn’t anymore.
“What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments.”
“It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them.”
“Weak advocates of a good cause or artful advocates of a bad one, may endeavour to stop such communications, or to discredit them by clamor and calumny.”
“This, however, is not the age for such tricks of controversy.”
“Men have suffered so severely by being deceived upon subjects of the highest import, those of religion and freedom, that truth becomes infinitely valuable to them, not as a matter of curious speculation, but of beneficial practice.”
“A spirit of enquiry is excited, information diffused, judgment strengthened.”
“Before this tribunal, let every one freely speak, what he really thinks, but with so sincere a reverence for the cause he ventures to discuss as to use the utmost caution, lest he should lead into errors, upon a point of such sacred concern as the public happiness.”
end quotes
Those words, which come to us across the gulf of time from the “Fabius I” political essay of John Dickinson, OBSERVATIONS on the CONSTITUTION proposed by the FEDERAL CONVENTION, are to me certainly as pertinent today as when they were originally written on April 12, 1788, a little less than twelve years (12) after the first Fourth of July, now considered a “racist” holiday which supposedly celebrates 400 years of white supremacy, even though it was only 244 years ago, in actuality, that it occurred, and seventy (70) days before the U.S. Constitution was finally ratified by all 13 states, with New York, a hold-out, being one of the last, on June 21, 1788.
When he died, John Dickenson was recognized by President Thomas Jefferson as being “Among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain whose ‘name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution.'”
But of course, Tommy Jefferson himself no longer exists in American history having been written out of the record as an embarrassment because he was a racist white supremacist who “owned” people as slaves, so perhaps his praise of John Dickenson is really a condemnation today, but lets set that aside for the moment and consider these words on their own, to wit, to test them for veracity regardless of who might have said them, given they are universal in nature, to wit:
“What concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments.”
“It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them.”
end quotes
Now, ask yourself as an American citizen today 232 years after those words were first spoken – are they true?
Or aren’t they?
In our time today, should what concerns all really be considered by all?
Or should only a few, like Kathy Sheehan, mayor of Albany, New York, be the ones to consider what concerns all, because we couldn’t possibly know ourselves?
And what about individuals may injure a whole society by not declaring their sentiments?
Is there any truth in that in our times today?
Or is that now like so much else from our past now an anachronism because it harkens back to a racist white supremacist society who gave us the United States Constitution?
“It is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them.”
Staying with the thoughts expressed 232 years ago on June 21, 1788 in the “Fabius I“ essay at the beginning of this nation’s political history as a nation, as opposed to a collection of separate English colonies beholden to a German king sitting on the throne of England, those being “(W)hat concerns all, should be considered by all; and individuals may injure a whole society, by not declaring their sentiments,” and “(I)t is therefore not only their right, but their duty, to declare them,” and the recent “executive order” of Democrat Albany mayor Kathy Sheehan, the Albany, New York Times Union, a Hearst publication, which has been mounting an admirable defense of the Democrat mayor turning herself into an autocrat or despot with respect to the statue of Revolutionary War figure Philip Schuyler, recently had a rather tepid and gutless editorial on the subject entitled “Don’t remove Philip Schuyler statue without community input” on July 7, 2020, three days after the Fourth of July, wherein we were informed as follows, to wit
THE ISSUE:
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan has ordered that a statue of Philip Schuyler be moved.
THE STAKES:
Her intent is laudable, but a broader community discussion would be useful.
end quotes
My goodness, do tell – and who would have thought it?
Think of it, people, how revolutionary that concept is – the broader community actually having a voice here, as opposed to Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan and BLACK LIVES MATTER, a political movement that uses intimidation tactics very similar to those employed by the KKK or the White League, a Democrat paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in 1874 to intimidate freedmen from voting and politically organizing, or the Red Shirts, paramilitary terrorist groups that were active in the late 19th century in the last years of, and after the end of, the Reconstruction era of the United States, groups that originated in Mississippi in 1875, when Democratic Party private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both whites and freedmen.
Different names, but the tactics remain the same, given the Democrats are nothing more than a one-trick pony, and no wonder, since violence works so well for them, why bother to change?
Getting back to the tepid Times Union editorial, is continues as follows:
This much is clear: Monuments to the Confederacy deserve no place in modern American life.
Statues of men such as Jefferson Davis were erected across the American South as celebrations of the racist caste system the Confederacy fought in vain to preserve.
Honoring only an ugly past, they were often erected to intimidate Black populations striving for equality and full citizenship.
Those statues must come down.
But what about monuments to Founding Fathers who were slaveholders, including local hero Philip Schuyler?
Should those also fall?
end quotes
And given that BLACK LIVES MATTER has demanded that Philip Schuyler go, the answer appears to be of course they must go, because BLACK LIVES MATTER says so, and that is that?
What need there for any other input, especially from the “broader community,” given that we all have already been written off as white supremacist racists, because we have white skin, and so, of course, we would have to be on the side of Philip Schuyler, because he is white and looks like us, not them?
So of course it has to be minority rule then in this case!
Because as Obama used to say, it is the right thing to do!
A handful of people don’t like something, it makes them feel bad about themselves, so the majority has to truckle and bend to their views, because they are a minority, and in Albany, at least, the minority rules because as the old saying goes, they hold the whip hand – if mayor Kathy doesn’t pass through the yoke in front of them, they will burn her city down, and she knows it.
And so does the Times Union, for that matter, which takes us back to the tepid and gutless editorial, as follows:
That’s a debate happening around the country amid an ongoing reckoning on race — including in Albany, where Mayor Kathy Sheehan has ordered the removal of a Schuyler statue placed at the entrance to City Hall nearly 100 years ago.
end quotes
A “reckoning on race,” people – can you possibly imagine that, because I can’t.
I can’t imagine that because the concept itself is stupid, just as was mayor Kathy saying “(T)o me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history” in the Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020.
Given that there is but one race here on earth, that being the “human race,” what then is this “reckoning on race” going to be?
And as you ponder that conundrum, because conundrum it is, we are going to take a pause for station identification and a word from our sponsors, but don’t go away, hear, as we will be right back with more on this thing of a “reckoning on race,” to see what on earth it might possibly be.
Getting back to this dish of tripe handed up to us here in America in this editorial entitled “Don’t remove Philip Schuyler statue without community input” on July 7, 2020 by the editorial staff of the Hearst publication the Albany, New York Times Union, wherein we people of America were informed that there is a debate happening around the country amid an ongoing reckoning on race, whatever on earth that is supposed to mean, the editors continued as follows, to wit:
The Schuyler statue wasn’t raised to glorify slavery, but to honor other aspects of the general’s life, including his significant role in founding a nation that, despite its flaws and hypocrisies, advanced the cause of human freedom.
We sometimes forget that the ideals pushed by leading figures of the Revolutionary War were, well, revolutionary.
Their win for inherent human rights was no small achievement.
It is a history worth remembering and celebrating — without ignoring its contradictory immoralities, notably slavery and the genocidal treatment of Native Americans.
end quotes
Now, as a sober, older American who learned about the “Native Americans” as a child through the wide-open lens of history that existed then, right after WWII, a war fought against a fascist nation that employed slave labor in its war efforts against freedom, I have to question the sanity and mental clarity of these editorial writers for the Times Union with their statement about the “genocidal treatment of Native Americans,” which sounds like a statement lifted from a depressing history of America by Howard Zinn, who looked at American history through a glass darkly.
For those unfamiliar with the name, Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, and socialist thinker who was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, a private, liberal arts, women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, and a political science professor at Boston University who described himself as “something of an anarchist, something of a socialist, maybe a democratic socialist,” so it is not at all surprising that the editorial staff of the Times Union, a Hearst publication, would turn to him for guidance, keeping in mind that it was other Hearst publications that called on the anarchists out there like Anti-Fa today to assassinate American president William McKinley when the publisher’s Journal on April 10, 1901 printed an editorial that declared, “If bad institutions and bad men can be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done.”
Keeping that history in mind, we who have skin that is white should truly beware in the light of what the Times Union is calling this “reckoning on race,” which is based on the premise that all males in this country who have white skin are BAD PEOPLE who are genocidal racist white supremacists.
Afterall, look at what the Times Union is saying we did to the Native Americans – we wiped them clean off the face of the earth here in America with our “genocide” against them, where genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation, notwithstanding that in the United States today, there are some 573 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages!
But, if we are sane and rational, as opposed to being emotional cripples, and we look at history through a wide-open lens, instead of the tiny peephole employed by anarchists like Howard Zinn and the editorial staff of the Times Union, which seems to be telling us that our time as white-skinned people to be the victims of a new genocide is coming, and coming soon, with their talk of a “reckoning,” i.e., to settle accounts, and we take the definition of “genocide” as the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation, we are forced to ask ourselves, and this is grade-school history, what happened to the Hurons, a confederation of native North American peoples formerly living in the region east of Lake Huron?
And that answer, as we who actually bothered to learn something about American history, as opposed to accepting the mindless crap spewed out by anarchists like Howard Zinn, is that the Hurons were largely eliminated from the face of the earth, not in any genocide by the BAD WHITE MEN, but by the Iroquois, who themselves were a very powerful and warlike set of confederated nations of Native Americans.
Consider this bit of history on that subject entitled “Iroquois Offensive and the Destruction of the Huron: 1647-1649,” where we learned as children as follows:
The Iroquois Confederacy (the Five Nations-Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Oneida) launched a massive offensive against the Huron north of the Great Lakes in the summer of 1647.
The Iroquois objective was to seize control of the major fur-trade routes controlled by the Huron.
The Huron had realized great benefits as middlemen between the French on the St. Lawrence and the First Nations farther inland.
An Iroquois Confederacy victory would enable the Five Nations to control the fur trade and divert furs to the Dutch trading posts along the Hudson River.
By 1649, the Iroquois had all but annihilated the Huron nation.
Their towns had been razed to the ground, and the main Jesuit mission at Huronia had been destroyed.
end quotes
Or this from LE CANADA – A PEOPLE’S HISTORY, entitled “Iroquois’ destruction of Huronia,” wherein was stated as follows:
In 1649, the Iroquois attacked and massacred.
“About twelve hundred Iroquois came,” a Huron remembered.
Huronia was bathed in blood and fire.
The Iroquois laid waste to Huronia.
Their vengeance knew no limit.
Of the thirty thousand Hurons, a few thousand survived: some of which decided to live on the Île d’Orléans under the protection of the cannons of Quebec.
“In a word, this people has been wiped off the face of the Earth.”
“My brother,” a Huron chief said to a Frenchman, “your eyes cheat you when you look at us: you think you are seeing living beings, whereas we are only the spectres and souls of the departed.”
It was the end of a people and a culture.
The few Huron that survived the Iroquois onslaught abandoned their lands and resettled near Quebec.
end quotes
Sounds like a genocide to me, anyway.
Stay tuned, more is yet to come!
So, do words have meaning today?
Or don’t they?
When the editors of the Hearst publication the Albany, New York Times Union say to us in a recent rather tepid and gutless editorial entitled “Don’t remove Philip Schuyler statue without community input” on July 7, 2020, that Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan has ordered that a statue of Philip Schuyler in front of Albany City Hall in Albany, New York, the capital city of the state, be moved and her intent is laudable in the context of a broader community discussion on the subject, what really is it they have told us with the insertion of that word “laudable” into the equation?
What does it mean for the Times Union editors to tell us her unilateral order to remove the statue, which is not her personal property, was “laudable,” where laudable means “deserving praise and commendation,” with such synonyms as praiseworthy, commendable, admirable, meritorious, and worthy?
If in fact the editors of the Albany Times Union have already proclaimed her unilateral decision to remove the statue to be praiseworthy, commendable, admirable, meritorious and worthy, what is there that is left for the broader community to then say?
That it in fact is none of those things at all?
But then, if that were really so, that her decision is not commendable, at all, then why are the editors of the Albany Times Union telling us otherwise?
Going back to the editorial, the editors continue on as follows:
Ms. Sheehan says she is not trying to erase history, but argues the Schuyler statue must go because it is hurtful to the city’s significant Black population.
end quotes
A statue of Philip Schuyler standing on a pedestal in front of Albany City Hall where it has stood since is “hurtful” to the city’s “significant” Black population?
Says who and using what metrics?
As to the composition of the City of Albany, the latest figures have it as follows:
White: 54.21%
Black or African American: 29.89%
Asian: 6.96%
Two or more races: 5.38%
Other race: 3.29%
Native American: 0.25%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.02%
end quotes
So if the Blacks are less than 30% of the population of Albany, how is that “significant?”
And of that 29.89%, how many really even know who Philip Schuyler was, or more to the point care, given that he is long since dead and there hasn’t been slavery in New York for close to 200 hundred years now?
Getting back to that editorial, and the issues it raises for our times today, and tomarrow, we have:
This ought not to be a decision for the mayor to make alone.
By acting hastily, Ms. Sheehan missed an opportunity to engage the community in a deeper conversation.
end quotes
A deeper conversation?
Do tell?
On what?
How about the full history of the “special institution” of slavery in the world, starting with the role the Black Ashanti Empire in Africa played in providing Black slaves to the slave market?
And the role Queen Anne of England played in providing Black slaves to the slave market?
If we truly are going to have this “deeper” conversation, then why would we stop at mere surface appearances that seem to place all the blame for there being Black slaves in America today because of white-skinned people alone?
If in fact we are finally going to have this “deeper” conversation about slavery that truly needs to be had, then we need to go far, far beyond the the statement of mayor Kathy of Albany in the Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020 that “(T)o me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history” by not stopping at “our” history, but by delving into “their” history, as well, in great depth so that finally,l “those” people will be forced by reality to have to accept the vital role the Black folks in Africa played in causing Black people to be slaves in this country, because that “deeper” conversation has been hanging fire and has been one-sided for far too long now, as we clearly see by going back in time to an article in the Daily Mail six (6) years ago on 20 August 2014 where we were informed that shortly after taking office in February 2009, Eric Himpton Holder, Jr, a Democrat Black man who was Democrat Hussein Obama’s top law enforcement officer, called the United States ‘a nation of cowards’ when it comes to talking about race, in a Black History Month speech, where only Black people were in attendance.
A “NATION OF COWARDS,” people, think about it, and when you do think about it, that is quite an indictment of a nation of some 328 million people, or 250,264,000 white people, anyway, for the nation’s top law enforcement official, the Attorney General of the United States of America to be leveling in a forum where white people did not have a voice.
According to our published history in the news media, in a segregated town hall meeting Himpton Holder, Jr. held out in Ferguson, Missouri that was closed so no “white” viewpoints could be expressed, Himpton Holder, Jr. said to the segregated audience present that “(W)e need concrete action to change things in this country,” and “(S)o this interaction must occur,” and “‘(T)his dialogue is important,” and “(B)ut it can’t simply be that we have a conversation that begins based on what happens on August 9, and ends sometime in December, and nothing happens.”
Now, as a white man barred by my “race,” the “BAD RACE,” from Mr. Attorney General Holder’s segregated town hall meeting in Ferguson, Missouri, where he chose as the nation’s top law enforcement official to demonize white cops in particular and the white race in general, as one of those being so demonized, while being denied an opportunity to defend myself by Mr. Attorney General Eric Himpton Holder, Jr.’s action of excluding white people’s voices from his Ferguson, Missouri segregated town hall, I could and would say that by doing so, by excluding white voices that he clearly does not want to be a part of this “important dialogue” on race relations in the United States of America, that it was Mr. Attorney General Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. who was the real coward, and a very craven one at that, if he would deny as he did the voices of white people from this very important, indeed, critical dialogue that must take place in America in the wake of all that has occurred in America since Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, which event in turn fueled the rioters and looters and destroyers of the BLACK LIVES MATTER crowd which brings us to the present time and this discussion we are finally having here today, all those years later, courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror.
In their zeal to exploit the situation in Ferguson, Missouri for partisan political gain, Obama and the craven coward Holder succeeded in creating a whole new generation of people in America, both Black and white, who will be raised in an atmosphere of mutual hate and distrust which we are now dealing with today in the United States of America, and by creating another generation of young, impressionable people who will now be raised in the atmosphere of racial hate and distrust fomented by Obama and Holder in Ferguson, Missouri, with the segregated town hall meeting where the craven coward Holder was demonizing white cops in particular and white people generally, the hack Democrat politicians Obama and Holder created a situation of racial disharmony in America that the Democrat Party will be able to exploit for political gain for generations yet to come, as we are witnessing today all across this sick nation of ours, which takes us back to the present and the Times Union editorial which concluded as follows:
Removing the statue need not be the only option on the table.
What if Philip Schuyler were given a companion monument honoring Albany’s mostly forgotten enslaved population?
Might that tell the historical story with more context, better reflecting today’s understanding of Schuyler?
To answer those questions, and others, we urge Ms. Sheehan to pause and invite community input — that is, to launch a conversation.
There’s a lot of work to do.
Debating the Schuyler statue could be a beginning, whether it stays or goes.
end quotes
And since that debate is never going to happen in reality, at least in the Democrat-controlled sanctuary city of Albany, New York because it will challenge the narrative the Democrats are using to keep us divided for political gain for themselves as they make their appeal to the Black folks by demonizing the white folks, thank God we white people have the Cape Charles Mirror as a necessary venue to push that Democrat narrative back to the starting line by focusing the spotlight of history on the role the Black folks played in enslaving themselves.
And going back to the recent rather tepid and gutless editorial entitled “Don’t remove Philip Schuyler statue without community input” by the editors of the Hearst publication the Albany, New York Times Union on July 7, 2020, we find ourselves as American citizens confronted with this followung statement of theirs, to wit:
Ms. Sheehan says she is not trying to erase history, but argues the Schuyler statue must go because it is hurtful to the city’s significant Black population.
end quotes
Given that Kathy Sheehan of Albany is merely a “cat’s paw” for BLACK LIVES MATTER, that statement is probably true on its face, because it is BLACK LIVES MATTER that is trying to erase history, using as their dupe to accomplish their political agenda mayor Kathy Sheehan of the Democrat-controlled sanctuary city of Albany, New York.
Consider for a moment that a “nation,” any nation, including the United States of America, is defined as “a stable community of humans formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.”
If one bothers to consider that definition, for a moment, one is first forced to have to wonder if today, we are a nation at all, given the turmoil and instability that exists in this nation today where we no longer have a common language, especially with the rise of TWITTERESE, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
And then one has to ponder what happens to us as a people when we no longer have a common history.
What are we then?
As to the use of “history” as a political tool or weapon, consider the article “Constructing national history in political discourse: Coherence and contradiction (Moldova, 2001–2009)” by Julien Danero Iglesias
Pages 780-800 | Received 05 Jan 2012, Accepted 12 Oct 2012, Published online: 27 Feb 2013, where we had as follows on that subject, to wit:
Abstract
History is one of the many instruments available for the persuasive construction of a nation.
end quotes
Said another way, it is history that shapes who and what a “nation,” which is always an abstract notion or idea, actually is, something the Marxists among us, which today includes BLACK LIVES MATTER, have known for some long time, as this is not at all a new subject for them.
I would say the majority of people are unaware of this on-going discussion about the role of history in creating the notion of what a nation is or is not largely because it is going on in academic circles where the majority of us are excluded, not included, unless we come out of our “comfort zones” to look around us at what is going on in the world we inhabit, as opposed to what is going on with TWITTER and the Kardashians, or Instagram.
One informative article on the subject is “Identity and Persuasion: How Nations Remember Their Pasts and Make Their Futures” by Consuelo Cruz in World Politics, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Apr., 2000), pp. 275-312,
published by Cambridge University Press, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25054115 , which article shows that the sharp developmental divergence between Costa Rica and Nicaragua can be properly understood only through close analytical scrutiny of the different rhetorical frames, fields of imaginable possibilities, and collective identities that rose to prominence at critical points in these countries’ colonial and postcolonial histories.
A similar article is “The Construction of Europe and the Concept of the Nation-State” by Bernard Bruneteau in Contemporary European History, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Jul., 2000), pp. 245-260, published by Cambridge University Press, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20081745 , where we were informed as follows:
Abstract
The construction of Europe is often teleologically addressed as a result of an unstoppable trend towards federalism.
Another angle on this history gives access to another logic: that of a European kind of nation-state which considers European integration not as an element in its decline, but as a tool to reorganise its power.
This new youth for the old nation-state was linked as much to the historical context of the 1950s-1970s as to the specific rules of policy-making and to the economic regulation focus of the European Community.
end quotes
And then we have the article “Social Construction of Nation—A Theoretical Exploration” by Helen Ting in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics Volume 14, 2008 – Issue 3, Pages 453-482, published online 14 Aug 2008,
https://doi.org/10.1080/13537110802301418 , wherein was stated as follows:
Abstract
In this article, the term “nation” is understood as a mental construct, and the formation of national identity as a dynamic, contentious historical process of social construction.
Using the concept of “figured world of nationhood,” I discuss how the subjective, collective perception of the “objective,” virtual reality of a nation is (re)constituted and negotiated through social practices.
In the same process, actors come to increasingly identify with and commit themselves to this “figured world of nationhood.”
The agency of social actors involved is differentiated according to the respective “social field” of their action.
end quotes
A lot of big words, perhaps, but when boiled down to its essence, it is an apt description for what is going on in this nation of ours right now, as we have Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER in a Newsweek article entitled “BLM Leader: We’ll ‘Burn’ the System Down If U.S. Won’t Give Us What We Want” by Meghan Roos on 6/25/20, telling us, or more properly, warning us, as follows:
A leader of Black Lives Matter’s New York chapter on Wednesday said the movement was prepared to “burn down this system” if the U.S. does not work with participants to enact real change.
“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” said Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, during an interview with Fox News.
end quotes
That is why Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York ordered the statue of Philip Schuyler in front of Albany City Hall to be removed and hidden away somewhere, along with our history that is being erased, because she knew damn well that BLACK LIVES MATTER would burn down her city of they didn’t get what it was they wanted from her, which is her subservience to their Marxist cause.
The Newsweek article continued as follows:
“This country is built upon violence,” Newsome said, pointing to the American Revolution and modern American diplomacy as examples.
end quotes
As to violence during the American Revolution, which was very much a civil war in this country, a well-researched and inf0rmative book on that subject is “The Burning of the Valleys – Daring Raids from Canada Against the New York Frontier in the Fall of 1780” by Gavin K. Watt, as follows:
Overview
In the fifth year of the War of Independence, while the Americans focused on the British thrust against the Carolinas, the Canadian Department waged a decisive campaign against the northern frontier of New York.
Their primary target was the Mohawk River region, known to be the “grainbowl” that fed Washington’s armies.
The Burning of the Valleys details the actions of both sides in this exciting and incredibly effective British campaign.
General Frederick Haldimand of Canada possessed a potent force, formed by the deadly alliance of toughened, embittered Tories, who had abandoned their families and farms in New York and Pennsylvania to join the King’s Provincial regiments in Canada, and the enraged Six Nations Iroquois, whose towns and farmlands had been utterly devastated by Continentals in 1779.
The Governor augmented this highly motivated force with British and German regulars and Canadian Iroquois.
In October, without benefit of modern transportation, communications or navigational aids, four coordinated raids, each thoroughly examined in this book, penetrated deeply into American territory.
The raiders fought skirmishes and battles, took hundreds of prisoners, burned forts, farms, and mills and destroyed one of the finest grain harvests in living memory.
end quotes
Living very near to where those raids took place, as children we learned about that violence first-hand, as in the Cherry Valley Massacre, which was an attack by British and Iroquois forces on a fort and the village of Cherry Valley in central New York on November 11, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War, described as one of the most horrific frontier massacres of the war when a mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Seneca and Mohawks descended on Cherry Valley, whose defenders, despite warnings, were unprepared for the attack.
During the raid, the Seneca in particular targeted non-combatants, and reports state that 30 such individuals were slain, in addition to a number of armed defenders.
So when this Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER starts talking about the use of violence as a political tool or weapon in the context of the American Revolution, where one side was fighting for liberty, while the other side was fighting to maintain a foreign tyranny, is he uttering fighting words to those of us in America who do know and remember our history?
Stay tuned, for through the courtesy and patriotism of the Cape Charles Mirror, more is yet to come on that subject.
Staying with this concept that the term “nation” is understood as a mental construct, and the formation of national identity as a dynamic, contentious historical process of social construction, and history is one of the many instruments available for the persuasive construction of a nation, let us go back for a moment to the article “Constructing national history in political discourse: Coherence and contradiction (Moldova, 2001–2009)” by Julien Danero Iglesias, where we had further on that subject, to wit:
In Moldova, the Party of the Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM), in office from 2001 to 2009, advocated for a Soviet-based version of the Moldovan nation.
This “Moldovanism” boasted of the existence of a “Moldovan People” and was relied upon to justify the independence of the former Romanian province.
Vladimir Voronin, the party’s leader and president of the Republic during this period, promoted this “civic” Moldovan nation and created what seemed to be a coherent and ad hoc construction of an independent Moldovan nation.
This paper focuses on communist political discourse during this eight year period.
Through the use of Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper focuses on the discursive construction of the Moldovan nation.
It is based on Voronin’s official speeches and messages from key occasions such as Independence Day and Victory Day.
This paper demonstrates the varied use of history in these speeches which improves understanding of the process of the construction of a nation.
end quotes
As I have said above, the Marxists have known for some long time the value of history as a political tool, which takes us to this sentence in that same paper, to wit:
This is a reference to a 1990 Soviet movie, based on a Turkish legend according to which a Mankurt is a man who is used as a slave because somebody has made him forget his fatherland, his history, and his language.
end quotes
In the figurative sense, the word “mankurt” is used to refer to a person who has lost touch with his historical, national roots, who has forgotten about his kinship.
In this sense, the word “mankurt” has become a term in common parlance in the old Soviet Union and thus, is a term used in journalism.
Marxists like BLACK LIVES MATTER would be quite familiar with that term and its meaning with respect to political control over a subject people, which would happen to be people with white skin in this nation if BLACK LIVES MATTER can succeed in stripping from us our national identity as a nation of people who once threw off the tyranny of a foreign tyrant king to replace it with a Republican frame of government based on the concept of egalitarianism or the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
In his novel “The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years,” the author Chinghiz Aitmatov, a Soviet and Kyrgyz author who wrote in both Kyrgyz and Russian, draws heavily on the tradition of the mankurts.
The legend is about a Turkmen who defends his homeland from invasion.
He is captured, tortured, and brainwashed into serving his homeland’s conquerors.
He is so completely turned that he kills his mother when she attempts to rescue him from captivity.
So, indeed, it is a very powerful metaphor, the Mankurt, which takes us back to the Albany, New York Times story “Biancolli: As we get rid of Schuyler statue, we need to own his history” by Amy Biancolli on July 7, 2020, to wit:
Philip John Schuyler, Revolutionary War general and senator from New York, has been a piece of Albany’s history for more than a quarter of a millennium.
We’ve been proud to embrace that history.
Schuyler’s ours.
We own him.
And now that the Black Lives Matters protests have sparked fresh reflection on history — now that Mayor Kathy Sheehan has promised to remove the statue — now that the Philip J. Schuyler Achievement Academy has resolved to change its name — now that the lens we train on history is focusing more closely on slavery, Schuyler’s own enslaved servants and the persistent systemic racism borne of same — we can’t disown him.
And we shouldn’t.
Owning him means acknowledging the facts of his life, which the Schuyler Mansion has been doing for years — incorporating the stories of Prince, the general’s longtime butler, and other enslaved people.
end quotes
And it is indeed interesting that with regard to “owning” Philip Schuyler by acknowledging the facts of his life, there is a lengthy, well-researched paper on that subject from the website for the Nw York State Military Museum entitled “Victory…Impossible Without Schuyler’s Direction” by Abigail and Paul Stambach, where we had as follows, to wit:
Two hundred and thirty years ago this summer, one of the most important campaigns of the American Revolution was fought in upstate New York and Vermont.
The action took place at Fort Ticonderoga, Whitehall, Fort Anne, Hubbarton, Fort Stanwix, Bennington and Schuylerville.
The campaign culminated in the American victories at the battles of Saratoga in September and October 1777 when a mighty British army was defeated.
As a result, France with its treasury, army and, more importantly, its naval fleet joined the American cause.
Most historians believe that this French aid resulted in final victory for independence.
The American commander at the time of the climatic Saratoga battles was General Horatio Gates.
Due to a combination of sectionalism amongst the states, class conflict, political intrigue and personal ambition, Gates received credit for the stunning victory.
Major General Philip Schuyler, the architect of the victorious campaign, was condemned as a military incompetent, and possibly even a traitor, despite his acquittal from a court martial in 1778.
In the last 30 years, however, historians such as Don Gerlach, Martin Bush and Richard Ketchum have begun to question the usual beliefs regarding Schuyler’s generalship.
Schuyler’s contributions were vital to the American war effort during the campaign leading up to the critical battles of Saratoga, which took place on September 19 and October 7, 1777.
Although Schuyler was no longer in command when the actual battles took place, nevertheless, his uses of the Fabian tactics of delay and evasion rather than direct confrontation were successful in stalling Burgoyne’s troops as they marched from Canada into northern New York.
Also, Schuyler audaciously split his forces in the face of the enemy’s main onslaught from the north to counter a British feint from the west along the Mohawk River valley.
Without Schuyler’s daring improvisations prior to the Saratoga battles, it is very possible that the campaign of 1777 would have turned out badly for the Americans.
end quotes
What makes that article not only interesting for the detailed look into the life of Philip Schuyler that it provides us with is the fact that the article started out as a term paper by Abigail, who was a senior at Gettysburg College majoring in History, who worked summers as an interpreter at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, NY., while her father, Paul, who enhanced the paper into this article, was the manager of Schuyler Mansion and the Crailo State Historic Site in Rensselaer, NY during the 1970s, which is over 40 years ago now, and is an indication of just how long scholarship on the life of Philip Schuyler has been going on now.
In closing, the article stated that they encouraged the reader to visit these sites to gain an understanding of what men like Philip Schuyler and John Van Rensselaer put at risk with their support of the war for independence.
Forty years later, instead of trying to gain an understanding of what men like Philip Schuyler put at risk with their support of the war for independence, we are instead being taught to revile him because as we have known for well over sixty years that I can attest to, he in fact “owned” slaves, like Prince, his pampered and well-fed butler at the Schuyler Mansion, where he tended to the family and their guests at the Georgian-style manse built in the 1760s for Gen. Philip Schuyler and his wife, Catherine.
Prince became the butler there after issuing a 1776 appeal to “the Honourable Lady Schuyler,” explaining the dire circumstances under his current owner and asking the Schuylers to take him on.
He “has quite lost the use of my limbs with cold for want of Cloaths or Blanket,” he wrote — or perhaps someone else wrote on his behalf.
“I am very willing to go to work for his Excellency the General at any sort of employ or any of the inhabitants in the town for my victuals & Cloaths.”
Of all the slaves in the Schuyler manse, said Heidi Hill, historic site manager at Schuyler and Crailo, “We know the most about Prince.”
Not everything: His age was unknown.
But Prince must have been on in years by the time Angelica Schuyler Church wrote to her mother from London, asking: “How is old Prince?”
“When I don’t see the old man’s name I think he is dead.”
Church’s letter is quoted in a 1911 book by Georgina Schuyler that tracks the mansion’s history from 1762 to 1804.
The author notes: “Prince was an African, a slave.”
“It was reported soon after he became a member of the household that he refused to eat with the other negroes on the ground that he was their superior in rank in Africa.”
“… Soon he was promoted, and he became a trusted and faithful servant.”
Which takes us over to mindless TWITTER, where on June 22, 2020, @AmyBiancolli TWEETED to her multitude of followers as follows:
More back-and-forth emails with this guy.
He’s adamant that enslaved people in NYS, including the servant Prince in the Schuyler Mansion, were well treated, so, you know, that somehow made their enslavement kinda okay?
My response: *He was owned.*
I need to say this??
Really??
end quotes
As was mentioned previously, who she is referring to in there as “this guy” happens to be myself, and it was never my contention that all enslaved persons anywhere, including New York state were well-treated, although the evidence indeed points in that direction if one were to bother to use the wide-open lens of history, as opposed to the tiny peephole employed today by BLACK LIVES MATTER and their medai toadies and sycophants like Amy Biancolli of the Albany Times Union.
As to Prince being owned by the Schuylers, according to the established history that has existed since the 1800s, it was at his specific request that he be their slave.
So, if we are going to “own” the history of Philip Schuyler, then we also, all of us, including Amy Biancolli and BLACK LIVES MATTER, have to own the history of Prince, who was the slave of Philip Schuyler by an act of his own volition.
As to that history of slavery in New York, and the United States of America which we have known about for some long time, in an article entitled “Guest Blog: The Women of Schuyler Mansion” three years ago now on 4/14/2017 written by Danielle Funiciello, a historic interpreter at Schuyler Mansion since 2012 who earned her MA in Public History from the University at Albany in 2013 and has been accepted into the PhD Program in History for Fall 2017, writing her dissertation on Angelica Schuyler Church, we learn as follows, to wit:
Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site has been open to the public since October 17, 1917 and will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this season.
The home was built between 1761 and 1765 by Philip Schuyler of Albany who, after serving in the French and Indian War, went on to become one of four Major Generals who served under George Washington during the American Revolution.
Prominent for his military career, as a businessman, farmer, and politician, Philip was the main focus of the museum when it opened in 1917.
Over the last hundred years, however, the narrative told by historians at the site has expanded to emphasize the roles of Philip’s wife Catharine Van Rensselaer Schuyler, their eight children (five daughters; three sons), and nearly twenty enslaved men, women, and children owned by the Schuylers at their Albany estate.
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So despite the ignorance of Amy Biancolli, it is quite obvious that the history of the slaves at the Schuyler mansion in Albany has never been a secret, nor have they been treated as if they were not human, which has me wondering why people are acting today as if this were a recently unearthed “secret” about Philip Schuyler’s past, when it has been a matter of open knowledge going back to at least 1917, which takes us back to that article, as follows:
Since March was Women’s History Month, I am pleased to set aside Philip Schuyler, and instead bring you the history of the women of Schuyler Mansion – Catharine Schuyler and her five daughters Angelica, Elizabeth, Margaret, Cornelia, and Catharine (henceforth Caty to avoid confusion with her mother).
Some of those names will sound familiar to fans of the Broadway show Hamilton: An American Musical.
The oldest daughters, Angelica, Elizabeth, and Margaret “Peggy” Schuyler, born in 1756, ‘57, and ‘58, feature heavily in the plot because second daughter Elizabeth married Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Secretary of the Treasury, in 1780.
It is largely through Elizabeth’s efforts that so much information exists about Alexander Hamilton, Philip Schuyler, and the rest of the family.
Women were often the family historians of their time, collecting letters and documents.
Elizabeth was particularly tenacious in this role.
Unfortunately, since women’s actions were not considered relevant to the historical narrative (and perhaps due to some degree of modesty from the female collectors), sources by and about women were not always preserved.
Through careful inspection of the documents that remain, however, we can piece together quite a lot about these six women.
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Of relevance to this discussion is the following from that article, to wit:
Schuyler Mansion once had 125 total acres with 80 acres of farmland and a series of back working buildings.
Catharine was often placed in charge of the property in Schuyler’s absence and managed the slaves who worked in the household.
Catharine also acted as an overseer for the unsung women of Schuyler Mansion – the enslaved servants.
The head servant Prince, the enslaved women including Sylvia, Bess and Mary, and the children like Sylvia’s children Tom, Tally-ho, and Hanover, who helped serve within the home, all reported directly to Catharine.
These women did the majority of labor within the home – cooking, cleaning, mending, laundry, acting as nannies when the girls travelled, and perhaps even producing the materials used for these tasks – like rendering soap and dipping candles.
All this was done while raising their own families.
Sources on the enslaved women of the Schuyler household are even sparser, of course, but we tell the stories we have and hope that we will someday know more.
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So, what really is going on here, people?
By erasing Philip Schuyler from our history, as BLACK LIVES MATTER is demanding, how much more of our history gets erased, as well?
And for what purpose?
To turn us into Mankurts, people who are to be used by BLACK LIVES MATTER as their slave after we have been made to forget our history and our language?
Think about it, people, in the context of BLACK LIVES MATTER leader Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, during an interview with Fox News, telling the people of America, “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”
Replace it with what, Hawk?
What are you going to replace our Republic that Philip Schuyler fought for wit?
A tyranny?
A despotism?
A Marxist “worker’s paradise?”
The candid world would like to know.
And going back to this Newsweek article entitled “BLM Leader: We’ll ‘Burn’ the System Down If U.S. Won’t Give Us What We Want” by Meghan Roos on 6/25/20, we have a dude named Hawk Newsome, who has to be one of the stupidest people on the planet today, which is quite and honor, given the stiff competition, warning us as follows, to wit:
A leader of Black Lives Matter’s New York chapter on Wednesday said the movement was prepared to “burn down this system” if the U.S. does not work with participants to enact real change.
“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” said Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, during an interview with Fox News.
“This country is built upon violence,” Newsome said, pointing to the American Revolution and modern American diplomacy as examples.
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And that statement about violence in this country associated with the American Revolution in the context of BLACK LIVES MATTER burning down the “system” in America, said “system” being civilized society based on rule of law, to replace it with something new, brings us back to the Declaration of Independence, where that violence is referenced quite vividly, as follows:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
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Now, I can just imagine the more sensitive among us are screeching at the top of their lungs at that reference in the Declaration of Independence, a historical document that is being written out of our history because it is alleged to be a white supremacist, racist document, to the Indians (Native Americans) as merciless savages, but if one reads history, and really, this is grade school history we are talking about here, because you don’t need a college degree to read and understand the Declaration of Independence, the Native Americans had a particularly brutal form of warfare before and at the time of the American Revolution whose violence this Hawk Newsome is referring to justify the violence of BLACK LIVES MATTER today, as we see by going back to that Newsweek article, as follows:
Several city leaders across the country have begun reviewing the training and policies in place at their local police departments, and a handful of officers accused of using excessive or unnecessary force that resulted in the death of a Black individual have been fired.
From Newsome’s perspective, that kind of progress is at odds with the due process claims government and law enforcement leaders made previously as explanations for why quick change was difficult.
“The moment people start destroying property, now cops can be fired automatically.”
“What is this country rewarding?”
“What behavior is it listening to?”
“Obviously not marching,” Newsome said.
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And talk about understatement – what the country is rewarding is BLACK LIVES MATTER taking over and looting and destroying the property of others so they can get their way by extortion and intimidation, which are classic KKK tactics.
And to see the direction this story is taking us as a nation and as a people with that said, let us go back to the Albany Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, where we find ourselves confronted with the following, to wit:
Although (Kathy) Sheehan has been mayor of the city (Albany) since 2014, the recent protests in Albany and across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer prompted her call for the statue’s removal at a time she believes everyone should embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.
While a few leaders of Black Lives Movement groups have promoted violence, or have a history of violence themselves, the mayor said it is time for the nation to embrace that cause.
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Why Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan thinks rational, sane people in this country today are going to embrace a cause that intends to burn our civilized society in this nation down because she has done so remains a mystery at the time of this writing.
And that thought brings us back in time to the American Revolution and British General Burgoyne’s Proclamation at Bouquet River. 23-24 June 1777, while he was on his way south with his huge army to end the Revolution by splitting the colonies.
As our grade school history informed us, while camped at Bouquet River, forty miles north of Fort Ticonderoga (now Willsboro, New York), General John Burgoyne issued a bombastic proclamation intended to rally loyal Americans to his support and dishearten the rebels with threats of attack by his native American allies.
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When this Hawk Newsome gets to running his mouth about having his savages in BLACK LIVES MATTER burn down civilized society here in America unless Hawk Newsome gets what he wants, he actually reminds me very much of Johnny Burgoyne threatening to turn loose his Indians back during the Revolution, and what the threat ended up costing Burgoyne, when that threat stirred up a hornet’s nest, just as the threats of this Hawk Newsome are stirring up a hornet’s nest today, and just as Nat Turner’s rebellion on August 21, 1831 stirred up a hornet’s nest and created a serious backlash against innocent Black folks back then, with his action setting off a massacre of up to 200 black people and a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the education, movement, and assembly of enslaved people.
As was the address of this Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER, the Bouquet River Proclamation was filled with the rhetorical excess for which Burgoyne was already well known and exposed him to ridicule from both sides of the Atlantic.
At about the same time he was threatening to unleash native American warriors against the rebels, he spoke to those allies in an attempt to persuade them to fight humanely.
Burgoyne’s two efforts at military rhetoric display a set of unrealistic assumptions about the character of the struggle, the nature of war on the frontier, and the motives of native Americans that help to explain why his campaign ended in surrender at Saratoga.
Before he further threatens the American people, this Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER should really consider the history of what happened to Burgoyne after he made similar threats, to wit:
After an introductory enumeration of his titles and a general comment on the justice of his cause, his political proclamation read:
To the eyes and ears of the temperate part of the public, and to the breasts of the suffering thousands [of Loyalists] in the Provinces, be the melancholy appeal, whether the present unnatural Rebellion has not been made a foundation for the compleatest system of tyranny that ever God, in his displeasure, suffered, for a time, to be exercised over a froward and stubborn generation….
Animated by these considerations, at the head of troops in the full power of health, discipline and valour, determined to strike where necessary, and anxious to spare where possible, I, by these presents, invite and exhort all persons, in all places where the progress of this army may point, and by the blessing of God I will extend it far, to maintain such a conduct as may justify me in protecting their lands, habitations and families.
The intention of this address is to hold forth security, not depredation to the country.
To those whom spirit and principle may induce to partake [of] the glorious task of redeeming their countrymen from dungeons, and reestablishing the blessings of legal government I offer encouragement and employment….
The domestick, the industrious, the infirm and even the timid inhabitants I am desirous to protect, provided they remain quietly in their houses …, [and do not] directly or indirectly endeavour to obstruct the operations of the King’s troops, or supply or assist those of the enemy.
[Concluding with threats against those who continued in rebellion, he went on to say that] I have but to give stretch to the Indian forces under my direction, and they amount to thousands [400, actually], to overtake the hardened enemies of Great Britain and America … wherever they may lurk.
(Quoted in Commager and Morris, Spirit of ‘Seventy-Six, pp. 547-548)
Burgoyne then addressed an assembly of chiefs and warriors by means of an interpreter on 24 June. Beginning with a why-we-fight exhortation, he then tried to lay down a few simple rules:
Persuaded that your magnanimity of character, joined to your principles of affection to the King, will give me fuller control over your minds than the military rank with which I am invested, I enjoin your most serious attention to the rules which I hereby proclaim for your invariable observation during the campaign….
I positively forbid bloodshed, when you are not opposed in arms.
Aged men, women, children and prisoners must be held sacred from the knife or hatchet, even in the time of actual conflict….
In conformity and indulgence of your customs, which have affixed an idea of honor to such badges of victory, you shall be allowed to take the scalps of the dead when killed by your fire and in fair opposition; but on no account … are they to be taken from the wounded or even dying, and still less pardonable … will it be held to kill men in that condition on purpose….
Base, lurking assassins, incendiaries ravagers and plunderers of the country, to whatever army they may belong, shall be treated with less reserve.
(Commager and Morris, pp. 545-547)
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As I say, when older Americans like myself hear Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER threatening us with his mobs of savages, we immediately think of Burgoyne’s address where he told his savages that in conformity and indulgence of their customs, which have affixed an idea of honor to such badges of victory, they would be allowed to take the scalps of the dead.
As to Burgoyne’s admonition that on no account were scalps to be taken from the wounded or even dying, and still less pardonable would it be held to kill men in that condition on purpose, as the death and scalping of Jane McCrea was to prove, those were empty words, and by uttering those words and turning loose his Indians, Burgoyne indeed stirred up the hornet’s nest that was waiting for him roughly 107 miles to the south at a place called Bemis heights, where he met his defeat and humiliation in what is known today as the Battle of Saratoga where his mighty army was destroyed by those he had set his Indians on to terrorize them to cause their submission.
That is the history I own, anyway, as an American citizen today,
What history does Kathy Sheehan and Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER own?
The history of LA-LA LAND?
Getting back to Burgoyne, after an initial flush of rage, Americans started laughing, and the more literate reached for their goose quills and foolscap, just as I am doing in here today in response to this call by mayor Kathy to embrace a cause to prevent our system being burned down, along with our nation, by BLACK LIVES MATTER.
An anonymous American commented, “General Burgoyne shone forth in all the tinsel splendour of enlightened absurdity” (Montross, p. 198).
In Albany, Kathy Sheehan is doing the exact same thing with her call for us to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER, a group pledged to the destruction of our nuclear families here in the United States of America.
In England, Horace Walpole suggested that “the vaporing Burgoyne,” “might compose a good liturgy for the use of the King’s friends, who … have the same consciousness of Christianity, and … like him can reconcile the scalping knife with the Gospel” (quoted in Nickerson, Turning Point, p. 122).
In the House of Commons, Edmund Burke evoked a picture of the keeper of the royal menagerie turning loose his charges with this admonition: “My gentle lions, my humane bears, my tenderhearted hyenas, go forth!”
“But I exhort you as you are Christians and members of civil society, to take care not to hurt any man, woman or child” (Commager and Morris, p. 544).
In Albany today, were he around, Edmund Burke, who did have a way with words, would be talking in the same manner about Kathy Sheehan turning loose her charges on us with the admonition to not loot and burn and destroy, which we know to be a joke, especially in the face of the threats of Hawk Newsome to burn down our country with us in it.
So where is it that they think their threats are going to take them?
And us, as well.
Stay tuned for further developments, as they say on TV.
So, staying for the moment with the concept of Democrat Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York since 2014, telling the candid world in the Albany, New York Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, that she believes everyone should embrace the Black Lives Matter movement, and that while a few leaders of Black Lives Movement groups have promoted violence, or have a history of violence themselves, she says it is time for the nation to embrace that cause, when Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York told the people of America during an interview with Fox News that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” do we actually know what it is he wants?
And that answer is yes, we do, to wit:
“I just want Black liberation and Black sovereignty — by any means necessary,” he said.
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So, okay, people, there it is, plain and simple, staring us right in the face – if we do not want Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER to burn down our country with us in it, we have to give Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER Black liberation and Black sovereignty.
And when Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York tells us it is time for the nation to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER, there is what she is asking us to embrace – Black liberation and Black sovereignty.
But liberation from whom?
Who is Hawk Newsome demanding liberation from?
Who is it that is holding him as a hostage that he needs liberation from?
How are we to liberate him when we have no idea where it is he is presently imprisoned?
How can we plan an operation to liberate him, if we don’t know how many people are holding him hostage?
As Jimmy Carter proved with that fiasco in the desert on April 24, 1980, when an ill-fated military operation to rescue the 52 American hostages held in Tehran ended with eight U.S. servicemen dead and no hostages rescued, these are all important details that cannot be overlooked without courting yet another disaster like that one.
And then there was that raid on Son Tay Prison to rescue American prisoners of war, just 23 miles west of Hanoi, the capital, which was also a failure.
So do we need to do that again as we try to liberate Hawk Newsome?
And what about his demand for Black sovereignty?
What exactly is Black sovereignty?
And why should we embrace that idea, as mayor Kathy of Albany is asking us to do to keep BLACK LIVES MATTER from burning down her city in front of her eyes?
Is Black sovereignty the same as Black nationalism, a type of nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity?
Is that what Hawk Newsome is demanding us to accept, a belief that Black people are a race separate and apart from the human race to which all other people regardless of skin color belong?
If so, I have to say as an older American that what Hawk Newsome is spinning there and Kathy Sheehan of Albany is asking us to embrace reminds me all too much of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party ascribing to the concept of the “Master Race,” which ideology held that the Aryan Races, people of Northern European descent, represented a superior and “pure race,” with an ideal member of the Master Race being referred to as an “Übermensch”, or literally, a “Super Man,” while aAny person not of pure, Aryan descent was considered an “Untermensch”, or literally, a “Sub-Human”.
It sounds very much as if Hawk Newsome has spun that around so that now, instead of Hitler’s Aryans being the Master Race, now it is Black folks like Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER, while the rest of us are relegated to the status of “sub-humans,” because we do not have skin that is Black, and thus, we cannot be members of the Master Race which will have sovereignty over us.
That is what Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan is asking us to embrace – the status of a sub-human in America under the domination of Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Thinking it over, I’m going to take a pass, because I refuse to be considered a sub-human by anyone simply because I do not have Black skin.
What say you, America?
Which side will you be on?
So, yes, people, Black superiority!
It does exist!
It is real!
And that is exactly what Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York is asking the people of America to embrace – a concept that has everyone who does not have Black skin being inferior to people with Black skin, which superior race the Democrat mayor thinks should have sovereignty, supreme power or authority, over all of the rest of us.
Consider the learned academic dissertation on the subject entitled “The White Image in the Black Mind: African American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925” by Waldo E. Martin, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 23, Number 3, Summer 2000, pp. 1153-1155, 10.1353/cal.2000.0151, to wit:
Important 19th-century black thinker James W.C. Pennington once described the dialectical struggle between master and slave as “a war of minds.”
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So when Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER demands “Black sovereignty — by any means necessary,” including burning down civilized society in America, there is where his thinking is coming from, along with Kathy Sheehan’s – he is mired in a thought pattern with its roots in the 1800’s, when the rest of us are comfortably over into a new century and a new millennium, one in which the Black folks in America haven’t been slaves since Juneteenth, although in the homeland of Africa, slavery still does exist as an institution, because over there, it is ingrained in their culture, while we in America have broken free of the institution and moved on into a world of egalitarianism, the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities, except for people like Hawk Newsome and Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany, who in their minds believe that all people without Black skin are less equal than people with Black skin, who they believe is a superior race to the rest of us who are not Black, which is quite un-American of the pair of them.
As to James William Charles Pennington (c. 1807 – October 22, 1870), he was an African-American orator, minister, writer, and abolitionist active in Brooklyn, New York who escaped at the age of 19 from slavery in western Maryland and reached New York.
After working in Brooklyn and gaining some education, he was admitted to Yale University as its first black student.
So much for the shabby treatment of the Black folks in America, n’est-ce pas?
Getting back to James William Charles Pennington, he completed his studies and was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church, later also serving in Presbyterian churches for congregations in Hartford, Connecticut; and New York.
After the Civil War, he served congregations in Natchez, Mississippi; Portland, Maine; and Jacksonville, Florida.
In the Antebellum period, Pennington was an abolitionist, and among the American delegates to the Second World Conference on Slavery in London.
In 1850, he happened to be in Scotland when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the US Congress.
As it increased the risk for fugitive slaves in the North, Pennington stayed in the British Isles while friends worked to buy his freedom from his former master and then from his estate.
Pennington raised funds for the abolition movement on the public lecture circuit in England.
Pennington wrote and published what is considered the first history of blacks in the United States, “The Origin and History of the Colored People” (1841).
His memoir, “The Fugitive Blacksmith,” was first published in 1849 in London.
So certainly, he would be considered an authority on the institution of slavery in America if anyone would be.
But he has been dead now since 1870, along with the institution of slavery he knew so much about, having experienced it first-hand, versus reading about it in a book the way Hawk Newsome and Kathy Sheehan did.
So what relevance do his views, which I don’t dispute, have today, where slavery does not exist in the United States of America, except in the fertile and fevered imaginations of Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER and Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York?
Getting back to that dissertation, we have:
As intellectual historian Mia Bay demonstrates in this well-written analysis of black attitudes towards whites, a vital battle within that war was the increasingly vigorous assertion of black humanity by free and ex-slave blacks, as well as by the slaves themselves.
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Today, 150 years give or take, after the Civil War ended and the slaves were set free, i.e., “liberated,” nobody who is sane and rational denies the Black folks their humanity.
So why are Hawk Newsome and Kathy Sheehan channeling a thought pattern from the 1800s in 21st century America?
Are they lost in space?
Are they lost in time?
Or are they just fools?
Getting back to the dissertation:
Waged within an increasingly white supremacist society, this critical intellectual offensive probed and also valorized blackness while simultaneously analyzing whiteness (see, for example, Winthrop Jordan’s study of the earlier period in “White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro,” 1550-1812 [1968] and George M. Frederickson’s “The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914” [1972]).
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So we can see that what is going on today with this concept of Black supremacy Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany is asking the people of America to embrace is not a new concept, at all, which takes us back to the dissertation, as follows:
In her highly readable analysis of this offensive, Bay insightfully maps the various, complicated, and at times ironic and paradoxical ways in which ordinary as well as elite blacks thought about whites.
Speaking with moral authority and the insight of experience, ordinary and often unlettered blacks forged compelling critiques of the racist foundations of white power and privilege.
Educated blacks, however, used a rhetorical admixture of 19th-century environmentalism joined with racial determinism and early 20th-century cultural relativism joined with liberal environmentalism — all reigning intellectual discourses of the time — in their compelling critiques.
The work’s trajectory proceeds from roughly the antebellum emergence of militant black abolitionism through the DuBoisian and Garveyite cultural politics of the early 20th century.
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Garveyite cultural politics of the early 20th century is a reference to the politics of race of Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940) a Black political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa.
Ideologically a black nationalist, his ideas which envisioned a unified Africa as a one-party state, governed by himself, that would enact laws to ensure black racial purity, and his black separatist views — he collaborated with white racists such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to advance their shared interest in racial separatism — came to be known as Garveyism.
While he was in the U.S., ideas about the need for black racial purity became central to Garvey’s thought.
Garvey argued that mixed-race people would be bred out of existence; and the hostility to black people not deemed of “pure” African blood was an idea that Garvey shared with Edward Wilmot Blyden (3 August 1832 – 7 February 1912), a Black educator, writer, diplomat, and politician noted as one of the first people to articulate a notion of “African Personality” and the uniqueness of the “African race,” stating in one of his books as follows:
‘Let us do away with the sentiment of Race.”
“Let us do away with our African personality and be lost, if possible, in another Race.”
“This is as wise or as philosophical as to say, let us do away with gravitation, with heat and cold and sunshine and rain.”
“Of course, the Race in which these persons would be absorbed is the dominant race, before which, in cringing self-surrender and ignoble self-suppression they lie in prostrate admiration.”
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Yes, people some pretty incredible stuff, this talk of “dominant races,” along with “cringing self-surrender and ignoble self-suppression.”
While we normal people in America, get up in the morning, thinking of today and tomarrow, and what we have to do today to make it a better world, people like Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER and Democrat Kathy Sheehan are mired in the thinking of a by-gone age that pits people with Black skin against the rest of the population as to who really is the “dominant” race.
How we who do not share those beliefs about a MASTER RACE are supposed to have any kind of rational conversation with either Kathy Sheehan or Hawk Newsome or BLACK LIVES MATTER eludes me, quite truthfully.
In “Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, author Edmund David Cronon believed that Garvey exhibited “antipathy and distrust for any but the darkest-skinned Negroes,” and he also rallied against Eurocentric beauty standards among blacks, seeing it as an impediment to black self-respect.
Garvey also accused W.E.B. Du Bois and NAACP of promoting “amalgamation or general miscegenation,” and he rallied against what he called the “race destroying doctrine” of those African-Americans calling for racial integration in the U.S., instead maintaining that his UNIA stood for “the pride and purity of race.” to wit:
“We believe that the white race should uphold its racial pride and perpetuate itself, and that the black race should do likewise.”
“We believe that there is room enough in the world for the various race groups to grow and develop by themselves without seeking to destroy the Creator’s plan by the constant introduction of mongrel types.”
Garvey argued that the European-American population of the U.S. would never tolerate the social integration proposed by activists like DuBois and that campaigns for such integration would only encourage anti-black riots and lynchings, and he openly conceded that the U.S. was a white man’s country and thus did not think African-Americans could expect equality within it.
He thus opposed attempts at social and economic integration of the races within the country.
Garvey’s belief in racial separatism, the migration of African-Americans to Africa, and opposition to miscegenation all endeared him to the KKK, who supported many of the same policies.
Garvey was willing to collaborate with U.S. white supremacists to achieve his aims and they were willing to work with him because his approach effectively acknowledged the idea that the U.S. should be a country exclusively for white people and would abandon campaigns for advanced rights for African-Americans within the U.S.
Garvey called for black collaboration with the white separatist Anglo-Saxon Clubs, stating that they shared the same ideals: “the purification of the races, their autonomous separation and the unbridled freedom of self-development and self-expression.”
“Those who are against this are enemies of both races, and rebels against morality, nature and God.”
Is that the philosophy Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York is asking us to embrace?
Stay tuned, more is yet to come!
And staying with this scholarly article entitled “The White Image in the Black Mind: African American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925” by Waldo E. Martin, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 23, Number 3, Summer 2000, pp. 1153-1155, 10.1353/cal.2000.0151, in the light of Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York being quoted in the Albany, New York Times Union story Getting back to the Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020 as saying “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” and “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” we have as follows, to wit:
Throughout, Bay cogently argues that together the imperatives of the long-term black freedom struggle in concert with the exigencies of the particular historical moment (i.e., Emancipation) have fundamentally shaped the contours and development of African-American thinking about whites.
end quotes
Now, with respect to mayor Kathy telling the people of America that she thinks it’s very important that we, the American people recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences, although she is incapable to explaining what they are, or what they might be, and that we, the American people have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union, which is mindless drivel, given there is no “civic discourse” on the consequences of what she calls “400 years of white supremacy,” given that there weren’t 400 years of white supremacy here in what is now the United States of America, which nation has only existed for 244 years, if one takes the Declaration of Independence as the birth of the nation, I think it is very important to consider how it is that the Black folks in America see the white folks, and why that is, and as we can see from this scholarly article, their views of white people harken back to them being slaves, something they seem incapable along with mayor Kathy of getting over, which takes us back to that article as follows:
“Black ideas about white people,” Bay thus perceptively concludes, “are inextricably entwined in this history of African-American intellectual resistance to racism.”
This is a most significant work in both African-American and American intellectual history.
As historians have given exclusive attention to white attitudes toward blacks, they have neglected the critical historical issue of black attitudes toward whites.
Similarly, while historians have given considerable attention to elite black discourses, there is scant historical work for this period on what cultural historian Lawrence W. Levine has characterized as “Afro-American Folk Thought” (Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom [1977]).
This study offers path-breaking and thoughtful discussions of vernacular as well as elite black interrogations of whiteness.
As a result, this work provides a much-needed, refreshing, and illuminating black narrative on whites and racism to the historical literature on American racial thought.
What emerges is a well-conceived three-part argument. “White People in Black Ethnology,” the first section, plots how a series of key black thinkers used concurrent racial science (and pseudoscience) and humanistic authorities — especially religious ones — to dissect white racial character.
These thinkers concluded that in crucial ways blacks were superior to whites, notably morally and spiritually.
Next, “The Racial Thought of the Slaves” offers a highly original and probing portrait of slave and ex-slave ideas about race.
Several features of this section stand out.
In an especially illuminating discussion, Bay observes that whereas elite black thinkers “often attributed the status and wealth of white people to the rapacious, acquisitive character of the Anglo-Saxon race, unlettered African-Americans confronted the power and privilege of the white world as a mysterious and troubling phenomenon” (165).
Equally revealing is the ubiquity of the animal husbandry trope — the dehumanizing equation of blacks with work animals — as a vernacular representation of the master-slave relationship in particular and of white-black race relations in general.
end quotes
And there we see the theme of Black superiority being pushed by Kathy Sheehan of Albany again being expressed – in her world view, using pseudoscience and humanistic authorities — especially religious ones — to dissect white racial character. Blacks are superior to whites, morally and spiritually, end of story.
So much then for stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history, which takes us to another scholarly article entitled “The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American Literature (review)” by Charles Scruggs, American Literature, Duke University Press Volume 73, Number 3, September 2001, pp. 663-664, where we learn a bit more about our “character” as follows:
“The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American Literature.” By Jane Davis. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2000. xx, 161 pp. $55.00.
Reversing the title of George M. Fredrickson’s well-known historical study (The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914), Davis analyzes the “images” of whiteness in black-authored texts.
end quotes
For those unfamiliar with her or her works, Jane Davis is a Black woman listed as an Associate Professor,
Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy at Tennessee State University with a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature; Humanities from Stanford University.
Before coming to TSU, Dr. Davis was a Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow for two years at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University and an Associate Professor of English at Iowa State University.
Her interests include: American Literature with an emphasis on African American Literature; Multicultural American Literature; Modern Literature; Film; Environmental Literature; South African Literature.
She has also been a participant in NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes at University of Chicago (Topic: Culture and Communication in Early Islamic Communities); UC Berkeley (Topic: Race and Slavery in American Literature); Indiana University (Topic: Post-Colonial Literature); CUNY Grad Center (Topic: Emergent/Multicultural American Literature); College of New Jersey (Topic: African American Literature)
As to George M. Fredrickson (July 16, 1934 – February 25, 2008), he was an American author, activist, historian, and professor who was the Edgar E. Robinson Emeritus Professor of History at Stanford University who in his college years was one of the many white college students who traveled to the South in support of the civil rights movement for African Americans and joined the March on Washington in 1963.
In his work “Racism: A Short History,” Frederickson captured his conception “of racial inequality and racism, as ideology and practice in Western societies over the past half millennium,” and how it is “based on the three primary components: ideas of racial purity, cultural essentialism or particularism, and a ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ mindset in which difference and power (and powerlessness) structured racist regimes.”
In the foreword of “Racism: A Short History” republished in 2015, Stanford historian Albert M. Camarillo discusses the courses that he co-wrote and taught with Fredrickson.
They developed a survey course called “Race and Ethnicity in the American Experience” that “examined how ideologies of race were manifested in societal institutions and policies that shaped the socioeconomic statues of communities of color in North America from the colonial era (British and Spanish) through the twentieth century.”
So there is where Kathy Sheehan of Albany is drawing her history from, which takes us back to the review of the work of Janet Davis above, to wit:
She focuses upon four types of white characters—“the overt white supremacist,” “the hypocrite,” “the good-hearted weakling,” and “the liberal” — who, she argues, are dissected with withering contempt by fiction writers such as James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison, and by nonfiction writers such as Ellis Cose (The Rage of a Privileged Class) and bell hooks (Killing Rage).
end quotes
So there we have it, people, our character as white people has been thoroughly dissected with each of us falling into one of those four categories that have been determined for us by Black authors such as James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987), an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist whose essays, as collected in “Notes of a Native Son” (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western society, most notably in regard to the mid-twentieth-century United States.
Baldwin’s novels, short stories, and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures.
Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine in his works to create intricate narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth-century America, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement.
As such, Baldwin’s protagonists are often, but not exclusively, African American, while gay and bisexual men also frequently feature as protagonists in his literature.
These characters often face internal and external obstacles in their search for social and self-acceptance.
Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin’s second novel, “Giovanni’s Room,” written in 1956, well before the Gay Liberation Movement.
Which takes us back to the essential existential question of how exactly do we white folks have this “civic discourse” when the Black folks have already written us off as being morally and spiritually inferior to the Black folks?
Stay tuned, more is yet to come!
And what about what is called the “nuclear family” here in the United States of America?
Why does Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York want to do away with the “nuclear family” here in the United States of America, because by asking all of the American people to “embrace” BLACK LIVES MATTER, that is exactly what she is advocating for – an end to the nuclear family as we presently know it.
For those unfamiliar with the term, the “nuclear family” is considered to be a couple and their dependent children, regarded as a basic social unit.
And here, immediately, will come a charge of RACISM, because the “nuclear family” is considered “racist.”
Consider, for example, the New York Post story “The agenda of Black Lives Matter is far different from the slogan” by Mike Gonzalez and Andrew Olivastro on July 1, 2020, where we were informed as follows on that subject, to wit:
Many see the slogan Black Lives Matter as a plea to secure the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans, especially historically wronged African Americans.
They add the BLM hashtag to their social-media profiles, carry BLM signs at protests and make financial donations.
Tragically, when they do donate, they are likely to bankroll a number of radical organizations, founded by committed Marxists whose goals aren’t to make the American Dream a reality for everyone — but to transform America completely.
Visit the Black Lives Matter website, and the first frame you get is a large crowd with fists raised and the slogan “Now We Transform.”
Read the list of demands, and you get a sense of how deep a transformation they seek.
One proclaims: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”
end quotes
Disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement?
What is that supposed to mean, and why is Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan asking the people of America to embrace disrupting anything, starting with our families, and here, I am speaking as a grandfather of a stable nuclear family that I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to see “disrupted” by Kathy Sheehan and her BLACK LIVES MATTER agenda, where the word “disrupt” carries its everyday meaning of “interrupt (an event, activity, or process) by causing a disturbance or problem,” with such synonyms as throw into confusion, throw into disorder, throw into disarray, cause confusion/turmoil in, play havoc with, derange, turn upside-down, make a mess of, disturb, disorder, disorganize, disarrange, interfere with, upset, unsettle, convulse, interrupt, suspend, discontinue, obstruct, impede, hamper, or drastically alter or destroy the structure of (something)?
And that question takes us back to the New York Post article, as follows:
The group’s radical Marxist agenda would supplant the basic building block of society — the family — with the state and destroy the economic system that has lifted more people from poverty than any other.
Black lives, and all lives, would be harmed.
end quotes
And how do we know it is a Marxist agenda that Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany is pushing?
Going back to that article one more time, we have:
In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers.”
“We are trained Marxists.”
end quotes
Given that they claim they are, who are we to dispute that?
So why is Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan pushing a Marxist agenda that wants to destroy our family structures here in the United States of America to replace them with something out of the old Soviet Union, other than the fact that BLACK LIVES MATTER will burn down her city if she doesn’t?
On that same subject, the Tennessee Star had an article entitled “Black Lives Matter Plan to Disrupt the Nuclear Family and ‘Dismantle Cisgender Privilege’ Gains Support in Corporate America” by Debra Heine on June 29, 2020, wherein was stated as follows:
The CEO of Brooks Brothers sent out a letter to customers last week expressing support of the objectives of the Black Lives Matter movement, which include a plan to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family,” and “dismantle cisgender privilege.”
Brooks Brothers, the oldest men’s clothier in the United States, is headquartered on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, and owned by the Italian billionaire Claudio Del Vecchio.
end quotes
WOW!
So we can see here that mayor Kathy is flying in style here, advocating for what the billionaires in Italy are advocating for, which must make her right and the rest of us wrong, which takes us back to that story as follows:
Del Vecchio goes on to say: “Our values at Brooks Brother align with and our morals support the objectives of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The following principles and objectives are included in the Black Lives Matter movement’s official declaration:
We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.
We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer‐affirming network.
When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).
end quotes
And wow all over again, as we see what it is that mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York is asking the people of America to embrace, with is the end of society as we presently know it.
A lot to think about, isn’t it?
And while we productive, law-abiding people of America who are products of stable nuclear families, and who ourselves have productive, law-abiding, stable nuclear families continue to ponder Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan’s open and overt advocacy for BLACK LIVES MATTER, where she is advocating for an end to the nuclear family and the dismantling of cisgender privilege while fostering a queer‐affirming network, that in the light of her oath of office wherein she solemnly swore that she would support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that she would faithfully discharge the duties of the office of mayor of Albany, a special place filled with people who care, who are kind to one another and love her great city, according to the best of her ability, which in fact might in reality be quite limited, and as we ponder all these big words like cisgender and heteronormative that are coming at us from BLACK LIVES MATTER through Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan, who is their advocate and who believes we all should embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER as she has done, in spite of her oath of office, let’s go back for a moment to the City of Albany, NY Charter Article III, “Executive Branch,” Section 301, Mayor’s Powers and Duties Generally, where we have as follows:
a) There shall be a Mayor who shall be the chief executive officer and administrative head of the City government.
(b) The Mayor shall be responsible for the day to day administration and supervision of all City affairs, executive officers, and departments, offices and agencies of the City, except offices headed by an elected official.
(d) The Mayor shall take care that the laws of the state, together with all local laws, resolutions and ordinances of the Common Council are faithfully executed and enforced within the City.
i) The Mayor shall have such other powers and duties as are provided by state law, this Charter, local law, ordinance or resolution.
end quotes
So, hmmmm.
Given all of that, which in these times we are now finding ourselves in, where mayors are becoming literal tin-pot dictators in America, may mean nothing at all despite it being our American heritage she is tossing in the trash can as she truckles to BLACK LIVES MATTER, we productive, law-abiding people of America who are products of stable nuclear families, and who ourselves have productive, law-abiding, stable nuclear families have to ask ourselves the essential existential question of why mayor Kathy is advocating for the disruption of our productive, law-abiding stable nuclear families.
What on earth kind of agenda is that, other than something someone mentally ill or criminally insane would come up with?
Consider financial stability, for example.
It has been found or suggested that nuclear families are more financially stable than joint families and can provide children with better opportunities in life.
Since it’s a smaller family, the expenses are considerably lesser, which means better financial stability.
So why does Kathy Sheehan of Albany want to disrupt that?
Is her mind twisted or warped in some devious way that she hates civilized society in America and wants to destroy it out of spite?
Consider that it is held by those who would be considered experts on the subject that the nuclear family plays an important role in the development of personality of individuals because children are more close to the parents and can have more free and frank discussion about their problems with parents which helps for the better development of their personality.
In fact, on February 11, 2020, the Institute for Family Studies, P.O. Box 1502 Charlottesville, VA 22902 michael@ifstudies.org 516.242.6812 had a series of articles on the subject including one entitled “Yes, David Brooks, the Nuclear Family is the Worst Family Form—Except for All Others” by Kay Hymowitz, @KayHymowitz, the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal who writes extensively on childhood, family issues, poverty, and cultural change in America, wherein was posited as follows on that subject, to wit:
For the past several years, David Brooks has made the decline of American communities and social isolation central themes in his writing.
For those of us who share his alarm over these trends, he has been an indispensable voice.
So, it comes as a surprise to read “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake,” Brooks’ new essay featuring a flawed history that negates both its argument and its solutions for a society that is, as I fully agree, “too detached, disconnected, and distrustful.”
Like other skeptics of the nuclear family, Brooks describes the arrangement as a recent historical aberration replacing the more long-standing extended family.
In his telling, by stranding parents and children on their own little island without the organic safety net of grandparents, that shift attenuated social connectedness and support.
Wealthy people may be able to afford to purchase child care, prepared foods, and many other services once freely provided by grandparents and other relatives.
But for the rest, he argues, the nuclear family has been “a disaster.”
His solution is “forged families” made up of self-selecting individuals instead of blood and marriage kin.
However, the premise of this narrative can’t survive the cold light of history.
Scholars now pretty much agree that the nuclear family household has been the “dominant form” in Western Europe and the United States since the dawn of the industrial era.
In fact, demographic realities made extended families an impossibility.
Brooks, citing family historian Steven Ruggles, states that “(u)ntil 1850, three-quarters of Americans older than 65 lived with their kids and grandkids.”
That’s true, but it slides past the fact that there simply weren’t many 65-year-olds above ground; U.S. life expectancy stood at only 40 in 1850.
In data published in a 1994 paper, Ruggles estimated that as of 1880, more than two-thirds of white couples, the large majority with children, lived in independent households.
The anomaly was the extended family, not the nuclear family.
What about the black family, often held up by nuclear family doubters as a resilient alternative to the nuclear “white family?”
True, after the Civil War, extended families made up a larger percentage of black households than they did white.
But those families were still the minority: Ruggles estimates that extended families were only 22.5% of black households in 1880; the number climbed till about 1940, but it never went above 26 percent.
Far more prevalent among blacks was the nuclear model: 57% of black households were married couples, the large majority of them with children.
As demographics changed, the dominant family form did not.
Rising life expectancy and falling fertility starting in the latter half of the 19th century meant more surviving grandparents available for a smaller number of couple households.
But the share of households with extended families stayed more or less the same.
It seems that people preferred the privacy and independence of the nuclear form — despite all its disadvantages.
Brooks doesn’t talk about marriage in “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake,” yet the inextinguishable human urge for pair bonding (and its associated childbearing) helps explain both the persistence of the nuclear family and the problems that plague its alternative communal forms.
Because humans can’t seem to resist pairing up, couples who break up will likely look for new partners.
The partner who moves out will be mourned and newcomers will have to be incorporated into the pre-existing family, whether it is nuclear, extended, or forged.
Children will lose crucial daily rituals and contacts — generally with their fathers — and adult networks will be short-circuited.
Jealousy, anger, hurt, inconvenient attractions, doubts, and changing allegiances will be no easier to weather in forged, chosen families than they are in nuclear families.
In fact, it’s a good guess it would be harder.
Some of the alternative arrangements Brooks describes, such as in-law apartments and common areas in otherwise conventional apartment buildings, still depend on a solid base of nuclear families.
Others, like co-living buildings, are temporary arrangements for singles until the right partner comes along.
The more radical commune-like experiments he cites have a dismal historical record for some of the reasons I described above.
Fruitlands, a “con-sociate” farm founded by the father of Little Women author, Louisa May Alcott, in the mid 19th century lasted seven months before succumbing to food shortages and infighting between and within the two primary families.
The kibbutzim of the early Zionists were deliberately designed to free children from the hothouse of the bourgeois family, but this also died a slow death as parents demanded the domestic intimacy they were supposed to forswear.
Children who were raised on the kibbutz left in droves.
The large majority of the back-to-the-land communes of the 1970s were equally unsuccessful.
The disaster confronting less prosperous Americans is not the nuclear family, but the erosion of socio-economic conditions that help them sustain lasting pair bonds.
To do something about the disconnection and instability infecting American life, we need to start there.
end quotes
Hmmmmm, again.
Can Kathy Sheehan of Albany rationally and logically dispute that with facts of her own that would justify her advocacy of the dismantling of our stable, productive, law-abiding nuclear families that we do not want her disrupting?
Stay tuned, more is yet to come.
So, if Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York has taken an oath to support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that she would faithfully discharge the duties of the office of mayor of Albany according to the best of her ability, and the City of Albany, NY Charter Article III, “Executive Branch,” Section 301, defines her powers and duties as (d) The Mayor shall take care that the laws of the state, together with all local laws, resolutions and ordinances of the Common Council are faithfully executed and enforced within the City, then why is the mayor advocating for a Marxist faction in America that is dedicated dismantling what they are calling “cisgender privilege,” whatever that might in fact be, beyond a concept in the minds of these Marxists mayor Kathy is advocating for?
And what does it portend for society here in the United States of America when we have the Democrat mayor of Albany, New York asking us to “foster a queer‐affirming network?”
When the mayor of the capital city of New York is advocating for the fostering of a “queer‐affirming network,” where to foster is to nurture something?
For what exact purpose to society is mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York dedicating herself to nurturing a “queer‐affirming network,” where “affirming” is taken to mean offer emotional support or encouragement?
And what exactly is this “queer‐affirming network” that mayor Kathy wants us to nurture?
And what of her advocacy for freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual, when we have known since at least the time the Bible was written by the Roman Emperor Constantine in or around 325 A.D., which is 1,695 years ago that there are among us many people who are not “heterosexual?”
What purpose is the mayor trying to accomplish here in 2020, given that five years ago in 2015, the United States Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges ruled that state-level bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional and that the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and the refusal to recognize those marriages performed in other jurisdictions violates the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and that “(U)nder the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right,” in essence, recognizing the LGBT community as fundamental to American life, which decision was based on the fundamental right to marry and the equality that must be afforded gay Americans?
Given that since at least 2015, if not much earlier, given the time it takes for matters to reach and be decided by the Supreme Court, the alleged and supposed “tight grip” of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual, has been peeled loose by the Supreme Court, which decision is “law of the land” binding on mayor Kathy and the BLACK LIVES MATTER crowd, what exactly is the issue today?
Does mayor Kathy not know of this decision?
But how can that be, given that the City of Albany in New York State already prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression, and New York State’s 2011 Marriage Equality Act also gives same-sex couples the right to marry in New York State and provides them the same rights, responsibilities, and benefits under State and local law enjoyed by opposite-sex couples so that same-sex couples can reap state tax benefits, state and municipal employee benefits, insurance benefits from state-licensed insurance agencies, health care benefits, expanded property rights, parental rights and a wide array of legal rights, and same-sex couples are now able to file joint state tax returns, take spousal deductions on state income taxes, exclude employer contributions for health insurance, exempt property from the state estate tax, and receive other tax benefits previously available only to opposite-sex couples?
Questions for our times, indeed.
But will answers ever be forthcoming from mayor Kathy?
Stay tuned for further developments.
And this brings us back around to Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York being quoted in the Albany, New York Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020 as saying “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” which again raises the question of exactly what history she is talking about that requires us today to have to say “out loud” (to whom I must wonder) Black Lives Matter, which is kind of a joke when one watches Ray Rice, a Black man, punching his fiancee, a Black woman, in the face in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo1UMV1GATQ
There is Black Lives Matter for you in technicolor.
And that is history, as well.
So according to mayor Kathy, white people have to say Black Lives Matter, which of course they do, given that ALL lives matter to white people, but to the Black folks like Ray Rice, and mayor Kathy ought to be aware of this with all the Black Folks in her city of Albany, a special place filled with people who care, who are kind to one another and love her great city, which is horse****, shooting each other, to the Black folks, Black lives aren’t worth spit.
What is “our history?”
Does it include, say, the Grand Settlement or Great Peace of Montreal was negotiated between the Iroquois Confederacy and New France on 4 August 1701, which treaty ended over one hundred years of warfare between the Iroquois, Hurons, Algonquians, English, and the French?
When mayor Kathy tells the Albany, New York Times Union that “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” is she talking about the Great Peace of Montreal on 4 August 1701 which ended over one hundred years of warfare between the Iroquois and the Hurons, who were all but wiped from the face of the earth by the Iroquois?
And that thought takes us back to Hearst Publishing’s own star political correspondent Amy Biancolli of the Albany, New York Times Union and her TWEET to the TWITTERATI on TWITTER on June 23, 2020, where she TWEETED as follows:
For too many people, History = What They Learned As Kids.
And that’s it.
No room for the voices of people of color.
end quotes
I truthfully have no idea what she learned about history as a “kid,” and frankly, based on her ign0rance today, it wasn’t much, but what I learned as a kid included that Great Peace, and the more than one hundred years of warfare that led up to it, and I learned as a kid that during the American Revolutionary War, Walter Butler, a New York Loyalist, led a mixed force of Indians and Loyalists to the area of Cherry Valley in what became the state of New York, resulting in the Cherry Valley Massacre, during which more than 40 people were killed and many were captured, which massacre was followed by a second raid in 1780, leading to the temporary abandonment of the village.
And that in turn brings us back to Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York telling the people of America during an interview with Fox News that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” and “This country is built upon violence,” pointing to the American Revolution as an example.
And as a child, a “kid” in the parlance of Amy Biancolli, I learned a lot about that violence, which takes us to a speech we learned as children by Colonel Isaac Barré (6 November 1726 – 20 July 1802), an Irish soldier and politician who earned distinction serving with the British Army during the Seven Years’ War and later became a prominent Member of Parliament, known for coining the term “Sons of Liberty” in reference to American colonists who opposed the British government’s policies, who with strong feelings of indignation in his countenance and expression, replied to Mr . Townsend in the following eloquent and laconic manner in March of 1765, to wit:
“THEY (the colonists in this country who rebelled against the King of England in 1776) PLANTED BY YOUR CARE?”
“No.”
“Your oppressions planted them in America.”
“They fled from your tyranny into a then uncultivated land , where they were exposed to all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and among others, to the cruel ties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and, I will take upon me to say, the most terrible, that ever inhabited any part of God’s earth.”
“And yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty , they met all these hardships with pleasure, when they compared them with those they suffered in their own country, from men who should have been their friends.”
“THEY NOURISHED BY YOUR INDULGENCE?”
“They grew up by your neglect of them.”
“As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them in one department and in another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them.”
” Men whose behavior on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them.”
“Men promoted to the highest seats of justice, some of whom to my knowledge were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.”
“THEY PROTECTED BY YOUR ARMS?”
“They have nobly taken up arms in your defence.”
“They have exerted a valor amidst their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument.”
“And believe – remember I this day tell you so, that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first, will accompany them still: but prudence forbids me to explain myself further.”
“God knows I do not at this time speak from any motives of party heat; what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart.”
“However superior to me in general knowledge and experience the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of Americans than most of you , having seen and been conversant in that country.”
“The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has, but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them, if ever they should be violated: but the subject is too delicate – I will say no more.”
end quotes
So, when Kathy Sheehan of the Democrat-controlled sanctuary city of Albany, New York tells the Albany Times Union that “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences,” is she channeling Colonel Isaac Barré (6 November 1726 – 20 July 1802), an Irish soldier and politician who earned distinction serving with the British Army who during the French and Indian War here in what became the United States of America served under his patron General James Wolfe on the Rochefort expedition of 1757, fighting at both Louisbourg (1758) and Quebec (1759), and who in the Quebec expedition, in which Wolfe was killed, was severely wounded by a bullet in the cheek, losing the use of his right eye?
Is that some of the violence this Hawk Newsome of Black Lives Matter is talking about?
Stay tuned for more on that subject of violence and burning is yet to come.
So, yes, people, burning down America and committing acts of violence against the people of America as this Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, was threatening, as if he were a modern incarnation of British General Johnny Burgoyne, who made similar threats to the American people in 1777, threatening the people of America with during an interview with Fox News telling us that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” and “This country is built upon violence,” pointing to the American Revolution as an example, which takes us back to the American Revolution for a real candid look at some of what this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER, and by extension, Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, are threatening us with today, to wit:
On the 17th of June 1775, the battle of Breed’s, now called Bunker’s hill, was fought
An intrenchment was thrown up on the preceding evening, by a body of one thousand men under Colonel Prescot.
The intention was to have fortified Bunker’s hill, but the officers sent to throw up the redoubt, found that less tenable, and built the fortification on Breed’ s hill.
Ground was broken at twelve o’clock at night, and by daylight a redoubt had been thrown up eight rods square.
In the morning, a reinforcement of five hundred men was sent to their assistance.
Although a heavy cannonading was kept up from daylight by the British shipping, the Americans, encouraged by General Putnam and other brave officers, did not cease their labors.
About noon, General Gage, astonished at the boldness of the American militia, sent a body of three thousand regulars, under Generals Howe and Pigot, to storm the works.
Generals Clinton and Burgoyne took a station in Boston, where they had a commanding view of the hill.
The towers of the churches — the roofs of the houses, indeed every eminence in and around Boston, was covered with anxious spectators, many of whom had dear relatives exposed to the known danger, awaiting with almost breathless anxiety the deadly conflict.
Many, and heart-felt were the prayers then offered up, for the success of the patriot band.
About the time the action commenced, General Warren, who was president of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, joined the Americans on the hill as a volunteer.
The British troops, having landed from their boats, marched to attack the works.
The Americans, reserving their fire until the white of the eye was visible, then opened a most destructive one, dealing death on every hand.
Indeed, rank after rank was cut down, like grass before the mower.
The enemy wavered , and soon retreated in disorder down the hill.
Then might doubtless have been heard a stifled murmur of applause, among the eye witnesses in Boston, who believed their countrymen fighting a just cause.
And then too, might have been seen the lip of the British officer and rank Tory, compressed with anger and mortification.
While this attack was in progress, the firebrand of the licensed destroyer, by the diabolical order of Gen. Gage, was communicated to the neighboring village of Charlestown, containing some six hundred buildings, and the whole in a short time were reduced to ashes; depriving about two thousand inhabitants of a shelter, and destroying property amounting to more than half a million of dollars.
The British officers with much difficulty again rallied their troops, and led them a second time to the attack.
They were allowed to approach even nearer than before; when the Americans, having witnessed the conflagration of Charlestown, themselves burning to revenge the houseless mother and orphan, sent the messenger of death among their ranks.
The carnage became a second time too great for the bravery of the soldier – the ranks were broken, and the enemy again retreated, some even taking refuge in the boats.
When the British troops wavered a second time, Clinton, vexed at their want of success, hastened to their assistance with a reinforcement.
On his arrival, the men were again rallied, and compelled by the officers, who marched in their rear with drawn swords, to renew the attack.
At this period of the contest, the ammunition of the Americans failed, and the enemy entered the redoubt.
Few of the former had bayonets, yet for a while they continued the unequal contest with clubbed muskets, but were finally overpowered .
The American loss in numbers was inconsiderable until the enemy scaled the works.
They were forced to retreat over Charlestown Neck , a narrow isthmus which was raked by an incessant fire from several floating batteries.
The British loss in this, which was the first regular fought battle in the Revolution, was, in killed and wounded, one thousand and fifty-four, including many officers, among whom was Major Pitcairn of Lexington memory.
The American loss in killed and wounded, was four hundred and fifty-three; and among the former was the talented , the kind-hearted and zealous patriot, Gen. Warren who received a musket bullet through the head.
Now, is that some of the violence and burning that this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER, and by extension, Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, are threatening us with today, as if there are no consequences from those threats?
Sticking with the burning this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER, and by extension, Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, are threatening us with today, the British, in 1775, burnt Stonington in Connecticut, Bristol in Rhode Island, and Falmouth in Massachusetts.
And Lord Dunmore, the Royal governor of Virginia, had for some time been arming the slaves who Amy Biancolli of the Albany, New York Times Union TWEETED to the TWITTERATI on TWITTER on June 23, 2020 “For too many people, History = What they Learned As Kids and that’s it – NO room for the voices of people of color,” which is a very ignorant statement as anyone who learned this history in the 7th grade knows, and instigating them to imbrue their hands in the blood of their masters; and on the first of January, 1776, he burnt Norfolk, Virginia.
Is mayor Kathy, the ROYAL mayor of Albany, New York instigating the BLACK LIVES MATTER crowd today to imbrue their hands in the blood of white people in America today?
And that thought takes us back to the 7th grade and the following extract from a letter from Col. Peter Gansevoort (July 17, 1749 – July 2, 1812), a Colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, to Col. Goosen Van Schaick (September 5, 1736 – July 4, 1789), a Continental Army officer during the American Revolutionary War, dated Fort Schuyler (Fort Stanwix), July 28th, 1777, which we learned about as “kids,” as Amy Biancolli in her ignorance calls us, to wit:
“Dear Sir – Yesterday, at 3 o ‘ clock in the afternoon, our garrison was alarmed with the firing of four guns.”
“A party of men was instantly dispatched to the place where the guns were fired, which was in the edge of the woods, about five hundred yards from the fort; but they were too late.”
“The villains were fled, after having shot three girls who were out picking raspberries, two of whom were lying scalped and tomahawked; one dead and the other expiring, who died in about half an hour after she was brought home.”
“The third had two balls through her shoulder, but made out to make her escape.”
“Her wounds are not thought dangerous: by the best discoveries we have made, there were four Indians who perpetrated these murders.“
“I had four men with arms just passed that place, but these mercenaries of Britain come not to fight, but to lie in wait to murder; and it is equally the same to them, if they can get a scalp, whether it is from a soldier or an innocent babe.”
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That is the history that I learned as a “kid,” and I hear this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER, and by extension, Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, threatening us with violence and burning today, that is the wide-open lens that I am looking through, which takes us back to that 7th grade history lesson that Kathy Sheehan and Amy Biancolli and this Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER apparently missed, to wit:
In the course of 1777, Lieutenant General William Tryon (8 June 1729 – 27 January 1788), a British Army general and official who served as the 39th governor of New York from 1771 to 1777, became almost a savage – sending out parties to burn buildings and wantonly destroy the property of many inoffensive colonists.
When remonstrated with by Gen. Parsons, he declared that had he more authority, he would burn every committeeman’s house within his reach, and expressed a willingness to give twenty silver dollars for every acting committee man who should be delivered to the King’ s troops.
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Is that some of the violence and burning this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER, and by extension, Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, are threatening us with today, as if there are no consequences arising from those threats?
Does Kathy Sheehan of Albany somehow believe she is a modern incarnation of Governor Tryon?
Stay tuned to this same station for further developments in the breaking news story!
And staying with the violence and burning this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER, and by extension, Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, are threatening us with today, as if there are no consequences arising from those threats, and going back for the moment to Hearst Publishing’s own star political correspondent Amy Biancolli of the Albany, New York Times Union and her TWEET to the TWITTERATI on TWITTER on June 23, 2020 that “For too many people, History = What They Learned As Kids and that’s it; no room for the voices of people of color,” by taking a look at the actual history taught to us as children, we can see just how ridiculous her comment about “no room for the voices of people of color” really is, to wit:
From the History of Schoharie County: And Border Wars of New York; Containing Also a Sketch of the Causes which Led to the American Revolution” written in 1845 by Jeptha Root Simms (December 31, 1807 – May 31, 1883), an American historian best known for chronicling the settlement of upstate New York, to wit:
Scene: the Schoharie Valley during the American Revolution in the year 1780:
Nothing more was heard of the enemy until Sunday night the 21st day of May 1780, when Sir John Johnson, at the head of about five hundred troops, British, Indians and Tories, entered the Johnstown settlements from the expected northern route.
The objects of the invasion doubtless were the recovery of property concealed on his leaving the country, the murder of certain whig partizans, the plunder of their dwellings, and the capture of several individuals as prisoners intending, by the execution of part of the enterprize, to terrify his former neighbors.
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Focus on that phrase “terrify his former neighbors” for a moment as we consider this thinly-veiled threat by Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York during an interview with Fox News that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”
Getting back to the narrative, which is American history as it actually happened, not some sanitized version that makes the Native Americans seem like the victims of the white folks, which is the politically correct way of viewing history today through a very tine lens, we have:
About midnight the destructives (Indians and Tories) arrived in the north east part of the town, from which several of the Tories had disappeared the day before, to meet and conduct their kindred spirits to the dwellings of their patriotic neighbors: for when Johnson was censured for the murder of those men, he replied that “their Tory neighbors and not himself were blameable for those acts.”
A party of the enemy proceeded directly to the house of Lodowick Putman, an honest Dutchman, livingtwo miles and a half from the court house.
Putman had three sons and two daughters.
On the night the enemy broke into his house, two of his sons were fortunately gone sparking a few miles distant.
Old Mr. Putman, who was a whig of the times, and his son Aaron who was at home, were taken from their beds, murdered, and scalped.
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Now, this is the history that I grew up with as a child, regardless of what this Amy Biancolli didn’t learn in the 7th grade, and the reason we children, or “kids” as Amy Biancolli calls us, learned this history was so that we could appreciate why it is that we make every effort, unlike Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, to live in peace with each other, because when we don’t, this is what it looks like in full technicolor, which takes us back to that narrative, as follows:
While some of the enemy were at Putman’s, another party approached the dwelling of Stevens , and forcing the doors and windows, entered it from different directions at the same instant.
Poor Stevens was also dragged from his bed, and compelled to leave his house.
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When this Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, threatens us as he did during an interview with Fox News telling us that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” referring to violence during the american Revolution, thi8s is exactly where his threatening words lead us older Americans, which takes us back to the history of that violence, as follows:
A few rods from the house Stevens was murdered, scalped and hung upon the garden fence.
After the enemy had left the dwelling, Mrs . Stevens looked out to see if she could discover any one about the premises.
She had supposed her husband taken by them into captivity; but seeing in the uncertain starlight the alınost naked form of a man leaning upon the fence, she readily imagined it to be that of her husband.
In a tremulous voice she several times called “Amasa! Amasa!” but receiving no answer she ran to the fence.
God only knows what her mental agony was on arriving there and finding her husband stiffening in death.
Dividing his forces, Col. Johnson sent part of them, mostly Indians and Tories, to Tribes’ Hill under the direction, as believed, of Henry and William Bowen, two brothers who had formerly lived in that vicinity and removed with the Johnsons to Canada.
These destructives were to fall upon the Mohawk river settlements at the Hill, and proceed up its flats, while Johnson led the remainder in person by a western route to Caughnawaga, the appointed place for them to unite.
The Bowens led their followers through Albany Bush, a Tory settlement in the eastern part of the town, where , of course, no one was molested, and directed their steps to the dwelling of Capt. Garret Putman, a noted whig.
Putman, who had a son named Victor, also a whig, had been ordered to Fort Hunter but a few days before, and had removed his family thither, renting his house to William Gault, an old English gardener who had resided in Cherry Valley before its destruction, and Thomas Plateau, also an Englishman.
Without knowing that the Putman house had changed occupants, the enemy surrounded it, forced an entrance, and tomahawked and scalped its inmates.
The house was then pillaged and set on fire, and its plunderers knew not until next day, that they had obtained the scalps of two tories.
In the morning, Gault, who was near eighty years old, was discovered alive outside the dwelling, and was taken across the river to Fort Hunter, where his wounds were properly drest , but he soon after died.
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When this Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York threatens the people of America during an interview with Fox News telling us that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” these are the meories of past burnings and violence that he invokes, which again takes us back to the narrative, to wit:
After the murder of Gault and Plateau , the enemy proceeded up the river to the dwelling of Capt. Henry Hansen, which stood where John Fisher now resides.
On reaching the dwelling of Hansen, who was an American captain, the enemy forced an entrance and taking him from his bed they murdered and scalped him.
Proceeding west along the river , the enemy next halted at the dwelling of Barney Hansen, which stood where Benj. R . Jenkins now lives.
Hansen , who chanced to be from home, bad a son about ten years of age, who was then going to school at Fort Hunter.
On Saturday evening preceding the invasion, Peter, a son of Cornelius Putman of Cadaughrity, about the same age as young Hansen, went home with the latter, crossing the river in a boat to tarry with him over Sunday.
The lads slept in a bunk, which, on retiring to rest on Sunday night, was drawn before the outside door; and the first intimation the family had of the enemy’s proximity was their heavy blows npon the door with an axe just before daylight, sending the splinter’s upon the boys’ bed, causing them to bury their heads beneath the bedding .
An entrance was quickly forced , and the house plundered.
About twenty of the enemy first arrived at the old Fisher place, and attempted to force an entrance by cutting in the door, but being fired upon from a window by the intrepid inmates, they retreated round a corner of the house, where they were less exposed.
The main body of the enemy, nearly three hundred in number, arrived soon after and joined in the attack.
At this period the sisters escaped from the cellar kitchen , and fled to the woods not far distant.
Mrs . Fisher, about to follow her daughters from the house, was stricken down at the door by a blow on the head from the butt of a musket, and left without being scalped.
The brothers returned the fire of their assailants for a while with spirit, but getting out of ammunition their castle was no longer tenable; and Harman, jumping from a back window, attempted to escape by flight.
In the act of leaping a garden fence a few rods from the house, he was shot, and there killed and scalped.
As the enemy ascended the stairs, Col. Fisher discharged a pistol he held in his hand, and calling for quarters, threw it behind him in token of submission.
An Indian, running up, struck him a blow on the head with a tomahawk, which brought him to the floor.
He fell upon his face, and the Indian took two crown scalps from his head, which no doubt entitled him to a double reward, then giving him a gash in the back of the neck, he turned him and attempted to cut his throat, which was only prevented by his cravat, the knife penetrating just through the skin.
His brother, Capt. Fisher, as the enemy ascended the stairs, retreated to one corner of the room in which was a quantity of peas, that he might there repel his assailants.
An Indian, seeing him armed with a sword, hurled a tomahawk at his head, which brought him down.
He was then killed outright, scalped as he lay upon the grain, and there left.
Leaving the progress of the destructives for a time, let us follow the fortunes of Col. Fisher.
After the enemy had left, his consciousness returned, and as soon as strength would allow, he ascertained that his brother John was dead.
From a window he discovered that the house was on fire, which no doubt quickened his exertions.
Descending, he found his mother near the door, faint from the blow dealt upon her head, and too weak to render him any assistance.
With no little effort the colonel succeeded in removing the body of his brother out of the house, and then assisted his mother, who was seated in a chair, the bottom of which had al ready caught fire, to a place of safety; and having carried out a bed, he laid down upon it, at a little distance from the house, in a state of exhaustion.
end quotes
And here enters the narrative a “person of color,” to wit:
Tom, a black slave, belonging to Adam Zielie, was the first neighbor to arrive at Fisher’s.
He enquired of the colonel what he should do for him?
Fisher could not speak, but signified by signs his desire for water.
Tom ran down to the Dadenoscara, a brook running through a ravine a little distance east of the house, and filling his old hat, the only substitute for a vessel at hand, he soon returned with it; a drink of which restored the wounded patriot to consciousness and speech.
His neighbor, Joseph Clement, arrived at Fisher’s while the colonel lay upon the bed, and on being asked by Tom Zielie what they should do for him, unblushingly replied in Low Dutch, “ Laat de vervlukten rabble starven!”
Let the cursed rebel die!
Tom, who possessed a feeling heart, was not to be suaded from his Samaritan kindness, by the icy coldness of his Tory neighbor, and instantly set about relieving the suffering man’s condition.
Uriah Bowen arrived about the time Tom returned with the water, and assisted in removing the dead and wounded farther from the burning building.
Col. Fisher directed Tom to harness a span of colts, then in a pasture near, (which, as the morning was very foggy, had escaped the notice of the enemy) before a wagon , and take him to the river at David Putman’s.
The colts were soon harnessed, when the bodies of the murdered brothers, and those of Col. Fisher and his mother, were put into the wagon, (the two latter upon a bed) and it moved forward.
The noise of the wagon was heard by the girls, who came from their concealment to learn the fate of the family, and join the mournful group.
When the wagon arrived near the bank of the river, several Tories were present, who refused to assist in carrying the Fishers down the bank to a canoe , whereupon Tom took the colts by their heads, and led them down the bank; and what was then considered remarkable, they went as steadily as old horses, although never before harnessed.
The family were taken into a boat and carried across the river to Ephraim Wemple’s, where every attention was paid them.
When a person is scalped, the skin falls upon the face so as to disfigure the countenance; but on its being drawn up on the crown of the head, the face resumes its natural look; such was the case with Col. Fisher, as stated by an eye witness.
Seeing the necessity of his having proper medical attention, Col. Fisher’s friends on the south side of the river, sent him forward in the canoe by trusty persons, to Schenectada, where he arrived just at dark the same day of his misfortune.
There he received the medical attendance of Doctors Mead of that place, Stringer, of Albany, and two Surgeons, belonging to the U.S. army.
After he recovered , he gave the faithful negro who had treated him so kindly when suffering under the wounds of the enemy, a valuable horse.
Tom afterwards lived in Schoharie county, where he was much respected for his industrious habits, and where at a good old age he died.
After bis removal to Schoharie , he usually paid Col. Fisher a visit every year, when he received substantial evidence of that patriot’s gratitude.
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So much for treating the colored folks as if they were not human.
As we can see, actual history tells us a far different tale than does TWEETING Amy Biancolli of the Albany, New York Times Union.
Why is that, one must wonder?
And leaving that history of the considerable political violence and bloodshed which existed in this nation at its beginning during the American Revolution, which was 244 years ago, not 400 as Democrat mayor of the violent sanctuary city of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan tries to tell us, which betrays how grossly ignorant she is about basic American history, which “Revolution” was in fact a civil war among the people of America at that time, as we see in this actual 7th grade history above here, for the moment, and coming forward to our times today, 244 years later, and the considerable violence that exists today as we head inexorably towards another civil war, which this time will be a “race” war waged by the “people of color” against those who are white, where before it was Tory versus Whigs, let us go back to June 24, 2020, to the interview on Fox News with Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York by Martha MacCallum on ‘The Story,” during which he informed the people of America that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” to see the direction this story is taking us as a nation and as a people, to wit:
Greater New York Black Lives Matter president Hawk Newsome joined “The Story” Wednesday to discuss the direction of the movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody and the subsequent demonstrations across the country, many of which have sparked destruction and violence.
“You … have said that violence is sometimes necessary in these situations,” host Martha MacCallum told Newsome.
“What exactly is it that you hope to achieve through violence?”
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Now, as we ponder that question about what BLACK LIVES MATTER and this Hawk Newsome hope to achieve through violence today, we have to at the same time ponder what the Tory Sir John Johnson and his “destructives” intended to achieve through violence when they burned, scalped and killed their way through the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys in 1780, the “Year of Burning,” which we schoolchildren learned as kids, it was said afterwards that “everything except the soil is destroyed from Fort Hunter to Stone Arabia”, a twenty-mile (32 km) swath of the Mohawk Valley, given that in the end, despite their violence, or actually as a result of it, they reaped the whirlwind and lost the war, which really is something this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER should be giving some very serious consideration to, before they meet the same fate, which takes us back to the interview as follows:
“Wow, it’s interesting that you would pose that question like that,” Newsome responded, “because this country is built upon violence.”
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And there is an indication of exactly how stupid, ignorant and uninformed this Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER really is, because if he had actually bothered to study American history as it is spelled out in detail above, instead of cultivating his own ignorance, he would discern the fact that THIS country is actually built upon ENDING the violence that was being inflicted on its people by a tyrant king in England named George III, to wit:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
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As to the “merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions,” in the above history, we were treated in technicolor to what that looked like in real life, with the following extract from a letter from Col. Peter Gansevoort (July 17, 1749 – July 2, 1812), a Colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, to Col. Goosen Van Schaick (September 5, 1736 – July 4, 1789), a Continental Army officer during the American Revolutionary War, dated Fort Schuyler (Fort Stanwix), July 28th, 1777, to wit:
“Dear Sir – Yesterday, at 3 o ‘ clock in the afternoon, our garrison was alarmed with the firing of four guns.”
“A party of men was instantly dispatched to the place where the guns were fired, which was in the edge of the woods, about five hundred yards from the fort; but they were too late.”
“The villains were fled, after having shot three girls who were out picking raspberries, two of whom were lying scalped and tomahawked; one dead and the other expiring, who died in about half an hour after she was brought home.”
“The third had two balls through her shoulder, but made out to make her escape.”
“Her wounds are not thought dangerous: by the best discoveries we have made, there were four Indians who perpetrated these murders.“
“I had four men with arms just passed that place, but these mercenaries of Britain come not to fight, but to lie in wait to murder; and it is equally the same to them, if they can get a scalp, whether it is from a soldier or an innocent babe.”
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Which history takes us back to the Fox interview, to wit:
The interview took a turn after MacCallum read a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. and asked Newsome if he agreed with it.
“Let us be dissatisfied,” King told the Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention in 1967, “until that day when nobody will shout, ‘White power!’, when nobody will shout, ‘Black power!’, but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.'”
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And let me interject here as an older American who has seen real violence, the kind of violence that would have this tough-talking Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER peeing in his pants if he were actually confronted with it face-to-face as I was as a twice-wounded an infantryman in LBJ’s war of liberation in VEET NAM, which racist Democrat LBJ called a “A raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country,” that I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. King in that statement above, which is why I am stepping out of my own personal comfort zone to face this Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER head on when they talk about burning down the country I was born in, raised a law-abiding, peace-loving, stable nuclear family in, and fought and bled to protect, which takes us back to Fox, to wit:
“I love the Lord and my Lord and savior,” Newsome responded to MacCallum’s prompt.
“Jesus Christ is the most famous black radical revolutionary in history.”
“And he was treated just like Dr. King.”
“He was arrested on occasion and he was also crucified or assassinated.”
“This is what happens to black activists.”
“We are killed by the government.”
At the conclusion of the interview, Newsome told MacCallum, “I just want black liberation and black sovereignty, by any means necessary.”
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Just as Sir John Johnson and his “destructives” who burned the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys in 1780 wanted English sovereignty under the tyrant George III in England by any means necessary, which included “everything except the soil is destroyed from Fort Hunter to Stone Arabia”, a twenty-mile (32 km) swath of the Mohawk Valley.
Which declaration of war on the people of America by Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER takes us back to the Albany Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, where we find ourselves confronted with the following, to wit:
Although (Kathy) Sheehan has been mayor of the city (Albany) since 2014, the recent protests in Albany and across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer prompted her call for the statue’s removal at a time she believes everyone should embrace the Black Lives Matter movement.
While a few leaders of Black Lives Movement groups have promoted violence, or have a history of violence themselves, the mayor said it is time for the nation to embrace that cause.
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Why is Kathy Sheehan asking us to embrace violence against us by BLACK LIVES MATTER when at the same time we are seeing such headlines in the Albany, New York Times Union as “As shootings rise, young offenders in Albany ‘run ragged’ – Albany joins other cities across NY seeing surge in gun violence, much of it caused by teenagers” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 12, 2020, and “Albany nears 100 people being hit by bullets in 2020 – Four people shot Saturday night in continuing plague of violence” by Massarah Mikati on Aug. 9, 2020, where we were treated to the following:
ALBANY — It was just before 8 p.m. Saturday when the sound of gunshots split the air in West Hill at least 20 times in a row.
Four people were shot.
One of them, an 18-year-old, died.
Saturday’s shooting, which Albany police say was a drive-by with more than one shooter in the vehicle, brings the city’s total number of gunshot victims this year to 91.
The victim is the 11th person to be killed in Albany so far in 2020, as part of a wave of violence and gun incidents that have hit the city.
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Why does mayor Sheehan of Albany, a Democrat, think sane and rational law-abiding citizens of the United States of America would want to “embrace” any of that?
Is she stupid?
Is she ignorant?
Or is she insane?
Stay tuned for further developments in this breaking story.
And that lawlessness and violence that we find on-going today in Dem0crat-controlled cities today like Kathy Sheehan’s sanctuary city of Albany, New York takes us back once again to this nation’s beginnings and the acts of violence inflicted on the people of America by a tyrant king in England named George III, and these words on the reasons for having a government from the “Dissent to the Massachusetts Convention” by Consider Arms, Malachi Maynard, Samuel Field on April 16, 1788, twelve years after the first Fourth of July, to wit:
Fully convinced, ever since the late revolution, of the necessity of a firm, energetic government, we should have rejoiced in an opportunity to have given our assent to such an one; and should in the present case, most cordially have done it, could we at the same time [have] been happy to have seen the liberties of the people and the rights of mankind properly guarded and secured.
We conceive that the very notion of government carries along with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed.
These propositions being established, we conceive must of necessity produce the following consequence, viz.
That every constitution or system, which does not quadrate with this original design, is not government, but in fact a subversion of it.
end quotes
What a very revolutionary idea that was, people, the very notion of government carrying along with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed.
Think about it in the light of the violence being inflicted on the people of this nation starting in 1775 by the despotic government of a tyrant king in England which included his abdication of Government here, by declaring the people of this nation out of his Protection and waging War against them, and plundering their seas, ravaging their Coasts, burning their towns, and destroying the lives of those people, at the time the Declaration of Independence was written transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny the tyrant king had already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation, exciting, as we see above, domestic insurrections amongst them, while endeavoring to bring on the inhabitants of their frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
So no wonder the people of this nation who had experienced the violence of the American Revolution would see the purpose of government as they did, having experienced its opposite just short years before.
So what are we to think today when we read in the Albany, New York Times Union as “As shootings rise, young offenders in Albany ‘run ragged’ – Albany joins other cities across NY seeing surge in gun violence, much of it caused by teenagers” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 12, 2020, and when we read in the same Times Union that “Albany nears 100 people being hit by bullets in 2020 – Four people shot Saturday night in continuing plague of violence” by Massarah Mikati on Aug. 9, 2020, where we were treated to the following violence and lawlessness in Democrat Kathy Sheehan’s sanctuary city of Albany, New York, as follows:
ALBANY — It was just before 8 p.m. Saturday when the sound of gunshots split the air in West Hill at least 20 times in a row.
Four people were shot.
One of them, an 18-year-old, died.
Saturday’s shooting, which Albany police say was a drive-by with more than one shooter in the vehicle, brings the city’s total number of gunshot victims this year to 91.
The victim is the 11th person to be killed in Albany so far in 2020, as part of a wave of violence and gun incidents that have hit the city.
end quotes
Is that evidence of a system which does not quadrate with the original design of government carrying with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed, which clearly is not happening in Albany, New York under Kathy Sheehan, so it is not government she is offering to the people of Albany, but in fact a subversion of it?
And what are we to think when we read about the Democrat-controlled city of Portland, Oregon under Edward Tevis Wheeler (born August 31, 1962), an American Democratic Party politician who has been the Mayor of Portland, Oregon, since 2017, in THE OREGONIAN story “Portland police declare riot Sunday after small crowd marches on police union” by Staff | The Oregonian on Aug. 10, 2020, where we have the following, to wit:
A crowd of around 200 that marched on a police union building in North Portland on Sunday evening was quickly pushed back and scattered by police in the city’s 74th night of protests.
Police declared the gathering a riot as officers advanced on retreating protesters, some of whom threw objects at police, video from the scene showed.
At one point, a large firework exploded between the groups.
Police responded by firing crowd control munitions.
Police said a mortar injured two officers and cited “direct attacks on officers” in declaring the demonstration a riot.
Sixteen people were arrested, including Black activist Demetria Hester, who leads Mothers United for Black Lives Matter and is a regular presence at Portland protests.
She, like others arrested in the demonstration, faces misdemeanor accusations of disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer.
Demonstrators blocked access at North Lombard Street and Fenwick Avenue using dumpsters and fences dragged into the street from nearby.
At least one dumpster was set on fire.
Late the night before, a small group of demonstrators lit a fire inside the Portland police union building, sparking the riot declaration from police, who ordered everyone to leave the area.
Protesters piled together wooden items from downtown Kenton, such as picnic tables and road barrier signs, to build a large barricade across Denver near Schofield Street.
In the early morning, someone lit part of the barricade on fire, and police advanced again.
The back-and-forth continued until well after 1 a.m.
The focus of the largest nightly protests has turned from the downtown Portland Police headquarters, then the nearby federal courthouse, to roving marches that usually end outside police precincts and facilities throughout the city.
The headquarters of the Portland Police Association, the union for frontline police officers, has also become a target for demonstrators.
On two occasions, including Saturday, someone has broken into the union building and lit a small fire inside.
end quotes
Is that also evidence of a system which does not quadrate with the original design of government carrying with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed, which clearly is not happening in Portland, Oregon under Democrat Ted Wheeler, so it is not government he is offering to the people of Portland, but in fact a subversion of it?
And how about the the Chicago Tribune “Aftermath of looting in downtown Chicago: 13 cops injured, 2 people shot, more than 100 arrests, Mag Mile trashed” by Paige Fry, Jeremy Gorner, Gregory Pratt, Megan Crepeau, Stacy St. Clair and Claire Hao on Aug. 10, 2020, where we have as follows from the Democrat-controlled city of Chicago, Illinois under Democrat Lori Elaine Lightfoot (born August 4, 1962), an American attorney and politician who serves as the 56th mayor of Chicago since 2019, to wit:
Hundreds of people swept through the Magnificent Mile and other parts of downtown Chicago early Monday, smashing windows, looting stores, confronting police and at one point exchanging gunfire with officers, authorities said.
end quotes
How about that for some preservation of property from rapine!
Getting back to that story:
It took police officers roughly four hours to get the downtown back under control, leading to finger pointing across the political spectrum and calls for the Illinois National Guard to once again help quell unrest in the country’s third-largest city.
Downtown Ald. Brian Hopkins, who said he was on Michigan Avenue from midnight to 4 a.m., described a scene in which officers were overwhelmed by looters and apparently did not have much of a plan for restoring order.
He criticized Lightfoot for failing to develop an effective strategy following looting incidents in May and June.
“The real question today is, where was the strategy?”
“What was the decision making at the highest levels?” Hopkins said.
“That means the police superintendent and the mayor, who’s a very hands-on mayor when it comes to these kinds of decisions.”
end quotes
Which brings us back to the central question of whether this is also evidence of a system which does not quadrate with the original design of government carrying with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed, which clearly is not happening in Chicago, Illinois under Democrat Lori Lightfoot, so it is not government she is offering to the people of Chicago, but in fact a subversion of it?
Getting back to that story, we have:
City officials said the seeds for the violent crime spree were sown on social media Sunday afternoon following an officer involved shooting in the Englewood neighborhood.
Officers shot and wounded a 20-year-old man Sunday after he fired shots at them while being chased, authorities said.
The lack of immediate, independent corroboration drew skepticism from several community groups, including Black Lives Matter Chicago.
The group, which planned a protest outside a near South Side police precinct Monday night, blasted Lightfoot for accepting the police version of events and not doing more to institute reforms.
The organization also suggested the man was right to flee authorities, given the department’s history of racism and abusive tactics.
“In a predictable and unfortunate move, she did not take this time to criticize her officers for shooting yet another Black man,” the organization’s statement read.
“Lightfoot instead spent her time attacking ‘looters.’”
“The mayor clearly has not learned anything since May, and she would be wise to understand that the people will keep rising up until the CPD is abolished and our Black communities are fully invested in.”
end quotes
Yes, people, in the lawless city of Chicago, Illinois, let’s abolish the police department as BLACK LIVES MATTER, a Marxist group that uses violence to accomplish its political ends, demands!
Getting back to that story:
More than an hour after the shooting, police and witnesses said a crowd of about 30 people faced off against officers holding a police line near 56th and Aberdeen streets.
During a scuffle, one officer was hit with pepper spray and a second officer suffered a minor shoulder injury.
Two people were arrested and a police car window was shattered by a brick, police added.
A large number of officers cordoned off streets in nearly every direction until the mood of the crowd cooled off.
But by that time, Brown said, messages began appearing on social media encouraging people to head downtown.
The looting and vandalism began shortly after, with people streaming in and out of high-end stores.
Some could be seen throwing merchandise into rental trucks and other large vehicles before driving away.
end quotes
Yes, people, as BLACK LIVES MATTER demands, let us do away with the police so that that can be a nightly occurrence!
Getting back to that story of what our world will look like if the demands to do away with police protection of the innocent by BLACK LIVES MATTER are met, to wit::
“This was not an organized protest,” Brown said.
“Rather this was an incident of pure criminality.”
“This was an act of violence against our police officers and against our city.”
The looting began shortly after midnight as people darted through broken store windows and doors along Michigan Avenue carrying shopping bags full of merchandise.
Cars dropped off more people as the crowd grew.
One woman with shopping bags in her hands fell on the sidewalk as an officer was chasing her.
Another woman appeared to have been pepper-sprayed.
A rock was thrown at a squad car.
At least five guns were recovered, officials said.
The scene was reminiscent of the looting that occurred earlier this summer amid the response to the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Both Lightfoot and Brown implicitly criticized Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, saying there weren’t consequences for looters earlier this summer.
Foxx pushed back with her own news conference a few hours later, denouncing any finger pointing in her direction blaming Monday night’s looting on her response to Floyd unrest.
She encouraged prosecutors to dismiss misdemeanor charges – and felony charges, in certain cases – related to the protests, but her office approved the vast majority of felony arrests brought by the Chicago Police Department, she said.
end quotes
And there is the cure, alright, as far as BLACK LIVES MATTER is concerned – elect to office people who you know beforehand will not enforce the law once elected and sworn is as the case with this Democrat Kimberly M. Foxx (née Anderson; born April 1972) an American politician currently serving as the State’s Attorney for Cook County, Illinois, who according to a Fox News article by Lucas Manfredi on 11 August 2020 has dismissed more than 25,000 felony cases – including murder cases- during her tenure from November 2019, according to an analysis by the Chicago Tribune based on data from the Cook County State’s Attorney office.
Great to be a murderer in Chicago with Democrat Kim Foxx in the prosecutor’s office, but not so great if you are one of their victims.
Getting back to that story of the world BLACK LIVES MATTER us creating for us in this country, we have:
The looting seemed to be centered in Streeterville and North Michigan Avenue, but some looting was reported on State Street in the Loop and on the Near North Side.
By 4 a.m. police appeared to be getting things under control.
But some vandalism continued into the daylight hours, and the CTA suspended train and bus service into downtown during the morning rush, while the Illinois state police blocked off ramps from expressways.
Bridges across the Chicago River were raised, except for the one on LaSalle Street for emergency vehicles.
People were seen running out of a PNC Bank, its windows smashed, at Huron and State streets.
Down the block, other stores, including a Sally Beauty Supply, had been cleaned out by vandals.
Other parts of downtown, including around Grand and Wabash avenues, were littered with trash.
Crowds repeatedly tried to bash in the windows of the Omega watch store at Delaware Place and Michigan Avenue.
“The watch store,” one officer said.
“They’re gonna get it eventually.”
A group of people went in and out through a broken window of the Louis Vuitton store along Walton Place across the street from the Drake Hotel.
A squad car drove by and the group ran away.
But as the car rode off, at least one person tried to go into the shop.
The police returned.
“Go home!” One cop shouted.
“You go home!” Someone shouted, apparently back at the officer.
end quotes
The future is now, people, and isn’t it amazing how much it looks the past!
So, people, when Consider Arms, Malachi Maynard, Samuel Field, all Revolutionary War soldiers, on April 16, 1788, twelve years after the first Fourth of July, penned their “Dissent to the Massachusetts Convention,” stating therein, “(W)e conceive that the very notion of government carries along with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed,” to get a better and fuller picture of what might have motivated them, veterans all, to make that statement about the purpose of government being to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed, let us go back seven more years to about the 1st of November, 1781, when a party of the enemy under Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (March 1743 – November 24, 1807), a Mohawk Indian military and political leader who was closely associated with Great Britain during and after the American Revolution, perhaps the Native American of his generation best known to the Americans and British who met many of the most significant Anglo-American people of the age, including both George Washington and King George III, who during the American Revolutionary War led Mohawk Indians and colonial Loyalists known as “Brant’s Volunteers” against the rebels in the bitter partisan war fought on the New York frontier that I learned about as a child, who was accused by the Americans of committing atrocities and given the name “Monster Brant,” and Capt. Adam Crysler , a former resident of the Schoharie Valley in what was then the English province of New York, entered what was known then as Vrooman’s Land early in the morning, near the residence of Peter Vrooman, a little distance from the Upper Schoharie fort in what is now the Town of Schoharie in New York State.
As that schoolboy history which has subsequently been scrubbed out of the record by those who think it makes the Native Americans seem a touch too savage and violent continues, Isaac Vrooman, father of Peter, had removed his family below the Helleberg some time before, and had at that time visited his son in Schoharie to procure his aid in moving his family back to his old residence in Schoharie.
For those unfamiliar with this early history, which is no longer taught because it is considered far too violent for the children of today, what was then called Helleberg is know the Town of Knox in New York State.
Of historical interest, perhaps, Scoharie was settled by Palatine Refugees 1712 from what is now Germany, and the earliest settlers of what is now Knox were both newer Palatine arrivals who found that the land in the Schoharie Valley was already taken, and early settlers who either could not get clear title to their land, or did not (or could not) pay the price.
At that time, and this is something people today cannot conceive of surrounded by modernity as they are on all sides, the wilderness land to the east in what is Knox could be had for the taking.
Settlement began before 1740.
At that time it was called Helleberg (various spellings).
The settlers were actually squatters, since in the 18th and most of the 19th centuries, Knox was part of the Rensselaerwyck estate.
The head of the Van Rensselaer family was the Patroon who owned all the land on which the tenants in the Hudson Valley lived, and used feudal leases to maintain control of the region.
Before the Revolutionary War, the patroons acted as feudal lords, with the right to make laws.
As to Joseph Brant, the part of the New York frontier where Brant grew up had been settled in the early 18th century by immigrants known as the Palatines, from the Palatine in what is now Germany.
Contrary to all these hysterical cries we hear today about how the white man treated the Native Americans, relations between the Palatines and Mohawks were friendly, with many Mohawk families renting out land to be farmed by the hard-working immigrants, though Mohawk elders complained that their young people were too fond of the beer brewed by the Palatines.
Thus Brant grew up in a multicultural world surrounded by people speaking Mohawk, German, and English, and because he grew up with the Palatines, Scots, and Irish living in his part of Kanienkeh, he was comfortable with aspects of European culture.
Kanienkeh was the traditional homeland of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk), Mohawk language for “Land of the Flint,” which encompassed some nine million acres, on the north being bound by the St. Lawrence River Valley with its eastern border the Richilieu River, Lake Champlain, and Hudson River waterway, while to the south, the natural border was the Mohawk River Valley and to the west, Kanienkeh bordered on the territory of the Oneida Nation of the Iroquois League or Confederacy.
Getting back to that history which used to be taught to children like myself in the State of New York before it was deemed too violent and made the Indians look bad, which is politically uncorrect today in the “Woke” Age we are now in, a few days before the arrival of his father, Peter had removed from a hut he occupied at the Upper Fort in the Schoharie Valley, south of the present town of Schoharie, to his dwelling, which he intended should be his winter quarters, thinking the season so far advanced that the enemy would not reappear that fall.
Peter was a self-taught blacksmith and had a little shop near his house where he usually did his own horse-shoeing.
It was found necessary previous to leaving home to set several shoes and the father rose before daylight, carried a shovel of coals from the house to the shop and made a fire.
As it began to get light, the old gentleman left the shop, as was supposed, to call his son.
On his way two guns were fired at him — the one by the Tory chieftain, and the other by an Indian warrior beside him.
The door of Vrooman’s dwelling was on the side opposite the shop, and the son, already up, hearing the report of the two guns, and rightly conjecturing the cause, sprang out of his house and ran towards the fort a few hundred yards distant.
He had gone but a short distance from his house when he was discovered fired upon, and hotly pursued by several Indians, but reached the fort in safety.
The wife of the younger Vrooman, on hearing the guns, ran up stairs, and from a chamber window saw an Indian in the act of tearing off the scalp of the elder Vrooman, who was then on his bands and knees, bellowing most piteously.
After the scalp was torn off, the Indian, Seth’s Henry, a chief of the Schoharie band of Mohawks, dispatched his victim with a war club, cut his throat, and with the bloody knife added another notch on the club, to the record of the many scalps he had taken in the war; after which he laid it upon the body of the murdered man and left him.
People like myself who learned this history as children remember that this same Schoharie chief left a war-club in the same neighborhood some time before, which recorded a most startling account of his prowess and cruelty; the record was much larger at a later period, making it hardly possible that an equal number of scalps and prisoners were made during the war by any other individual Indian.
That, people, is history as it happened, regardless of what those trying to revise it and scrub it might want us to think, which takes us back to Consider Arms, Malachi Maynard, Samuel Field, all Revolutionary War soldiers, on April 16, 1788, twelve years after the first Fourth of July, penning their “Dissent to the Massachusetts Convention,” stating therein, “(W)e conceive that the very notion of government carries along with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed.”
De we really want Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER to take us back to those times and that violence with their threats to burn down our system if they do not get what they want, which is soverignty here in the United States of America?
A question for our times, indeed!
So, people, staying with this school-boy history of the violence being heaped on the people of what was to become the present-day United States of America, a beleaguered (beset with difficulties) nation very much at war within itself over what form the government for the future is going to be, the present Republican frame or a Marxist Socialist Worker’s Paradise, where it won’t be a good thing to have white skin, or to think all lives matter, when in fact, only Black lives do, all others not Black being of an inferior race not deemed human, by a tyrant king in England called George III, on Saturday the first day of June, 1778, two years after the first Fourth Of July, and in reprisal for it, and ten years before Revolutionary War soldiers Consider Arms, Malachi Maynard, Samuel Field, all Revolutionary War soldiers, on April 16, 1788 penned their “Dissent to the Massachusetts Convention,” stating therein, “(W)e conceive that the very notion of government carries along with it the idea of justice and equity, and that the whole design of instituting government in the world, was to preserve men’s properties from rapine, and their bodies from violence and bloodshed,” the Battle of Cobleskill in the Schoharie Valley of the province of New York was fought.
According to the history of our Revolutionary War period that I learned when young, the Battle of Cobleskill (also known as the Cobleskill massacre) was an American Revolutionary War raid on the frontier settlement of Cobleskill, New York on May 30, 1778 which marked the beginning of a phase in which Loyalists and Iroquois, encouraged and supplied by British authorities in the Province of Quebec, raided and destroyed numerous villages on what was then the United States western frontier of New York and Pennsylvania, and foreveraftermore, changed the history and sealed the fate of what was known as Iroquoia, and the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy who dwelt thereon.
In that battle, well known to us schoolchildren when I was young, a small party of Iroquois entered Cobleskill and drew the local defenders into a trap set by a much larger party of Iroquois and Loyalists under the command of Joseph Brant, who we have previously met in this narrative of the violence inflicted on the people of New York by the Mohawks fighting on the behalf of the tyrant king in England.
After killing a number of the militia and driving off the remainder, Brant’s forces destroyed much of the settlement.
As to what impact that raid was to have on the people of the Iroquois nations, not surprisingly, New York’s defenders retaliated against Brant’s actions against Cobleskill and other communities by destroying Iroquois villages later in the year, and Continental Army forces destroyed more Iroquois villages in the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which of course served to incense the Iroquois to make them fight all that much harder to avenge those losses.
Going to the local history of that battle as told in “The History of Schoharie County: And Border Wars of New York; Containing Also a Sketch of the Causes which Led to the American Revolution” written in 1845 by Jeptha Root Simms (December 31, 1807 – May 31, 1883), an American historian best known for chronicling the settlement of upstate New York, the scene we have before us is this: On arriving at the house from which they had been so artfully drawn into an ambush designedly laid, three of Patrick’s men and two of Brown’s took refuge within it, which providentially favored the escape of their fugitive friends.
Being fired on from the house, the Indians halted to dislodge its inmates, by which the rest of the party gained time sufficient to make good their retreat.
The house was set on fire, and three of its inmates were buried in its ruins.
The continental soldiers, in attempting to make their escape from the burning building, were slain.
One was evidently shot, but the other was supposed to have been taken alive and tortured to death.
The party who first visited the scene of blood after the battle, found this soldier not far from where the house had stood, with his body cut open and his intestines fastened round a tree several feet distant.
The enemy, after the engagement, plundered and burnt all the dwellings in Cobleskill as far down as the churches, except an old log house, formerly occupied by George Warner, which stood near the present residence of his son David.
end quotes
For that, the people of the Iroquois nations were to lose their homeland.
Which takes us back to this colloquy between Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York and FOX TV host by Martha MacCallum on ‘The Story,” to wit:
Greater New York Black Lives Matter president Hawk Newsome joined “The Story” Wednesday to discuss the direction of the movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody and the subsequent demonstrations across the country, many of which have sparked destruction and violence.
“You … have said that violence is sometimes necessary in these situations,” host Martha MacCallum told Newsome.
“What exactly is it that you hope to achieve through violence?”
“Wow, it’s interesting that you would pose that question like that,” Newsome responded, “because this country is built upon violence.”
end quotes
And as was said above, and needs to be said again and again, as BLACK LIVES MATTER escalates its violence as was recently the case in Chicago, where the so-called Miracle Mile was looted, there is an indication of exactly how stupid, ignorant and uninformed this Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER really is, because if he had actually bothered to study American history as it is spelled out in detail above, instead of cultivating his own ignorance, he would discern the fact that THIS country was actually built upon ENDING the violence that was being inflicted on its people by a tyrant king in England named George III, and Hawk, dude, we, the people of America who freed ourselves from tyranny once do not want BLACK LIVES MATTER bringing it back with its attendant violence, which like before, will surely spawn a backlash as was the case with the people of the Iroquois Confederacy back when.
Going back to the violence being inflicted on the people of this nation starting in 1775 by the despotic government of a tyrant king in England which included his abdication of Government here, by declaring the people of this nation out of his Protection and waging War against them, and plundering their seas, ravaging their Coasts, burning their towns, and destroying the lives of those people, at the time the Declaration of Independence was written transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny the tyrant king had already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation, exciting domestic insurrections amongst them, while endeavoring to bring on the inhabitants of their frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, and staying for the moment with the colloquy between Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York and FOX TV host by Martha MacCallum on ‘The Story” on June 24, 2020 where host Martha MacCallum was heard to say, “You … have said that violence is sometimes necessary in these situations, what exactly is it that you hope to achieve through violence?”” and Newsome was heard to respond “Wow, it’s interesting that you would pose that question like that, because this country is built upon violence,” for a further look at that violence he makes reference to, let us for the moment go to a written history of the border war in the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys of provincial New York during the Revolution found at the Schoharie County NYGen Web Site entitled “The Blue-Eyed Indians – The Story of Adam Crysler and His Brothers in the Revolutionary War” by Don Chrysler, 1999, where we have as follows from the perspective of the notorious Tory Adam Crysler, as follows:
“All of the Cryslers prospered and were living peacefully with their neighbors and the red men until the 4th day of July in 1776, when news came that a group in Philadelphia had declared their independence from the Crown.”
end quotes
Ah, yes, people – the fourth day of July in 1776!
How that one date was to change the history of the world, and bring us to where we are now in this divided nation at war with itself within, just as it was in 1776.
Getting back to that history, we have:
“The war was now to reach the Schoharie frontier; it was a time to test men’s souls.”
“How could these Germans, who owed everything they had to the Crown, take up arms against the King?”
end quotes
The Germans in question, of course, were the Palatine Germans who originated in the area of Germany along the Rhine River called the Palatinate, after the title of its ruler, a region that included Nassau, Weilburg and Braunfels.
As history informs us, during the late 1600’s, under the rule of Louis XIV of France, the region had suffered greatly.
The Thirty Years War had concluded in 1648 and it devastated the region.
In 1707 French troops marched through with orders to burn and kill, in an attempt to drive the Spanish out of this area that is now Germany.
At the same time the Palatinate ruler was attempting to force his Protestant subjects into the Church of Rome.
Thus, land agents from England traveled through the area advertising the advantages of settlement in British North America.
After the bitter winter of 1708/9, 13,500 Palatines made the six week passage down the Rhine and its tributaries to Rotterdam, Holland.
Another group had made the trip the year before, being well treated, during which they became British citizens under the Naturalization Act of 1708, passed specifically for their benefit.
Word of their generous treatment encouraged the second group.
This second group did not fare as well.
They camped outside Rotterdam from May of 1709 until October.
They were transported from the Dutch port of Brielle to London, where they were supported by public and private charities and quartered in private homes, warehouses and army tents along the Thames.
They began arriving in May and were still coming in July when the British restricted further immigration, stranding those who were still left behind in Rotterdam.
The refugees overloaded the British facilities in London.
Some, mostly the Catholics, were returned to the Continent, others were sent to Ireland and a few stayed in England.
Although the large camp stirred hostility among the locals, at least one observer described them as “innocent, laborious, peaceful, healthy and ingenuous people, who may be reckoned more a blessing than a burden to any nation where they shall settle.”
The British government had no specific plans for the Palatines until that summer.
The Royal Navy was having trouble acquiring adequate timber, tar and pitch to maintain their wooden ships, since the Swedish government had cut off their main supplier.
The Navy convinced the government to use the Palatines to set up camps in the colonies to provide tar, thereby solving two problems at once and set up a contract with the Palatines requiring them to repay some of the expenses of their own transportation.
After an encampment of several months near London, while the government finished making up its mind exactly what to do with the unexpectedly large numbers of Palatines, arrangements were made to ship them to New York with Governor Hunter who was leaving to take up his new post in that province.
Between December 25 and 29th over 2,800 Palatines were loaded on ten ships in the Thames to be carried to New York to establish tar making camps for the British Navy.
Red tape and shipping delays bedeviled the convoy and they would not leave England until April 10, 1710.
The trip would take six months, the last ship would not arrive in New York harbor until August.
It was a bad trip!
Many died even before they left England, one ship reporting the deaths of eighty children before leaving Portsmouth.
Stormy weather in the Atlantic and crowded conditions made things miserable even for the survivors.
Fifteen percent of the refugees died during the voyage but thirty babies were born to make up for their loss.
The people of New York City did not appreciate their arrival.
Rumored to be laden with disease, they did have typhus, the New York City council protested their arrival.
The population of New York City in 1710 was less than 5,000 and the city could not accommodate 2,500 newcomers.
Therefore the Palatines were encamped in tents in New York harbor on Nutten’s Island, now called Governor’s Island.
They remained in the tent camp until October and another 250 died that first summer.
The British government during the summer had decided to set them up in two camps ninety miles up the Hudson River and in September had purchased 6,000 acres from Robert Livingston’s manor on the east bank for that purpose.
Livingston contracted to provide each person daily with one third of a loaf of bread and a quart of low grade “ship beer.”
Livingston was a friend of the Governor and a fellow Scotsman, and he and the Governor would later be accused of fraud concerning the project.
The government already owned 6,000 acres on the west bank of the river.
The Palatines started to move in early October with 1,300 being sent to the area around the present Germantown (originally called “German Camp” and “East Camp,”) where they were quartered in three villages: Queensbury, Annsbury and Huntertown.
The trip that had taken eighteen months.
Other groups of refugees were sent to Saugerties and Kaatsbaan and 500 widows, old, weak, sick and orphans were left in New York City.
Later groups of Palatines would emigrate to Pennsylvania where they were known as the Pennsylvania Dutch.
The Palatines cleared the ground and built their own huts, which at first lacked fireplaces.
Cooking was done in stone ovens out-of-doors.
They were expected to raise their own food.
As more permanent dwellings could be built of stone and logs, fireplaces, which were so important in winter, were made by attaching a stone chimney to the outside wall.
Kitchen utensils were then acquired.
Rocking chairs were the height of luxury and a prized possession in the colony.
The earliest artificial light came from pitch pine knots and candles were scarce and expensive.
Most settlers were up at dawn and in bed by dark.
Deer skins replaced the clothing provided to the settlers as it wore out.
The Palatines had large families, often numbering close to twenty or more, but mortality was high, as evidenced by the large number of children who died young.
Women married young, often without the services of a preacher, who was usually an infrequent visitor.
The diary of a local settler stated that “here the people lived for a few years without preacher, without government and generally in peace.”
The Palatines brought with them their almost devotional adherence to right and lawfulness.
end quotes
And that brings us back around to Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York being quoted in the Albany, New York Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020 as saying “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” which history is being spelled out in great detail above here, thanks to the Cape Charles Mirror, and her further statements to the Albany, New York Times Union that “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union.”
If we have to recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union, we really ought to know what 400 years of white supremacy she is talking about, because as we can see from this above, what 400 years of white supremacy she is talking about and who were the white people who were supreme is not at all clear, at least if you were a Palatine German, in which case, it clearly was not you.
Going back to the Schoharie County NYGen Web Site and the article “The Blue-Eyed Indians – The Story of Adam Crysler and His Brothers in the Revolutionary War,” the author, Don Chrysler, writing in 1999, some 219 years after the events depicted in the article transpired, wrote in the Preface, as follows:
Adam Crysler and his brothers have stirred the passions of historical writers like few others.
Early writers like Simms and Roscoe have painted them as downright demons in the flesh.
Later American writers had a less critical view.
It should be understood that war is inherently evil and that atrocities were carried out on both sides, not just by the Loyalists.
To those who read these pages who have ancestors that were victims of the Schoharie raids we extend our sincere condolences.
We, too, lost one of the Crysler family.
Our purpose now is to present the Loyalists side of the story through the harrowing adventures of Adam Crysler and his brothers.
Hopefully it will help heal the rift between the descendants of the once friendly neighbors of that idyllic Schoharie community.
end quotes
That should serve as a stark reminder to us all as to how long bad feelings among people can persist as a result of politics and war, which takes us further back as to why it was that I had this history “forced in my face,” in essence, when I was young, one; because it happened near where I was brought up, and two; it was to serve as an object lesson to us young Americas, as to why it is we work hard in this country, or are supposed to work hard, anyway, at getting along with each, because this bloodshed and scalping and plundering is what happens when we don’t, proving the old adage that the fruits of war are a harvest of thorns.
And that brings us back forward in time to Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York being quoted in the Albany, New York Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020 as saying “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” which history would have to include the rift between the descendants of the once friendly neighbors of that idyllic Schoharie community where atrocities during the American Revolution occurred, and her further statements to the Albany, New York Times Union that “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” and the question of if we have to recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union, exactly what 400 years of white supremacy is she talking about, because as we can see from this above, what 400 years of white supremacy she is talking about and who were the white people who were supreme is not at all clear, at least if you were a Palatine German, in which case, it clearly was not you, as we see from the following:
The British were under the impression that the Palatines had contracted for seven years of what amounted to indentured servitude and that they would be employed at making tar until the profits paid for their expenses, transportation and settlement.
They were to receive 40 acres after seven years.
The Palatines had a different impression of their contract, which was explained to them in German back in England.
In May, 1711 there was a rebellion of some four hundred Palatines.
They had formed a secret organization that intended to leave Livingston Manor before their servitude was up.
They met with the Governor and stubbornly demanded their property rights as promised by the Queen, believing that their contract was not the same one explained to them in England.
The Governor delayed making a decision until he was reinforced by a military detachment of 70 from Albany, which disarmed the Palatines and ended the rebellion.
In 1712 the tar making project collapsed, just at the end of the growing season.
Suddenly the Palatines were left to their own scanty resources.
Many elected to stay in the camps.
Two groups moved overland into the Schoharie Valley, then an unsettled wilderness, where they founded eight encampments.
Some of this group moved on to Pennsylvania.
In 1715 another thirty families moved south from the Livingston Manor to found the town of Rhinebeck.
Thus in fifteen years time the original Palatines were widely dispersed in the new land.
Rhinebeck, originally called Ryn Beek and Rein Beek, was founded in 1647 by a settler from the Rhine Valley named Beekman, but the town was not incorporated until 1834.
Many Palatine Germans became naturalized as British citizens, taking advantage of the Naturalization Act of 1715, passed by the British in July of that year.
The Act allowed naturalization for all foreign born inhabitants who would take the oath of Allegiance within nine months.
end quotes
So, if there is any white superiority there, it was the British who were holding the whip hand, and clearly not the Palatine Germans, which takes us to the history of Adam Crysler, a very real person in our American history, which like all history, not just “white” history, has consequences down through time, to wit:
In 1709, Johann Philipp Greisler (39) with his wife, Anna Catharina (39) and two sons, Johann George (8), and Johannes (7) left their home in Guntersblum, Germany to seek a new life in America.
The British Government promised Johann Philipp and Anna Catharina free transportation, forty acres of land, money, clothes, utensils and tools if they would establish a farm in the new colonies.
Adam Crysler was born in 1732 in the little village of West Camp, about 90 miles north of New York City, on the Hudson River.
His Grandfather, Johann Philipp Greisler, and Grandmother, Anna Cathrina Braun Greisler, had settled there when they came from Germany to the Colonies in 1710.
Between 1740 and 1742, Adam’s father, Jeronimus (sometimes spelled Hieronymus), fourth child of Johann Philipp and Anna Cathrina, left the west side of the Hudson and headed for the “promised land of Schoharie,” some forty five miles to the northwest.
In 1742, a large patent of land was purchased by “Vrooman, Swartz and Griesler” (Jeronimus) in the southeastern section of New Dorlach (Seward).
On April 16, 1744, Jeronimus Crysler, William Bouck and Frederick Lawyer purchased 12,000 acres of land from the Indians for 30 pounds.
The property lay southwest of Middleburg along both sides of the Schoharie River.
Jeronimus developed 80 acres on the west side of the river where he built his home at Fultonham, ten miles south of the village of Schoharie.
Here, in the midst of Indian territory, Adam grew up on the banks of Breakabeen Creek where it enters the Schoharie River.
What a great place that was.
The home stood on the south bank of Breakabeen Creek, just above the road that leads north to Middleburg, about five miles away.
Across the road from his house was Crysler’s Hook, a small bend in the Schoharie River.
Near the Hook was Bouck’s Island, developed and owned by the Bouck family.
The Bouck family was related to the Cryslers by the marriage of Jeronimus’ sister, Anna Elizabeth, to William Bouck in 1742 and through the marriage of Adam’s sister, Maria, to Johannes Bouck in 1772.
Jeronimus was deeply indebted to the British crown for rescuing his parents out of Germany and delivering them to the Colonies.
In 1746, when the Crown requested volunteers from the Germans to fight the French in Quebec, Jeronimus was one of the first to enlist.
He was a good soldier and soon became an officer with the rank of Lieutenant.
Adam was about eight when they arrived at Schoharie and was soon found playing with the young warriors in the Indian village near his house.
Historians tell us he became a swift runner and was able to outrun most other white boys.
In the course of time he began dressing like the Indians and in time was inducted into their ranks as the blue-eyed Indian.
Nor was Adam alone.
His younger brothers Philip, John and William also followed in his footsteps and enjoyed an equal fellowship with their red brothers.
In 1750, Adam received the Fultonham property from his father and with the help of his brothers and younger Bouck family members built the gristmill and ran the farm on Breakabeen Creek.
He had a barn with utensils and wagon and raised wheat in his fertile fields.
Before the war he had 14 cattle to graze in his plush meadows and grasslands.
He also had 8 horses, 20 hogs and 5 sheep.
Jeronimus, his father, died in 1751.
On July 10, 1760, Adam married Anna Maria (Hoover) Braun.
Philip, John and William then moved to their father’s property in New Dorlach, 16 miles to the northwest, where they built their homes.
Another brother, Baltus, married Elizabeth Johnson and built a home for his family just south of Middleburg.
end quotes
And there the stage has been set for what is to follow.
In the meantime, focus in on the name New Dorlach for it figures prominently in this narrative of 400 years of white supremacy having consequences, as does all history, including that of Africa,which we are supposed to “own” in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union, as opposed to one being created in this country by dividers among us like Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York and Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER that is as far from perfect as it is possible to be.
And as we continue to ponder the words of Democrat Kathy Sheehan, Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York in the Albany, New York Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020 that “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” and “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” this in the light of the comments of Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER on Fox concerning the use of violence to get their way, let me again say that I had this history “forced in my face,” in essence, when I was young, not only because it happened near where I was brought up, but more importantly, it was supposed to serve as an object lesson to us young American as to why it is we work hard in this country, starting from the time we are in kindergarten, if not before, or are supposed to work hard, anyway, at getting along with each, because this bloodshed and scalping and plundering that we are reading about in here, which is actual history, not some made-up story, is exactly what happens when we don’t and instead revert to being savages, as was the case during the American Revolution, which was in reality a civil war in this country, and again during our Civil War, and again in WWI, and again in WWII, which had just ended when I was being taught these life lessons.
“Be thankful you were born here when you were, instead of in the past, and be thankful you were born here and not in Europe now!”
Which takes us back to New Dorlach, but first a bit more historical background from Chapter 2 of the Schoharie County NYGen Web Site article “The Blue-Eyed Indians – The Story of Adam Crysler and His Brothers in the Revolutionary War” by author Don Chrysler, to wit:
In 1778, the British initiated a number of raids on the Schoharie frontier to disrupt the American cause.
Their goal was to take prisoners, capture horses and cattle, burn homes and especially destroy crops that may have found their way back to the American army.
end quotes
That would perhaps be some of the 400 years of white supremacy by the British that mayor Kathy of Albany talks about us having to own which were to have serious consequences for them as a nation.
Getting back to the background, we have:
In May of 1778, Col. Butler appointed Adam a Lieutenant.
end quote
Col. Butler would of course be John Butler (1728–1796), a Loyalist who led an irregular militia unit known as Butler’s Rangers on the northern frontier in New York during the American Revolutionary War.
Born in Connecticut, he moved to New York with his family, where he learned several Iroquoian languages and worked as an interpreter in the fur trade.
He was well-equipped to work with Mohawk and other Iroquois Confederacy warriors who became allies of the British during the rebellion.
During the War, Butler led Seneca and Cayuga forces in the Saratoga campaign in New York.
He later raised and commanded a regiment of rangers, which included affiliated Mohawk and other Iroquois nations’ warriors.
They conducted raids in central New York west of Albany, including what became known among the rebels as the Cherry Valley Massacre.
After the war Butler resettled in Upper Canada, where he was given a grant of land by the Crown for his services.
Butler continued his leadership in the developing province, helping to found the Anglican Church of Canada and Masonic Order, and serving in public office.
In 1755, John Butler was appointed to the rank of Captain in the Indian Department of the British colonial government.
He served in the French and Indian War under Sir William Johnson.
In 1758, he saw action with James Abercromby at Fort Ticonderoga and John Bradstreet at the Battle of Fort Frontenac.
In 1759, he was made second in command of the Indians with Johnson at the Battle of Fort Niagara.
In 1760, he continued as a second in command of the Indians in Jeffery Amherst’s force at Montreal.
After the French and Indian War, Butler returned to the Mohawk Valley in New York where he acquired more land, building an estate of 26,000 acres (105 km²) at Butlersbury near the major Mohawk village of Caughnawaga (present-day Canajpoharie).
He was second only to Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, as a wealthy frontier land owner, and worked under Johnson for the British.
Butler was also appointed a judge in the Tryon County court and was commissioned Lt.-Colonel of Guy Johnson’s regiment of Tryon County militia.
Butler was elected as one of the two members representing Tryon County in the New York assembly.
John Butler returned to service, as a Loyalist, when the American Revolution turned to war in 1775.
In May 1775, he left for Canada in the company of Daniel Claus, Walter Butler, Hon Yost Schuyler and Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader.
On July 7, they reached Fort Oswego and in August, Montreal. Butler participated in the defense of Montreal against an attack led by Ethan Allen.
In November, Carleton sent him to Fort Niagara with instructions to keep the Indians neutral.
His oldest son, Walter Butler served with him, but his wife and other children were detained by the American rebels.
In March 1776, John Butler sent a party of about 100 allied Indians to Montreal to force the Americans out of Quebec.
In May, Butler received instructions to use a warrior party of the Six Nations in an attack on New York.
On June 5 he received instructions to send as many Indians as he could to Fort Oswego for an attack on Fort Stanwix as a part of the Saratoga campaign.
He was put second in command of the Indians, primarily warriors of bands of four nations of the Iroquois, under Daniel Claus.
John Butler led the Indians and a small number of Loyalists in a successful ambush, of rebel militia and Oneida warriors in the Battle of Oriskany, and as a result, after this expedition he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel and given authority to raise his own regiment, which became known as Butler’s Rangers, initially with a strength of eight companies.
He traveled back to Fort Niagara, and completed recruiting the first company in December.
In July 1778, John Butler led his rangers and Iroquois allies at the Battle of Wyoming, in which he defeated Zebulon Butler and took Forty Fort.
The Patriots suffered heavy losses, and after the battle Butler’s Rangers burned many of the colonists’ homes in the area.
Later, the battle was referred to as the Wyoming Valley massacre because some of the victorious Loyalists and Iroquois were said to have executed and scalped prisoners and fleeing enemy soldiers.
Later that year, after the burning of Tioga, his son Captain Walter Butler led two companies of rangers and 300 Iroquois warriors in a raid which was later referred to as the Cherry Valley massacre.
The name of Butler was thereafter anathema to the rebels.
John Butler’s unit of rangers was spread, through frontier outposts, from Niagara to Illinois County, Virginia.
Butler commanded his rangers from his headquarters of Fort Niagara.
In 1779, he was defeated, by the Sullivan Expedition, at the Battle of Newtown, and withdrew to Fort Niagara.
That should give the reader a feel for just how much warfare and destruction there was in this nation prior to the American Revolution, which seemingly endless warfare and destruction while the British were in charge was to lead to the American Revolutio9n to put a final end to the endless warfare and dest4ruction then on-going, which takes us back to Adam Crysler and the path to New Dorlach, to wit:.
On May 30, Capt. Joseph Brant, with a band of Loyalists and Indians, fought a battle in Cobleskill where many homes, including that of Nicholas Warner, were burned.
On June 4, Adam Crysler was engaged in a battle in the valley of Wyoming, Pennsylvania that caused 460 Rebel casualties.
Adam was also involved in the destruction of the whole settlement of German Flats in September of 1778.
On November 11, Brant, with Capt. Walter Butler, Adam Crysler, 200 Rangers and 320 Indians attacked the village of Cherry Valley.
The clear policy of the British was to spare women, children and the elderly, but here the policy went terribly wrong.
Ignoring the pleas of their officers, the Indians, bent on revenge for losses of their own, attacked everyone who did not reach the safety of the Fort.
All property and crops were put to the torch and the cattle returned as a prize to Niagara.
end quotes
Yes, indeed, people, just as Kathy Sheehan of Albany says, 400 years of white supremacy has consequences.
More on that subject is yet to come, so please, stay tuned and don’t touch that dial, and we will be back on these same stations after a break for station identification and a word from our sponsors!
“Be thankful you were born here when you were, instead of in the past, and be thankful you were born here and not in Europe now!”
Those are words I still vividly recall hearing from my first day of kindergarten, right after the teacher told us, “you’re not home, now, you’re in my classroom, you’re not here to fool around, I’m the boss and you are here to learn who you are and where you fit into society so that you can be a productive part of it, as opposed to a drag on it,” which are words that in my experience, those who self-identify as liberal or progressive find unduly harsh for an adult to be saying to a child, as if somehow, being told “you’re not here to fool around” would in some way stunt my emotional and intellectual growth as a human being and American citizen, but such it was, and I don’t think I am either intellectually or emotionally damaged today, as a result.
The admonition to “be thankful you were born here and not in Europe now,” was, of course, a reference to war-torn Europe after the devastation of WWII, which had only recently concluded, where children like us were homeless and parentless in many cases, war orphans, confined in Displaced Person camps across Europe, while we children were more or less free to come and go as we pleased.
As to being thankful we were born here when we were, instead of in the past, that was a direct reference to the violence meted out on children just like us during the civil war that was the American Revolution in New York state, if not elsewhere, where children like us were in no way protected from the tomahawk and scalping knives because of our tender ages.
People today don’t like to hear about that violence, but so what?
What does pretending it never happened and not wanting to know about it, or hear about it, because it is too upsetting, accomplish?
As to children like us being in no way protected from the tomahawk and scalping knives because of our tender ages during the violence of the American Revolution, on the second and third days of August, 1780, the settlements in and around Canajoharie (west of Albany on the Mohawk River) were laid waste by a body of Indians under Brant.
Sixteen of the inhabitants were killed, between fifty and sixty made prisoners; over one hundred buildings burnt, and a large amount of property destroyed.
This happened at a time when the Tryon county militia were mostly drawn off to Fort Schuyler (Fort Stanwix).
At this time a party of the enemy appeared in the vicinity of Fort Dayton.
For those unfamiliar with these historic locations, Fort Dayton was in what is now Herkimer County in New York state located on the north side of Mohawk River at West Canada Creek, and it was constructed in 1776 by troops of the Fourth New Jersey Regiment under the command of Colonel Elias Dayton.
Getting back to the story, two Indians had the temerity to approach a barn, in which two men were threshing, on whom they fired.
The flail stick in the hands of one was nearly severed by a bullet, but the young farmers escaped to the fort.
It was well garrisoned, and a party of Americans being then mounted, pursued and killed both the Indians.
It is probable the Schoharie settlers had been notified of the misfortunes of their friends in the Mohawk Valley, and were anxious to guard against surprise.
The Schoharie forts were feebly garrisoned at the time, but small parties of soldiers were constantly engaged during the day, to guard the more exposed inhabitants while harvesting an unusual growth of wheat.
Early on the morning of the 9th of the same month, a scout, consisting of Coonradt Winne, Leek, and Hoever, was sent by Capt. Hager, from the Upper fort (south of Schoharie village) to reconnoitre in the western part of the present town of Fulton.
The scout was instructed to return immediately to the fort without firing, if they saw any of the enemy, and were not themselves discovered.
In that part of Fulton, now called Byrnville, or Sap Bush Hollow, some five or six miles distant from the Upper fort; the scout seated themselves upon a fallen tree, near the present residence of Edwin M. Dexter, to eat their breakfast; and while eating, a white man, painted as an Indian, made his appearance within some fifty yards of them.
Stooping down as nature prompted, he became so good a mark, that Leek , who was a dead shot, not seeing any one else, could not resist the temptation to fire, and levelling his rifle, the tory was instantly weltering in his gore.
Leek had not had time to reload his piece before the enemy appeared in sight.
The scout fled, hotly pursued by a party of Indians, who passed their dying comrade without halting.
They were so closely followed that they were separated, Leek flying towards the fort, while Hoever and Winne were driven into the woods, in an opposite direction.
The two latter afterwards saw, from a place of concealment near the Schoharie, in the present town of Blenheim, their foes pass up the river with their prisoners and plunder.
Leek reached the fort in safety, after a race of nine or ten miles, but not enough in advance of his pursuers to have a seasonable alarm given to warn the citizens of impending danger.
The invaders, consisting of seventy-three Indians, almost naked, and five tories — Benjamin Beacraft, Frederick Sager, Walter Allet, one Thompson, and a mulatto, commanded by Capt. Brant, approached Vrooman’ s Land in the vicinity of the Upper fort, about ten o ‘ clock in the morning.
They entered the valley on the west side of the river, above the Onistagrawa in three places; one party coming down from the mountain near the present residence of Charles Watson: another near that of Jacob Haines, then the residence of Capt. Tunis Vrooman; and the third near the dwelling of Harmanus Vrooman, at that time the residence of Col. Peter Vrooman, who chanced to be with his family, in the Middle fort.
Capt. Hager had gone on the morning of that day to his farm attended by a small guard to draw in some hay nearly seven miles distant from the Upper fort, the command of which then devolved on Tunis Vrooman, captain of the associate exempts.
Although the citizens of Schoharie had huts at the several forts where they usually lodged nights, and where their clothing and most valuable effects were kept during the summer, the female part of many families were in the daily habit of visiting their dwellings to do certain kinds of work, while their husbands were engaged in securing their crops.
On the morning of the day in question, Capt. Vroonuan also returned home to secure wheat, accompanied by his family, his wife to do her week’ s washing.
The command of the garrison next belonged to Ephraim Vrooman, a lieutenant under Capt. Hager, but as he went to his farm, soon after Capt. Vrooman left, it finally devolved on Lieut. William Harper, who had not a dozen men with him in the fort.
The wife of Lieut. Vrooman also returned home to do her washing.
Capt. Vrooman, who had drawn one load of wheat to a bar rack before breakfast, arose on that morning with a presentiment that some disastrous event was about to happen, which he could not drive from his mind; and he expressed his forebodings at the breakfast table.
Four riflemen called at his house in the morning and took breakfast with him, but returned to the fort soon after, to attend the roll call.
Capt. Vrooman’ s family consisted of himself, wife, four sons, John, Barney, Tunis and Peter, and two slaves, a male and female.
After breakfast, Capt. Vrooman and his sons drew another load of wheat to the barrack: and while it was unloading, he stopped repeatedly to look out towards the surrounding hills.
The grain had not all been pitched from the wagon, before his worst fears were realized, and he beheld descending upon the flats near, a party of hostile savages.
He descended from the barrack, not far from which he was tomahawked, scalped, and had his throat cut by a Schoharie Indian named Jobo who stood upon his shoulders while tearing off his scalp.
His wife was washing in a narrow passage between the buildings, where she was surprised and stricken down.
After the first blow from a tomahawk, she remained standing , but a second blow laid her dead at the feet of an Indian, who also scalped her.
The house was then plundered and set on fire, as was the barn, barracks of grain, hay, & c .; and the three oldest boys, with the blacks, made captives.
Peter, who fled on the first alarm and concealed himself in some bushes, would probably have escaped the notice of the enemy, had not one of the blacks made known his place of concealment: he was then captured and taken along a short distance, but crying to return, he ran to a fence, to which he was pursued by the tory Beacraft, who caught him, and placing his legs between his own, bent him back and cut his throat; after which, he scalped and hung him across the fence.
From the dwelling of Col . Vrooman , which was a good brick tenement , and to which was applied the torch of destruction, Seth’ s Henry led several of the enemy to the dwelling of Lieut. Vrooman; which stood where Peter Kneiskern now lives.
On hearing the alarm, Vrooman ran to his house, caught up his infant child and fled into the cornfield, between his dwelling and the Onistagrawa, followed by his wife leading her little daughter; said to have had long and beautiful hair for a child.
He seated himself against the trunk of a large apple tree, and his wife was concealed a few rods from him in the thriſty corn.
His family would, no doubt, have remained undiscovered, had Mrs. Vrooman continued silent; but not knowing where her husband was, and becoming alarmed, she rose up and called to him in Low Dutch, “Ephraim, Ephraim, where are you: have you got the child?”
The words were scarcely uttered when a bullet from the rifle of Seth’s Henry pierced her body.
He then tomahawked and scalped her.
While Seth’ s Henry was killing and scalping Mrs. Vrooman, the tory Beacraft killed her little daughter with a stone, and drew off her scalp.
end quotes
So, yes, people, thankfulness that we live in these times, and not those times!
So why does Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER want to take us back to there?
Is he crazy?
Or just insane?
So, we continue to ponder the words of Democrat Kathy Sheehan, Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York in the Albany, New York Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020 that “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” and “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union” in the light of this real American history above here, we have to ask ourselves this essential question, to wit: is this woman insane?
How does the history of little Peter Vrooman having his throat slit by a Tory, a king lover, who then scalped him during the violence of the American Revolution on the New York frontier, have anything at all to do with BLACK LIVES MATTER, a Marxist group that wants to do away with our stable, productive, law-abiding nuclear families in this country?
When Democrat Kathy Sheehan of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York tells us American citizens “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” we are back to the question of what history is she talking about?
Is she talking about what happened in New Dorlach to the west of Albany, during the violence of the American Revolution?
With respect to that history, which comes to us from “The History of Schoharie County: And Border Wars of New York; Containing Also a Sketch of the Causes which Led to the American Revolution” written in 1845 by Jeptha Root Simms, when the war of the Revolution commenced, three brothers, William, John, and Philip Crysler, who lived in New Dorlach; with their brother Adam, who lived in Schoharie, took up arms with the foes of their country, and went to Canada in 1777.
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New Dorlach, some 46 miles to the west of Albany City Hall where Democrat Kathy Sheehan reigns supreme, is the present town of Sharon.
It was called “New Dorlach” from a location in Germany known to the early settlers while still in Otsego County.
Getting back to the story:
As it began to be doubted by many of the tories in 1780, whether Britain could subdue the states, Philip, whose family still lived in New Dorlach, and who desired to remove it to Canada, had a party assigned him near Harpersfield to aid in its removal.
It is supposed, they arrived near the settlement a day or two before the army reached Schoharie; and were concealed until Seth’s Henry and possibly some others met them in an appointed place, and communicated intelligence of the proceedings in Schoharie, that the movement of Crysler’s destructives should not precede the general irruption.
However that may be, it is certain Seth’s Henry, who was at the burning of Schoharie, was on the following day also of the hostile party in New Dorlach.
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When Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany says, “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” is this the history she is referring to, or is she referring to something else?
Or doesn’t she even have a clue as to what she is on about, simply mouthing those words to the media off of a cue card handed to her by her BLACK LIVES MATTER controllers?
And what about her saying “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences?”
Where is she getting the “white supremacy” from in the light of what follows, to wit:
The enemy, consisting of eighteen Indians and three tories, made their appearance just after noon at the dwelling of Michael Merckley, where Hiram Sexton now resides.
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The fact of that matter is that up until the time of the American Revolution, which was to spell the end of the Iroquois Confederacy as it had existed for centuries prior to that time, who had the supremacy in New York state if not elsewhere were the Red Men, the Native Americans, which takes us back to the story, as follows:
Merckley was at this time a widower.
His family consisted of three daughters, three sons, and a lad named Fox.
The daughters were all young women; one was married to Christopher Merckley, and lived in Rhinebeck, a small settlement a few miles from New Dorlach — the other two were at home.
The oldest son had gone to Canada three years before, the second was then at Schoharie, and the youngest, a lad about thirteen years old, and Fox, a boy near his age, were also at home.
Frederick, a brother of Michael Merckley, then resided less than a mile east of the latter.
He had an only daughter named Catharine, who by repute was the fairest young lady in the Schoharie settlements.
He also had several sons.
Christian, (from whom some of these particulars were obtained) about seventeen years old, who was then at home; Martin, a younger brother, who had been sent to his uncle Martin’s about noon of that day to borrow a currier’s knife, and possibly one or two others.
On arriving at Merckley’s, the enemy captured his two daughters, the two boys, and their cousin Martin who chanced still to be there.
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Which takes us back for a moment to this colloquy between Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York and FOX TV host by Martha MacCallum on ‘The Story,” to wit:
Greater New York Black Lives Matter president Hawk Newsome joined “The Story” Wednesday to discuss the direction of the movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody and the subsequent demonstrations across the country, many of which have sparked destruction and violence.
“You … have said that violence is sometimes necessary in these situations,” host Martha MacCallum told Newsome.
“What exactly is it that you hope to achieve through violence?”
“Wow, it’s interesting that you would pose that question like that,” Newsome responded, “because this country is built upon violence.”
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And there he is dead wrong, because this country couldn’t be “built” until the violence being inflicted on it by the agents of the tyrant king in England had finally been brought to an end, which takes us back to the violence, as follows:
About three-fourths of a mile west of Michael Merckley, then resided Bastian France, where his son Henry now resides, a little distance from the road, which ran much as it does at the present day.
As the country was new, however, it was shaded more by trees, and not bounded by fences as at present.
Mr. France had eight children.
His two oldest sons, young men, had gone to Schoharie on the 17th , to learn how matters stood in that valley, and were in the Lower fort when the enemy passed it.
Christopher, the oldest of those brothers, (who was the first white child born in the town of Seward) and Miss Catharine Merckley, had plighted hymenial vows, and were to have been married two weeks from the day of her death.
Four other sons were at home – John, fourteen years old, Henry, thirteen, and two younger: and two daughters — Betsey, a young lady of seventeen, and a little girl perhaps ten years of age.
At the road, near the residence of France, resided Henry Haines, a tory.
West creek, a tributary of Cobelskill, passed near his house, and on this he had erected a small grist-mill — the first erected in the town of Seward.
Philip Hoffman, an old gentleman, lived not far from Haines, where Klock now resides.
Mr. Merckley, at whose house the Indians first appeared, had been to visit his married daughter at Rhinebeck settlement, as had also Catharine Merckley and Betsey France, all on horseback.
Mr. Merckley returned home but a little in advance of the girls, and approaching his house he discovered the Indians about the door, but conscious of his kind feelings towards them, and zeal in the royal cause, while in the act of dismounting from his horse with perfect unconcern, he was shot down, killed, and scalped.
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There is some history for Kathy Sheehan to think about when she talks to us of “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union.”
As to some violence for Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER, we have as follows:
It was at his house, it will be remembered, the party were harbored who captured his neighbor, William Hynds, and family, the preceding July.
When the girls approached his mill, Haines came out, and addressing Catharine, enquired, “What is the news?”
The reply was, “Betsey will tell you; I am in a great hurry to get home.”
Miss France had reined up just above the mill, to cross the creek, between the road and her father’s dwelling, as her beautiful companion rode forward, evidently excited from some cause, to meet her impending fate.
Possibly she had heard the gun fired at her uncle, and anticipated danger.
She had but little more than a mile to go after parting with her young friend.
The road, by a bend from Haines’ mill, swept along the verge of a rise of ground on the north side of West creek, leaving the flats southwest of the road.
The ground is elevated in front of the Merckley place, and just beyond it the road turns off, nearly east, towards Hyndsville.
Miss Merckley was riding a noble gray horse, and as she drew near her uncle’s dwelling she saw the Indians and tories about the door, several of whom called on her to stop; but her eye, no doubt, caught a view of the mangled remains of her uncle, and instead of reining, she urged her horse up the acclivity at a quick gallop.
At the instant she was opposite to him, Seth’s Henry leveled his rifle and fired at her, and as she did not immediately fall, he snatched a rifle from the hands of another Indian and fired again.
The horse, as though conscious of danger, and the value of his burden, increased his speed, but the fatal messenger had done its errand — the lovely victim pitched forward and fell to the earth, writhing in the agonies of death.
She was shot through the body evidently by the first bullet, as it had passed in at the right side.
She survived but a few minutes, and expired clasping her hands firmly upon the wound.
The tragic death of this young lady, so justly celebrated for her personal charms, was witnessed from the house by her brother and cousins.
Her murderer, as he tore off her bleeding scalp, struck with the beauty and regularity of her features, remarked — “ She was too handsome a pale face to kill, and had I known the squaw had such long black hair, I would not have shot her.”
The horse ran home, after losing his rider, and the bloody saddle shadowed forth the tidings her friends might expect to hear, of their dear relative’s fate.
The family instantly fled, and secreted themselves in the woods, where they remained until the following day.
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So, when Democrat Kathy Sheehan tells us “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” do any of us have a clue as to what she could possibly be talking about?
Stay tuned, for the story of New Dorlach is far from over!
As I recount this history in here of the violence associated with the civil war that was the American Revolution in what became the state of New York in the light of Democrat Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, the state’s capital, telling us “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences” and “We have to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union,” it occurs to me that that is exactly what we are doing in here – recognizing that 400 years of Red supremacy by the Native Americans in this state have had serious consequences for them, and the nation, as well, while speaking to those consequences as I am doing in here, recounting the history of what transpired in New Dorlach in 1780, and owning it, as opposed to hiding it and trying to pretend for the sake of political correctness that it never happened, in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union, which takes us back to that history, as follows:
Bastian France, who was then advanced in life, and quite infirm, was in his chamber making shoes.
Hearing the firing at Merckley’s, he came down and told his family (his wife was then visiting at the house of Haines near by) he felt alarmed and taking his gun, said he would go through the woods south of his house and learn the cause of disturbance.
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As an aside, one can see from this where our Second Amendment rights to bear arms for our defense derives from.
Getting back to the story:
He had not gone half way to Merckley’s, when he discovered several Indians proceeding directly to his own dwelling.
Knowing he could not reach it before they did, he resolved to proceed on foot, by a circuitous route, to the lower Schoharie fort for assistance, distant eighteen or twenty miles, and return as soon as possible.
He arrived there late in the evening, greatly fatigued, and found that all the troops which could be spared were preparing to follow the enemy to the Mohawk.
It was late the following day when he again arrived at his own dwelling.
Two Indians reached the residence of France in advance of their fellows, at which time the children were standing on the stoop looking for the cause of alarm.
As they approached the house, a large watchdog ran out and attacked them, which one halted to shoot.
The other approached the children and led out John and Henry, the two oldest boys at home, towards a pile of wood to be killed.
As the Indian who had shot the dog came up , John was handed over to him by his captor to be murdered for the British value of his scalp.
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One has to wonder if Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of Albany, New York, is aware of the fact that the British during the American Revolution were paying hard money for the scalps of American children.
And one has to wonder if this Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER realizes the hornet’s nest he is stirring up when he starts to tell older Americans like myself that BLACK LIVES MATTER is going to burn down our system and engage in acts of violence against us until they get “Black sovereignty,” whatever that in the end is to mean.
Getting back to the story, we have:
The Indian aimed a blow with his tomahawk at his head, which the latter warded off with his arm.
As the second blow which brought him to the ground was raised, Henry saw the other children running off, and followed them.
Seeing his captor start in pursuit, lest he should be shot down, he sprang round a corner of the house and stood still.
The Indian turned the corner and took him, with the other children, back to the stoop.
Without waiting to scalp the victim, the Indian who had felled John, left him and ran across the creek to the house of Hoffman, but the latter with his wife, having heard the gun which was fired at France’ s dog, took seasonable alarm, fled into the woods and escaped.
As the children returned to the door with their captor, somc half a dozen more of the enemy arrived; and proceeding to the cellar, helped themselves to several pies, and such other food as it contained, which they took up stairs, placed on a table in the centre of a room and greedily devoured.
Mrs. France hearing the noise, hastened home to protect her children or share their fate, just as the Indians were surrounding the table.
When Henry was taken back, he went to his wounded brother, who could still sit up, and attempted to raise him on his feet; but he was unable to stand.
Henry then told him to crawl under the oven where the dog usually had slept, but the hatchet had done its bidding, and he was too weak.
When his mother arrived at the house and beheld the situation of her dying son, who was then past speech, her maternal sympathy was aroused.
Her little daughter, crying, clung to her knees and besought her to save John from the cruel Indians; and she in tears entreated them to carry him into the house, or spare him from further injury.
This they refused to do, but promised not to harm her other children.
While his captor was eating, Henry was compelled to stand near him, by whom he was closely eyed.
Twice he walked to the door, and on turning round, observed the stealthy eye of the red man fixed upon him and he walked back; he thus lulled the suspicion of his keeper, and the third time he reached the door, perceiving he was not watched, he sprang out of the house, ran round it and fled towards the woods.
When about twenty rods distant, he looked back and saw several Indians turn a corner of the house, and instantly falling to the ground he was gratified to observe, that as they scattered in pursuit, none started in the direction he had taken.
From behind some old logs he watched their motions, and as soon as they had returned to the dwelling, he gained the adjoining woods in safety.
A few minutes after Henry had eluded the vigilance of his new master, the Indian who had gone to Hoffnan’s returned, was quite angry because the former had escaped, and instantly dispatched and scalped John.
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So, yes, people, consequences!
Stay tuned, however, for the story of what occurred in new Dorlach in 1780 is not yet over!
And as we continue to ponder what exactly Democrat Kathy Sheehan, mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, is trying to tell us American citizens when she says, “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” that in the light of this history of violence against innocent American children by Tories and Indians (Native Americans) on the frontier of the state of New York during the American Revolution, that thought takes us to these words from history, to wit:
“We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history.”
“History consists for the greater part of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites which shake the public with the same troublous storms that toss the private state, and render life unsweet.”
“These vices are the causes of those storms.”
“It is thus with all those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under color of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.”
Those are words written in 1790, ten years after the slaughter of innocents in the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys in the present state of New York by Tories and Indians loyal to King George III of England discussed above, by Edmund Burke of England in his “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” wherein he also wrote “(S)uch is the effect of the perversion of history by those who, for the same nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of learning,” and “(B)ut history in the nineteenth century, better understood and better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous ages.”
For those unfamiliar with the name, Edmund Burke (12 January 1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Irish statesman and philosopher.
Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party after moving to London in 1750.
Burke was a proponent of underpinning virtues with manners in society and of the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state.
These views were expressed in 1756, 20 years before the first Fourth of July in this country, in his “A Vindication of Natural Society,” where in a swift survey of history, he finds nothing but “Tumults, Rebellions, Massacres, Assassinations, Proscriptions, and a Series of Horror” and remarks that “All Empires have been cemented in Blood” as the casualties mount in the millions, with cruelties perfected by technology.
To his credit, Burke is known to our history as one who stood up and criticized the actions of the British government towards the American colonies, including its taxation policies, which were to have lasting consequences not only for Great Britain, but for the world, as well.
Burke also supported the rights of the colonists to resist metropolitan authority, although he opposed the attempt to achieve independence.
And that same opposition to the attempts by the colonists in this country to achieve independence is what fueled the hatred towards the rebels by the Tories, the King lovers whose undivided loyalty was to the King in England, no matter how despotic his policies, which had them killing for the King and scalping women and children for the reward the King in England was paying for them in hard money.
Interestingly, Burke was a leading sceptic with respect to democracy.
While admitting that theoretically in some cases it might be desirable, he insisted a democratic government in Britain in his day would not only be inept, but also oppressive.
He opposed democracy for three basic reasons.
First, government required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that occurred rarely among the common people.
Second, he thought that if they had the vote, common people had dangerous and angry passions that could be aroused easily by demagogues, fearing that the authoritarian impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property.
Third, Burke warned that democracy would create a tyranny over unpopular minorities, who needed the protection of the upper classes.
And with that as a preamble, let us go back to 1780, and New Dorlach, where the action resumes as follows:
Philip Crysler lived in the direction of Hoffman, and when the murderer returned, the former, disguised as an Indian, came with him.
He was not known to the family at the time, although they observed he had blue eyes, (the eyes and hair of a blooded Indian are almost invariably black) but they afterwards learned from a sister of Crysler, that his wife, hearing the gun fired at the dog of France, told her husband to put on his Indian dress, run over and save the France family by all means, as she was under such great obligations to them.
They had almost wholly supported herself and family for three years.
To the counsels of the blue-eyed Indian, as Crysler was called, the party reluctantly yielded; and leaving the rest of the family and most of their effects undisturbed, soon after withdrew.
The Indian who had been foiled by Henry, seemed most dissatisfied; and snatching a brand of fire he ran to the barn and thrust it into the hay.
Another Indian drew it out and threw it away, but some coals must have remained, as the barn and its contents were soon after in flames.
Two large barracks, each an hundred feet in circumference, standing near the barn, were also consumed.
Two of the Indians at the house of France could speak Low Dutch; Mrs. France begged of them to intercede for the lives of her offspring.
The invaders went as far west as the dwelling of Haines, capturing several of his slaves.
Haines went to Canada himself at a subsequent period.
As soon as the Indians were out of sight, Mrs . France carried the body of her murdered son into the house, his warm blood trickling upon her feet; and then, with Betsey and three younger children, concealed herself in the woods.
Henry France, after gaining the forest back of his father’s house, ran, by a circuitous route, towards the dwelling of William Spurnhuyer, who resided not far from Christian Merckley.
In the mean time, the enemy, with their plunder, accompanied by the family of Crysler, after burning the dwelling and barn of Michael Merckley, set forward on their journey.
On arriving at the house of Spurnhuyer, who had gone with his family to a place of greater security but a day or two before, they made a halt.
Spurnhuyer had left a young heifer near the dwelling, which was shot to serve the party for food.
When the gun was fired at the animal, young France was not in sight, though near, but was running directly toward that place, and supposing it fired at himself, changed his course, nor did he know at what the gun was discharged, until the return of Martin Merckley, some time after.
Thus had this lad a third time escaped the tomahawk.
He then went back and secreted himself, about sundown, near the creek, a few rods from his father’s dwelling.
He had been but a short time in this place when Mrs. Haines, who was going past with a milk-pail, discovered him in the bushes, and told him where he could find his mother.
Procuring blankets at the house the weeping group returned to sleep in the woods, fearing a visit from the bears and wolves less than they did that of the armed savage.
The family lived in the woods until the third day following their disaster, when they went to Schoharie.
Spurnhuyer’s house, after being plundered, was set on fire, and, with his barn consumed.
The invaders had proceeded only a mile or two from the settlement, when the two boys cried to return.
The executioner of the party halted with them, and soon after overtook his comrades with their bloody scalps.
Berkley, a tory present, from the vicinity of Albany, told the Misses Merckley that their brother and young Fox would not have been killed had they not cried.
Indians never fancy crying children.
It was not known in New Dorlach that those boys were killed, until a year or two afterwards, when the fact was communicated by a letter from the Merckley girls to their friends.
Persons who visited the spot near the mountain south of their father’s, designated as the place where the boys were murdered, found bones scattered over the ground, wild beasts having no doubt eaten the flesh that once covered them.
The party journeyed directly to Canada by the usual southwestern route, and as the weather was then cold, the suffering of the prisoners was very severe.
They were greatly straightened for food on the way, and putrid horse flesh, fortunately found in the path, was considered a luxury, and doubtless saved some of them from starving.
Martin Merckley was compelled to run the gantlet, and was beaten and buffeted a great distance.
Prisoners captured in the spring or fall, when the Indians were congregated in villages, usually suffered more than those taken in midsummer.
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And thus ends for us the tale, or history, of the consequences of 400 years of Red supremacy here in what became New York state, and what transpired in New Dorlach during the civil war that was the American Revolution on the frontier in what was to become the state of New York in the present United States of America, a troubled divided nation once again edging towards another civil war, which brings us to this conclusion from Jeptha R. Simms, author of “HISTORY of SCHOHARIE COUNTY, and
BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK; containing also A Sketch of the Causes which led to the American Revolution; and Interesting Memoranda of the Mohawk Valley; together with Much Other Historical and Miscellaneous Matter, Never Before Published,” in 1845, to wit:
Trifling circumstances were construed into plausible pretexts too often in the Revolution — as , in fact , they will be, from the nature of things, in all civil wars — for the perpetration of the most heinous and revolting cruelties.
The reason is obvious: when all laws are disregarded and set at defiance, the baser passions of the human breast triumph over virtue and social order; and crime “Stalks abroad at noonday, Nor does she cease at midnight to destroy.”
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Perhaps would do well for everybody concerned for both Kathy Sheehan and Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER to give some heed to those words and consider them well, and mayor Kathy, why not white lives, as well?
Why is it that you think only Black lives matter?
Don’t white lives have value, as well?
And while we are on the subject of what may well be called “delicious ironies” in here in the light of Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York telling the American people “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” with respect to that history, which may well be the source of the major-league guilt trip mayor Kathy is on that has her saying that to the candid world, as if we all shared her guilt trip, which of course we don’t, not having valid or rational reasons for doing so, let us simply go back to 1845 and Chapter III of a “HISTORY of SCHOHARIE COUNTY, and BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK; containing also A Sketch of the Causes which led to the American Revolution; and Interesting Memoranda of the Mohawk Valley; together with Much Other Historical and Miscellaneous Matter, Never Before Published,” by Jeptha R. Simms, where we find what may well be the source of mayor Kathy’s angst, to wit:
I have before remarked that the Schoharie people owned slaves.
Many of them were either purchased in the New England states, or of New England men.
When slaves were purchased out of the Colony (of New York), a duty was required to be paid on them, as the following certificate of the Mayor of Albany will show.
“Theas are to Certify, yt Nine negro men and women has been Imported Into ye County of Albany from New England, and according to an Act of ye Governor, ye Council, and the generall Assembly; William Day has paid ye Duty for said negro men and women: witness my hand this twentieth Day of Aug. 1762.
VOLKERT P. DOUW, Mayor.”
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To the City of Albany in colonial days, Black lives mattered, because they were a steady source of income for the mayor and City of Albany who were profiting off the slave trade and the misery of their fellow human beings, so that when Kathy Sheehan looks around at the opulence of her office today, she is looking at opulence paid for by the duty imposed on the importation of slaves into Albany.
So no wonder the poor woman feels so much guilt because the plight of the poor Black folks today is directly attributable to her predecessors in office as mayor of the City of Albany!
Should Kathy Sheehan be apologizing to the Black people of Albany for that crime against their humanity – making money off of them as slaves?
I would say so.
She is the mayor, afterall.
And what about reparations?
Does Albany owe the Black people some type of refund on all those duties collected off them when they were slaves?
Justice would seem to demand so, is my thought.
And that thought takes us in turn to a New York Daily News article “Cuomo again defends Columbus amid renewed calls to remove statue” by Denis Slattery on June 11, 2020, where we had as follows, to wit:
In Albany, Mayor Kathy Sheehan announced Thursday that the state capital will be removing a statue of Revolutionary War general Philip Schuyler because he was a slave owner.
“I have signed an Executive Order directing the removal of the statue honoring Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler — reportedly the largest owner of enslaved people in Albany during his time — from in front of Albany City Hall,” Sheehan tweeted.
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Which raises the question of why stop there?
Why stop at removing the statue of Philip Schuyler, when it is Albany City Hall itself, along with the office of the mayor of Albany, that is far more responsible for the proliferation of slavery in New York than Philip Schuyler ever was, and therefore is a far more odious presence for the Black folks than is the statue of Philip Schuyler, because while he may have owned slaves, Albany City Hall is where people went to pay for the privilege of having slaves in Albany?
Why the hypocrisy?
If Philip Schuyler should have to come down because he owned slaves, then Albany City Hall has to come down as well, because Albany City Hall was profiting off the slave trade, which makes it a far more odious presence than Philip Schuyler. especially with that big BLACK LIVES MATTER banner stretched across the front of it.
And while we continue on the subject of what may well be called “delicious ironies” in here in the light of Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York telling the American people “To me, stating that Black Lives Matter is something that we have to say out loud because of our history,” which history, as stated above, may well be the source of the major-league guilt trip mayor Kathy is on, the fact of the matter is that people in this country, people at least as white as Kathy Sheehan of Albany today, have been saying Black lives matter right from the time this nation began, if not earlier.
So why is it that Kathy Sheehan is finally raising her voice, all these hundreds of years later?
Consider these words from 173 years ago on in 1845 the subject of Black lives mattering from Chapter III of a “HISTORY of SCHOHARIE COUNTY, and BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK; containing also A Sketch of the Causes which led to the American Revolution; and Interesting Memoranda of the Mohawk Valley; together with Much Other Historical and Miscellaneous Matter, Never Before Published,” by Jeptha R. Simms, to wit:
The manner in which the slaves of Schoharie were generally treated by their masters, is not ineptly described by Mrs. Grant, in her Memoirs of Albany.
They were allowed freedom of speech, and indulged in many things, which other members of the family were, whose ages corresponded to their own; and to a superficial spectator, had the color not interfered, they would have seemed on an equality.
Individual instances may now be cited where blacks would be much better off under a good master then they now are, or, indeed, than thousands of the operatives of England are – -still, no one can from moral principle, although he may form motives of expediency, advocate the continuance of the evil as just and proper in any country.
The existence of slavery in the United States, is the greatest stain upon their national escutcheon.
This I believe to be a fact generally conceded, by all the good and virtuous in the land.
The question then, which naturally arises, is, or rather it should be, what is the best and most proper manner of obliterating the stain?
Let reason and common sense, not fanaticism and malice, reply.
end quotes
Clearly, long before Kathy Sheehan of Albany came along to try and exploit the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement for political gain for herself, or merely to keep them from burning down her city, which is essentially the same thing, white-skinned people in America were way out ahead of her saying that indeed, Black lives do matter, and who but a fool would assert otherwise, which thought takes us even further back in time 233 years to October 06, 1787, and the “Crito” political essay in the Providence Gazette and Country Journal, an early-American version of the Cape Charles Mirror, by Samuel Hopkins (September 17, 1721 – December 20, 1803), an American Congregationalist theologian of the late colonial era of the United States who was also an opponent of slavery, saying that it was in the interest and duty of the U.S. to set free all of their slaves, to wit:
Some, perhaps, will not chuse to read any farther; but drop this paper with a degree of uneasy disgust, when they are told the subject to which their attention is asked is, The AFRICA SLAVE TRADE, which has been practiced and in which numbers in these United States are now actually engaged.
So much has been published within a few years past on this subject, describing the fertile country of Africa, and the ease and happiness which the natives of that land enjoy, and might enjoy to a yet greater degree, were it not for their own ignorance and folly, and the unhappy influence which the Europeans and Americans have had among them, inducing them to make war upon each other, and by various methods to captivate and kidnap their brethren and neighbours, and sell them into the most abject and perpetual slavery; and at the same time giving a well-authenticated history of this commerce in the human species, pointing out the injustice, inhumanity and barbarous cruelty of this trade, from beginning to end, until the poor Africans, are fixed in a state of the most cruel bondage, in which, without hope, they linger out a wretched life; and then leave their posterity, if they are so unhappy as to have any, in the same miserable state.
So much has been lately published, I say, on these subjects, that it is needless particularly to discuss them here.
end quotes
So, yes, 400 years of what Kathy Sheehan calls “white supremacy” had consequences that were already being felt and commented on 233 years ago, long before Kathy Sheehan and the Marxist group BLACK LIVES MATTER came on the scene to dismantle what they are calling “cisgender privilege” in the United States of America while fostering a queer‐affirming network and working to disrupt the stable, law-abiding, productive Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement.
And while we are on the subject of the delicious ironies which abound in this story, that white supremacy Kathy Sheehan talks about actually goes back to Queen Anne of England who continued the tradition of royal support for the British slave trade, announcing in 1712 that she had secured an exclusive contract for the British nation to provide enslaved Africans for the Spanish West Indies for thirty years.
In a scholarly article on the subject entitled “Queen Anne’s Government and the Slave Trade” by D. A. G. Waddell in Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1960), pp. 7-10, published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40652736, the author traced the history of the British involvement with the slave trade, as follows:
Before the Revolution of 1688 the Royal African Company held the monopoly of English trade with Africa.
The most important part of its business was the delivery of slaves to the West Indian islands and the southern colonies of the American mainland.
end quotes
Now, note that specific language “southern colonies of the American mainland,” as opposed to American states.
Those colonies were Britain’s, not America’s.
Does that make a difference?
Of course it does to all of us who are not British and never were, when Kathy Sheehan tries to pin the rap for the British promotion of slavery in its American colonies on all people with white skin, regardless of national origin.
Getting back to that history of the business of slave trading by the English, which Queen Anne was to endorse, it continues as follows:
Its trading was fairly successful, and though there were occasional complaints, especially from Jamaica, that the number of slaves delivered were insufficient, the prices it charged for its slaves in the colonies were reasonable.
end quotes
So, as was the case in Aug. 1762 when Volkert Petrus Douw (March 23, 1720 – March 20, 1801), a merchant and politician from Albany, New York prominent both during colonial times and after the United States was established was mayor before Kathy Sheehan, and Albany was cashing in on the slave trade, for which one would think that Kathy Sheehan owes the Black folks a sincere apology, as well as reparations, the slave trade was for the English strictly a business proposition, for to them, and Queen Anne, who is directly linked to the Palatines who settled in Schoharie in the early 1700s, Black lives didn’t matter at all, except for what they were worth being sold as slaves.
Getting back to that history, we have:
But its (Royal African Company) financial position was never sound.
It had to sink a large part of its capital in forts on the African coast to protect its trade both from the warlike natives and from the rivalry of the French and Dutch.
More capital was tied up in credits to the planters, who were seldom able to pay for their slaves in cash.
Thus from an early stage the Company had to borrow money to acquire stock with which to trade.
After 1688 the Company ran into two main difficulties which it lacked the resources to surmount.
England went to war with France, and it suffered losses in ships from enemy privateers.
The volume of its trade dropped off, but its overhead costs remained as high as ever.
Secondly, the supremacy of Parliament established by the Glorioius Revolution led to a questioning of its charter of monopoly which had been granted by the Crown but not confirmed by Parliament.
end quotes
For those who don’t recall this high school history, the Glorious Revolution, also called “The Revolution of 1688” and “The Bloodless Revolution,” took place from 1688 to 1689 in England and it involved the overthrow of the Catholic king James II, who was replaced by his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange.
As we were taught when young, motives for the revolution were complex and included both political and religious concerns, and the event ultimately changed how England was governed, giving Parliament more power over the monarchy and planting seeds for the beginnings of a political democracy.
And that brings us to Chapter I of a “HISTORY of SCHOHARIE COUNTY, and BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK; containing also A Sketch of the Causes which led to the American Revolution; and Interesting Memoranda of the Mohawk Valley; together with Much Other Historical and Miscellaneous Matter, Never Before Published,” by Jeptha R. Simms in 1845, to wit:
After the throne of England had been vacated by the death of William and Mary, Queen Anne ascended it, and as her predecessors had done, she tolerated the Protestant religion.
It was often the case in former times, that when one form of religious worship was tolerated in a kingdom of Europe, and laws were enacted to compel all to conform to it, many who had scruples about adopting it, at the sacrifice of judgment and feeling, fled to other countries where their own religion prevailed.
It was bigotry and Catholicism, which drove the ancestors of General Marion from France to South Carolina.
The grandfather of Marion was a French Protestant: by the authorities of France he was banished to perpetual exile, and notified by letter, that if found in the kingdom after ten days from the date had transpired, his life would be forfeited, his body consumed by fire, and the ashes scattered on the winds of heaven.
I have mentioned this case to show the reader the nature of the persecution, which tended in a great measure to people the United States.
end quotes
General Marion, for those who don’t recall the name, is Francis Marion (c. 1732 – February 27, 1795), also known as the Swamp Fox, who was a military officer who served in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).
Acting with the Continental Army and South Carolina militia commissions, he was a persistent adversary of the British in their occupation of South Carolina and Charleston in 1780 and 1781, even after the Continental Army was driven out of the state in the Battle of Camden.
Marion used irregular methods of warfare and is considered one of the fathers of modern guerrilla warfare and maneuver warfare, and is credited in the lineage of the United States Army Special Forces, also known as the “Green Berets.”
So, yes, people, I obviously think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences, as we are seeing above here in technicolor, and yes, we now need more than ever to speak to those consequences and own it in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union, and thankfully, for those of us who actually are daring to engage in this civic discourse that we need to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union, thank God say I that we have the Cape Charles Mirror accessible to us for that purpose. because if it were up to Kathy Sheehan and the Albany Times Union, the only voices that would be heard are hers and the Marxist group BLACK LIVES MATTER.
And as we continue to try and make any sense at all of Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, the state’s capital, telling us “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences,” given that she fails to tell us exactly what 400 years she is talking about, or who exactly it was that was supposed to have this “white supremacy” for 400 years, given that in this country up until the conclusion of the American revolution, who enjoyed the supremacy were the Red Men, the Native Americans, especially those of the Iroquois Confederation who happened to be the allies of the tyrant king in England, George III, except for the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, let us for the moment go back to the scholarly article on the subject of the British involvement in the slave trade during the colonial period of what was to become the United States of America on 4 July 1776, entitled “Queen Anne’s Government and the Slave Trade” by D. A. G. Waddell in Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1960), pp. 7-10, published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd., where the author continued as follows, to wit:
Traders who weren’t in the Company (Royal African Company) seized their chance (to engage in the slave trade) and fitted out interloping ships which violated the monopoly.
As they did not incur the cost of maintaining forts, they were able to deliver slaves to the colonies in greater numbers and at lower rates than the Company.
The Company itself felt unable to stop the interlopers without Parliamentary sanction, and unable to put its finances in order while its monopoly was being openly violated.
In 1697 it therefore petitioned Parliament for confirmation of its charter.
For the previous ten years, however, its deliveries of slaves had been very small, and the planters feared that if the interlopers, on whom they had mainly relied during the war years, were excluded, they might be starved of slaves.
Many of the colonies thus petitioned Parliament that the trade should be open to all and the monopoly abolished.
In July, 1698 Parliament passed an act, which was to be in force for thirteen years, laying the trade open to all English subjects.
end quotes
Note that terminology “laying the (slave) trade open to all English subjects,” that being in July of 1698, which is 322 years ago from the present, and 78 years before the first Fourth of July in 1776, and the Declaration of Independence, wherein was stated in relevant part as follows with respect to our relationship to Great Britain as a separate nation, to wit:
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren.
We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.
We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.
We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.
end quotes
In other words, we as American citizens, especially those of us who aren’t English, and never were, are not in any way, shape or manner responsible for what went on in this country before 1776, which is 244 years ago now, with respect to the institution of slavery, regardless of what mayor Kathy of Albany might think about it as she suffers her own guilt trip related to her City of Albany and its mayors before her profiting from the slave trade while New York was still a British colony, which in turn takes us to an Encyclopedia Britannica article entitled “Slave trade,” where we learn more on the subject, as follows:
Slavery, though abundantly practiced in Africa itself and widespread in the ancient Mediterranean world, had nearly died out in medieval Europe.
end quote
And there is where this discussion of an alleged “400 years of white supremacy” having consequences that now more than ever we need to speak to and own in order for us to engage in this civic discourse that we need to continue to engage in to ensure that we are creating a more perfect union breaks down, because people like Kathy Sheehan of Albany continually ignore the fact that slavery was an institution in Africa long before it was an institution in this country, and there could be no Black slaves in this country without them first being sold by other Black folks in the home country of Africa, and until people like Kathy Sheehan and BLACK LIVES MATTER and Hawk Newsome acknowledge that fact, and the Black folks finally take responsibility for inflicting that misery and sffering on themselves, there simply will be no civic discourse, because you can’t have civic discourse with people with closed minds.
Getting back to that history, we have:
It was revived by the Portuguese in Prince Henry’s time, beginning with the enslavement of Berbers in 1442.
end quotes
1442 happens to be 578 years ago, and it is arguable that the term “white supremacy” applies to the Portuguese, who in any event were neither British subjects nor American colonists.
Nor should Kathy Sheehan of Albany be trying to lay a guilt trip on us alive today for any involvement the Portuguese had with the slave trade 578 years ago, and 334 years before the first Fourth of July which created the United States of America.
Returning to history as it happened, versus the distorted and perverted view mayor Kathy of Albany has of it, we have:
Portugal populated Cape Verde, Fernando Po (now Bioko), and São Tomé largely with black slaves and took many to the home country, especially to the regions south of the Tagus River.
New World black slavery began in 1502, when Gov. Nicolás de Ovando of Hispaniola imported a few evidently Spanish-born blacks from Spain.
Rapid decimation of the Indian population of the Spanish West Indies created a labour shortage, ultimately remedied from Africa.
The great reformer, Las Casas, advocated importation of blacks to replace the vanishing Indians, and he lived to regret having done so.
The Portuguese at first practiced Indian slavery in Brazil and continued to employ it partially until 1755.
It was gradually replaced by the African variety, beginning prominently in the 17th century and coinciding with the rapid rise of Brazilian sugar culture.
As the English, French, Dutch, and, to a lesser extent, the Danes colonized the smaller West Indian islands, these became plantation settlements, largely cultivated by blacks.
Before the latter arrived in great numbers, the bulk of manual labour, especially in the English islands, was performed by poor whites.
Some were indentured, or contract, servants; some were redemptioners who agreed to pay ship captains their passage fees within a stated time or be sold to bidders; others were convicts.
Some were kidnapped, with the tacit approval of the English authorities, in keeping with the mercantilist policy that advocated getting rid of the unemployed and vagrants.
end quotes
And there is another aspect of this matter that people like Kathy Sheehan never bother to mention – the fact that white people were enslaved, as well, pursuant to the mercantilist policies of England, which policy advocated getting rid of the unemployed and vagrants, which is how the Palatine Germans came to be here in the early 1700’s in what became New York state in 1776.
So with people like Kathy Sheehan in denial of what actually transpired in history, while trying to lay the blame for slavery on all white-skinned people alive in the United States of America today, there can be no civic discourse of any kind, nor is she even open and amenable to having a discourse.
Stay tuned, however, because this on-going story is not yet over!
“It is impossible for an honest and feeling mind, of any nation or country whatever, to be insensible to the present circumstances of America.”
“Were I an East Indian, or a Turk, I should consider this singular situation of a part of my fellow creatures, as most curious and interesting.”
“Intimately connected with the country, as a citizen of the Union, I confess it entirely engrosses my mind and feelings.”
While those words are certainly applicable today to the times we now find ourselves living in, as this divided nation slips into anarchy and civil war, in fact they were first written 232 years ago on September 26, 1788 by Tench Coxe (May 22, 1755 – July 17, 1824), an American political economist and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1788–1789 in the political essay “An American Citizen: An Examination of the Constitution of the United States I,” wherein he stated further as follows with respect to how the American colonies came to be settled in the first place, to wit:
To take a proper view of the ground on which we stand, it may be necessary to recollect the manner in which the United States were originally settled and established.
Want of charity in the religious systems of Europe and of justice in their political governments were the principal moving causes which drove the emigrants of various countries to the American continent.
end quotes
Simply stated, people left Europe in colonial times to escape injustice, which brings us back around to Queen Anne and the Palatines, as we see by going back to Chapter I of a “HISTORY of SCHOHARIE COUNTY, and BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK; containing also A Sketch of the Causes which led to the American Revolution; and Interesting Memoranda of the Mohawk Valley; together with Much Other Historical and Miscellaneous Matter, Never Before Published,” by Jeptha R. Simms in 1845, to wit:
Queen Anne, who received the crown of England in the year 1702, knowing that the Germans were in general peaceable, loyal subjects, and lovers of liberty from principle — anxious to increase the population of her American colonies, held out strong inducements to this hardy and industrious race of people to become British subjects.
She offered to give them lands, if they would settle on the frontier of certain colonies, and furnish them at the beginning with necessary tools, provisions, &c.
What added to the inducement, they could there practice their own form of religious worship.
There is a charm in the word liberty, that converts a desert wild into a paradise, and severs the cords of the fraternal, social circle.
The generous offers of Queen Anne induced thousands to bid a final farewell to the land of their nativity — cross the foaming Atlantic, and erect their altars of worship in the wilds of America, thousands of miles from the luring places to which they were known in childhood.
Schoharie, with the exception of its Indian inhabitants, was first settled by the Germans and Dutch, and to religion and the love of liberty is that settlement mostly to be attributed.
end quotes
Now, this is all important background as we continue to try and make any sense at all of Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, the state’s capital, telling us “I think it’s very important that we recognize that 400 years of white supremacy have consequences,” given that she has failed to tell us exactly what 400 years she is talking about, or who exactly it was that was supposed to have this “white supremacy” for 400 years, which takes us to Chapter III of a “HISTORY of SCHOHARIE COUNTY, and BORDER WARS OF NEW YORK; containing also A Sketch of the Causes which led to the American Revolution; and Interesting Memoranda of the Mohawk Valley; together with Much Other Historical and Miscellaneous Matter, Never Before Published,” by Jeptha R. Simms in 1845, as follows:
From the fact, that the Dutch, who settled in Vrooman’s Land, were more wealthy than their German Neighbors located below them, a kind of pride or distant formality, was manifested by the former towards the latter for many years.
When prejudices of any kind are allowed to gain a place in the human breast, it often requires generations to eradicate them.
The prejudices alluded to as having existed between the Dutch and Germans, tended for many years almost wholly to prevent inter-marriages between them.
As I have already stated, much prejudice existed at Schoharie in former days, between the Germans and Dutch.
These national antipathies were manifested in nothing more clearly at first, than in matters of religion.
The early Germans were, almost without exception, disciples to the doctrines of Martin Luther; while the Dutch, collectively, subscribed the Calvinistic, or Dutch Reformed creed.
While they existed, they tended to prevent that friendly interchange of good feeling — that reciprocity of kindness, so necessary to the prosperity and happiness of an isolated people.
end quotes
So, who had the white supremacy there?
The Dutch?
The Germans?
Or the British?
Or should we do like mayor Kathy of Albany and disregard reality and lump them in all together, because in the end, they all had white skin, so they all must be equally guilty of white supremacy?
Getting back to Simms, we have:
Smith’s history of New York informs us, that General Hunter, who had been appointed governor of the province, arrived at New York on the fourteenth day of June, 1710, bringing with him near three thousand Palatines, who, the year before, had fled to England from the rage of persecution in Germany.
end quotes
All these figures from high school history are coming to life in here as w ponder this question of 400 years of white supremacy having consequences, but for whom?
General Hunter is a reference to Robert Hunter (1666–1734), a British military officer, colonial governor of New York and New Jersey from 1710 to 1720, and governor of Jamaica from 1727 to 1734 whose philosophy was that “the true Interests of the People and Government are the same, I mean A Government of Laws.”
“No other deserves the Name, and are never Separated or Separable but in Imagination by Men of Craft.”
Ah, yes, men of craft, which today would also include women of craft like Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Sheehan of Albany.
General Hunter began his military career 332 years ago in 1688 when a guard was formed to protect the future Queen Anne as the rift began with her father James II.
He was appointed aide-major, 19th Apr 1689, in the regiment of dragoons raised by Henry Erskine, 3rd Lord Cardross, in support of William of Orange in Flanders.
Henry Erskine, 3rd Lord Cardross, was a Scot who had been educated in the principles of the covenanters, and at an early period distinguished himself by his opposition to the administration of John Maitland, 1st Duke and 2nd Earl of Lauderdale, 3rd Lord Thirlestane KG PC (24 May 1616 – 24 August 1682), who was a Scottish politician, and leader within the Cabal Ministry, a group of high councillors of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to c. 1674, who through the Foreign Affairs committee and their own offices were able to direct government policy both at home and abroad.
Is that some of the white supremacy mayor Kathy of Albany, whose predecessors in office profited off the slave trade in the colony of New York, is on about?
As to the Covenanters, they were members of a 17th-century Scottish religious and political movement, who supported a Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and the primacy of its leaders in religious affairs, the name deriving from Covenant, a biblical term for a bond or agreement with God.
As history informs us, the origins of the movement lay in disputes with James VI & I, and his son Charles I of England over church structure and doctrine, which interestingly was to lead to us in this cpountry having separation of church and state, and with good reason as we consider this history which was to lead to the first Fourth of July in this country in 1776..
In 1638, thousands of Scots signed the National Covenant, pledging to resist changes imposed by Charles on the kirk, a Scottish word meaning “church”, or more specifically the Church of Scotland.
Following victory in the 1639 and 1640 Bishops’ Wars, the Covenanters took control of Scotland.
The 1639 and 1640 Bishops’ Wars were the first of the conflicts known collectively as the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which took place in Scotland, England and Ireland.
Others include the Irish Confederate Wars, the First, Second and Third English Civil Wars, and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.
Their origin stemmed from disputes over governance of the Church of Scotland, popularly known as the kirk, dating back to the 1580s.
Royalists generally supported rule by bishops, while most Scots supported a Presbyterian kirk ruled by presbyters, or leaders of a local Christian congregation, and in predominant Protestant usage, presbyter does not refer to a member of a distinctive priesthood called priests, but rather to a minister, pastor, or elder.
In the 17th century, debates over religious practice and structure were closely linked to different views of power and control; as a result, the conflict led to major changes to the Scottish political system, as well as the kirk.
Matters came to a head in 1637, when Charles I attempted to impose uniform practices on the kirk and the Church of England, changes opposed by the presbyters and English Puritans.
The 1638 National Covenant pledged to oppose such “innovations”, and, in December, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland voted to expel bishops from the kirk.
This was followed in August 1639 by a series of acts passed by the Parliament of Scotland that amounted to a constitutional revolution.
The Covenanters defeated attempts by Charles to re-impose his authority in 1639 and 1640, and gained control of Scotland, but, to protect that settlement, they sought support from sympathisers in Ulster and England.
Since Charles did the same, the result was to destabilize not only Scotland, but England and Ireland also, resulting in The Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
The 1643 Solemn League and Covenant brought them into the First English Civil War on the side of Parliament, but they supported Charles in the 1648 Second English Civil War.
After his execution in 1649, the Covenanter government agreed to restore his son Charles II to the English throne; defeat in the 1651 Third English Civil War led to Scotland’s incorporation into the Commonwealth of England.
After the 1660 Restoration, the Covenanters lost control of the kirk and became a persecuted minority, leading to several armed rebellions and a period from 1679 to 1688 known as “The Killing Time.”
According to Scottish history, which itself is long and bloody, in reference to “The Killing Time,” when Charles II was restored to the thrones of Scotland and England, he should probably have clambered onto his knees and thanked God for his return to power.
His father had been executed, he was viewed with suspicion by his own subjects, and he had been forced into exile after losing a battle against parliament’s forces.
Given his track record, it is astonishing that he was given another chance to rule.
However, instead of simply being grateful and trying to do a good job as monarch, Charles brought his vengeance and arrogance back with him.
The result was that Scotland was virtually plunged into yet another spell of religious intolerance.
Once restored to the Scottish throne, the king decided to get his own back on the Scots Presbyterians who had lectured him and ridiculed his family when he had first been given power.
Those who supported Scotland’s Covenant, he decided, were to be taught a harsh lesson.
The Scottish parliament, the Estates, was recalled in 1661.
It became known as the Drunken Parliament, but its actions were far from slow or muddled.
It wiped out all the Covenanter legislation of the previous 30 years, The Privy Council was brought back, bishops were restored to the Kirk, and the covenant was declared illegal.
The new Estates decided to keep the efficient system of tax gathering that had been instituted under Cromwell, but much else was changed.
The main trouble was caused by an edict that said Kirk ministers could no longer simply be chosen by local congregations, but had to be approved by local patrons and bishops.
All ministers were ordered to conform to this ruling.
They were furious, and more than 250 of them resigned their charges instead of complying.
Instead of preaching in churches, they began to do so on the Scottish moors.
These meetings quickly became known as Conventicles, and those who attended them were named Covenanters.
By 1665, they had become extremely popular, though attending them was a dangerous business.
Attending them was illegal, and government troops were often despatched to break them up and levy fines.
In reply, the Covenanters often stationed their own guards nearby when services were in progress.
Tensions between the two sides grew, particularly in strong covenanting areas of the country such as Galloway.
In 1666, the Covenanters captured the commander of government troops in south western Scotland, Sir James Turner, and paraded him towards Edinburgh in his nightshirt.
This act of insurrection led them into direct conflict with General Tam Dalyell, the commander of the army in Scotland.
At Rullion Green near Edinburgh, a force of 900 of the covenanters was defeated by Dalyell.
The leaders of the rebellion were hanged, others tortured or imprisoned, and even women and children murdered.
WOW!
Is that some of the white supremacy mayor Kathy is on about then?
Stay tuned, for the history train has left the station courtesy of the good offices of the Cape Charles Mirror!
And as we continue to ponder an alleged and supposed “400 years of white supremacy” by somebody that has “consequences” for the rest of us that we have to “own” according to Democrat Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, let us once again go back in time 232 years ago to September 26, 1788 and the political essay “An American Citizen: An Examination of the Constitution of the United States I” by Tench Coxe (May 22, 1755 – July 17, 1824), an American political economist and a delegate for Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress in 1788–1789, wherein he stated as follows with respect to how the United States of America came to be separated from the tyrannical and despotic “Mother Country” of England, to wit:
“Tis evident from this short detail and the reflections which arise from it, that the quarrel between the United States and the Parliament of Great Britain did not arise so much from objections to the form of government, though undoubtedly a better one by far is now within our reach, as from a difference concerning certain important rights resulting from the essential principles of liberty, which the constitution preserved to all the subjects actually residing within the realm.”
“It was not asserted by America that the people of the island of Great Britain were slaves, but that we, though possessed absolutely of the same rights, were not admitted to enjoy an equal degree of freedom.”
“When the Declaration of Independence completed the separation between the two countries, new governments were necessarily established.”
“Many circumstances led to the adoption of the republican form, among which was the predilection of the people.”
“In devising the frames of government it may have been difficult to avoid extremes opposite to the vices of that we had just rejected; nevertheless many of the state constitutions we have chosen are truly excellent.”
“Our misfortunes have been, that in the first instance we adopted no national government at all, but were kept together by common danger only, and that in the confusions of a civil war we framed a federal constitution now universally admitted to be inadequate to the preservation of liberty, property, and the Union.”
end quotes
First of all, as we slip back into chaos, confusion, anarchy and civil war in this country today, note the words from our own history from 232 years ago, “in the confusions of a civil war we framed a federal constitution now universally admitted to be inadequate to the preservation of liberty, property, and the Union.”
And once again, make note of the fact that the “civil war” he was talking about then, 232 years ago in 1788, twelve years after the first Fourth of July, was what we today, if we are even aware of it, which many people no longer are, being a confused and disoriented people with no history at all, call the “American Revolution,” a term rather devoid of meaning when one considers the outright violence of that period meted out to people who were for liberty by other Americans whose loyalty was to the tyrant king in England, George III.
And then go to the words “(M)any circumstances led to the adoption of the republican form, among which was the predilection of the people,” and ask yourself this simple question, to wit: Do we still have a Republican form in this country today, and if so, how then can such a thing as “white supremacy,” or any other color supremacy for that matter, including Black supremacy, exist?
And what even is the “Republican form” he talked about 232 years ago?
Does anybody today even have a clue?
And no, the “Republican form” has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the minority faction in the United States of America that calls itself the “Republican party,” nor does it have anything to do with Donald Trump, or “white nationalism,” whatever on earth that might in fact be, or “white supremacy.”
Far from it, in fact, at least in theory.
So what then is it?
And for that answer, let us go to an educational site for children in this country called the Center for Civic Education, and Lesson 3: “What Is a Republican Government?” from the first edition of “We the People: The Citizen & the Constitution, Level 1,” for upper elementary students, where we have as follows, and please note that this lesson is in fact for children in America who are upper elementary students, to wit:
Purpose of Lesson
This lesson will help you understand why the Founders thought a republican form of government was best.
You will also learn about civic virtue and the common welfare.
The Founders Studied History
The Founders studied the history of governments.
They were very interested in what they read about the government of the Roman Republic.
It was located in what is now the country of Italy.
The Roman Republic existed more than 2,000 years before our nation began.
The Founders liked what they read about the Roman Republic.
They learned some important ideas from their study of the government of ancient Rome.
They used some of these ideas when they created our government.
end quotes
Those who do not know history in the end are easily manipulated and exploited fools, which describes so many people in this country today, perhaps starting with Kathy Sheehan, the Democrat mayor of Albany, New York whose knowledge of our history is abysmal and sorely lacking, with her blather about “400 years of white supremacy” having consequences that we American citizens have to own, despite we having absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for what happened before we were even born and acts committed by people who were not even American citizens.
Getting back to the civics lesson for children, we have, to wit:
What is a Republican Government?
The government of Rome was called a republican government.
The Founders read that republican government was one in which:
* The power of government is held by the people.
* The people give power to leaders they elect to represent them and serve their interests.
* The representatives are responsible for helping all the people in the country, not just a few people.
end quotes
So, where is the “white supremacy” then, besides in the twisted mind of Kathy Sheehan of Albany?
And back again to the lesson in civics we go, as follows:
What are the Advantages of Republican Government?
The Founders thought a republican government was the best kind of government they could choose for themselves.
They believed that the advantages of republican government were:
* Fairness.
They believed that laws made by the representatives they elected would be fair.
If their representatives did not make fair laws, they could elect others who would.
* Common welfare.
The laws would help everyone instead of one person or a few favored people.
* Freedom and prosperity.
People would have greater freedom and be able to live well.
end quotes
Today, that really should read, in the beginning, they believed that laws made by the representatives they elected would be fair, an if their representatives did not make fair laws, they could elect others who would, but today, due to factionalism, that is no longer true where we don’t really have people in Congress representing us if we are not a member of the minority faction the Democrat party, which is in the game for itself, not the American people, or a member of the minority faction the Republican party, which is also in the game for itself, not the American people, based on the political maxim “To the victor go the spoils!”
Getting back to the lesson again, we have:
What is the Common Welfare?
When a government tries to help everyone in a country, we say it is serving the common welfare.
The common welfare is what is good for everyone in the country, not just a few people.
Problem Solving
Your Interests and the Common Welfare
How do you decide what the common welfare is?
When should you give up your own interests to do something that is good for everyone?
Each person has to answer this question for himself or herself.
What is Civic Virtue?
When you work to help others and promote the common welfare, you are showing civic virtue.
The Founders thought civic virtue was important for a republican government.
People with civic virtue are interested in having the government help all the people.
The Founders thought it was necessary to teach children the importance of helping others.
Young people learned about civic virtue in their homes, schools, and churches.
Adults also heard about civic virtue from their religious and political leaders.
The Founders thought a republican government would work in our country.
They believed most of the people had civic virtue.
They thought the people would select leaders who would work for the common welfare.
end quotes
To which today, as an older and wiser American citizen, all I can say is how very wrong they were on that account – that the people would select leaders who would work for the common welfare.
Perhaps that was true as one time in this country, but as Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany with her Cancel Culture is proving, that is no longer so, and in fact, hasn’t been so for many, many years now, which is to our shame as a people who have truly lost their way and no longer know where they are or what they are even doing, or why!
“I hope my countrymen will never have occasion to blush for me, whatever may be the event of this campaign.”
Those were words written in a correspondence dated Moses Creek, four miles below Fort Edward, July 24th, 1777 from General Philip Schuyler, whose statue in front of Albany City Hall in New York state has been ordered to be removed by an executive order of Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of that same city, because obviously today. some of his countrymen, starting with mayor Kathy, do have occasion to not only blush for him, but to revile him, as well, to the Albany Committee of Correspondence, Safety, and Protection which was formed over the winter of 1774-1775, and would take over for an increasingly inadequate Albany Corporation which had governed the city since 1686, and although city-based, over the next two and a half years, the Albany Committee extended its authority and influence throughout Albany County and beyond.
Two days prior, on the 22d of July 1777, the chairman of the Albany committee had written to Gen. Schuyler as follows:
“Hon. Sir – Colo. Vrooman and two other gentlemen from Schoharie, are now with us, and represent the distress their part of the county is driven to.”
“Threats, they hourly receive; their persons and property are exposed to imminent danger nearly one-half of the people heretofore well disposed, have laid down their arms, and propose to side with the enemy.”
“All which change has taken its origin from the desertion of Ticonderoga, the unprecedented loss of which, we are afraid, will be followed by a revolt of more than one-half of the northern part of this county.”
“We therefore beg leave to suggest whether it would not be advisable to detain one or two companies of continental troops, which are expected here, to be sent that way for a few days, which we suppose might bring the greater part again to a sense of their duty.”
Thus were the serious straits the people of this fledgling nation found themselves in a little over a year after the first Fourth of July in 1776.
Fear for their lives and families on the frontier in the colony of New York was causing the people to turn their backs on independence and instead, to seek protection from the Tories, or Royalists, the King lovers of that time who themselves possessed considerable martial skills, and a burning hatred of those seeking to be an independent natio9n no longer subject to the tyrant King George III in England, which history Democrat mayor Sheehan would like to sweep under the carpet as she seeks to change our history, which she considers “racist,” given that the people creating that history in some large part had white skin, instead of Black, which color is in vogue now in this day and age of BLACK LIVES MATTER and their threat to burn down our system if they do not get their way in all things political in this country, just as the Indians and Tories were burning down the frontier in New York back then to suppress the Revolution, which was to degenerate into years of civil war on our frontier.
By way of reference, at that time, British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s 8,000-man army composed of British regulars, Tories, Indians and German mercenaries was coming south from Canada headed towards Albany, and between 2 and 6 July 1777, Fort Ticonderoga, near the southern end of Lake Champlain in the state of New York had been abandoned by the Americans after Burgoyne’s army occupied the high ground above the fort, and nearly surrounded the defenses, which abandonment was to tarnish the reputation of general Schuyler and result in his replacement by General “Granny” Gates, who was to set a land speed record for a man fleeing combat on horseback on August 16, 1780 during the Battle of Camden in South Carolina, which was a major victory for the British in the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War, where British forces under Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis routed the numerically superior U.S. forces led by Major General Horatio Gates about four miles north of Camden, thus strengthening the British hold on the Carolinas following the capture of Charleston.
The rout was a personally humiliating defeat for Gates, the U.S. general best known for commanding the American forces at the British defeat at Saratoga three years previously, although credit for that victory really belonged to Daniel Morgan of Virginia and Benedict Arnold, later to turn traiter to the American cause and instead, join with the British, as the people in Schoharie were doing in 1777.
In that battle of Camden, Gates’ army had possessed a great numerical superiority over the British force, having twice the personnel, but his command of them was seen as shambolic, and following the battle, he was regarded with distain by his colleagues and he never held a field command again.
However, his political connections helped him avoid any military inquiries or courts martial into the debacle, and it was those same political connections that had him replace Philip Schuyler in 1777 after the loss of Ticonderoga to the British.
After just one hour of combat in that battle in Camden in 1780, the same year Tories and Indians were burning their way through the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys, the American troops under “Granny” Gates had been utterly defeated, suffering over 2,000 casualties.
Banestre Tarleton’s cavalry pursued and harried the retreating Continental troops for some 22 miles before drawing rein.
By that evening, Gates, mounted on a swift horse, had taken refuge 60 miles away in Charlotte, North Carolina.
According to Charles Stedman, one of Cornwallis’ officers, after that battle, “The road for some miles was strewn with the wounded and killed who had been overtaken by the legion in their pursuit.”
“The numbers of dead horses, broken wagons, and baggage scattered on the road formed a perfect scene of horror and confusion: Arms, knapsacks, and accoutrements found were innumerable; such was the terror and dismay of the Americans.”
Thus, the mention by the Albany committee in July of 1777 of the “desertion” of Fort Ticonderoga and the very serious impact that had on the people on the frontier of the colony of New York to the west of Albany along the Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys, who at that time were also subject to raids by Indians under the command of Joseph Brant, and Tories.
Concerning the depressed spirits of the people on the frontier at that time, subsequent to the abandonment of Fort Ticonderoga after its continued occupancy by the Americans became untenable due to the emplacement of British cannons on Mount Defiance which overlooked the fort, on the 24th of July, 1777, the chairman of the Albany committee wrote to the New York council of safety as follows:
“Gentlemen – Yours of the 22d instant is now before us, recommending us to use our utmost influence to revive the drooping spirits of the inhabitants of this and Tryon county. ”
“A duty so essential as this, has long since been our principal object, by following the example you have recommended to us; but upon the whole, gentlemen, they are only words upon which we have long played, and we earnestly hope they may be realized in such a manner as that the usual confidence the people of this and Tryon county have in our board, may not depreciate in the eyes of the public, on which head we beg leave to remark, that your sanguine expectations of Col. Harper’s rangers will by no means answer the purpose.”
“The gentleman undoubtedly has abilities, and will exert himself; but when this matter is held up in a more clear view, it will appear that every man, almost, in this and Tryon county, adapted for the ranging service, is engaged in the continental, occasioned by the amazing bounty that has been given; and on the other hand, the necessary men employed in various branches attending an army, together with the constant drain of militia, though but few in number, occasioned by the above circumstance, are still necessitated to discharge their duty to their country, all which point out to you the impracticability of the plan.”
“After considering these particulars, (which we believe have not been sufficiently suggested by the honorable the council,) we conceive it will be impossible to collect any more men on the proposed plan, by reason that their pay and encouragement is not adequate to the times.”
“If the foregoing difficulties have any weight, you may judge that no essential service can be expected from the rangers, nor can have any weight with the people to the westward.
“We enclose you a copy of a letter by us sent to Gen. Schuyler, from which you will perceive the distressed situation the people of Schoharie are in.”
Speaking of the Fourth of July, the little settlement at Harpersfield, some 66 miles south-west of Albany , which was greatly exposed to savage inroads, organized a committee of vigilance, of which Isaac Patchin was chairman.
In view of the enemy’s proximity, Mr. Patchin wrote to the State Council of Safety, on the 4th of July, 1777, as follows:
“Gentlemen – The late irruptions and hostilities committed at Tunadilla, by Joseph Brandt, with a party of Indians and tories, have so alarmed the well-affected inhabitants of this and the neighboring settlements, who are now the entire frontier of this state, that except your honors doth afford us immediate protection, we shall be obliged to leave our settlements to save our lives and families; especially as there is not a man on the outside of us, but such as have taken protection of Brant, and many of them have threatened our destruction in a short time, the particular circumstances of which Col. Harper, (who will wait on your honors,) can give you a full account of, by whom we hope for your protection, in what manner to conduct ourselves.”
Note the reference therein, “especially as there is not a man on the outside of us, but such as have taken protection of Brant, and many of them have threatened our destruction in a short time,” which is a direct reference to the civil war in this country that was the American Revolution, which had members of the same families fighting against each other on different sides, as well as neighbor against neighbor, a situation we seem to be descending into all over again, which is why this history should not be swept under the rug by people such as mayor Kathy of Albany, and why we today should stand up to people like mayor Kathy and BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Thereafter, on the 8th July, 1777, William Harper wrote the Albany council from Cherry Valley, also within Tryon county, stating the exposed condition of that place, and the rumor of the enemy’s nearness under Brant.
The committee to which was referred the correspondence of Isaac Patchin and Wm. Harper, introduced several resolutions to the New York council of safety on the 17th July; in which they recommended raising two companies of rangers, to serve on the frontiers of Tryon, Ulster, and Albany counties, under the command of John Harper and James Clyde, as captains, and Alexander Harper and John Campbell as lieutenants.
Lt. Harper, as soon as twenty-five men were enlisted by Col. John Harper as recruiting officer, was to take charge of them and repair to a post of danger.
In the correspondence of the Provincial Congress of New York, we then have as follows from the Schoharie Committee Chamber, July 17, 1777, to wit:
“Gentlemen – The late advantage gained over us by the enemy, has such effect upon numbers here, that many we thought steady friends to the state seem to draw back; our state therefore, is deplorable; all our frontiers [frontier settlers] except those that are to take protection from the enemy, are gone, so that we are entirely open to the Indians and tories, which we expect every hour to come to this settlement: part of our militia is at Fort Edward; the few that are here many of them, are unwilling to take up arms to defend themselves, as they are not able to stand against so great a number of declared enemies, who speak openly without any reserve.”
“Therefore, if your honors do not grant us immediate relief, of about five hundred men to help defend us, we must either fall a prey to the enemy, or take protection also.”
“For further particulars we refer you to the bearer, Col. Wills, in whom we confide to give you a true account of our state and situation, and of the back settlements, as he is well acquainted with them.”
“We beg that your honors will be pleased to send us an answer by the bearer.”
“We remain, Your honors’ most obed’t humble servants.”
Signed by order or the committee. JOHANNES BALL, Chairman..
Today, we take our independence as a nation as a matter of fact, but in the beginning, that was hardly so, as we see in that correspondence above with reference to “we must either fall a prey to the enemy, or take protection also.”
Thereafter, on the 22d, the Council wrote “To the Chairman of the Committee of Schoharie,” as follows:
“Kingston, July 22, 1777.”
“Gentlemen: It greatly astonishes this Council that the settlement of Schoharie, which has always been considered as firmly and spiritedly attached to the American cause, should be panic-struck upon the least appearance of danger.”
“Can you conceive that our liberties can possibly de redeemed from that vassalage which our implacable foes are, with unrelenting cruelty, framing for us, without some danger and some vigorous efforts on our part?”
“To expect that Providence, however righteous our cause, will, without a vigorous use of those means which it has put in our power, interpose in our behalf, is truly to expect that God will work miracles for us, when those means, well improved, will afford sufficient security to our inestimable rights.”
“It is your bounden duty, if you wish for the smiles of Heaven in favor of the public cause in which you are so deeply interested, to acquit yourselves like men.”
“A few worthless Indians, and a set of villains, who have basely deserted their country, are all the enemies you have to fear.”
“We have good reason to believe that the greatest and most deserving part of the Six Nations are well disposed toward us.”
“This Council is exerting itself to secure you against danger, and only wish you would second their efforts.”
“Tryon county is a frontier to your settlement; in that county Fort Schuyler (Stanwix) is a respectable fortress, properly garrisoned.”
“Major General Schuyler has sent up a part of a regiment as a further reinforcement.”
“We have authorized Colonel Harper to raise and embody two hundred men for covering and protecting the inhabitants, and have formed such a disposition of the militia of the county of Tryon for alternate relieves as we hope will tend effectually to secure you.”
“If any proclamations or protections should be offered you by the enemy, by all means reject them.”
“From the woful experience of those who have fallen within their influence in other parts of the country, we have the highest reasons to believe that your acceptance of those tenders of friendship, should they be made, will render your misery and slavery unavoidable.”
“In further attention to the cause of your settlement and Tryon county, we have this morning sent Mr. Robert Livingston to Gen. Washington.”
“He is authorized to concert with his Excellency the most effectual measures for putting the western frontiers of this state in all possible security.
“In the mean time we expect much from your public virtue; that it will induce you to apprehend and send to us the disaffected among you ; that it will lead you to the most effectual means of securing your property from the depredations of a weak but insidious foe; and that it will teach you the impropriety of deserting your habitations, and keep you in continual readiness to repel the assaults of the enemies of the liberty of your country.”
“We write to the general committee of the county of Albany, to give you all the countenance, assistance, and support in their power.”
The following is part of a letter from the same body, under the same date, to the Albany Committee:
“Gentlemen – The great depression of spirits of the inhabitants of Tryon county, and the settlers of Schoharie, give this Council much uneasiness, as it exposes them to the depredations of an enemy whom they might otherwise despise.”
“We hope that your committee will not be wanting to support the drooping spirits of the western inhabitants in general, and particularly of those within your county.”
“We have great reason to fear the breaking up of the settlement of Schoharie, unless our exertions be seconded by your efforts.”
“You well know that such an event on the frontiers will not only be attended with infinite mischief to the inhabitants, but will furnish cause for discouragement to the country in general.”
“Every means should therefore be tried to prevent it.
“This Council are earnestly solicitous to put the western frontiers of this state in a situation as respectable as possible; and though they conceive the enemy’s strength to consist principally in those exaggerations which result from the threats of our internal foes, and the fears of our friends; yet as those may be productive of real mischief, they would endeavor by every means in their power to prevent the evil.”
“Your known exertions in the public cause will not permit them to doubt of your straining every nerve to second their endeavors,” &c., &c.
end quotes
Take notice then of these words from our history on July 22, 1777, to wit: “From the woful experience of those who have fallen within their influence in other parts of the country, we have the highest reasons to believe that your acceptance of those tenders of friendship, should they be made, will render your misery and slavery unavoidable.”
Yes, indeed, the consequences of 400 years of British supremacy, which mayor Kathy likes to think of as “white supremacy,” even though from those very words about “will render your misery and slavery unavoidable,” it is clear that white people for independence in this country at that time hardly had any “white supremacy” at all, especially when Joseph Brant, the Mohawk Indian was chief and his murderous Red Men were on the prowl.
So why does Democrat mayor of Albany Kathy Sheehan now want to bury this history along with Philip Schuyler?
Any thoughts, anyone?
It is interesting as we follow along this history of our nation’s beginnings after the first Fourth of July in 1776 in what was in reality a bloody civil war in this country fought between those who were for liberty and independence versus those who remained loyal to the tyrant King George III in England that that history then leads us to these following words, which in their turn lead us to today, and the incipient civil war we are once again facing as a people and as a nation, to wit:
“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.”
Those were words from January 8, 1790, 162 months after the first Fourth of July in 1776, and 76 months after the end of the American Revolution on September 3, 1783, and roughly two years before the ratification of the 2d Amendment to the United States Constitution in December of 1791, which amendment states “(A) well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” that were addressed to the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate by America’s first president of the newly-formed federal government George Washington, the former Commanding General of our Continental Army during the American Revolution, in his First Annual Address To Congress.
Note how he phrased that, to wit; “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.”
Today, we are a heavily armed people, but are we a disciplined people?
Talking about the incipient civil war now brewing in this sad and sorry nation at war with itself, from what is transpiring presently in the nation, and here I am thinking mainly but not only of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse, who traveled some 20 miles to Kenosha while armed to ultimately engage in gunfire with members of an anarchist mob rioting in that city, one can only wonder.
Which thought then brings us back around to the 2d Amendment and the so-called God-given “inalienable right to bear arms,” as it always seems to do when “guns” are at issue, as they so often are today, seemingly on a daily basis anymore, including in Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan’s lawless sanctuary city of Albany, New York, where a recent Albany Times Union article titled “Seven-year-old shot in Albany’s South End on Sunday” by Massarah Mikati on Aug. 30, 2020, we had as follows, to wit:
ALBANY — A 7-year-old child was shot in the knee Sunday afternoon when gunman in a vehicle opened fire on a crowd of people gathered outside to enjoy the late summer weather, police said.
Caught in the crossfire that left a man injured too, the youngster is at least the third child 10 or younger shot in Albany in 2020 and the 100th shooting victim this year.
Chief Eric Hawkins said preliminary investigations have found the shooting was a drive-by with multiple people involved.
He is unsure how many of those people fired weapons, and there are no suspect or vehicle descriptions being released yet.
“It’s very unsettling to have something like this happen in a vibrant, family-oriented neighborhood in broad daylight,” he said near the scene of the shooting.
“These are individuals who have no regard for life, and it’s important that we find out who they are and bring those individuals to justice.”
end quotes
But my goodness, people, why get all excited?
Afterall, they too have God-given “inalienable rights” to bear arms under the 2d Amendment, just like everybody else in this nation, so what is the big deal?
Just because they are murderous thugs, savages and animals does not mean they should be deprived of their God-given “inalienable rights” to bear arms, because if they were so deprived, then the “God-given right” would no longer be inalienable, i.e. unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor, now would they, especially as it was George Washington himself, the so-called “Father” of this country who said in 1790 in his first address to Congress that a free people ought to be armed, as these savages and animals clearly were that day in mayor Kathy’s lawless sanctuary city of Albany, New York, this state’s pathetic capital city with a huge BLACK LIVES MATTER banner prominently displayed across the front of mayor Kathy’s city hall, when actually, as we can see from this story, they don’t matter at all to the Black folks doing the shooting at other Black folks in that sorry city, which takes us back to that story, as follows:
Mayor Kathy Sheehan said she spoke with the child’s mother and grandmother Sunday.
“The depraved indifference involved in shooting a gun in the presence of a child is difficult to fathom, and callous acts like these will not be tolerated in our city,” Sheehan said in a written statement released by her office.
“Our residents deserve better, and our city deserves better.”
end quotes
Which is BULL****, as we can clearly see by going back to another Albany, New York Times Union article entitled “Demonstrators rally outside court for couple arrested while recording police” by Steve Hughes on June 17, 2020, where we have as follows, to wit:
Addison and Shuman were arrested shortly after they began recording the arrest of another man near the intersection of South Pearl and Arch streets.
The incident took place days after several rallies – including two that featured clashes between police and protesters – were held in Albany to call for police reforms and an end to police brutality after the May 25 killing of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Police accused Addison of inciting a riot and resisting arrest.
The incident occurred near the police department’s South Station where police and protesters clashed on May 30.
Shuman was also accused of resisting arrest.
As videos of the arrest surfaced, Mayor Kathy Sheehan said she was troubled by the behavior of police and the city announced the charges would be dropped.
The case was referred to the police department’s Office of Professional Standards.
“The video footage does not appear to depict efforts by police to de-escalate a situation, nor it does it depict the sensitivity I expect from all city employees in this moment and every day,” she said.
end quotes
Which brings us back to the Aug. 30, 2020 Times Union story, as follows:
Brenda Warner lives a few houses down from where the shooting took place, and saw the gunfire herself while sitting on her front deck.
It’s not the first shooting she’s seen, she said, but it never gets any easier to witness the tragedies.
“You don’t ever forget,” she said.
Broken glass was pooled on the street in front of her.
Warner has been a resident of the Clinton Street block for a total of eight years.
The neighborhood, she said, has changed, and she doesn’t feel safe living alone anymore.
“I said to the cop today, ‘You only come when somebody gets hurt or if there’s a shooting.'”
“‘It’s like you’re afraid to come on this block, but why?'” she said.
end quotes
And that answer is simple – they are afraid that if they do come, and they are not “sensitive” enough to the “feelings” of the savages with their depraved indifference doimng the shooting, that mayor Kathy will demand that they too be suspended and disciplined and have their lives and careers destroyed, as she did with the detectives involved with the rioters because they did not depict the “sensitivity” mayor Kathy expects from all city employees in this moment and every day, which takes us back to the story, as follows:
“We’re citizens, too, and we have rights just like everybody else.”
“One right is you’re supposed to be protected.”
end quotes
Oh, really?
By whom?
Other people with guns?
And how?
“Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”
“In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is proportionably essential.”
“To the security of a free constitution it contributes in various ways – by convincing those who are intrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness – cherishing the first, avoiding the last – and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.”
Those are other and further words from January 8, 1790, 162 months after the first Fourth of July in 1776, and 76 months after the end of the American Revolution on September 3, 1783, words that were addressed to the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate by America’s first president of the newly-formed federal government George Washington in his First Annual Address To Congress, and as we view with dismay the chaos and anarchy and lawlessness and just plain stupidity and insanity this pitiful nation is rapidly descending down into as we head towards another civil war in this nation, it is quite obvious those words of wisdom of George Washington, a now discredited American figure because of his involvement with the institution of slavery, have long since been not only forgotten, but totally discarded, so that today, especially in a sanctuary city like Albany, New York, or Portland, Oregon, or Kenosha, Wisconsin, or Seattle, Washington, to name but a few, absolute stupidity and gross ignorance rather than knowledge appears to be the basis of public happiness in this sick and troubled nation, which thought takes us to another article in the Albany Times Union entitled “Albany chief tries to bridge the blue and Black Lives Matter – Eric Hawkins talks about the sometimes exhausting work of supporting officers, responding to calls for change” by Massarah Mikati, Staff writer, on June 28, 2020, where we have as follows:
ALBANY — One month ago, Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins was surrounded by a throng of impassioned protesters in Arbor Hill, demanding answers about holding local police officers accountable for violence against black residents.
He was chided with comments such as, “I’m tired with the political responses,” and “You’re not here to be silent, Chief.”
Some people called Hawkins, who is black, a sellout and an Uncle Tom.
end quote
And there is where it always seem to go back to here in this highly divided nation, which divisions are being stoked by Democrats like Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, with her disturbing and intimidating huge BLACK LIVES MATTER banner hung in prominent display across the front of Albany City Hall for all to see and fear.
Any and every person with Black skin who attempts, as Chief Hawkins is doing, to be a functioning part of a multicultural society that has people, human beings, of all skin colors in it, is a “sell out” and an “Uncle Tom,” which is a real ignorant comment if there ever was one as applied to Chief Hawkins, who I have personally met, given that the definition of an “Uncle Tom” is a black man considered to be excessively obedient or servile to white people and a person regarded as betraying their cultural or social allegiance.
What “cultural or social allegiance” is a police chief of any color supposed to have, other than to RULE OF LAW?
As to these “protestors” screeching to the chief about “violence” allegedly done to them by the police, let’s for a moment by way of context take a look at the violence done by them to the community by going to a NEWS 6 WRGB story on the subject entitled “Albany officials estimate damage from weekend riot could be over $1 million” by Emily DeFeciani on June 1st, 2020, where we have as follows:
ALBANY NY (WRGB) – As the fight for black lives and George Floyd rages on in a variety of forms, Albany is calculating the cosh of the destruction left behind from a riot Saturday night.
“After the events of Saturday night into Sunday morning, we had many businesses that were already hurting because of COVID that experienced catastrophic losses,” said Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan.
“I visited some of them yesterday and when you see a grown person crying, because they saw their whole future just wiped out in front of them when they were trying to get through being shut down for almost two months, in some cases longer, it’s sad.”
“But it happened,” added Albany County Executive Dan McCoy.
Albany officials estimate damage done throughout the city and county during a riot Saturday could be well over a million dollars.
Monday, Mayor Kathy Sheehan announced they will be providing emergency aid to small businesses, including making changes to the existing facade improvement program that will waive the 50% match requirement for those impacted by the destruction.
end quotes
So the animals and savages who comprise these mobs get to destroy to their heart’s content, and it is the civilized people in society who then have to foot the bill, and tom the animals and savages, that is their form of “racial justice,” that the rest of us simply have to accept.
WHY?
Getting back to “socializing” the costs of this mob violence in the name of “racial justice,” we have this from that same story, to wit:
But Sheehan says with the city already facing a financial crisis, this further highlights the need for federal funding.
“Had this event occurred in a normal year with normal budgeting, it would’ve been painful, but we certainly would’ve been able to manage through it. In the current environment without that replaced revenue, this just makes matters all the more difficult and dire,” she explained.
end quotes
So there we see it, people – the law-abiding federal taxpayers with their stable, productive nuclear families who don’t loot and destroy the property of others are the ones who should have to foot the bill for the destruction caused by these animals and savages, because, uh, well, you know, it’s the right thing to do!
It’s uh, well, racial justice!
Make the people who are “oppressing” these animals and savages have to pay for the damage, because it would be a clear case of racial injustice to make the animals and savages have to pay for it, because they are already oppressed enough by the “white man’s laws” which they do not believe should apply to them, being quite happy as they are with law of the jungle, instead, which takes us back to that article as follows:
Sheehan says she wants to continue the dialogue about racial injustice and changing the system, but in a peaceful manner.
“Racism is real.”
“We should be talking about it and we need to acknowledge it and we need to recognize it.”
end quotes
Racism is indeed very real as we can see from this story about the “white haters” in Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan’s lawless, pathetic city of Albany, New York.
As the now thoroughly discredited George Washington once said at this nation’s beginning, knowledge in America should be the surest basis of public happiness and to the security of a free constitution it is supposed contributes in various ways, chiefly by convincing those like Democrat truckler and mob appeaser and mollycoddler Kathy Sheehan who are intrusted with the public administration that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people, and by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights so that they, the citizens, can discern and provide against invasions of them and to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness – cherishing the first, avoiding the last – and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.
But as we can see in Albany from this story, where mayor Kathy is mouthing her stupid and ignorant pablum about “racism is real and we should be talking about it and we need to acknowledge it and we need to recognize it,” those words of George Washington are long since dead.
Racism is real, mayor Kathy – and the best example we have of it today is these mobs who destroy the property of those who are not Black like them!
That is racism, mayor Kathy, this hatred of white people in your troubled city staring you right in the face, so when are you going to acknowledge that recognize that?
The candid world would truly like to know.
“On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character or the public trust.”
“I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions.”
“I will always uphold the Constitution, my community, and the agency I serve.”
Those, people, are words from the widely used oath for uniformed police officers embraced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in the United States of America, today, 244 years after our first Fourth of July occasioned by the Declaration of Independence from a tyrant King in England who had declared the people of this nation out of his Protection while waging War against them, and plundering their seas, ravaging their Coasts, burning their towns, and destroying the lives of those people, and at the time the Declaration of Independence was written transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny the tyrant king had already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation, exciting domestic insurrections amongst them, while endeavoring to bring on the inhabitants of their frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, which is why we are supposed to have LAW and ORDER in this country today, even though we don’t and are getting farther and farther away from the concept.
Going back to those words from that oath, first of all, in these highly troubled times we find ourselves in, in this highly divided nation on the brink of yet another civil war, as was the so-called American Revolution, where it was family member against family member and neighbor against neighbor, focus on the words in that oath, “On my honor, I will never betray the public trust,” and as you do, ask yourself this essential question, to wit: what exactly is the “public trust” that a police officer is never to betray?
According to the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police on that subject, we have as follows, to wit:
Before Police Officers take upon themselves the “LAW ENFORCEMENT OATH OF HONOR,” it is vital that they understand what it truly means.
An oath is a solemn pledge someone voluntarily makes when they sincerely intend to do what they say.
The key words in the “LAW ENFORCEMENT OATH OF HONOR” are defined thusly:
* HONOR means giving one’s word as a bond and guarantee.
* BETRAY is defined as breaking faith and proving false.
* The BADGE is a visible symbol of the power of your office.
* INTEGRITY is firm adherence to principles,both in our private and public life.
* CHARACTER means the qualities and standards of behavior that distinguish an individual.
* The PUBLIC TRUST is a duty imposed in faith to those we are sworn to serve.
* COURAGE is having the “heart,” the mental, and the moral strength to venture, persevere, withstand, and overcome danger, difficulty, and fear.
* ACCOUNTABILITY means that we are answerable and responsible for our actions.
* COMMUNITY is the municipalities, neighborhoods, and citizens we serve.
end quotes
All well and good, but in these troubled times, where the police are seen more and more as “the enemy” by more and more people in this country as were the Red Coats of the tyrant King George III of England back when, do those words really mean anything at all, or are they like so many other empty words today, simply a lot of meaningless hot air?
And that thought takes us to a NEWS10 ABC story entitled “Several arrests made in Monday night Albany riots” by Giuliana Bruno on June 2, 2020, where we have as follows:
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — A peaceful protest turned violent in Albany Monday night.
The demonstrations began at noon with Police Chief Eric Hawkins taking a knee with demonstrators in solidarity, but ended with police having to throw tear gas to disperse crowds late into the night.
end quotes
HUH?
The Police Chief of the lawless, violent, sanctuary city of Albany, New York “took a knee” with demonstrators?
Is somebody pulling our leg here?
Could that somehow be a misprint?
But no, it isn’t – that really happened, and what a very powerful statement that makes, especially to those of us who are in the hated class in Albany of having skin that is white, and not Black like the Police Chief – the Police Chief openly and brazenly taking a knee in solidarity with a minority of the people, those of the Marxist ideology who are bent on burning down our system and instituting Black “sovereignty,” i.e. supreme power or authority, as we see by going back to June 24, 2020, 22 days after the Police Chief of Albany, New York “took the knee,” an incredible act given his oath to support the Constitutions of the United States and the State of New York, which oath he appears to have forsaken by “taking the knee” in solidarity with these protesters, to the interview on Fox News with Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York by Martha MacCallum on ‘The Story,” during which Hawk Newsome informed the people of America that “(I)f this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” to see the direction this story is taking us as a nation and as a people in the ,light of this Police Chief taking the knee with these protesters, to wit:
Greater New York Black Lives Matter president Hawk Newsome joined “The Story” Wednesday to discuss the direction of the movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody and the subsequent demonstrations across the country, many of which have sparked destruction and violence.
“You … have said that violence is sometimes necessary in these situations,” host Martha MacCallum told Newsome.
“What exactly is it that you hope to achieve through violence?”
“Wow, it’s interesting that you would pose that question like that,” Newsome responded, “because this country is built upon violence.”
The interview took a turn after MacCallum read a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. and asked Newsome if he agreed with it.
“Let us be dissatisfied,” King told the Southern Christian Leadership Conference convention in 1967, “until that day when nobody will shout, ‘White power!’, when nobody will shout, ‘Black power!’, but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.’”
“I love the Lord and my Lord and savior,” Newsome responded to MacCallum’s prompt.
“Jesus Christ is the most famous black radical revolutionary in history.”
“And he was treated just like Dr. King.”
“He was arrested on occasion and he was also crucified or assassinated.”
“This is what happens to black activists.”
“We are killed by the government.”
At the conclusion of the interview, Newsome told MacCallum, “I just want black liberation and black sovereignty, by any means necessary.”
end quotes
There is who the Police Chief of Albany, New York is siding with by his public act of taking the knee in solidarity with these Marxists who were calling him an “Uncle Tom” and who want to use violence against us and burn down our system and destroy our stable, law-abiding nuclear families which is not a comforting thought at all if one happens to be white.
You cannot be for all the people, when it is obvious the Police Chief, by taking the knee with these protesters, the equivalent of “passing under a yoke,” is for just some of the people, and those people bent on our destruction, as they proved that same evening the Chief truckled to the mob by taking the knee.
So.
Has the Police Chief of Albany, New York declared war on white people then?
Like King George III before him with regard the the American colonists, has the Police Chief of Albany, New York declared people with white skin outside of his protection?
Sure does seem that way to me, anyway, and that is not at all a comforting thought!
Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna!
“Your lot is cast in Sparta, be a credit to it!”
That is a proverb that is frequent in Latin literature, being taken from the ‘Telephus’ of Euripides, where it is addressed by Agamemnon, the king of Argos who commanded the united Greek armed forces in the ensuing Trojan War, to his brother Menelaus, the king of Sparta and husband of Helen of Troy who was a central figure in the Trojan War, leading the Spartan contingent of the Greek army, under his elder brother Agamemnon.
It could be modernized to our times by making it say instead, “your lot is cast in the United States of America, be a credit to it,” which thought takes us back in time to the American Revolution circa 1779, three years after the first Fourth of July and this excerpt from “The History of Schoharie County: And Border Wars of New York; Containing Also a Sketch of the Causes which Led to the American Revolution” written in 1845 by Jeptha Root Simms, to wit:
Among the men who aided in our glorious struggle for independence, was a regiment of blacks, who generally proved to be good, faithful soldiers.
end quotes
Clearly, those Black people fighting alongside the white folks for freedom and independence back then took those words to heart and unlike the savages today tearing down our civilization and rule of law to replace it with law of the jungle, i.e., a system or mode of action in which the strongest survive, presumably as animals in nature or as human beings whose activity is not regulated by the laws or ethics of civilization, as we are seeing in Kathy Sheehan’s violent sanctuary city of Albany, New York, incidentally the state capital, where we were recently treated to the spectacle of mayor Kathy’s police chief taking the knee with in solidarity with the protestors, as opposed to standing tall for law and order, they were a credit to it.
Which then brings us forward in time a bit to October 21, 1788, five years after the war was finally over, and some degree of peace was finally able to reign in the land after eight years of struggle and civil war which ended on September 3, 1783, in some part thanks to the efforts of those Black soldiers, the political essay “An American Citizen: An Examination of the Constitution of the United States IV” by Tench Coxe, a white man, wherein we had as follows, to wit, regarding the Black folks and the “special institution” of slavery, a hold-over from when we were ruled by the British, to wit:
The importation of slaves from any foreign country is, by a clear implication, held up to the world as equally inconsistent with the dispositions and the duties of the people of America.
A solid foundation is laid for exploding the principles of negro slavery, in which many good men of all parties in Pennsylvania, and throughout the union, have already concurred.
The temporary reservation of any particular matter must ever be deemed an admission that it should be done away.
This appears to have been well understood.
In addition to the arguments drawn from liberty, justice and religion, opinions against this practice, founded in sound policy, have no doubt been urged.
Regard was necessarily paid to the peculiar situation of our southern fellow-citizens; but they, on the other hand, have not been insensible of the delicate situation of our national character on this subject.
end quotes
So much for mayor Kathy’s specious claim that all white people are racists, which is pure hog****.
And but for the Democrats like mayor Kathy who ruled in the south, slavery would have ended as it should have, which is something mayor Kathy should give some serious thought to and own.
Getting back to that same essay, we have as follows, to wit:
Let us examine what further securities for the safety and happiness of the people are contained in the general stipulations and provisions.
The United States guarantee to every state in the union a separate republican form of government.
From thence it follows, that any man or body of men, however rich or powerful, who shall make an alteration in the form of government of any state, whereby the powers thereof shall be attempted to be taken out of the hands of the people at large, will stand guilty of high treason.
end quotes
The concept of a republican government, which as stated before has nothing to do with the minority political faction in this country called the “Republican party,” comes from the concept of republicanism, which is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic with an emphasis on liberty and the civic virtue practiced by citizens.
Ah, yes, civic virtue practiced by citizens!
So why doesn’t that apply to Hawk Newsome and BLACK LIVES MATTER who are trying to make an alteration in the form of our government in this state, whereby the powers thereof shall be attempted to be taken out of the hands of the people at large, and placed in theirs instead, to our detriment if we happen to have skin that is white, instead of Black?
As to republicanism, more broadly it refers to a political system that protects liberty, especially by incorporating a rule of law that cannot be arbitrarily ignored by the government as seems to be happening in mayor Kathy’s lawless and violent sanctuary city of Albany, New York, where instead of standing tall in defense of the common welfare, the laws would help everyone instead of one person or a few favored people, mayor Kathy’s police chief is kneeling in submission to the howling mob, instead?
Is that what those Black soldiers were fighting for back when?
Somehow, I don’t think so, and instead of kneeling and truckling to a tyrant English king, they were standing tall like men.
Racism is real, mayor Kathy, because racists like yourself keep it that way.
Recognize that and own it, because it is the truth that you have so much trouble facing with your intimidating BLACK LIVES MATTER banner making our capital city a very unwelcoming place if one happens not to be Black or a Marxist intent on destroying our stable, law-abiding nuclear families while burning down our system to replace it with Black sovereignty, an act of treason according to Tech Coxe and American history.
And once again, as we productive, law-abiding people of America who are products of stable nuclear families, and who ourselves have productive, law-abiding, stable nuclear families continue to ponder Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan’s open and overt advocacy for BLACK LIVES MATTER, where she is advocating for an end to the nuclear family and the dismantling of cisgender privilege while fostering a queer‐affirming network, that in the light of her oath of office wherein she solemnly swore that she would support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that she would faithfully discharge the duties of the office of mayor of Albany, a special place filled with people who care, who are kind to one another and love her great city, according to the best of her ability, which in fact might in reality be quite limited, and as we ponder all these big words like cisgender and heteronormative that are coming at us from BLACK LIVES MATTER through Democrat mayor of Albany, New York Kathy Sheehan, who is their advocate and who believes we all should embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER as she has done, in spite of her oath of office, let’s go back to September 26, 1788 and the political essay “An American Citizen: An Examination of the Constitution of the United States I” by Tench Coxe where we have as follows:
Let us compare it (the proposed United States Constitution) with the so much boasted British form of government, and see how much more it favors the people and how completely it secures their rights, remembering at the same time that we did not dissolve our connection with that country so much on account of its constitution as the perversion and maladministration of it.
end quotes
Before going further, as we also consider the consequences to those of us who are not Black and the ramifications to our civilized society in this country of the police chief of mayor Kathy’s lawless city of Albany, New York “taking the knee” with “protesters” pledged to burning down our system if they don’t get their way, which is Black sovereignty in this country according to Greater New York Black Lives Matter president Hawk Newsome, who sees the use of violence against us and ours as a viable political tool for BLACK LIVES MATTER, a Marxist group, to get its way, just as the Tories during the bloody civil war that was the American Revolution used violence against those called “damned rebels” for the same purpose, at a time when the British government under the tyrant king in England was paying for the scalps of those Americans in rebellion against him, whether from man, woman or child, it mattered not, let us focus on the words in that sentence from that essay, “see how much more it favors the people and how completely it secures their rights,” which then takes us to these words from that same essay, to wit:
“In all royal governments an helpless infant or an inexperienced youth may wear the crown.”
“Our President must be matured by the experience of years, and being born among us, his character at thirty-five must be fully understood.”
“Wisdom, virtue, and active qualities of mind and body can alone make him the first servant of a free and enlightened people.”
end quotes
Reading those words from 232 years ago on September 26, 1788 at the time of this nation’s political beginning, and then looking around at where we are now, as the nation descends into anarchy, violence and chaos, with the police chief of Albany, New York “taking the knee” in solidarity with those creating those conditions instead of him standing tall like a man in opposition to them and their agenda in support of law and order, we really have to wonder if we are any longer what could be called an “enlightened people,” where the word “enlightened” is taken to mean “having or showing a rational, modern, and well-informed outlook,” because what on earth is rational about burning, looting, destroying and running amuck with loaded guns while shooting at children and innocent bystanders?
And if “wisdom, virtue, and active qualities of mind and body” are what are supposed to be required of him or her who would be the first servant of a free and enlightened people, what about a mayor of any city in the United States today, including Albany, New York and Portland, Oregon, where the “protests” have now been going on for 100 days?
Why aren’t wisdom, virtue, and active qualities of mind and body required of them, as well, given that they have more power to do this nation harm than does the president?
In that essay, the writer states thusly with respect to the king of England, to wit:
“In Britain their king is for life.”
“In that country the king is hereditary and may be an idiot, a knave, or a tyrant by nature, or ignorant from neglect of his education, yet cannot be removed, for ‘he can do no wrong.’”
end quotes
And here, in all truth, he appears to be talking about Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, as well, when he talks about the British king being able to be an idiot, a knave, or a tyrant by nature, or ignorant from neglect of his education, after being quoted in the Albany, New York Times Union story “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, stating that she believes everyone should embrace the Black Lives Matter movement, and that while a few leaders of Black Lives Movement groups have promoted violence, or have a history of violence themselves, she says it is time for the nation to embrace that cause, that after an article in Newsweek entitled “BLM Leader: We’ll ‘Burn’ the System Down If U.S. Won’t Give Us What We Want” by Meghan Roos on 6/25/20, where we had Hawk Newsome of BLACK LIVES MATTER warning us as follows, to wit:
A leader of Black Lives Matter’s New York chapter on Wednesday said the movement was prepared to “burn down this system” if the U.S. does not work with participants to enact real change.
“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” said Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, during an interview with Fox News.
end quotes
Which takes us back to Tench Coxe, as follows:
“In America, as the President is to be one of the people at the end of his short term, so will he and his fellow citizens remember, that he was originally one of the people; and that he is created by their breath.”
“Further, he cannot be an idiot, probably not a knave or a tyrant, for those whom nature makes so, discover it before the age of thirty-five, until which period he cannot be elected.”
“It appears we have not admitted that he can do no wrong, but have rather presupposed he may and will sometimes do wrong, by providing for his impeachment, his trial, and his peaceable and complete removal.”
end quotes
So what about Kathy Sheehan then, who does appear to be an idiot, if not also a knave or a tyrant, and her police chief Eric Hawkins, who “took the knee” in solidarity with these people who are prepared to “burn down this system” if the U.S. does not work with participants to enact real change on their terms and their terms only?
Are they also “of the people” as the president is supposed to be?
Or are they above us?
A question for our times if there ever was one!
“Let us then, with a candor worthy of the subject, ask ourselves, whether it can be feared, that a majority of the Representatives, each of whom will be chosen by six thousand enlightened freemen, can betray their country?”
“Whether a majority of the Senate, each of whom will be chosen by the legislature of a free, sovereign and independent state, without any stipulations in favour of wealth or the contemptible distinctions of birth or rank, and who will be closely observed by the state legislatures, can destroy our liberties, controuled as they are too by the house of representatives?”
“Or whether a temporary limited executive officer, watched by the federal Representatives, by the Senate, by the State Legislatures, by his personal enemies among the people of his own state, by the jealousy of the people of rival states, and by the whole of the people of the Union, can ever endanger our Freedom?”
Those were the types of hard questions that were posed to the people of the United States of America 232 years ago on October 21, 1788 in the political essay “An American Citizen: An Examination of the Constitution of the United States IV” by Tench Coxe, and 232 years later, as we watch this nation being divided by factionalism that Tench Coxe and his generation apparently could not conceive of, those hard questions bear scrutiny once again, where we have evidence of the factionalism dividing us in our present pitiful times in this following question from the Albany, New York Times Union story “Albany chief tries to bridge the blue and Black Lives Matter – Eric Hawkins talks about the sometimes exhausting work of supporting officers, responding to calls for change” by Massarah Mikati on June 28, 2020, to wit:
“What is it like to be a black police chief in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement?”
end quotes
What a strange question to be asking a person who took the following oath pursuant to Article XIII of the New York State Constitution, the Preamble of which reads “We The People of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom, in order to secure its blessings, DO ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION,” and which document is supposed to apply to all public officials in New York state regardless of what color their skin might be – red, black, brown, yellow or white, to wit:
“I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Police Chief of the City of Albany, according to the best of my ability.”
end quotes
Section 1 of Article I, the Bill of Rights, of that document reads thusly: No member of this state shall be disfranchised, or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land, or the judgment of his or her peers.
Section 11 of Article I further states: No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof.
No person shall, because of race, color, creed or religion, be subjected to any discrimination in his or her civil rights by any other person or by any firm, corporation, or institution, or by the state or any agency or subdivision of the state.
end quotes
Accordingly, what on earth does “in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement” have to do with how the Police Chief of the lawless, violent, sanctuary city of Albany, New York, ironically, also the state capital, where ignorance prevails and Black lives aren’t worth a damn to the Black savages roaming mayor Kathy’s city with their guns blowing away Black children and innocent bystanders, have to do with how the Police Chief of Albany fulfills his oath and upholds the law so that no person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws, which would have to start with those dead Black children the Chief has so far failed to protect?
Has the Chief ever read the Constitution of the State of New York that he swore an oath to support?
Do the words “NO member of this state shall be disfranchised, or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof” mean anything to him, for if they did, he would have laughed right in the face of the Times Union reporter, whose interview starts with the preamble “Hawkins sat down with the Times Union to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement, and what it’s like to be a black police chief today,” asking him the question “What is it like to be a black police chief in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement,” precisely because his oath says nothing about being the BLACK police chief, given that section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states in very clear and quite unambiguous language as follows: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
So, are people with Black skin like Albany, New York Police Chief Eric Hawkins citizens of the United States?
Or aren’t they?
And if they are citizens of the United States, just like people with red skin, or brown skin, or yellow skin, or white skin are citizens of the United States of America, then what on earth does being a police chief in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement have to do with anything connected to enforcing the laws of the State of New York so as to not deny to anyone, including those of us with white skin who seem to be outside of Black Police Chief Eric Hawkins of the lawless, violent sanctuary city of Albany, New York, the equal protection of the law?
Two hundred thirty-two (232) years ago, at the time of this nation’s founding, Tench Coxe asked the people of the United States at that time “Let us then, with a candor worthy of the subject, ask ourselves, whether it can be feared, that a majority of the Representatives, each of whom will be chosen by six thousand enlightened freemen, can betray their country?”
232 years later, we need to reframe that question thusly: “Let us then, with a candor worthy of the subject, ask ourselves, whether it can be feared, that in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, a Black police chief and a Democrat mayor in the City of Albany, New York, unaccountable to the people, will betray their country?”
As for me, watching this on-going drama unfold, I would answer that question framed thusly in the affirmative, because in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, WHITE lives do not matter, at all, which constitutes a gross violation of that portion of section 1 of the 14th Amendment which states as follows, to wit: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws!
As we track the history of this nation in this series of essays courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror, which history indeed is far from perfect, as the people who made and still make that history are and were in many cases quite far from perfect themselves, from the first Fourth of July in 1776, and the circumstances surrounding that event, this in the light Hearst Publishing’s former star political correspondent Amy Biancolli’s TWEET to her multitude of TWITTERATI on TWITTER on June 23, 2020 that “For too many people, History = What They Learned As Kids and that’s it; no room for the voices of people of color,” by taking a look at the actual history taught to us as children, we can see just how ridiculous her comment about “no room for the voices of people of color” really is.
By way of background, when we American people today speak of the first Fourth of July in 1776, if we talk about it at all as other than a holiday in July where we get to drink a lot of beer, and eat a lot of hot dogs and hamburgers, and blow off a lot of fireworks, we speak of it as if that date had any real significance in our lives today other than as the date the British colonists in this country declared to the world that those people of this fledgling nation who were to become the first Americans were freeing themselves from the tyranny of a despotic English king who had abdicated Government here and declared those people out of his Protection and was at that time waging War against them while plundering their seas, ravaging their coasts, burning their towns, and destroying the lives of those people while at that same time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny he had already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation, exciting domestic insurrections amongst those people while endeavouring to bring on the inhabitants of their frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Now, when Amy Biancolli TWEETS “History = What They Learned As Kids and that’s it,” that above is the history she is referring to, especially the part about “exciting domestic insurrections amongst those people while endeavouring to bring on the inhabitants of their frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
With regard to her ridiculous assertion about that history we learned as children having “no room for the voices of people of color,” which anyone who actually bothered to crack the covers of a book to learn something, as opposed to being taught to merely parrot some lines of limp drivel, knows is patent hogwash, according to that same schoolboy history we once were required to know as young American citizens, regardless of skin color, since we were all created equal according to the Declaration of Independence, by November 14, 1775, eight months before the first Fourth of July, when John Murray, Earl of Dunmore and royal governor of Virginia, issued his famous proclamation, his plan to offer freedom to slaves who would leave their patriot masters and join the royal forces was already well underway.
So much for the slaves being considered “not human.”
Staying with that history, because it is quite relevant to what has to follow if we are to truly understand the threat today this BLACK LIVES MATTER movement is to our civilized, multi-cultural society in this nation which is being divided by the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement, as we will clearly see, Dunmore understood that such an act would have a wide-ranging effect, which brings us back to Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan talking about the consequences of 400 years of “white superiority” we all have to “own,” as if we today bear responsibility for acts committed by somebody with white skin like Lord Dunmore in 1775.
As to those consequences, not only would it disrupt production in this nation, which had not yet formally rebelled; it would also feed the growing fear among the colonists of armed slave insurrections, a form of instigating terrorism on the part of Lord Dunmore.
Planters would be distracted from waging war against Britain by the necessity of protecting their families and property from an internal threat.
At the same time, Dunmore’s own force of 300 soldiers, seamen and loyalist recruits, cut off from the support of British troops in Boston, would be reinforced by black fighting men and laborers.
Word of Dunmore’s plan was known as early as April, when a group of slaves presented themselves to him to volunteer their services.
He delayed the decision by ordering them away, but the Virginia slaveholders’ suspicions were not allayed.
On June 8, 1775, Dunmore left Williamsburg, taking refuge aboard the man-of-war Fowey at Yorktown.
Over the next five months, he reinforced his troops by engaging in a series of raids and inviting slaves aboard the ship.
On November 7, Dunmore drafted a proclamation, and a week later he ordered its publication.
It declared martial law and adjudged the patriots as traitors to the Crown; more importantly, it declared “all indented servants, Negroes, or others…free that are able and willing to bear arms…”
Response from the colonists was immediate.
Newspapers published the proclamation in full, and patrols on land and water were intensified.
Throughout the colonies, restrictions on slave meetings were tightened.
The Virginia Gazette warned slaves to “Be not then…tempted by the proclamation to ruin your selves” and urged them to “cling to their kind masters,” citing the fact that Dunmore himself was a slave holder.
In December, the Virginia Convention issued its own proclamation as a broadside, declaring that runaways to the British would be pardoned if they returned in ten days, but would be severely punished if they did not.
The document began with a reminder of the penalty for slave insurrection — death without benefit of clergy — though in practice, it was used sparingly during the war.
By then, 300 black men had been inducted into “Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment,” armed, and outfitted in military uniforms inscribed with the words “Liberty to Slaves.”
By early June, however, Dunmore’s forces had been decimated by smallpox and the patriot’s defenses.
In August, the British destroyed over half of their own ships and sailed out of the Potomac, taking the 300 healthiest blacks with them.
Although probably no more than 800 slaves actually succeeded in reaching Dunmore’s lines, word of the proclamation inspired as many as 100,000 to risk everything in an effort to be free.
end quotes
That, people, is American history as it happened, and as we can clearly see, there was plenty of room therein for the voices of people of color.
So why are we then being told otherwise?
And that question brings us back to the present moment, and mayor Kathy of the lawless, violent sanctuary city of Albany, New York telling us that “because of our history,” which includes Lord Dunmore and his proclamation and those Black folks bearing arms in support of the tyrant King in England, we have to “embrace” the Black Lives Matter movement, which as a loyal, law-abiding American citizen I openly refuse to do, precisely because that movement, as we can clearly see from what follows from “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of the three founders of the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement, is based on not only outright lies, but a perversion and distortion of our history by a confused and hate-filled young woman, to wit:
“We know that if we can get the nation to see, say and understand the Black Lives Matter, then every life would stand a chance.”
“Black people are the only humans in this nation ever legally designated, after all, as not human.”
“Which is not to erase any group’s harm to ongoing pain in particular the genocide carried out against the First Nations peoples.”
“But it is to say that there is something quite basic that has to be addressed in the culture, in the hearts and minds of people who have benefited from, and were raised up on, the notion that Black people are not fully human.”
end quotes
Who in this nation besides Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the confused founder of BLACK LIVES MATTER, was “raised up” on the “notion” that Black people are not fully human?
I certainly wasn’t, and so I am not going to embrace a movement that asks me to be ignorant of reality and to lie to myself.
Plain and simple!
So, how about you?
And here, we have to back up a minute, as we reflect on Democrat Kathy Sheehan, mayor of the violent, sanctuary city of Albany, New York telling us that we have to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER, to ask ourselves this essential question, to wit: Which BLACK LIVES MATTER is it that we are supposed to embrace?
With the corollary: Why?
As to who or what exactly is BLACK LIVES MATTER, in a Newsweek article entitled “BLM Leader: We’ll ‘Burn’ the System Down If U.S. Won’t Give Us What We Want” by Meghan Roos on 6/25/20, we law-abiding Americans received the following warning, to wit:
A leader of Black Lives Matter’s New York chapter on Wednesday said the movement was prepared to “burn down this system” if the U.S. does not work with participants to enact real change.
“If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” said Hawk Newsome, chairman of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, during an interview with Fox News.
end quotes
So, is he BLACK LIVES MATTER?
Or isn’t he?
Which relevant question takes us to a Press Statement “For Immediate Release, Statement” by Kailee Scales, Managing Director of BLM Global Network, on that same date, June 25, 2020, as follows:
Today, Donald Trump attributed a quote to a “Black Lives Matter leader” on his social media.
We have traced these comments to Hawk Newsome.
Hawk Newsome has no relation to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (“BLM”) founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi — and is not the “president” of BLM or any of its chapters.
Only BLM chapters who adhere to BLM’s principles and code of ethics are permitted to use the BLM name.
The reason for this is simple: unaffiliated uses of BLM’s name are confusing to people who may wrongly associate the unsanctioned group and its views and actions with BLM.
As BLM has told Mr. Newsome in the past, and as is still true today, Mr. Newsome’s group is not a chapter of BLM and has not entered into any agreement with BLM agreeing to adhere to BLM’s core principles.
The only official chapter of BLM in New York is Black Lives Matter NYC.
BLM Global Network strongly encourages anyone interested in learning about or becoming a part of our movement to seek information from trusted, official sources — such as our BLM Global Network social feeds (@blklivesmatter), our emails, and our official Black Lives Matters website (blacklivesmatter.com) — rather than unknown or untrusted sources using BLM’s name.
end quotes
Scrolling down further after the Press Statement, it continued as follows:
Join the Movement to fight for Freedom, Liberation and Justice by signing up for updates, supporting our work, checking out our resources, following us on social media, or wearing our dope, official gear.
end quote
Now, this is just me, but speaking as a combat veteran who went to Viet Nam, a raggedy-ass 4th-rate little country as Democrat Lyndon, Baines Johnson famously called it, to fight for freedom, liberation and justice, which was total horse****, if I were to join anything again, starting with a “Movement to fight for Freedom, Liberation and Justice,” I would want to know a hell of a lot more about exactly what the fight is, how it is to be waged, with what weapons to secure whose freedom, to be measured how, and who is being liberated, and from what, and justice for whom, at the expense of who else?
None of those pertinent questions are addressed anywhere in that Press Statement, which continues as follows:
Join the Global Movement
Donate Today
end quotes
Ah, yes, why do I keep forgetting that this really isn’t about Black lives actually mattering, because like in Chicago, in mayor Kathy’s sanctuary city of Albany, New York, they don’t matter at all – it’s about raising money.
It is a fund-raising operation for the following stated purposes, to wit:
We appreciate your support of the movement and our ongoing fight to end State-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people, and end white supremacy forever.
end quotes
Ah, yes, I see – end white supremacy forever.
Okay.
So how is that to be done?
SOUNDS OF SILENCE!
As to their money-making operation that will fund them so they can end white supremacy forever (why does that smack of a threat of genocide?), the Press Statement has as follows:
For corporate/foundation grants or other partnership questions, please email partnerships@blacklivesmatter.com.
end quote
So American corporations and foundations are funding a movement to end “white supremacy forever?”
What an interesting use of corporate funds that is – funding the end of white supremacy in America forever.
Getting back to the Press Statement, it concludes as follows, to wit:
Help Us Fight Disinformation
We need to see what you see.
Black Lives Matter is a central target of disinformation and you are a key line of defense.
Report suspicious sites, stories, ads, social accounts, and posts about BLM.
https://blacklivesmatter.com/for-immediate-release-statement-by-kailee-scales-managing-director-of-blm-global-network/
And that bit about BLACK LIVES MATTER being a central target of disinformation, when in reality, it is a source of disinformation, takes us to a POLITIFACT article entitled “Is Black Lives Matter a Marxist movement?” by Tom Kertscher on July 21, 2020, 26 days after the BLM Press Statement above, where we had the following capsule summary, to wit:
* Black Lives Matter was founded by community organizers. One of the three co-founders said in 2015 that she and another co-founder “are trained Marxists.”
* Black Lives Matter has grown into a national anti-racism movement broadly supported by Americans, few of whom would identify themselves as Marxist.
end quotes
Now, before we ask ourselves how this Tom Kertscher, a 35-year newspaper reporter, finishing that career at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, now a freelance writer whose work includes fact-check reporting for PolitiFact and sports reporting for Associated Press and the author of sports books on Brett Favre and Al McGuire on July 21, 2020 knew for certain, based on facts accessible to all of us, and not just him, that BLM is “broadly” supported by Americans, few of whom would identify themselves as Marxist, let us consider the established fact that POLITIFACT is a part of something called the Poynter Institute, which institute in 2019 used various “fake news” databases to compile a list of over 515 news websites that it labeled “unreliable,” calling on advertisers to “blacklist” the sites on the list which included conservative news websites such as the Washington Examiner, The Washington Free Beacon, and The Daily Signal.
Of direct relevance to the discussion in here, after backlash, Poynter retracted the list, citing “weaknesses in the methodology,” issuing a statement, saying: “We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication,” which statement was the subject of an article in The Hill entitled “Poynter pulls blacklist of ‘unreliable’ news websites after backlash” by Joe Concha on 05/03/19, where we had as follows:
The Poynter Institute has apologized for publishing a list of 515 news websites it deemed “unreliable” after backlash from readers and on social media regarding “weaknesses in the methodology” used by the nonprofit publication.
The index was compiled from “fake news” databases curated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at University of Southern California, Merrimack University, PolitiFact, Snopes and data designer Chris Herbert.
Publications originally on the list included the Washington Examiner and the Washington Free Beacon.
“Soon after we published, we received complaints from those on the list and readers who objected to the inclusion of certain sites, and the exclusion of others,” Poynter managing editor Barbara Allen wrote in an explanation behind the piece that was pulled off the site on Thursday.
“We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication,” Allen added.
“We pledge to continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards.”
Allen said that Poynter launched the audit to test the veracity of the list and that while it felt that many of the sites “did have a track record of publishing unreliable information,” the review also “found weaknesses in the methodology.”
“We detected inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases that were the sources for the list and our own rendering of the final report,” she said in the statement.
The language in the original story also called on advertisers to “blacklist” the sites selected for the list.
“Fake news is a business.”
“Much of that business is ad-supported,” Poynter researcher Barrett Golding wrote in the report.
“Aside from journalists, researchers and news consumers, we hope that the index will be useful for advertisers that want to stop funding misinformation.”
Reaction on Twitter was swift, which included criticism from journalists whose publication were included on the list.
What a disgusting exercise in bad faith from an organization that’s supposed to be about improving and promoting journalism. Instead, they’re creating tabloid-level listicles to smear reporters without offering even a single piece of evidence. Shame on you, @Poynter.
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) May 2, 2019
It’s fine to hate the content at @DailySignal or disagree with that.
But we take journalism and accuracy and transparency very seriously, and @Poynter is smearing us by putting us on an unreliable news database https://t.co/j1frl70V5H
— Katrina Trinko (@KatrinaTrinko) May 2, 2019
– We should all now remember @Poynter has exposed itself as an agent of the left, but considering its a media organization we already knew that.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 3, 2019
end quotes
So much then for the veracity or lack thereof of POLITIFACT.
Which leaves us with the question of who or what really is BLACK LIVES MATTER, and why should we law-abiding white-skinned people who appear to be its intended victims as it “ends white supremacy forever” embrace it as Democrat Kathy Sheehan of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York is telling us to do?
Stay tuned as we explore that question further in here courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror, the citizen’s counter to the fake news and disinformation put out by POLITIFACT and BLACK LIVES MATTER.
So, let us American people who are being called on by Democrat Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, to “embrace” BLACK LIVES MATTER be incandescently clear with ourselves here based on this June 25, 2020 Official BLACK LIVES MATTER Press Statement “For Immediate Release, Statement” by Kailee Scales, Managing Director of BLM Global Network which makes it patently clear who BLACK LIVES MATTER is and who BLACK LIVES MATTER is not – when Democrat Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York, where Black people prove to the candid world that Black, lives to them aren’t worth a damn as they gun down each other and children and innocent by-standers with wild abandon, tells us to submit, to surrender, to bend the knee in solidarity with, as she had her Black Police Chief Eric Hawkins do publicly recently to show all the candid world exactly what side she and her police chief are really on, despite any oaths either made to support the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of New York, and grant hegemony, i.e. leadership or dominance, especially by one social group over others, to BLACK LIVES MATTER, what she really asking us to do, as she and her police chief have done, is to grant suzerainty over our lives to three women, namely Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi – in other words, to treat those three women as superior overlords to whom fealty is due, which is what “bending the knee,” an act of submission, is really all about – an acknowledgement of inferior social status by the kneeler.
Says mayor Kathy in so many words – forget the past, the future is now, and see the new bosses, who are not the old bosses at all.
Which takes us back to Tom Kertscher and his POLITIFACT article entitled “Is Black Lives Matter a Marxist movement?” on July 21, 2020, where we have an exhibition of some real fancy tap-dancing by a Poynter Institute journalist looking to blow smoke up our ***** in order to “prove” his specious premise that BLACK LIVES MATTER is not a Marxist group just because at least two of its founders are, to wit:
Backlash against Black Lives Matter includes branding it as Marxist.
The attack has been made in recent weeks by Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer; Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development; conservative talk show host Mark Levin; and PragerU, which has more than 4 million Facebook followers.
end quotes
Since I too have publicly made an objection to submitting and bending the knee to BLACK LIVES MATTER based on its Marxist ideology, I would have to guess that I am part of the backlash, as well, as every loyal American should be who doesn’t want to have to submit to what equates to an incipient Black Marxist dictatorship here in the United States of America in the place of our present Republican frame of government pursuant to the United States Constitution.
Getting back to the tap-dancing by Tom Kertscher, a 35-year newspaper reporter, finishing that career at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, now a freelance writer whose work includes fact-check reporting for PolitiFact and sports reporting for Associated Press and the author of sports books on Brett Favre and Al McGuire, we have as follows, to wit:
Aren’t sure what Marxism is, actually?
end quotes
And here, I personally have to answer his question by stating candidly that yes, I believe that I am very sure of what Marxism is actually, and what I believe Marxism is, to define Marxism in simple terms, is that it is a political and economic theory where a society has no classes and every person within the society works for a common good, and class struggle is theoretically gone.
That is what I believe Marxism is.
So what does our tap-dancing Tom Kertscher have to say about it then?
Well, let’s go see, to wit:
It was developed by 19th century German philosopher Karl Marx and is the basis for the theory of communism and socialism.
“Marxism envisioned the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat (working class people) and eventually a classless communist society,” Encyclopedia Britannica and Oxford Reference say.
end quotes
And there tap-dancing Tom and I are on the same page, which brings me back in time to 1968, when I was a member of the United States Army (BOO HISS) and the Soldeir’s Handbook issued to all United States soldiers at that time wherein was stated thusly on p.4 with respect to Marxism and communism, to wit:
Today, communism is the major threat to our nation.
end quotes
And for the record, when that handbook was issued to me, the Commander-In-Chief of our military was a Democrat.
So, having established thanks to POLITIFACT that Marxism is the basis for the theory of communism and socialism, and Marxism envisioned the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat (working class people) and eventually a classless communist society, which in 1968 was deemed a major threat to our nation, let’s go back to the POLITIFACT article where the tap-dancing is about to begin in earnest, to wit:
These days, Marxism usually means analyzing social change through an economic lens, with the assumption that the rich and the poor should become more equal.
end quotes
HUH?
How so, Tom?
When exactly did the definition of Marxism change then?
And how?
And why?
Other than by you changing it yourself, I mean.
As to Marxism, Investopedia gives us the following to consider, to wit:
What Is Marxism?
Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx, which examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism.
end quotes
Now, that is the classical definition of Marxism, so why is tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT trying to waltz us down the garden path in some different direction?
Getting back to Investopedia, we have further on Marxism as follows:
Marxism posits that the struggle between social classes, specifically between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers, defines economic relations in a capitalist economy and will inevitably lead to revolutionary communism.
Key Takeaways
* Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx, which focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class.
* Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict.
* He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy.
end quotes
So it would logically follow that when one of the three co-founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER said in 2015 that she and another co-founder “are trained Marxists,” that what they are trained in is a belief system or ideology based on the above, not some drivel served up cold by tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT.
Taking that thought further by going back to Investopedia, we have:
Understanding Marxism
Marxism is both a social and political theory, which encompasses Marxist class conflict theory and Marxian economics.
Marxism was first publicly formulated in the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which lays out the theory of class struggle and revolution.
end quotes
So when one of the three co-founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER said in 2015 that she and another co-founder “are trained Marxists,” what they are trained in is the Marxist theory of class struggle and revolution.
As to Marx’s class theory two of the co-founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER are trained in, it portrays capitalism as one step in the historical progression of economic systems that follow one another in a natural sequence driven by vast impersonal forces of history that play out through the behavior and conflict between social classes.
According to Marx, every society is divided among a number of social classes, whose members have more in common with one another than with members of other social classes.
end quotes
Today, the United States of America is being divided up into those who bend the knee and cleave to the banner of BLACK LIVES MATTER, which includes Democrat Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, and her police chief Eric Hawkins, and the rest of us who are being relegated to an inferior social class deemed the enemy of the BLACK LIVES MATTER superior social class, because to have conflict according to Marxism, you have to first have an enemy to have it with, and today, that enemy is people with white skin.
And there for the moment I will rest to let all of that sink in, before we go back to more fancy dancing by Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT who when is comes to shoveling out copious amounts of pure horse**** can tap-dance with the best of them!
And getting back to tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT and his “Backlash against Black Lives Matter includes branding it as Marxist,” we have further as follows, to wit:
But the movement has grown and broadened dramatically.
Many Americans, few of whom would identify as Marxists, support Black Lives Matter, drawn to its message of anti-racism.
“Regardless of whatever the professed politics of people may be who are prominent in the movement, they don’t represent its breadth,” said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton University African American Studies professor and author of “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”
“There are definitely socialists within the movement, as there have been in every single social movement in 20th century American history and today.”
“But that does not make those socialist movements, it makes them mass movements,” she said.
end quotes
Which is completely beside the point because what makes BLACK LIVES MATTER “Marxist” is not who has joined it, but rather, what its stated policies are, which takes us to Black Lives Matter 13 Guiding Principles, which are found on-line, and specifically, no. 11 on that list as follows:
11. Black Villages
We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, and especially “our” children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.
end quotes
And that brings us to “The Marxist Perspective on The Family,” from Revise Sociology, one of many sites on the subject, where we have as follows:
Marxists argue that the nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism – the family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy.
It is also the institution through which the wealthy pass down their private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality.
Marxism is a ‘structural conflict’ perspective.
They see society as structured along class lines with institutions generally working in the interests of the small elite class who have economic power (the ‘Bourgeoisie’) and the much larger working class (the ‘Proletariat’).
The Bourgeoise gain their wealth from exploiting the proletariat.
There is thus a conflict of interests between the Bourgeoise and the Proletariat.
However, this conflict of interests rarely boils over into revolution because institutions such as the family perform the function of ‘ideological control’, or convincing the masses that the present unequal system is inevitable, natural and good.
Something else Marxists suggest about the family (like the Functional Fit theory) is that the family type generally changes with society – more specifically, the nuclear family emerges not because of the needs of industrialisation, but because of the needs of the capitalist system.
Explaining the emergence of the nuclear family – Engels
According to Engels, the monogamous nuclear family only emerged with Capitalism.
Before Capitalism, traditional, tribal societies were classless and they practised a form of ‘primitive communism’ in which there was no private property.
In such societies, property was collectively owned, and the family structure reflected this – there were no families as such, but tribal groups existed in a kind of ‘promiscuous horde’ in which there were no restrictions on sexual relationships.
However, with the emergence of Capitalism in the 18th Century, society and the family changed.
Capitalism is based on a system of private ownership – The bourgeois use their own personal wealth to personally invest in businesses in order to make a profit, they don’t invest for the benefit of everyone else.
Marxism Family
Eventually the Bourgeois started to look for ways to pass on their wealth to the next generation, rather than having it shared out amongst the masses, and this is where the monogamous nuclear family comes from.
It is the best way of guaranteeing that you are passing on your property to your son, because in a monogamous relationship you have a clear idea of who your own children are.
Ultimately what this arrangement does is to reproduce inequality – The children of the rich grow up into wealth, while the children of the poor remain poor.
Thus the nuclear family benefits the Bourgeois more than the proletariat.
Contemporary Marxism – The family as an Ideological Apparatus
The modern nuclear family functions to promote values that ensure the reproduction and maintenance of capitalism.
The family is described as an ideological apparatus – this means it socialises people to think in a way that justifies inequality and encourages people to accept the capitalist system as fair, natural and unchangeable.
One way in which this happens is that there is a hierarchy in most families which teaches children to accept there will always be someone in “authority” who they must obey, which then mirrors the hierarchy of boss-worker in paid employment in later life.
end quotes
So, if BLACK LIVES MATTER espouses a Marxist principle or goal such as being committed to disrupting what they call the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement, is it a Marxist movement?
Or isn’t it?
Stay tuned, for more on that subject is yet to come.
And going back for the moment to FACT-CHECKING tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT and his attempt at a defense against the backlash against Black Lives Matter because it clearly is a movement based on Marxist ideology,” we have Tommy the tap-dancer saying as follows, to wit:
Many Americans, few of whom would identify as Marxists, support Black Lives Matter, drawn to its message of anti-racism.
end quotes
But is that true, his claim that BLACK LIVES MATTER draws in people with its “message of anti-racism?”
More specifically, does BLACK LIVES MATTER with its published agenda to liberate Black people and end white supremacy forever have a “message of anti-racism,” as tap-dancing Tommy Kertscher of POLITIFACT is trying to make us believe?
For that answer, let us go back to Black Lives Matter 13 Guiding Principles, which are found on-line, and specifically, no. 12 on that list as follows:
12. Unapologetically Black
We are unapologetically Black in our positioning.
In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position.
To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others.
end quotes
HMMMMMMMM.
Sounds awful racist to me, anyway.
And it certainly comes nowhere to being “anti-racist” as tap-dancing Tommy Kertscher of POLITIFACT is trying to make us believe, so PANTS ON FIRE and a couple of Pinochios for tap-dancing Tommy Kertscher of POLITIFACT on that false claim.
And having “outed” tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT trying to pull our legs with that silly claim that BLACK LIVES MATTER has a message of “anti-racism,” let’s go back to his attempt at a defense of BLACK LIVES MATTER espousing a Marxist ideology and FACT CHECK it some more, to wit:
‘Trained Marxists’
In a Facebook post labeling Black Lives Matter as a Marxist movement, PragerU included a video interview with Carol Swain, a Black conservative and former professor at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities.
She said, “Now, the founders of Black Lives Matter, they’ve come out as Marxists.”
Swain alluded to Black Lives Matter’s three co-founders, who are still featured prominently on the group’s website — Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.
Their primary backgrounds are as community organizers, artists and writers.
Swain, though, was referring to a newly surfaced interview Cullors did in 2015, where she said:
“We do have an ideological frame.”
“Myself and Alicia, in particular, are trained organizers; we are trained Marxists.”
“We are superversed on, sort of, ideological theories.”
“And I think what we really try to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many Black folks.”
We didn’t find that Garza and Tometi have referred to themselves as Marxists.
But the book publisher Penguin Random House has said Garza, an author, “describes herself as a queer social justice activist and Marxist.”
end quotes
So confronted with the obvious fact right in front of his face that Alicia Garza of BLACK LIVES MATTER has described herself as a queer social justice activist and Marxist, how is it then that tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT didn’t find that Garza has referred to herself as a Marxist?
With the facts of the matter right in front of his face, where was it that he failed to look?
And why?
What is the dude trying to cover up – the fact that BLACK LIVES MATTER espouses Marxist principles?
But my goodness, Tommy, we already knew that, so you efforts to hide it from us are for naught.
And continuing on with our FACT-CHECKING:
What Black Lives Matter says
Black Lives Matter was formed in response to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Florida.
The group calls its three co-founders “radical Black organizers.”
The project started with a mission “to build local power and to intervene when violence was inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes,” the group’s website says.
“In the years since, we’ve committed to struggling together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic and political power to thrive.”
Included on its list of beliefs is one that has drawn criticism as being consistent with Marxism:
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”
A spokesperson for Black Lives Matter; Kailee Scales, managing director at Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation; and the three co-founders did not reply to our requests for information.
“On one level, these are just put downs,” University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor Richard Wolff, author of “Understanding Marxism,” told PolitiFact about the attacks on Black Lives Matter.
If people declare themselves Marxists, they are in effect Marxists, but “there really is no standard” of what Marxism is, “there’s no way to verify anything.”
end quotes
There really is no standard of what Marxism is?
That’s ignorant BULL****, plain and simple!
So shame on
Moving right along here:
Black Lives Matter today
It’s important to recognize that movements evolve.
Noting Cullors’ declaration of being Marxist trained, “one has to take that seriously: if the leadership says it is Marxist, then there’s a good chance they are,” said Russell Berman, a professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at its conservative Hoover Institution who has written critically about Marxism.
But “this does not mean every supporter is Marxist — Marxists often have used ‘useful idiots.’”
“And a Marxist movement can be more or less radical, at different points in time,” he said.
end quotes
And there we have some very necessary truth – the fact that Marxists often have used “useful idiots” such as all these dupes supporting BLACK LIVES MATTER today, people like tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACTDemocrat Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York who is telling us that because of our history, we have to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER and join its ever-growing army of other “useful idiots” which is exactly what we would be if we were to heed mayor Kathy’s message to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER and the Marxist ideology that it espouses and shame on tap-dancing Tom Kertscher of POLITIFACT for trying to tell us different!
And before we go back to Poynter Institute FACT CHECKER “Tommy the tap-dancer”Kertscher of POLITIFACT and his claim that Black Lives Matter has grown into a national anti-racism movement broadly supported by Americans, few of whom would identify themselves as Marxist, this in the light of what recently transpired in Los Angeles, where after two white police officers were shot by a Black ambusher, a mob of savages descended on the hospital to block its entrances while chanting, “LET THEM DIE,” I would like to stand up in here as an American citizen who is totally disgusted with that exhibition of what our once civilized society is now devolving into, as the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement’s efforts to end white supremacy forever gain traction in this country with the attempted murder of white police officers, to say that I see a direct linkage between what transpired in Los Angeles starting with the ambush of the the police officers and then what happened at the hospital, none of which can be denied, given it was televised, and Black police chiefs like Eric Hawkins of the Democrat-controlled sanctuary city of Albany, New York making themselves a disgrace to the uniform and badge of authority that they wear, as well as making a joke of their oath to support the Constitution, by getting down on their knees like cowards to show their solidarity with the mobs intent on tearing down our civilized society and RULE OF LAW to replace it with rule of the jungle as we are seeing in Los Angeles, a primitive system or mode of action in which the strongest survive, presumably as animals in nature or as human beings whose activity is not regulated by the laws or ethics of civilization, which by getting on his knees in submission to BLACK LIVES MATTER and its agenda to wage war on people with white skin in this country, Eric Hawkins of Albany is putting his personal seal of approval on, with the blessing of Democrat mayor of Albany Kathy Sheehan, who I understand also took the knee in submission to BLACK LIVES MATTER, as she is telling all the rest of us to do, as well, which I am personally refusing to do because I will be damned if I will bend the knee and submit to a group of white-hating racists intent of getting hegemony over us by intimidation and violence and deceit and lies.
By taking the knee in submission to BLACK LIVES MATTER and their agenda to end white supremacy forever as he did while wearing his badge, Eric Hawkins, the police chief of Albany, New York has quite literally painted a bulls-eye on every white police officer in the City of Albany, thus inviting the same kind of violence against them, and by extension, civilized society, that we just witnessed in Los Angeles.
Lines have now been drawn by kneelers like Eric Hawkins, and sides have been taken, and what transpired in Los Angeles with the shooting of those police officers and the howling mob of savages at the hospital is the world these kneelers like Eric Hawkins of Albany are bequeathing us and ushering in.
As to the oath Albany police chief Eric Hawkins swore to support the United States Constitution, Section 4 of Article Iv states in clear language that the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and with respect to that, in a letter in April, 1787, to Edmund Randolph, who formally presented the Virginia Plan to the Convention, James Madison had suggested that ”an article ought to be inserted expressly guaranteeing the tranquility of the states against internal as well as external danger. . . .” stating that “Unless the Union be organized efficiently on republican principles innovations of a much more objectionable form may be obtruded.”
With respect to republican principles, they are the guiding political philosophy of the United States that has been a major part of American civic thought since its founding.
Republican principles stress liberty and inalienable individual rights as central values; and recognize the sovereignty of the people as the source of all authority in law; as well as rejecting monarchy, aristocracy, and hereditary political power.
Republican principles also expect citizens to be virtuous and faithful in their performance of civic duties; and vilify corruption.
Republican principles were based on Ancient Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and English models and ideas and formed the basis for the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution (1787), and the Bill of Rights, as well as the Gettysburg Address (1863).
Republican principles include guarantees of rights that cannot be repealed by a majority vote.
Thus, in a nation based on Republican principles, there can be no “white supremacy,” because in a Republic, we are all equal REGARDLESS OF SKIN COLOR!
When the kneeler Eric Hawkins swore his oath to support the United States Constitution, which in section 1 of the 14th Amendment states quite clearly that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, that is what he was swearing to support – the fact that despite what our skin color might be, in the eyes of the law, we are all supposed to be equal.
By taking the knee in submission to BLACK LIVES MATTER and the Marxist ideology it espouses, however, the kneeler Eric Hawkins made it quite clear to all of us with white skin that we are out of his protection as the police chief of Albany, New York, and what we see taking place in Los Angeles with the howling mob of savages blocking the entrances to a hospital to deny police officers the medical treatment they required after being ambushed by a hooligan is a glimpse at our own future, and if you are white, then there is a lot for you to worry about, and God protect the white police officers in Albany, New York who have to serve under his lead.
As an older American, one who still has a memory of what came before BLACK LIVES MATTER, my first exposure to Marxism and “communism” was back in the 1950s, and it was nothing new in this country at that time, given that Marx, in the end an idiot and loser who couldn’t hold a job or support his own family and lived off of Engels, whatever their relationship in the end might have been, wrote his Communist Manifesto was written in 1847, nearly a hundred years before I was born, and the first anti-Communist alarm, or Red Scare, in the United States occurred between 1917 and 1920, precipitated by the events of World War I and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia of 1917 which saw the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, topple the Romanov dynasty, kicking off the rise of the communist party and inspiring international fear of Bolsheviks and anarchists, which fear, reminiscent of today, turned to violence with the 1919 anarchist bombings, a series of bombs targeting law enforcement and government officials with bombs going off in a wide number of cities including Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, D.C., and New York City.
Given that communism was, in theory, an expansionist ideology spread through revolution wherein according to Marx the working class would overthrow the middle class, once the United States no longer had to concentrate its efforts on winning World War I, many Americans became afraid that communism might spread to the United States and threaten the nation’s democratic values.
As to threatening “democratic values,” young Americans like myself got a first-hand exhibition of that on November 4, 1956 when a spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression was viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops with thousands being killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fleeing the country.
On November 4, 1956, while the world and American children like myself watched, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush, once and for all, the national uprising with vicious street fighting breaking out, but the Soviets’ great power ensured victory.
The Soviet action stunned many people in the West, although given the Marxist ideology underlying it, it really shouldn’t have.
Inaction on the part of the United States angered and frustrated many Hungarians.
Voice of America radio broadcasts and speeches by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had recently suggested that the United States supported the “liberation” of “captive peoples” in communist nations.
Yet, as Soviet tanks bore down on the protesters, the United States did nothing beyond issuing public statements of sympathy for their plight.
To this day, I remember that quite well, just as I remember the Iron Curtain, which formed the imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991, the term symbolizing efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas, descending.
On March 5, 1946, in one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period given at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri , former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemned the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declared, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
In particular, he warned against the expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union.
In addition to the “iron curtain” that had descended across Eastern Europe, Churchill spoke of “communist fifth columns” that were operating throughout western and southern Europe.
Churchill’s “iron curtain” phrase immediately entered the official vocabulary of the Cold War, and in the Soviet Union, Russian leader Joseph Stalin denounced the speech, referring to Churchill’s comments about the “English-speaking world” as imperialist “racism.”
Stalin, in his turn, is remembered by people like myself and history as a butcher famous for the Ukrainian famine — known as the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for “starvation” and “to inflict death” — by one estimate claiming the lives of 3.9 million people or about 13 percent of the population.
Unlike other famines in history, the Holodomor was caused when the dictator Stalin wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and to punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.
In the 2018 book, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, the author, Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, described it as “a hybrid…of a famine caused by calamitous social-economic policies and one aimed at a particular population for repression or punishment.”
In 1929, as part of Stalin’s plan to rapidly create a totally communist economy, Stalin had imposed collectivization, which replaced individually owned and operated farms with big state-run collectives, and Ukraine’s small, mostly subsistence farmers resisted giving up their land and livelihoods.
In response, the Soviet regime derided the resisters as kulaks — well-to-do peasants, who in Soviet ideology were considered enemies of the state and Soviet officials drove these peasants off their farms by force while Stalin’s secret police further made plans to deport 50,000 Ukrainian farm families to Siberia.
According to Trevor Erlacher, an historian and author specializing in modern Ukraine and an academic advisor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies, “Stalin appears to have been motivated by the goal of transforming the Ukrainian nation into his idea of a modern, proletarian, socialist nation, even if this entailed the physical destruction of broad sections of its population,” which reminds me of the goal today of the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement to end “white supremacy” in the United States of America forever so as to transform the United States into their idea of a modern, proletarian, socialist nation, even if this entails the physical destruction of broad sections of our population.
As to Russia and Marxism, Marxism–Leninism was the official state ideology of the Soviet Union and other ruling parties making up the Eastern Bloc as well as the political parties of the Communist International after Bolshevisation, and the butcher Joe Stalin, a real thug, considered the political and economic system under his rule to be Marxism–Leninism, which he considered the only legitimate successor of Marxism and Leninism.
So that is the backdrop to the world I grew up in, and as a result, as children, we studied Marxism so we could understand what was going on in the world around us, and more importantly, why that was, and to understand Marxism, it was then necessary to study Marx himself, and when one studies Marx as a free American, one can only surmise that the dude was a real loser, plain and simple, as Marx’s family lived from one crisis to the next, caused most often by lack of funds, since Marx had no steady employment, and Marx himself recognised that his devotion to communism had deprived his family and ‘shattered’ the life of his wife Jenny.
As to his legacy, it is best captured in the collapse of the Soviet Union in or about 1991.
With respect to Marxist economics, which are horse**** on a stale hard roll, by some measures, the Soviet economy was the world’s second largest in 1990, but shortages of consumer goods were routine and hoarding was commonplace and it was estimated that the Soviet black market economy was the equivalent of more than 10 percent of the country’s official GDP.
Economic stagnation had hobbled the country for years, and the perestroika reforms only served to exacerbate the problem.
Wage hikes were supported by printing money, fueling an inflationary spiral.
Mismanagement of fiscal policy made the country vulnerable to external factors, and a sharp drop in the price of oil sent the Soviet economy into a tailspin.
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the Soviet Union ranked as one of the world’s top producers of energy resources such as oil and natural gas, and exports of those commodities played a vital role in shoring up the world’s largest command economy.
When oil plunged from $120 a barrel in 1980 to $24 a barrel in March 1986, this vital lifeline to external capital dried up.
The price of oil temporarily spiked in the wake of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, but by that point the collapse of the Soviet Union was well under way.
So much for Karl Marx, so that today, if someone like this Patrisse Cullors or Alicia Garza or Opal Tometi, the founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER were to tell me, “We do have an ideological frame, myself and Alicia, in particular, are trained organizers; we are trained Marxists, we are superversed on, sort of, ideological theories,” I would consider that I was in the presence of mindless idiots and morons – ideologues, meaning those unable to think for themselves who are given to fanciful ideas or theories – adherents of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.
Given that, why would anyone who is sane and rational want to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER?
And as we consider the roots or conflict here in the United States of America today, those words above by Russell Berman, a professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at its conservative Hoover Institution who has written critically about Marxism, noting the declaration of BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors, by all appearances a confused young woman who told us “We know that if we can get the nation to see, say and understand the Black Lives Matter, then every life would stand a chance; Black people are the only humans in this nation ever legally designated, after all, as not human; which is not to erase any group’s harm to ongoing pain in particular the genocide carried out against the First Nations peoples; but it is to say that there is something quite basic that has to be addressed in the culture, in the hearts and minds of people who have benefited from, and were raised up on, the notion that Black people are not fully human,” of being Marxist trained, telling us that “one has to take that seriously: if the leadership says it is Marxist, then there’s a good chance they are,” take us to these words of an American citizen who was not a Marxist, to wit:
“My uniform federal attachments, and the interest I have in the protection of property, and a steady execution of the laws, will convince you, that, if I am under any bias at all, it is in favor of any general system which shall promise those advantages.”
end quotes
For the record, someone a citizen of the United States of America who has an interest in the protection of property, especially today when we see mobs of savages out there destroying property, as if it were theirs to destroy, would be considered by the Marxists as an “anti-Marxist,” defined as one who is opposed to or hostile toward Marxism, which category of United States citizens would include myself, although it does not include all people living in the country, which is one of the sources of the present conflict in this country leading us further and further towards another civil war, which will be deemed a “revolution” by the Marxists like BLACK LIVES MATTER founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.
Moving right along, we have:
“The instability of our laws increases my wishes for firm and steady government; but then, I can consent to no government, which, in my opinion, is not calculated equally to preserve the rights of all orders of men in the community.”
end quotes
That, of course, would have to be considered an anti-BLACK LIVES MATTER statement because according to its stated purposes, one of which is to “end white supremacy forever,” BLACK LIVES MATTER, which declares itself “unapologetically Black” in their positioning, is for a government not calculated equally to preserve the rights of all orders of men in the community, only theirs, which brings us next to this, to wit:
“Though I have long apprehended that fraudulent debtors, and embarrassed men, on the one hand, and men, on the other, unfriendly to republican equality, would produce an uneasiness among the people, and prepare the way, not for cool and deliberate reforms in the governments, but for changes calculated to promote the interests of particular orders of men.”
end quotes
With respect to those unfriendly to republican equality, would produce an uneasiness among the people, and prepare the way, not for cool and deliberate reforms in the governments, but for changes calculated to promote the interests of particular orders of men/women, that statement would very accurately describe those who take the knee in surrender and submission to the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement, and make no mistake about that, at all.
Now, while those words above are very relevant to the times that we find ourselves in today in this highly divided and very troubled nation descending into violence, chaos and anarchy, as civilized society devolves, and while they certainly could be attributed to myself as their author, or source, those words in fact come to us from our political past as a nation, being written as they were in the political essay “Federal Farmer I” by Federal Farmer, thought to be Richard Henry Lee, 233 years ago on October 8, 1787, eleven years after the first Fourth of July in 1776 and the Declaration of Independence wherein was stated “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” which statement about the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States in its turn takes us to these words from BLACK LIVES MATTER, whose founders tell us “We do have an ideological frame, myself and Alicia, in particular, are trained organizers; we are trained Marxists, we are superversed on, sort of, ideological theories,” to wit:
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”
end quotes
Which raises this relevant question, since words have meanings, and those meanings matter greatly in the political context, to wit:
What exactly is the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement?”
Where exactly is that prescribed, because it is not prescribed anywhere in OUR United States Constitution?
And who was it that prescribed it?
Does anyone besides BLACK LIVES MATTER have a clue?
As an American citizen who was born in this country right after WWII, which was a fight against fascism and totalitarian government and drone-like mindlessness, and accordingly, from the time I was young, had instilled in me those values expressed in the Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of a despotic English king, holding, as opposed to merely mouthing as politicians do, these truths to be self-evident, that all men, including women, are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and having been introduced when young, as opposed to having been indoctrinated, i.e., teach a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically, to Marxist thought, such as it could ever be called “thought,” or ideology, that system of ideas and ideals which form the basis of the economic and political theory and policy that underlie communism, I cannot escape from the idea that to be a “Marxist,” as the founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER claim to be, you have to be in fact a moron or idiot incapable of rational thought or critical thinking for many reasons, starting with the fact that Marx himself cannot be looked at as anything other than a loser and a destroyer, not a builder or creator in any positive sense of the word, which makes interesting the idea that he is a hero to millions of people in the world like the founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER.
In fact, Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.
Revolutionary socialist governments espousing Marxist concepts took power in a variety of countries in the 20th century, leading to the formation of such socialist states as the Soviet Union in 1922 and the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Many labour unions and workers’ parties worldwide are influenced by Marxism, while various theoretical variants, such as Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, and Maoism, were developed from them.
Marx is typically cited, with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.
WHY?
AND FOR WHAT?
And who the hell is Karl Marx, anyway, that we as free people in the United States of America would want in any way to adopt any of his ideas, unless of course we hate being free and hate civilization and want to live in a dream world conjured up by Marx and Engels where everyone should contribute what they can, and everyone should get what they need, which is the exact conundrum we American children who were being taught to think for ourselves, unlike the bovine-like Germans who blindly followed the rug-chewing madman Adolph Hitler, and to question, as opposed to meekly accepting, and to watch politicians like a hawk were presented with to work our way through, to see if any rational or logical sense could be made of it, at all.
If everyone should contribute what they can, what of those who either have nothing to contribute, or refuse to contribute?
What is to be done with them in Marxist society?
And if everyone should get what they need, where is that to come from?
And how?
And what about those who feel they need everything under the sun that there can possibly be?
Who is to provide them with all of that?
And where will they get it from?
A wish?
A hope?
A dream?
As to Marxism, above here, we have University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor Richard Wolff, author of “Understanding Marxism,” telling PolitiFact that if people declare themselves Marxists, they are in effect Marxists, but “there really is no standard” of what Marxism is, so there’s no way to verify anything, which is perhaps true with respect to the ideology, given that Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that originates in the works of 19th century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Given that a method is merely a particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one, we can clearly see that to begin with, there is nothing absolute at all with respect to their method of socioeconomic analysis, which dates from the early 1800s in Europe and later, England, where Marx moved after being exiled from France for his radical views.
To simplify this, because a lot of Marxism is simply hoo-doo and gobbledegook from someone who never held a real job in his life, and never produced anything but radical ideas, and got what he needed from his friend Engels, in a nutshell, Marx’s theories about society, economics and politics – collectively known as Marxism – hold that human societies progress through class struggle: a conflict between an ownership class that controls production and a dispossessed labouring class that provides the labour for production.
Now, notice the presence in there of the word “theories,” where a theory is a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
As free American children, we were tasked with considering this essential question with respect to Marxist thought, to wit: does any society on the face of the earth conform with theories about society?
Does a theory of society in Europe in the 1800s put forth by a radical thinker govern the structure of society in the United States of America subsequent to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence?
Do the views and beliefs of the thinker affect the theories put forth by the thinker?
And of course they do, and how could it be otherwise?
Consider, for example, that in 1843, Marx befriended the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) in Paris, a hotbed of radical thought where Marx became a revolutionary communist and was writing for radical newspapers.
If someone becomes a radical communist, then logically and rationally, one would have to presume that that would affect how they saw life, as opposed to say, someone like myself, who is not and does not want or desire to be either a communist, or a member of communist society anywhere on earth, and especially here in the United States of America.
As to Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, he was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism, considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary socialist and social anarchist tradition.
After moving to Dresden, Bakunin published his first revolutionary credo in a radical journal in 1842, ending with a now-famous aphorism: “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.”
And 178 years later, in 2020, we see in this country people believing in that very same aphorism.
Getting back to Bakunin, the February Revolution of 1848 in Paris gave him his first taste of street fighting, and after a few days of eager participation he traveled eastward in the hope of fanning the flames of revolution in Germany and Poland.
In 1848, Bakunin wrote his first major manifesto, “An Appeal to the Slavs,” in which he denounced the bourgeoisie as a spent counterrevolutionary force, called for the overthrow of the Habsburg Empire and the creation in central Europe of a free federation of Slav peoples, and counted on the peasant — especially the Russian peasant — with his tradition of violent revolt, as the agent of the coming revolution.
That is the company Marx was keeping, and from that comes the philosophy and beliefs of the founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER as to the use of political violence to get their way, which is not our way, at all, or at least mine.
And interestingly, on that note, when asked by Politifact to comment on their position that “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable,” a spokesperson for Black Lives Matter, Kailee Scales, managing director at Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, and the three co-founders did not reply to their requests for information.
How come, ladies?
Cat got your tongues?
Getting back to Marx, he called capitalism the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,” believing it to be run by the wealthy classes for their own benefit; and he predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism, arguing that class antagonisms under capitalism between the bourgeoisie and proletariat would eventuate in the working class’ conquest of political power in the form of a dictatorship of the proletariat and eventually establish a classless society, socialism or communism, a society governed by a free association of producers.
Along with believing in the inevitability of socialism and communism, Marx actively fought for their implementation, arguing that social theorists and underprivileged people alike should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change.
So when the founders of BLACK LIVES MATTER say “We do have an ideological frame, myself and Alicia, in particular, are trained organizers; we are trained Marxists; we are superversed on, sort of, ideological theories,” the ideological theories they are superversed on, sort of, are expressed right there in the belief of Marx that social theorists and underprivileged people alike should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change.
So what socio-economic change can we then expect from BLACK LIVES MATTER and the social theorists and underprivileged people alike who cleave to their standard and carry their banner in the street as theyd carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change?
Stay tuned, more is to come on that thought courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror, a true grand palladium of freedom, and scourge of tyrants in this country, which brings me to these closing words from the Federal Farmer I political essay by Federal Farmer on October 8, 1787, to wit:
The fickle and ardent, in any community are the proper tools for establishing despotic government.
But it is deliberate and thinking men, who must establish and secure governments on free principles.
end quotes
So, which side will you be on then?
And speaking of actions having consequences, the rise of Hitler as a dictator in Germany and WWII and the persecution of the Jews in Germany can be traced directly back to Karl Marx and his advocacy of communism.
Consider that on February 28, 1933, the day after the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down due to arson, President Hindenburg issued the Decree for the Protection of People and the Reich.
Though the origins of the fire are still unclear, in a propaganda maneuver, the coalition government (made up of Nazis and the Nationalists) blamed the Communists.
They exploited the Reichstag fire to secure President Hindenburg’s approval for an emergency decree, popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, that suspended individual rights and due process of law.
That is the one real tangible effect produced by Marxism in my estimation – the destruction of civilized society.
Because outside of that, Marxism really has nothing else to offer.
Getting back to the real-world consequences of Marxism, the Reichstag Fire Decree permitted the regime to arrest and incarcerate political opponents without specific charge, dissolve political organizations, and to suppress publications.
It also gave the central government the authority to overrule state and local laws and overthrow state and local governments.
The decree was a key step in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.
Germany became a police state in which citizens enjoyed no guaranteed basic rights and the SS, the elite guard of the Nazi state, wielded increasing authority through its control over the police.
That is what Karl Marx and his Marxist ideology produced, which thought interestingly takes us back to America and an article in the “progressive” New York newspaper The Sun on September 6, 1880 by John Swinton, an American journalist and “social reformer” after an interview he conducted with Marx while in England, where Marx was then located after being kicked out of France, and in that article, we have as follows to consider, to wit:
One of the most remarkable men of the day, who has played an inscrutable but puissant part in the revolutionary politics of the past forty years, is Karl Marx.
end quotes
Focus on the term “revolutionary politics,” and consider that just 53 years later, the “revolutionary politics” of Marx literally set the world on fire, which outcome Marx, who died on March 14, 1883, and his coterie of communists and anarchists and general misfits would have loved to see had Marx lived long enough.
Getting back to the fawning puff piece on Marx in The Sun, we have:
A man without desire for show or fame, caring nothing for the fanfaronade of life or the pretence of power, without haste and without rest, a man of strong, broad, elevated mind, full of far-reaching projects, logical methods, and practical aims, he has stood and yet stands behind more of the earthquakes which have convulsed nations and destroyed thrones, and do now menace and appal crowned heads and established frauds, than any other man in Europe, not excepting Joseph Mazzini himself.
The student of Berlin, the critic of Hegelianism, the editor of papers, and the old-time correspondent of the New York Tribune, he showed his qualities and his spirit; the founder and master spirit of the once dreaded International and the author of “Capital”, he has been expelled from half the countries of Europe, proscribed in nearly all of them, and for thirty years past has found refuge in London.
end quotes
For all those today who hold Marx as their hero, and they are many in this nation, they should focus in on that historical fact that by 1880, Marx had been expelled from half the countries of Europe and proscribed in nearly all of them, and they should ask themselves why that was, and how that impacts or affects their own future as they embrace Marxist ideology as the wave of the future they want to embrace, just as Democrat mayor of Albany, New York is telling is to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER, as if somehow, in some undefined and undefinable manner, BLACK LIVES MATTER holds the key to a glorious new future for all of us, including people with white skin.
Getting back to the fawning puff piece in The Sun, we have further as follows:
And is this massive-headed, generous-featured, courtly, kindly man of 60, with the bushy masses of long revelling gray hair, Karl Marx?
His dialogue reminded me of that of Socrates — so free, so sweeping, so creative, so incisive, so genuine — with its sardonic touches, its gleams of humor, and its sportive merriment.
He spoke of the political forces and popular movements of the various countries of Europe — the vast current of the spirit of Russia, the motions of the German mind, the action of France, the immobility of England.
He spoke hopefully of Russia, philosophically of Germany, cheerfully of France, and sombrely of England — referring contemptuously to the “atomistic reforms” over which the Liberals of the British Parliament spend their time.
Surveying the European world, country after country, indicating the features and the developments and the personages on the surface and under the surface, he showed that things were working toward ends which will assuredly be realized.
end quotes
And most assuredly, just 53 short years later, in 1933, when the Germans were stripped of their rights and rule of law, those ends were in fact realized, which takes us back to 1880 and The Sun fawning puff-piece, to wit:
I was often surprised as he spoke.
It was evident that this man, of whom so little is seen or heard, is deep in the times, and that, from the Neva to the Seine, from the Urals to the Pyrenees, his hand is at work preparing the way for the new advent.
end quotes
That “new advent” was called World War II, and the rise of communism in Russia, which takes us back to The Sun, as follows:
Nor is his work wasted now any more than it has been in the past, during which so many desirable changes have been brought about, so many heroic struggles have been seen, and the French republic has been set up on the heights.
As he spoke, the question I had put, “Why are you doing nothing now?” was seen to be a question of the unlearned, and one to which he could not make direct answer.
Inquiring why his great work “Capital”, the seed field of so many crops, had not been put into English as it has been put into Russian and French from the original German, he seemed unable to tell, but said that a proposition for an English translation had come to him from New York.
He said that that book was but a fragment, a single part of a work in three parts, two of the parts being yet unpublished, the full trilogy being “Land”, “Capital”, “Credit” , the last part, he said, being largely illustrated from the United States, where credit has had such an amazing development.
Mr. Marx is an observer of American action, and his remarks upon some of the formative and substantive forces of American life were full of suggestiveness.
By the way, in referring to his “Capital”, he said that any one who might desire to read it would find the French translation much superior in many ways to the German original.
Mr. Marx referred to Henri Rochefort the Frenchman, and in his talk of some of his dead disciples, the stormy Bakunin, the brilliant Lassalle, and others, I could see how his genius had taken hold of men who, under other circumstances, might have directed the course of history.
end quotes
The “stormy” Bakunin, the anarchist famous for the aphorism “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion,” we have already met above.
As to Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay (30 January 1831 – 30 June 1913) he was a French writer of vaudevilles, a type of comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets, as well as a politician who in 1880 founded L’Intransigeant in the radical and socialist interest, and for a short time in 1885–86 he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, but found a great opportunity next year for his talent for inflaming public opinion in the Boulangist agitation, with Marxist historians viewing the Boulangist movement as a proto-fascist right-wing movement, while a number of scholars have presented boulangism as a precursor of fascism, including Zeev Sternhell and Stanley Payne.
According to French historian Jacques Néré, “Boulangism was first and foremost a popular movement of the extreme left”.
As to Boulanger, he gained the support of a number of former Communards from the Paris Commune and some supporters of Blanquism (a faction within the Central Revolutionary Committee) which included men such as Victor Jaclard, Ernest Granger and Henri Rochefort.
As to Ferdinand Lassalle (11 April 1825 – 31 August 1864), he was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist best remembered as the initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany.
About Lassalle, Bertrand Russell said as follows:
“No one has ever understood the power of agitation and organisation better than Lassalle …”
“The secret of his influence lay in his overpowering and imperious will, in his impatience of the passive endurance of evil, and in his absolute confidence in his own power.”
“His whole character is that of an epicurean god, unwittingly become man, awakening suddenly to the existence of evil, and finding with amazement that his will is not omnipotent to set it right.”
Lassalle and Marx became friends during the Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Spring of Nations, which were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848 and it remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history.
Many of the revolutions were quickly suppressed; tens of thousands of people were killed, and many more were forced into exile, and when the protests were crushed, Lassalle was imprisoned and Marx fled Germany.
As to Swinton, he became involved in radical labor politics in the spring of 1874, when he addressed a mass meeting at Tompkins Square in New York City — a gathering which was violently dispersed by the police.
Following his stint as a freelancer, Swinton took a permanent position as an editorial writer for the New York Sun in 1875.
Before he left the Sun in 1883 to launch a newspaper of his own, he delivered at a press dinner the speech he is most famous for today:
“There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns.”
“You are all slaves.”
“You know it, and I know it.”
“There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion.”
” If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print.”
“I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with.”
“Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things.”
“If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone.”
“The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job.”
“The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary.”
“You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an ‘Independent Press!'”
“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.”
“We are jumping-jacks.”
“They pull the string and we dance.”
“Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men.”
“We are intellectual prostitutes.”
end quotes
Words of truth in our times today and such is history and so much for the New York Times and the Washington Post which exist to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell our country for their daily bread, and thank god we have as a grand palladium palladium of freedom and scourge of tyrants in this country the Cape Charles Mirror as an independent press because it is out in country town of Cape Charles.
And with it having been confirmed for us by no less an authority on the subject than John Swinton, an American journalist, “social reformer” and editorial writer for the New York Sun that far from being any kind of grand palladium of freedom and scourge of tyrants in this country, the business of a New York journalist, and this would include Hearst Publication’s Albany, New York Times Union, Democrat governor Andy Cuomo’s personal print propaganda organ, is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, I am reminded of a communication I sent to Times Union “managing editor” Brendan Lyons on that very subject on 5 July 2020 in response to his whining about a post I had in the Cape Charles Mirror, as follows:
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR July 5, 2020 at 8:22 pm
Paul Plante says:
And getting back to the Fourth of July being considered a “racist” holiday because it celebrates “white supremacy,” we have more on that subject from Democrat mayor Kathy Sheehan of Albany, New York, a self-proclaimed expert on that subject of which she is entirely ignorant, in the Albany, Times Union article “As statues tumble, relatives of Gen. Philip Schuyler ask for pause” by Brendan J. Lyons on July 5, 2020, to wit:
ALBANY — The complicated legacy of Maj. Gen. Philip J. Schuyler, a Revolutionary War hero and former state senator whose family’s heritage is enmeshed in the history of Albany and the nation, was officially etched into the city’s landscape in 1925 when a statue in his honor was erected in front of City Hall.
end quotes
And that is bull**** media hype by Brendan J. Lyons because there really is nothing “complicated” at all about the legacy of Maj. Gen. Philip J. Schuyler if one is sane and rational and in control of one’s emotions as opposed to being overly emotional bordering on paranoiac hysteria.
end quotes
Apparently and not surprisingly to those of us who have been following the “reportage” of the Times Union since the 1980s, when the Times Union not only made clear its support of the use of mob violence against an honest public official in Rensselaer County in the state of New York, but further used its “freedom of the press” to literally destroy a man’s life and strip him of his livelihood, with impunity, because he was too honest for the Times Union’s taste, “managing editor” Lyons has a thin skin and can’t take criticism, which he never had to deal with from members of the public like myself before the grand palladium of freedom and scourge of tyrants that is the Cape Charles Mirror came into our lives, which led to my response to him on 5 July 2020, to wit:
As you have probably gathered by now, I really don’t think much of you and your reportage or journalism, whatever name you want to put to it, and I consider you to be on the cowardly side, and the purpose of having you on my distribution list was to keep you appraised of that fact, as well as to give you the chance or opportunity to step up to the plate to defend yourself.
I think that if someone like myself is going to publicly mock someone like yourself in print, that the courteous thing to do is to let the one being so mocked know what is going on.
As you are declining the opportunity, I will be most happy in the future to let you remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that when it comes to reporting, you and the Times Union are no longer in charge.
Happy Independence Day, stay safe, and don’t forget to wear your mask when out in public.
end quotes
In reply, and again not at all surprisingly, given his thin skin, Mr. Lyons got quite huffy and told me to go **** myself, and truthfully, being comfortable in my own skin unlike Mr. Lyons who takes positions in print that he is unable to defend, never having had to before, I’m totally cool with that as a disabled combat veteran who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that I would bear true faith and allegiance to the same, which I still do to this day, regardless of how quaint or out-dated such a concept might be in the era of BLACK LIVES MATTER, because the First Amendment to that Constitution states thusly with regard to the right of Brendan Lyons of the Times Union to tell me to go **** myself, as follows:
Congress shall make no law ….. or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.
So, people – freedom of the press.
That’s as American as apple pie, is it not?
But freedom to do what?
Destroy the lives of those it considers too honest?
And freedom to be what?
Isn’t it supposed to be freedom to be a grand palladium of freedom and scourge of tyrants in this country, as opposed to an organ for the dissemination of political propaganda, in this case, propagandizing for BLACK LIVES MATTER?
Consider that at the time of this nation’s beginning, which history is being written out of the history books because it is considered racist and “white supremacy,” James Madison, who also is being written out of history because he himself is considered a racist and white supremacist because he owned slaves, introduced in the House of Representatives on June 8, 1789 his version of the speech and press clauses, wherein was provided, to wit: ”The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.”
Ah!
Freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.
But that is not what the First Amendment says, is it?
And why?
And that is because of politics – for whatever reasons, and they are unknown, the words “as one of the great bulwarks of liberty” disappeared as a result of a compromise between the Senate at that time and the House of Representatives, so that now, the press is free to do any damn thing it pleases, or as it is told to do as slaves and jumping-jacks and intellectual prostitutes, of which the Times Union has quite a stable who are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes who pull their string and make them dance, given that their time, their talents, especially their talents for lying and slinging horse**** and destroying people’s lives and livelihoods are all the property of other men like Andy Cuomo and women like Kathy Sheehan of Albany and now, BLACK LIVES MATTER.
Going in to those debates on the First Amendment, it was the common law view as expressed by Sir William Blackstone, (10 July 1723 – 14 February 1780), an English jurist, judge and Tory politician of the eighteenth century most noted for writing the Commentaries on the Laws of England as follows:
”The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published.”
“Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity.”
“To subject the press to the restrictive power of a licenser, as was formerly done, both before and since the Revolution, is to subject all freedom of sentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion and government.”
“But to punish as the law does at present any dangerous or offensive writings, which, when published, shall on a fair and impartial trial be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the preservation of peace and good order, of government and religion, the only solid foundations of civil liberty.”
“Thus, the will of individuals is still left free: the abuse only of that free will is the object of legal punishment.”
“Neither is any restraint hereby laid upon freedom of thought or inquiry; liberty of private sentiment is still left; the disseminating, or making public, of bad sentiments, destructive to the ends of society, is the crime which society corrects.”
end quotes
And with those words before us to consider, here for the moment I will rest.
And this confirmation by no less an authority on the subject than John Swinton, an American journalist, “social reformer” and editorial writer for the New York Sun that the business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, with those “journalists” being nothing more than slaves and jumping-jacks and intellectual prostitutes who are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes who pull their string and make them dance, given that their time, their talents, especially their talents for lying and slinging horse**** are all the property of other men like Andy Cuomo and women like Kathy Sheehan of Albany and now, BLACK LIVES MATTER, takes us back to June 22, 2020 at 3:58 PM and Amy Biancolli of the Albany, Times Union and her total BULL**** statement that “White people have controlled the conversation around race for too long.”
Oh do tell, Amy, because that statement is simply absurd and ignorant as the story of Elizabeth Freeman, known to history as Mum Bett more than amply illustrates, although I am quite certain that Amy Biancolli never even heard of Mum Bett along with the rest of American history she is so ignorant about.
So who was Mum Bett?
Well, first, we have to go back to July 4, 1776, and these words from the American Declaration of Independence as they are quite relevant to the story of Mum Bett, whose story was told way back in 1854 by Miss Electra F. Jones in her book entitled “STOCKBRIDGE, PAST AND PRESENT; OR, RECORDS OF AN OLD MISSION STATION,” to wit:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
end quotes
By way of background, and here we are talking about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at the close of the Revolutionary War, the Legislature of Massachusetts passed the Act which abolished slavery in the Commonwealth, and this Act was sent to the towns to receive the sanction of the people, which question excited much interest in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, if not elsewhere.
When the question of slavery, or no slavery, was to be put to the consciences and purses of the people of Stockbridge conscience triumphed; those who had just declared “all men of right free and equal,” and opened their purses and offered their life blood to maintain the heaven-born truth, made no effort to vote in exceptions on the ground of color, which blows clean out of the water the specious assertion of Amy Biancolli that slaves weren’t considered as human beings, which tripe and drivel she apparently got from consulting an academic as we see from the following from Ms. Biancolli on Monday, June 22, 2020 @ 01:39:30 PM EDT, to wit:
I am obviously not a historian, nor do pretend to be; that’s why I sought out an interview with UAlbany Prof. Jennifer Burns in my story.
end quotes
UAlbany Prof. Jennifer Burns is listed as a Lecturer in Africana Studies at the State University of Albany in New York state, and according to its website concerning that department, we have as follows:
The Department of Africana Studies at the University at Albany motivates students (majors, minors, and all who love knowledge) to learn and to enter the world to serve.
Our Department enrolls students from all over the world who drink deep from our course offerings.
In our nationally-ranked Department, students learn about Africa’s ways of life, about African Americans’ ways of life, about African languages, about black religion, about black arts, literature, psychology, black history, the law and the black community, public speaking, critical thinking, expository writing, race theory and social thought, geography of Africa, black popular culture, statistics, among many other areas concerning Africa and Black America.
end quotes
So why she would be ignorant of Mum Bett remains a mystery, and that drivel spewed by Amy Biancolli that Black people weren’t considered human mirrors the tripe put out by BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors, who told us in her book “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” that “Black people are the only humans in this nation ever legally designated, after all, as not human.”
Getting back to Mum Bett, we have further as follows:
Mum Bett (Elizabeth Freeman) was among the first enslaved people in Massachusetts to successfully sue for her freedom, encouraging the state to abolish slavery.
end quotes
Now, it should stand to reason, if one were to actually engage in the critical thinking the Department of Africana Studies at the University at Albany says it encourages, one would be forced to have to come to the conclusion that if as BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors tells us in her book “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” that “Black people are the only humans in this nation ever legally designated, after all, as not human,” that Mum Bett would never have been able to prevail in Brom and Betts v. Ashley to win her freedom, let alone bring the suit in the first place, since non-humans cannot sue for anything in a court of law.
Instead, she proved to be a driving force in ending the enslaved people trade in the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts when she successfully sued for freedom in 1781, becoming the first African American woman to win her way out of slavery.
So much then for “Black people are the only humans in this nation ever legally designated, after all, as not human.”
Soon after this, a woman named Elizabeth Freeman fled from her master, Colonel Ashley of Sheffield, under circumstances of peculiar interest.
Getting back to that history, we have:
In 1780, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts completed its constitution, the first state in the Union to do so, and in it was the guarantee that “all men are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights,” which mirrors the language in the Declaration of Independence, and through all the talk she’d heard around the Ashley home about the rights of the Colonies, Bett had come to believe she’d been guaranteed some rights of her own.
To her ears, the new Massachusetts Constitution extended its protection to all people in the Commonwealth, even enslaved people.
In Theodore Sedgwick (May 9, 1746 – January 24, 1813), an American attorney, politician and jurist, who served in elected state government and as a Delegate to the Continental Congress, a U.S. Representative, and a United States Senator from Massachusetts, serving as the fourth Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1802, serving there the rest of his life, she found the perfect person to represent her as Sedgewick was looking to mount a legal attack against the practice of slavery, and through Bett and another enslaved person, Brom, attached to the cause, he’d discovered the perfect test case.
On August 21, 1781, Brom and Bett v. Ashley was first argued before the Court of Common Pleas.
It took only a day for the jury to find in the plaintiffs’ favor.
Bett and Brom were freed and awarded 30 shillings in damages.
Ashley appealed the decision but quickly dropped the case.
While he pleaded with Bett to return to his home as a paid servant, she refused, choosing instead to work for Sedgwick’s family.
Bett, who changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman, grew incredibly close to the Sedgwick family, working for them for several years as a domestic servant.
She saved enough money to eventually build her own house, where she raised her family.
She was buried in the Sedgwick family plot in Stockbridge with the following inscription on her tombstone:
ELIZABETH FREEMAN, also known by the name of MUMBET died Dec. 28th 1829. Her supposed age was 85 Years. She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years; She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated a trust, nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial, she was the most efficient helper and the tenderest friend. Good mother, farewell.
Mum Bett is the only non-family member buried in the Sedgwick family plot.
end quote
As to Mum Bett, her usual employment was nursing, in which she was peculiarly skilled.
Her good sense, skill and energy, made her useful, and enabled her to become intelligent; and that faithfulness with which she discharged her duties inducing entire confidence, she was an object of respect and esteem.
Mum Bett made history because hers was one of the first cases tested in this way, and the Massachusetts Bill of Rights — “that all men are born free and equal” — prevailed.
Betty was made free, and thus a hope of success held out for those who, like her, were held in bondage contrary, not only to the laws of Nature and the rules of the Gospel, but to the accepted and recorded laws of the State.
So much for the Black folks not being considered human.
So why do we hear nothing about Mum Bett from the Albany Times Union?
Because it spoils their BLACK LIVES MATTER agenda that they are pushing?
And staying with this BULL**** premise being spewed by BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors who tells us in her book “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” that “Black people are the only humans in this nation ever legally designated, after all, as not human,” which drivel was then parroted by Amy Biancolli of the Hearst Publication’s Albany, New York Times Union, let us go back to 1854, three years before the United States Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, to the book “STOCKBRIDGE, PAST AND PRESENT; OR, RECORDS OF AN OLD MISSION STATION” by Miss Electra F. Jones, and SECTION XLI, titled AFRICAN POPULATION, where we have as follows, to wit:
Another individual of the same race, who has been peculiarly distinguished in Stockbridge, is Agrippa Hull.
He was born in Northampton, in the days of slavery, but of free parents, who lived near Licking Water Bridge.
At the age of six, he was brought to Stockbridge by Joab, and lived here until 1777, when he enlisted as a soldier during the war.
end quotes
Now, if this BULL**** being spewed by BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors that “Black people are the only humans in this nation ever legally designated, after all, as not human,” which drivel was then parroted by Amy Biancolli of the Hearst Publication’s Albany, New York Times Union, were at all true, then it is highly unlikely that today, we would be reading about Agrippa Hull in a book written by a white woman in 1854, the same year that the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri on May 15, 1854 heard Dred Scott v. Sandford and ruled against Scott, holding him and his family in slavery, and it is even more unlikely that as a non-human, Agrippa Hull would have been able to enlist with the American patriots fighting for freedom from the tyranny of King George III of England.
Getting back to the story of Agrippa Hull, who in fact and contrary to the horse**** spewed by BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Amy Biancolli of the Hearst Publication’s Albany, New York Times Union was very much human, we have:
The first two years, which seem to have commenced during the winter of 1777, he was servant to Col. Patterson; but for four years he was in the service of Kosciusko, the Polish General.
He was discharged at West Point, having been engaged six years and two months.
He was afterwards in the service of Judge Sedgwick, while that gentleman was a member of Congress in New York.
end quotes
So for somebody who BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors would have us believe was legally designated as “not human,” I would say that Agrippa Hull acquitted himself quite well, because he was human and in fact was considered so by no less a personage than Judge Sedgewick, at that time a United States Congressman.
But his story doesn’t end there, as we see from the following:
In 1827, he became hopefully pious, and united with the church, evidently enlisting as he had done in the service of his country — for better or for worse, as long as life’s warfare lasted.
The character of Agrippa could scarcely be called eccentric, and yet it was unique.
He was witty, and his presence at weddings seemed almost a necessity.
There, as he wedged himself and his “good cheer” into every crowded corner, his impromptu rhymes, and his courteous jokes, were always welcome.
He had no cringing servility, and certainly never thought meanly of himself, or had opportunity to do so, yet he was perfectly free from all airs and show of consequence.
His language was so simple, and his petitions often so peculiarly adapted to the everyday needs of his hearers, or of those perishing around him, that a smile was sometimes provoked from the thoughtless; but the true worshiper could not fail to realize his dependence upon Divine Grace for every right action or emotion, as well as for every breath.
While he lived too, the church always had one at least, who possessed “a spirit of grace and of supplication.”
Thus he was ever ready with a patient, and often a witty answer; and he commended efforts for the good of his race still in bondage, by saying, “they will do good by helping them to keep down their bad feelings until deliverance comes.”
He felt deeply the wrongs of his nation, but his feelings rose on the wings of prayer, rather than burst from the muzzle of the musket.
Had he lived to the present day, he was not the man to have taken up arms against the laws of his country which he had fought so long to redeem; yet in principle he would have much preferred the fugitive statute of Moses — “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee; he shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place which he shall choose, where it liketh him best.” Deut. 23: 15,16.
Agrippa was born March 7, 1759, and died, after a long illness, May 1, 1848, aged nearly eighty-nine.
end quotes
Had he lived to the present day, he was not the man to have taken up arms against the laws of his country which he had fought so long to redeem!
Those are words it would behoove BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors to consider and consider well, along with Amy Biancolli of the Hearst Publication’s Albany, New York Times Union, although it is possible that they would simply dismiss him an another “Uncle Tom,” or an Oreo Cookie, black on the outside but white inside, precisely because he spoils their narrative about Black people in America being designated an non-human, which brings us in turn to the years 1781 to 1783, when in three related cases known today as “the Quock Walker case,” the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwelath of Massachusetts applied the principle of judicial review to abolish slavery.
In doing so, the Court held that laws and customs that sanctioned slavery were incompatible with the new state constitution.
In the words of then-Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice William Cushing: “[S]lavery is in my judgment as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges [in the constitution] wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence.”
By way of background, which again is high school history as accessible to BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Amy Biancolli of the Hearst Publication’s Albany, New York Times Union as it is to you and me, we have thusly:
It is generally agreed that African slaves first arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630’s, and slavery was legally sanctioned in 1641.
As the rhetoric supporting independence of the colonists from Great Britain intensified in the colony of Massachusetts, some noted the glaring inconsistency of arguing for the rights of Englishmen while owning slaves.
For example, James Otis, a leading proponent of colonial independence, wrote in a highly regarded and influential 1764 pamphlet that “The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black.”
Historian Joanne Pope Melish observed that “the onset of the Revolution both intensified the attack and weakened the structures and practices that supported the institution [of slavery in New England]. . . .”
“New England was not ultimately dependent on slave labor, and the war disrupted patterns of production and trade in the very areas in which slave labor was most heavily engaged; the coastal trade, the provisioning trade with the West Indies, fishing, and shipping in general.”
Slaves too were active in seeking the end of slavery in Massachusetts.
For example, in 1773, a group of slaves petitioned the General Court (legislature) to end slavery, and directly tied their search for liberty to the colonists’ struggles with Great Britain.
As discussed in the section of this website entitled John Adams and the Massachusetts Constitution, the Constitution of 1780 was preceded by a constitution drafted by the legislature and rejected by the voters in 1778.
The constitution proposed in 1778 would have recognized slavery as a legal institution, and excluded free African Americans from voting.
The Constitution of 1780, in contrast, contained a declaration that “all men are born free and equal, and have . . . the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties.”
In his charge to the jury in the Quock Walker case, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice William Cushing announced that slavery was incompatible with the new Massachusetts Constitution:
. . . [T]hese sentiments [that are favorable to the natural rights of mankind] led the framers of our constitution of government – by which the people of this commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves to each other – to declare – that all men are born free and equal; and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws as well as his life and property.”
“In short, without resorting to implication in constructing the constitution, slavery is in my judgment as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence.”
“The court are therefore fully of the opinion that perpetual servitude can no longer be tolerated in our government, and that liberty can only be forfeited by some criminal conduct or relinquished by personal consent or contract.”
end quotes
So how come today we are being fed this rank BULL**** by BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Amy Biancolli of the Hearst Publication’s Albany, New York Times Union that Black peop0le who were slaves weren’t considered as being human?
How come we don’t hear about Mum Bett and Agrippa Hull and Quock Walker in the Albany, New York Times Union?
Because it spoils the BLACK LIVES MATTER narrative they are pushing?
“The great object of a free people must be so to form their government and laws and so to administer them as to create a confidence in, and respect for the laws; and thereby induce the sensible and virtuous part of the community to declare in favor of the laws, and to support them without an expensive military force.”
Those are words from the “Federal Farmer III” political essay by the Federal Farmer on October 10, 1787, eleven years after the first Fourth of July, now considered to be a “racist” holiday celebrating “white supremacy,” even though there were Black people like Agrippa Hull and James Armistead Lafayette fighting alongside those deemed today as “racists,” simply because their skin was white, which is a sign of how far over into gross ignorance and stupidity this nation has descended in the intervening 233 years since the publication of the “Federal Farmer III” political essay, where people today are totally ignorant and pitifully so, with this mindless blather by people such as Amy Biancolli and BLACK LIVES MATTER founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors that back then, Black people weren’t considered as human beings.
In point of fact, around five-thousand Blacks served in the Revolutionary War as soldiers on the patriot side against the British, which country was responsible for their enslavement in this nation before the first Fourth of July and the Declaration of Independence from the tyranny of English King George III, and a vast unknown number provided a myriad of support services.
So much for them being considered as non-humans.
With respect to the Declaration of Independence, what exactly did that accomplish, besides nothing?
To the British, the Declaration of Independence meant exactly nothing as far as they were concerned, so the colonists who declared independence and the Black folks who fought for their cause were hardly free just because of the Declaration of Independence, and in fact, that freedom would not come until seven long bloody years later on September 3, 1783, with the major American victory at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781 marking the end of hostilities, although some fighting took place through the fall of 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed by representatives of King George III including David Hartley and Richard Oswald and the United States including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, officially ending the conflict.
The treaty was ratified by the US Congress of the Confederation on January 14th, 1784.
As to the War of Revolution, there were 165 principal engagements from 1775-1783, and the Smithsonian tome, “The American Revolutionary War: A Visual History,” quotes a Hessian officer in 1777, as saying, “No regiment is to be seen in which there are not Negroes in abundance and among them are able-bodied and strong fellows.”
In the Battle of Bunker Hill, Peter Salem, a slave, served with courage under fire, as varying accounts reported and he was introduced to George Washington as “the man who shot Pitcairn,” the British Royal Marine Major who shouted to his men before Salem shot him down, “The day is ours.”
Col. John Thomas wrote John Adams on October 24, 1775 to say as follows: “We have negroes, but I look upon them as equally serviceable with other men, for fatigue (labor); and, in action many of them have proven themselves brave.”
So much for them not being considered as being human, which brings us to 1783 and Chapter III of the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia entitled “An act directing the emancipation of certain slaves who have served as soldiers in this state, and for the emancipation of the slave Aberdeen,” wherein was stated thusly:
I. WHEREAS it hath been represented to the present general assembly, that during the course of the war, many persons i this state had caused their slaves to enlist in certain regiments or corps raised within the same, having tendered such slaves to the officers appointed to recruit forces within the state, as substitutes for free persons, whose duty or lot it was to serve in such regiment or corps, at the same time representing to such recruiting officers that the slaves so enlisted by their direction and at their concurrence were freemen; and it appearing further to this assembly, that on the expiration of the term of enlistment of such slaves that the former owners have attempted again to force them to return to a state of servitude, contrary to the principles of justice, and to their own solemn promise.
II. And whereas it appears just and reasonable that all persons enlisted as aforesaid, who have faithfully served agreeable to the terms of their enlistment, and have thereby of course contributed towards the establishment of American liberty and independence, should enjoy the blessings of freedom as a reward for their toils and labors; Be it therefore enacted, That each and every slave, who by the appointment and direction of his owner, hath enlisted in any regiment or corps raised within this state, either on continental or state establishment, and hath been received as a substitute for many free person whose duty or lot it was to serve in such regiment or corps, and hath served faithfully during the term of such enlistment, or hath been discharged from such service by some officer duly authorized to grant such discharge, shall from and after the passing of this act, be fully and completely emancipated, and shall be held and deemed free in as full and ample a manner as if each and every one of them were specially named in this act; and the attorney-general for the commonwealth, is hereby required to commence an action, in forma pauperis, in behalf of any of the persons above described who shall after the passing of this act be detained in servitude by any person whatsoever; and if upon such prosecution it shall appear that the pauper is entitled to his freedom in consequence of this act, a jury shall be empannelled to assess the damages for his detention.
III. And whereas it has been represented to this general assembly, that Aberdeen, a negro man slave, hath labored a number of years in the public service at the lead mines, and for his meritorious services is entitled to freedom; Be it therefore enacted, That the said slave Aberdeen shall be, and he is hereby emancipated and declared free in as full and ample a manner as if he had been born free
end quotes
That, people, is American history as it actually happened, not as the Albany, New York Times Union and Democrat mayor of the sanctuary city of Albany, New York and BLACK LIVES MATTER would have it be, with this tripe and drivel of theirs that Black people weren’t considered as being human, when the evidence is that they clearly were considered human.
So why in 2020 are we being force fed that drivel and just plain BULL**** while at the same time being told by mayor Kathy that because of our history, of which that is a part, we have to embrace BLACK LIVES MATTER, which is equivalent to telling us we have to embrace ignorance and just plain stupidity and a Marxist-inspired agenda to disrupt our stable, law-abiding nuclear families?
So, squinting at history through that single, narrow lens, as Amy Biancolli of the Albany, New York Times Union called it in the Times Union story entitled “Biancolli: As we get rid of Schuyler statue, we need to own his history” by Amy Biancolli on July 8, 2020, in the context of the more limited narrative Amy says was first absorbed in my youth, it is crystal clear that in every battle of the Revolutionary War from Lexington to Yorktown; black men, slave and free, picked up the musket and defended America; and in the course of that struggle, earned their freedom and paved the way for other Black folks to be free as well, so why is it then, that so many Black historians as well as “sensitive” white folks like Amy Biancolli have omitted their contributions in their warped and twisted and perverted view of history?
In my opinion as an American citizen, this need for these Black historians to “overlook,” “underestimate,” and or “erase,” these sacrifices is a gross negligence on their part for political reasons that intentionally distorts and misrepresents American history; and furthermore, it continues to disenfranchise the patriotic heroes of the past and malign the self-image of millions of Americans today simply because of the color of their skin, all to maintain the BLACK LIVES MATTER narrative being pushed by the Albany Times Union and Democrats like Kathy Sheehan, again for political reasons, that depicts all Black people as downtrodden losers who they depict as not even being human, which is nothing more than tripe.
In her polemic in the Times Union on July 8, 2020, Amy Biancolli, a polished political commentator for the Hearst Publishing’s Albany, New York Times Union who was born in Queens and grew up in Connecticut and holds degrees from Hamilton College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a former movie critic for the Houston Chronicle who first wrote for the TU from 1991-2000 and then bounced back into the local-arts beat in 2012 stated with respect to myself that “I was baffled by his refusal to acknowledge the crushing, enduring evils of an institution built on the denial of all human rights,” which is a BULL**** statement all the way around, because although members of the so-called “servile class,” the Black folks were hardly denied “all human rights,” as we clearly see in the case of the Virginia law in 1783 mentioned above making freemen out of former Black slaves who either fought in the Revolution, or like Aberdeen, a negro man slave, labored for a number of years in the public service at the lead mines, and for his meritorious services was entitled to freedom and emancipated and declared free in as full and ample a manner as if he had been born free.
As to Massachusetts, and this is schoolboy history we never hear about from these Black historians pushing the BLACK LIVES MATTER narrative of Black people being considered as non-humans, although slaves were indeed considered as “property,” at the same time, they were also considered as persons before the law, so that slaves could institute and prosecute lawsuits in the courts against their master as the defendant, which is a human right ignorant people like Amy Biancolli says they did not have.
As to acknowledging the crushing, enduring evils of an institution built on the denial of all human rights, though my “lens of history” that I squint through, I go back to 135–132 BC, and the First Servile War, which was a slave rebellion against the Roman Republic led by Eunus, a former slave, and Cleon, a Cilician slave, who became Eunus’s military commander.
With respect to the crushing, enduring evils of an institution built on the denial of all human rights, following the final expulsion of the Carthaginians from Sicily during the Second Punic War, there were great changes in land ownership in Sicily with speculators from Italy rushing onto the island and buying up large tracts of land at low prices, or occupying estates which had belonged to Sicilians of the Carthaginian party, which estates were forfeited to Rome after the execution or flight of their owners.
According to the school-boy history that I learned when young, back in a time when ignorance was not tolerated as it is today, these newly arrived Roman Sicilians exploited their slaves more brutally than their predecessors, and those slaves weren’t Black, they were white, so how about that!
According to Diodorus Siculus, or Diodorus of Sicily, who was an ancient Greek historian known for writing the monumental universal history Bibliotheca historica, in forty books, fifteen of which survive intact, between 60 and 30 BC, politically influential slave-owners, often Roman equites who constituted the second of the property-based classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the senatorial class, did not provide enough food and clothing for their slaves.
The Roman conquest of Macedonia, in which thousands of the conquered were sold into slavery, the slave-dealing of the Cretan and Cilician pirates whose activity was practically unchecked at this time, as well as the oppression of corrupt Roman provincial governors, who were known to organize man-hunts after lower-class country provincials to be sold as slaves — all contributed to a constant supply of new slaves at very cheap price, which made it more profitable for their masters to wear them out by unremitting labor, harshness, exposure and malnutrition, to be cheaply replaced, than to take proper care for their nourishment, health, and accommodation.
Talk about people being treated as if they were non-human, there is a case of it right there before our eyes, so how come we never hear of this from these Black historians and ignorant people like, Amy Biancolli who would have us believe that the only people ever oppressed by the institution of slavery were Black?
Getting back to the history as it happened, the plantation system which took shape in Sicily led to thousands of slaves dying every year of toil in the fields from dawn to dusk with chains around their legs, and being locked up in suffocating subterranean pits by night.
For food, the slaves had to turn to banditry to survive while the Roman Senate failed to take measures to curb this dangerous tendency, which converted one of the most beautiful and fertile provinces of the Republic into a horrible den of misery, brigandage, atrocity and death.
Because of that treatment, which I certainly acknowledge, given it cannot be denied other than by ignorant fools, of which we have many in this nation, either serving as historians or writers for rags like the Times Union, in 135 BC, the plantation slaves in Sicily finally rose in revolt, with Eunus of Syrian origin as their head.
The spark which would end up starting the revolt came when a group of slaves, who were suffering under the severe cruelty of their owner Damophilus, sought out Eunus for advice on what to do about their situation, and in response, Eunus organized about 400 slaves into a band and stormed the prominent city of Enna located in the interior of the island and the home of Damophilus.
The unprepared town was captured and savagely sacked by the insurgents, who executed every inhabitant but the iron-forgers, who were chained to their smithies and put to manufacturing arms for their captors.
Damophilus was butchered after being insultingly paraded through the local theater, abjectly begging for his life while his wife was tortured to death by her servants.
Their daughter, who had once attempted to alleviate the suffering of her family’s slaves, was spared by the mob and given an honorable escort which was to deliver her to the Roman garrison at Catana.
After the capture of Enna, the revolt quickly spread.
Achaeus, a Greek slave (Greeks aren’t Black), was named commander-in-chief by Eunus, who simultaneously proclaimed himself king Antiochus, of Syria.
A group of 5,000 slaves on the south side of the island under Cleon rose up and managed to capture Agrigentum, after which they joined Eunus and his forces.
The numbers of the slave army swelled rapidly from 10,000 to 70,000 by the lowest estimate (Livy and Orosius following him), or as many as 200,000 according to Diodorus Siculus, including men and women, possibly counting children as well.
The Praetor Lucius Hypsaeus marched with a body of Sicilian militia to quash the revolt but the slaves managed to rout his army, they then defeated three other praetors in succession and occupied almost the whole island by the end of the year.
In 134 the Roman Senate sent Flaccus, the consul for the year, to put an end to the revolt.
However, his campaign, the details of which are few and obscure, seems to have ended without a conclusive result.
A year later, in 133 the new consul Lucius Calpurnius Piso was given the same task as Flaccus but this time the effort actually gave results.
He recaptured Messana, putting 8,000 surrendered slaves to death before laying siege to the important town of Tauromenium on the north-east coast, though he was in the end unable to take it.
The revolt was finally snuffed out in its entirety the following year by Publius Rupilius who laid siege to Tauromenium and managed to capture it with relative ease thanks to the help of traitors from within the slave army defending the town.
Talk about not having any basic human rights like the Black slaves in Massachusetts did, being able to sue their masters in court as they were able to do, all the prisoners taken when the town fell were first tortured, and then thrown from a cliff.
Next Publius Rupilius marched on Enna, which had become the center of the entire revolt, where one of the slave leaders, Cleon, had taken refuge.
Cleon died of wounds sustained during a desperate sally out of the gates to try and break the Roman siege lines.
Enna then fell not long after, again helped by traitors inside the walls, and the remnants of the slave army on the rest of the island was quickly stamped out, with around 20,000 prisoners being crucified by Rupilius in retribution.
And there is my acknowledgement of the crushing, enduring evils of an institution built on the denial of all human rights.
So why don’t these Black historians today and progressives like Kathy Sheehan of Albany and Amy Biancolli acknowledge it as well?
A question for our times, indeed.
Four long years ago, back on July 9, 2017, when I started this thread, I stated thusly, to wit:
“Ah, yes, the Fourth of July, and lucky us this year, ain’t it people?”
“Gas the cheapest its been in years, and the same with hamburgers!”
“Isn’t this a wonderful country we live in, then?”
“But if so, why aren’t we happy?”
end quotes
That was four years ago, now, as I say, an age, actually, despite the shortness of the number of actual years, and where are we today, as the now-thoroughly discredited “WHITE MAN’S RACIST HOLIDAY” of the Fourth of July fast approaches?
Which raises a question in my mind today of why do we even bother having holidays anymore in this country?
What purpose do they serve, and here, I am thinking of America’s newest holiday, brought to us from the pen of Joe Biden, a holiday that goes by the ridiculous name of JUNETEENTH.
What on earth is JUNETEENTH?
Who came up with that ridiculous term for a national holiday?
And what is the purpose of having JUNETEENTH, a ridiculous name, as a national holiday, given that Joe Biden was on NPR just the other day going on about how the “stain” of slavery continues to exist here in the United States of America, as if slavery still exists, and people – it does!
The supposed “stain” of slavery exists today and will never go away because pandering hack politicians like Joe Biden will never let it go away, because if it were to do so, they would lose one of the only issues they have remaining to them to keep us divided as a people, which is exactly what this JUNETEENTH is going to do – further divide us.
And for some much-needed insight into that statement. let’s go to a CNBC article entitled “Biden signs Juneteenth bill, creating new federal holiday commemorating end of slavery in U.S.” by Kevin Breuninger on June 17 2021. where we have as follows to consider concerning this new national holiday, to wit:
President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a bill establishing Juneteenth, the date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, as a federal holiday.
Biden, in what he called “one of the greatest honors” of his presidency, signed the bill two days before Juneteenth itself, which is on June 19 each year.
end quotes
So there we have it, people, Joe Biden created JUNETEENTH for no other purpose than to honor himself as the greatest president we have ever had, or ever will, or that matter, which takes us back to CNBC, as follows:
“We have come far, and we have far to go.”
“But today is a day of celebration,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, who spoke before the president at the signing event in the White House.
end quotes
OH ******* BULL****!
Just what we need – a RACIST “holiday” where white people now have to feel “white guilt” and flagellate themselves in atonement for the BLACK people in Africa having made slaves out of themselves for sale to among other places, the British-run colonies that comprised the original American “states” that came into being after the Revolution, and I’m not for having it, given that I lost a grandfather several times removed in the Civil War fighting down South to free the BLACK slaves from the DEMOCRATS who were holding them in bondage.
And that takes us to a USA TODAY article entitled “Kamala Harris agrees with Tim Scott that America not a ‘racist country’ but says must ‘speak truth’ on racism” by Matthew Brown on 29 APRIL 2021, where we had as follows:
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris said America is not a “racist country” but the nation must “speak the truth” about its history with racism on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
end quotes
So, people, if we are not a “racist” country, then why did Joe Biden just “gift” us with a decidedly racist holiday?
And if we’re not a “racist” country, then what is Kamala Harris on about with respect to JUNETEENTH when she said “We have come far, and we have far to go but today is a day of celebration,” speaking before old Joe at the signing event in the White House?
And what on earth are we celebrating?
Going back to that USA TODAY story for a moment, we have:
The vice president’s comments were in response to Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who gave the Republican Party’s rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s speech to Congress on Wednesday.
The senator contended “America is not a racist country” and said progressives perpetuate discrimination akin to Jim Crow-era policies.
end quotes
And that is exactly what this JUNETEENTH holiday is all about – a furtherance of that PROGRESSIVE agenda intended to further divide us along color ,linjhes, since there is but onje race of people in the US, that being the human race, which takes us back to USA TODAY, as follows:
“A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic.”
“And if they looked a certain way, they were inferior.”
“Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor,” Scott said in his speech.
“It’s backward to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination,” the senator continued.
end quotes
Amen, Senator Scott, and white kids today are being taught they are oppressors precisely because of an executive order signed by the RACIST Joe Biden on his first day in office.
And now we have a national “holiday” to reinforce that sick Biden-esque policy that demonizes white children in America’s schools while Joe panders for the BLACK vote, whichy takes us back to USA TODAY, as follows:
“Well, first of all, no, I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak the truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today,” Harris said while praising Biden’s comments on race and domestic terrorism in his first joint address to Congress on Wednesday.
She applauded Biden for “having the ability and the courage to speak the truth” about the country’s history with racism.
“He spoke what we know from the intelligence community: One of the greatest threats to our national security is domestic terrorism manifested by white supremacists,” Harris said, referencing reports from federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies identifying white supremacists as a persistent and rising terror threat.
“And so these are issues that we must confront, and it does not help to heal our country, to unify us as a people, to ignore the realities of that,” the vice president said.
“The idea is that we want to unify the country but not without speaking truth and requiring accountability where it is appropriate,” she urged.
end quotes
And so we now have a RACIST national holiday to divide us further, which takes us back to the CNBC article, to wit:
“Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,” Biden told the East Room crowd, which included dozens of politicians, activists and community leaders.
“They embrace them.”
“In short, this day doesn’t just celebrate the past.”
“It calls for action today,” Biden said.
end quotes
What BULL****!
I’m not suffering WHITE GUILT because the RACIST Joe Biden created a national holiday to demonize white people in America, and with respect to the FOURTH OF JULY, which used to be INDEPENDENCE DAY, but is no more, let us go back to the CNBC article to see why that is so, to wit:
Juneteenth National Independence Day will become the 12th legal public holiday, including Inauguration Day, and the first new one created since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was signed into law in 1983 by then-President Ronald Reagan.
end quotes
JUNETEENTH NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE DAY!
Which means the FOURTH OF JULY can no longer be be celebrated as INDEPENDENCE DAY because JUNETEENTH has pre-empted that title, and how many national independence days can one nation have?
Going back to CNBC, we have:
Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of the last enslaved African Americans.
On that day in 1865, Union soldiers led by Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in the coastal city of Galveston, Texas, to deliver General Order No. 3, officially ending slavery in the state.
The final act of liberation came months after the Confederate army’s surrender ended the Civil War, and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, two months before his proclamation made it to Texas.
end quotes
So, back to the question, then – what is the FOURTH OF JULY going to be this year?
A national day of shame for white people?
Seems a strange way to “unify” the country to me, anyway!
And taking a further look into JUNETEENTH, the new holiday that replaces the Fourth of July as “Independence Day,” since that only applied to 13 British colonies with slave-owning racist, white nationalist/white supremacists in them practicing systemic racism against the BLACK folks, let’s go right to th source, which is a white house Press Release titled “Remarks by President Biden at Signing of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act” on June 17, 2021, where we have the following on this new holiday, to wit:
East Room
3:51 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Well, thank you, Madam Vice President.
One hundred and fifty-six years ago — one hundred and fifty-six years — June 19th, 1865 — John, thanks for being here — a major general of the Union Army arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and free the last enslaved Americans in Texas from bondage.
end quotes
Those were white people freeing the last of the BLACK folks the Democrats were holding in bondage as their slaves, and how we get JUNETEENTH as JUNETEENTH NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE DAY eludes me, given that “independence” is defined as “the fact or state of being independent,” as in “Argentina gained independence from Spain in 1816.”
So what are we as a nation celebrating then?
That thanks to the white people in America who stood up to and defeated the slave-owning, racist, white supremacist DEMOCRATS, we no longer have BLACK people as their slaves in America?
But how does that translate to a NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE DAY?
For that answer, let’s go back to Joe’s press release to see what more we can learn of his intentions for this new holiday, to wit:
A day, as you all know — I’m going to repeat some of what was said — that became known as Juneteenth.
You all know that.
end quotes
And actually, Joe, no, we don’t all know that.
Why, of all the descriptive terminology the English language makes available to its users, was an ignorant, gibberish term chosen to denote that day?
And while we wait for that answer, which will never be forthcoming, let’s go back to the press release to see what the hell it is we are supposed to be “celebrating” on JUNETEENTH, to wit:
A day that reflects what the Psalm tell us: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
end quotes
HUH?
Is JUNETEENTH now a new religious holiday like Easter and Christmas?
Are we now all supposed to be psalm singers on JUNETEENTH with Joe Biden as our Psalmist-In-Chief leading us in our prayers as we white folks beg forgiveness for being white?
Getting back to Joe’s press release, it continues thusly:
Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come.
end quotes
Doesn’t that also apply to the Israelites who were in bondage to some powerful dude back then?
And what about all the slaves of the Romans and Moors?
Shouldn’t we really be celebrating them, as well, along with all the slaves held by the BLACK folks in Africa?
Getting back to the Biden press release, it continues as follows:
This is a day of profound — in my view — profound weight and profound power.
A day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take — what I’ve long called “America’s original sin.”
end quotes
Good ******* *****, Joe!
Get real, dude, and read my lips – thanks to the white folks in America who stood up to and defeated the slave-owning DEMOCRATS, we don’t have slavery in America, and if there is a stain, it is on the DEMOCRAT party, not the American people, so stop laying a guilt trip on all of us because the DEMOCRATS were slave owners.
And what kind of a sick people in a very sick nation stay focused on something that has not existed now for one hundred and fifty-six years, or some eight generations, according to Jo9e’s figures?
What is this obsession with wearing hair shirts and living in the past in the name of a national holiday?
Why don’t we celebrate the end of the Civil War, then, as a national holiday?
Because it would remind us today of the fact that the DEMOCRATS were the slave owners?
Getting back to Joe’s press release, it goes on as follows concerning what it is we are supposed to be doing on JUNETEENTH, to wit:
At the same time, I also remember the extraordinary capacity to heal, and to hope, and to emerge from the most painful moments and a bitter, bitter version of ourselves, but to make a better version of ourselves.
end quotes
Stop projecting, Joe!
Stop demonizing us, because there is no white person alive today who was a DEMOCRAT slave owner, and because the DEMOCRATS owned slaves does not make the rest of us who are not DEMOCRATS into bad people simply because we are white.
Getting back to the Biden press release, we have:
You know, today, we consecrate Juneteenth for what it ought to be, what it must be: a national holiday.
end quotes
CONSECRATE?
We are now “consecrating” JUNETEENTH?
Where “consecrate” means “make or declare something sacred; dedicate formally to a religious or divine purpose,” what the **** has just happened here?
We in fact now have a new religious holiday called “JUNETEENTH” is the only possible answer, given Joe’s choice of the word “consecrate” to describe why he made JUNETEENTH a national holiday!
Getting back to the Biden press release:
As the Vice President noted, a holiday that will join the others of our national celebrations: our independence, our laborers who built this nation, our servicemen and women who served and died in its defense.
And the first new national holiday since the creation of Martin Luther King Holiday nearly four decades ago.
I am grateful to the members of Congress here today — in particular, the Congressional Black Caucus, who did so much to make this day possible.
I’m especially pleased that we showed the nation that we can come together as Democrats and Republicans to commemorate this day with the overwhelming bipartisan support of the Congress.
I hope this is the beginning of a change in the way we deal with one another.
And we’re blessed — we’re blessed to mark the day in the presence of Ms. Opal Lee.
As my mother would say, “God love her.”
(Applause.)
I had the honor of meeting her in Nevada more than a year ago.
She told me she loved me, and I believed it.
(Laughter.)
I wanted to believe it.
(Laughs.)
end quotes
As an aside, this is about Joe Biden, afterall, and what a great human being he really is, loved by all, because he is so lovable, which takes us back to the press release, to wit:
Ms. Opal, you’re incredible.
A daughter of Texas. Grandmother of the movement to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
And Ms. Opal is — you won’t believe it — she’s 49 years old.
(Laughter.)
Or 94 years old, but I — (laughter).
You are an incredible woman, Ms. Opal.
You really are.
As a child growing up in Texas, she and her family would celebrate Juneteenth.
On Juneteenth, 1939, when she was 12 years old, the white — a white mob torched her family home.
But such hate never stopped her any more than it stopped the vast majority of you I’m looking at from this podium.
Over the course of decades, she’s made it her mission to see that this day came.
It was almost a singular mission.
She’s walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to Juneteenth, to make this day possible.
I ask, once again, we all stand and give her a warm welcome to the White House.
(Applause.)
As they still say in the Senate and I said for 36 years, “if you excuse me there for a point of personal privilege,” as I was walking down, I regret that my grandchildren aren’t here because this is a really, really, really important moment in our history.
By making Juneteenth a federal holiday, all Americans can feel the power of this day, and learn from our history, and celebrate progress, and grapple with the distance we’ve come but the distance we have to travel, Jim.
You know, I said a few weeks ago, marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments.
Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments.
They don’t ignore those moments of the past.
They embrace them.
Great nations don’t walk away.
We come to terms with the mistakes we made.
And in remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger.
The truth is, it’s not — simply not enough just to commemorate Juneteenth.
After all, the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans didn’t mark the end of America’s work to deliver on the promise of equality; it only marked the beginning.
To honor the true meaning of Juneteenth, we have to continue toward that promise because we’ve not gotten there yet.
The Vice President and I and our entire administration and all of you in this room are committed to doing just that.
That’s why we’ve launched an aggressive effort to combat racial discrimination in housing — finally address the cruel fact that a home owned, to this day, by a Black American family is usually appraised at a lower rate for a similar home owned by a white family in a similar area.
That’s why we committed to increasing Black homeownership, one of the biggest drivers of generational wealth.
That’s why we’re making it possible for more Black entrepreneurs to access — to access capital, because their ideas are as good; they lack the capital to get their fair — and get their fair share of federal contracts so they can begin to build wealth.
That’s why we’re working to give each and every child, three and four years of age, not daycare, but school — in a school.
(Applause.)
That’s why — that’s why we’re unlocking the incredibly creative and innovation — innovation of the history — of our Historical Black Colleges and Universities, providing them with the resources to invest in research centers and laboratories to help HBCU graduates prepare and compete for good-paying jobs in the industries of the future.
Folks, the promise of equality is not going to be fulfilled until we become real — it becomes real in our schools and on our Main Streets and in our neighborhoods — our healthcare system and ensuring that equity is at the heart of our fight against the pandemic; in the water that comes out of our faucets and the air that we breathe in our communities; in our justice system — so that we can fulfill the promise of America for all people.
All of our people.
And it’s not going to be fulfilled so long as the sacred right to vote remains under attack.
(Applause.)
We see this assault from restrictive laws, threats of intimidation, voter purges, and more — an assault that offends the very democracy — our very democracy.
We can’t rest until the promise of equality is fulfilled for every one of us in every corner of this nation.
That, to me, is the meaning of Juneteenth.
That’s what it’s about.
So let’s make this June- — this very Juneteenth, tomorrow — the first that our nation will celebrate all together, as one nation — a Juneteenth of action on many fronts.
One of those is vaccinations.
Tomorrow, the Vice President will be in Atlanta on a bus tour, helping to spread the word, like all of you have been doing, on lifesaving vaccines.
And across the country this weekend, including here in Washington, people will be canvassing and hosting events in their communities, going door-to-door, encouraging vaccinations.
We’ve built equity into the heart of the vaccination program from day one, but we still have more work to do to close the racial gap in vaccination rates.
The more we can do that, the more we can save lives.
Today also marks the sixth anniversary of the tragic deaths of — at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
A killer motivated by hate, intending to start a race war in South Carolina.
He joined his victims in a Bible study class, then he took their lives in the house of worship.
It’s a reminder that our work to root out hate never ends — because hate only hides, it never fully goes away.
It hides.
And when you breathe oxygen under that rock, it comes out.
And that’s why we must understand that Juneteenth represents not only the commemoration of the end of slavery in America more than 150 years ago, but the ongoing work to have to bring true equity and racial justice into American society, which we can do.
In short, this day doesn’t just celebrate the past; it calls for action today.
I wish all Americans a happy Juneteenth.
I am shortly going to — in a moment, going to sign into law, making it a federal holiday.
And I have to say to you, I’ve only been President for several months, but I think this will go down, for me, as one of the greatest honors I will have had as President, not because I did it; you did it — Democrats and Republicans.
But it’s an enormous, enormous honor.
Thank you for what you’ve done.
And, by the way, typical of most of us in Congress and the Senate, I went down to the other end of the hall first and thanked your staffs because I know who does the hard work.
(Laughter and applause.)
They’re down there.
They’re at the other end, but I thanked them as well.
May God bless you all.
And may God protect our troops.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
Now, I’d like to invite up, while I sign, Senator Tina Smith, Senator Ed Markey, Senator Raphael Warnock, Senator John Cornyn, Whip John [Jim] Clyburn, Representative Barbara Lee, Representative Danny Davis, Chair Joyce Beatty, and Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ms. Opal.
(The act is signed.)
(Applause.)
4:06 P.M. EDT
end quotes
So what do we do on the FOURTH OF JULY, then?
Feel guilty?
So, hey, yeah. wow, it’s almost the Fourth of July, and based on all of what has gone down in America since Joe Biden took the oval office, out of fear of being labeled a racist, white supremacist, white nationalist, Jim Crow-loving piece of pond scum, or a dreg of society who belongs in a basket of deplorables, I don’t think I really want to talk about it, not after Joe Biden’s very powerful Juneteenth message to the candid world and beyond, which message made it quite clear to me that if you are white, you are a bad person who does not deserve a day to celebrate anything.
To the contrary, what we need if we are white is a national day of atonement, the concept of a person taking action to correct previous wrongdoing on their part, even if none of us alive today ever actually owned a Black person as a slave, we are all still guilty, where we all wear hair shirts while walking around flagellating ourselves with Harley-Davidson primary chains as we “pursue the path of penance,” for the WHITE GUILT we all rightly bear, which takes us back to 28 April 2021 and the full transcript from President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress, where we have as follows about being bad people if we are white, to wit:
And, we won’t ignore what our own intelligence agencies have determined – the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today is from white supremacist terrorism.
end quotes
See that, people!
And he is the president of the United States of America, and he can’t say that kind of stuff if it is not absolutely true, nor can the intelligence agencies!
So I am seeing this as a test, this coming Fourth of July, as to whether or not we are white supremacist terrorists at heart.
If we are for the Fourth of July in any way, then of course we are white supremacist terrorists, because who else other than a white supremacist terrorist would want to celebrate a holiday devoted to white supremacy, white nationalism, racism and Jim Crow?
Which is why I don’t want to talk about the Fourth of July in here – it’s getting to be too damn dangerous, and to see what I mean, let us go to a Newsweek article by Ben Weingarten, a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, entitled “Biden Domestic Terror Strategy Codifies Woke War on Wrongthink | Opinion” on 30 June 2021 where we have as follows:
The Biden administration’s first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism codifies a federal War on Wrongthink.
end quotes
In this case, Wrongthink would be celebrating the Fourth of July!
Getting back to the article, it continues as follows:
In sum, the document makes clear that the imposition of Wokeism constitutes a national security imperative.
That is, the strategy uses public safety to justify leftist domination of both public policy and the public discourse, enforcing the regime’s ideology at the point of a government gun.
It comes against the backdrop of the Woking of the defense, national security and intelligence apparatuses, the executive branch more broadly and society itself, whereby those who run afoul of progressivism are deemed bigoted and dangerous — and therefore liable to be purged.
end quotes
And my goodness, people, who in their right mind wants to be purged!
Getting back to the story:
To begin, the strategy fails to clearly define who exactly it is targeting — meaning the target could be ever-moving, and forever growing — but strongly implies that the threat consists of at least the nearly half of the electorate that voted for President Donald Trump in 2020.
It does so through invoking the Capitol Riot as typifying the domestic terror threat, warning of “narratives of fraud in the recent general election” that could spur forthcoming attacks and focusing on “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “anti-government or anti-authority extremists” — the kind of “extremism” the Left cynically conflates with mainstream conservatism.
This is demonstrated, for example, in the casting of President Trump, his supporters and their shared views as “white supremacist,” the claim that the Capitol Riot Trump purportedly incited was rooted in “white supremacism” (as Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently declared) and in arguments that electoral integrity laws are tantamount to “Jim Crow” (as President Joe Biden has asserted, and which is now buttressed by his Justice Department’s actions).
The logic is as simple as it is horrifying:
This is the logic of their current “counterterrorism” assault.
Opposing the regime is racism, racism is terrorism, terrorism is a national security threat.
The strategy also never substantiates its claims that the violent extremists to whom it refers pose such a pervasive threat to the homeland as to demand the whole-of-government, if not whole-of-society, plan laid out.
It expects us to rely on a politicized Biden administration-led intelligence assessment that downplays threats from the Left while providing little to justify its conclusions.
The strategy treats January 6 — in spite of the collapsing narrative that it represented a murderous, armed insurrection that threatened to topple the republic — as a domestic terror attack of paramount importance, while ignoring the death and destruction inflicted by the likes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) during last summer’s 1619 Riots.
The strategy purports, in the words of a senior administration official, to “create contexts in which those who are family members or friends or co-workers know that there are pathways and avenues to raise concerns and seek help for those who they have perceived to be radicalizing and potentially radicalizing towards violence.”
end quotes
And what better sign that a family member is “radicalizing” than them wanting to celebrate the Fourth of July?
That’s why I call this a test!
Getting back to the story once again, we have:
While nations must of course be vigilant about legitimate national security threats, surveilling those near and dear to us based on vague notions of “radicalization” never defined is the stuff of third-world banana republics.
end quotes
Third-world banana republics?
Hey, people, that is the United States of America he is talking about there!
Could we now be a third-world banana republic under Joe Biden?
And what am I thinking, of course we are, which takes us back to the story, to wit:
The strategy speaks of the U.S. government partnering with Big Tech and other ostensibly private actors in pursuit of the threats it purports to identify.
What could possibly go wrong?
The strategy also calls for authorities “to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories,” which it suggests “can provide a gateway to terrorist violence.”
The strategy notes that “the Department of Homeland Security and others are either currently funding and implementing or planning evidence-based digital programming, including enhancing media literacy and critical thinking skills, as a mechanism for strengthening user resilience to disinformation and misinformation online for domestic audiences.”
Where the strategy believes it derives this legal authority or social legitimacy is unclear.
What is clear is that such a policy is incompatible with basic freedom and republican self-governance.
It is the document’s close that reveals beyond a shadow of a doubt that the strategy is about forcibly imposing the regime’s ruling ideology.
In a section titled “Confront Long-Term Contributors to Domestic Terrorism,” the strategy calls for combating domestic terrorism through anti-racism.
“Tackling the threat posed by domestic terrorism over the long term,” the document reads, “demands…prioritizing efforts to ensure that every component of the government has a role to play in rooting out racism and advancing equity.”
Anti-racist “equity,” which as the Left uses it is antithetical to real “equality,” calls for overtly discriminating against individuals and removing justice’s blindfold.
The goal is to use policy to socially engineer the citizenry so that all outcomes are proportional to group identity.
Applied Critical Race Theory, in other words, is now set to be our domestic counterterrorism strategy.
Meanwhile, as a corollary to the Biden administration mantra that everything is infrastructure, infrastructure would seem to constitute counterterror strategy.
Citing financial relief measures contributing to “an equitable economic recovery that can counter the economic dislocation and even despair felt by many Americans,” the strategy notes that “economic recovery and sustainable development” policies will be geared toward “alleviating over time the sentiments that some domestic terrorists deliberately use to recruit and mobilize.”
We need to implement progressive policies, in other words, to fight the material “root causes” of domestic terror.
Last but not least, the Biden regime calls for — what else — protecting and preserving its power and privilege.
The strategy notes a broader priority: “enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms.”
To do so, it calls for “accelerating work to contend with an information environment that challenges healthy democratic discourse” and, again, working to “counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories” that it claims lead to terrorist violence.
Controlling the narrative is now domestic counterterrorism strategy — as is ensuring that “the institutions” remain dominant, no matter how illegitimate and unrepresentative their actions may well be.
The terrors this document could unleash may well prove far more profound and long-lasting than the ill-defined threats it purports to counter.
end quotes
See what I am saying, people?
It’s just too risky anymore to actually talk out loud about the Fourth of July!
So I won’t!
Instead, I will say HAPPY INDEPENDENCE FROM THE TYRANNY OF A FOREIGN KING DAY!
And enjoy!
And HAPPY JOE BIDEN DAY, everyone, as we celebrate just how very lucky and blessed we are to have Joe Biden as our president as opposed to anybody else, which has me being very politically correct in here so that nobody can mistake me for a racist, white supremacist, white nationalist, Jim Crow-loving piece of pond scum, or a dreg of society who belongs in a basket of deplorables because of implicit bias in my DNA going back most likely millennia, if not longer, at least according to Hillary Clinton, who knows these kinds of things, because she is Hillary Clinton and we aren’t, which makes all the difference in the world.
As to what we are really celebrating today, let us first go to a CNBC article entitlled “Biden on June jobs report: ‘Our economy is on the move, and we have Covid-19 on the run’” by Christina Wilkie on July 2, 2021 where we have as follows:
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden responded to the June jobs numbers on Friday, saying the strong growth in employment reflects the success of his American Rescue Plan relief bill this spring and his administration’s nationwide vaccination campaigns.
“We’re proving to the naysayers and the doubters that they were wrong,” Biden said Friday morning at the White House.
“Today’s job news brought us something else to celebrate” over the Independence Day holiday, Biden said.
The president will spend Saturday in Michigan, celebrating the success of the vaccination campaign and pitching his bipartisan infrastructure bill.
end quotes
So thanks to the absolute greatness of Joe Biden, we really do have something to celebrate today, which is Joe Biden, the greatest American president there ever was, or will be, as we see by going back to the Full transcript from President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, where we have just how very great as an American president Joe Biden really is, to wit:
But tonight, I can say because of you — the American people – our progress these past 100 days against one of the worst pandemics in history is one of the greatest logistical achievements our country has ever seen.
In the process, the economy created more than 1.3 million new jobs in 100 days.
More new jobs in the first 100 days than any president on record.
end quotes
See there what I am talking about, people, why it is that today, we are celebrating JOE BIDEN DAY, and since he is the president, and everybody knew American presidents never lie to us, we have to believe that that is true, that our own Joe Biden, as American an institution is is apple pie, has created more new jobs in the first 100 days he was in office than any president on record, and if that doesn’t make you feel good about yourself and all warm and squishy inside, you must be a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN or something who hates America.
And if that is not enough, let us go to an article in THE HILL entitled “Biden hails jobs numbers, gets testy with questions” by Morgan Chalfant on 2 July 2021, to wit:
President Biden on Friday hailed a new report showing the U.S. added 850,000 jobs in June, describing it as “historic progress” that he attributed to his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package signed into law in March.
end quotes
See that, people – “historic progress,” and if that isn’t a real good reason to celebrate JOE GIDEN DAY today, nothing is, which takes us back to that story, for more, to wit:
He also grew impatient while fielding several questions about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, defending it as a “rational” plan in an exchange with reporters.
“I’m not going to answer any more questions on Afghanistan.”
“Look, it’s Fourth of July,” Bided said.
“I’m concerned that you guys are asking me questions that I’ll answer next week.”
“But this is a holiday weekend.”
“I’m going to celebrate it.”
“There’s great things happening.”
end quotes
See again, people – there’s GREAT things happening, and that is because Joe Biden is president, and if Joe Biden is going to celebrate himself as a result, we, the American people have a duty to Joe Biden to celebrate him, as well, because of those GREAT THINGS only Joe Biden was able to make happen, because he is Joe Biden and nobody else is, and Joe is just the greatest thing ever, which is why it is imperative for us commoners in this country to celebrate just how lucky we are to have Joe Biden in the white house, which again takes us back to that story, to wit:
Biden opened his remarks by talking up the jobs report.
“This is historic progress, pulling our economy out of the worst crisis in 100 years, driven in part by our dramatic progress in vaccinating our nation and beating back the pandemic, as well as other elements of the American Rescue Plan,” Biden said in remarks from the White House hours after the jobs report was released.
“Put simply, our economy is on the move and we have COVID-19 on the run,” he said.
He also used the venue as an opportunity to push for the passage of his long-term economic agenda, the bipartisan infrastructure deal he agreed to last week and his American Families Plan.
Biden said his proposals would both create good-paying middle-class jobs and help America become more competitive against other countries in the 21st century.
The White House says that the figures give the administration new momentum as Biden tries to pass the rest of his economic agenda, something that will be difficult given the slim Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
“The president’s economic plan is working.”
“It is clear that it is working,” White House senior adviser Anita Dunn said in an interview with Politico on Friday morning.
“We feel that this gives us added momentum as we go into this next phase.”
end quotes
An c’mon everyone – how can you not celebrate that?
And if that is not enough, then how about the Washington Post article “As Biden prepares to host 1,000 for Independence Day, desire to declare victory collides with need for caution” by Annie Linskey and Dan Diamond on July 3, 2021, to wit:
In a televised address in March, President Biden offered a hopeful but tempered vision of where the country would be on the Fourth of July, saying there was a “a good chance” that “small groups will be able to get together” — and quickly adding, “That doesn’t mean large events with lots of people.”
But on Sunday, a sea of 1,000 largely maskless people will flow onto the South Lawn of the White House for an Independence Day party that marks the first large-scale event hosted by Biden as president, a barbecue that will serve as a marker of sorts for an America returning to normal.
end quotes
HOORAY!
America is returning to normal, people, and we have the brilliance of Joe Biden to thank for that, because truthfully, I doubt very seriously if there is anyone else on the face of the planet who could have returned America to normal, which is why I am saying to everyone in America, HAPPY JOE BIDEN DAY, which is the right thing to do in these happy circumstances we now find ourselves in today, but if we go back to that article, we find that in America today, there will always be doubters and naysayers, to wit:
That backdrop for Sunday’s celebration suggests the tensions that Biden’s administration will face in coming months.
The White House wants to take credit for ramping up vaccinations and overseeing a huge reduction in infections and deaths.
But if handled poorly, that message could suggest the pandemic is over — a notion that is inaccurate, politically risky and potentially deadly.
Some Biden allies warned that the country, and the president, must take care to avoid declaring victory too soon.
“I do think that we’re jumping the gun,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I think being cautious on that is really important, and focusing on what more we have to do is really important.”
Emanuel, who was on Biden’s transition team, added, “We’re not at victory.”
“We can’t say ‘Mission Accomplished’ yet.”
“We want to just forget everything and go back to pre-2019, and I think it’s going to be a mistake, and there are people who are going to pay with their lives for it.”
end quotes
My goodness, but that dude sounds like a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN who loves Trump and hates Joe Biden with that burst of negativity that serves to cast doubt on the absolute greatness of Joe Biden as president, and I’m not going to let that kind of talk spoil my celebration of Joe Biden today, which takes us back to the WaPo, as follows:
The anxiety, however, is not always reflected in the administration’s public tone.
“There’s a disconnect between the cautious message of the White House covid response team — that vaccinated people are safe but we need to still take precautions — and then a very public display of large crowds,” said Kavita Patel, a physician and nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution who served in the Obama administration.
Defeating the pandemic is central to Biden’s vision of his presidency, and any sign of delay or uneven success could be politically damaging.
Beyond tangibly improving Americans’ lives, Biden is seeking to prove that the federal government can still achieve great things.
White House officials say that’s exactly what’s has happened so far.
“Americans should feel great about what we have accomplished together as a nation over the last six months,” Anita Dunn, a top adviser to the president, said in an interview.
“This huge step back to normal is something that everybody should be able to celebrate in a united way.”
end quotes
And “everybody” means all of us, so there is no excuse for anybody in America today to not be celebrating Joe Biden for that huge step back to normal that only he was able to make happen, which again takes us back to the WaPo, as follows, for why we all should be celebrating this holiday as JOE BIDEN DAY, to wit:
Starting immediately after the Fourth of July weekend, the White House will get outside help amplifying Biden’s message.
Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC, will launch the first installment of a $2 million ad campaign including spots that tout Biden’s response to the pandemic.
“They’re delivering for us,” a narrator says.
“Hundreds of millions of vaccines so that we can finally be together again.”
The online campaign will be aimed at voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, said Guy Cecil, the group’s chairman, and will seek to reach first-time voters who backed Biden, as well as some who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 but turned to Trump in 2020.
Cecil lauded the Independence Day event at the White House, saying it was appropriate for the president to lead Americans in celebrating how far they had come.
“It’s fair to say the country has been through a lot over the last year and a half,” he said.
“Everyone needs a moment to take a breath and celebrate the progress that we’ve made.”
end quotes
And there we have it, people, because if it is in the Washington Post, it has to be the gospel truth, and that’s a fact!
HAPPY JOE BIDEN DAY, everyone!
And talk about the Fourth of July bringing out and highlighting the gross ignorance that exists in America today, and the incredible stupidity of certain PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT members of congress, let us go to a Newsweek article entitled “Progressive Lawmakers Call Fourth of July Freedom for Whites: Blacks ‘Still Aren’t Free'” by Christina Zhao on 4 July 2021, where we have as follows:
Black progressive lawmakers on Sunday questioned the inclusivity of the freedoms celebrated on Independence Day as the White House prepared for an evening of traditional festivities.
end quotes
Which raises the question of where do these people come up with all these different meanings for INDEPENDENCE DAY, such as these Black progressive lawmakers questioning the inclusivity of the freedoms celebrated on Independence Day?
What “freedoms?”
We do not celebrate “freedoms” on Independence Day, period!
Independence Day — known colloquially as the Fourth of July — marks the date in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress finally approved the US Declaration of Independence, marking the freedom of the thirteen American colonies from British colonial rule.
And that is it, period!
And since then, July 4, 1776 has been considered America’s “birthday,” making her 245 years old this year.
That’s what we “celebrate,” and that is all we “celebrate,” the birth date of a new nation.
And what about the Declaration of Independence?
It starts out thusly:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
end quotes
That is what the Declaration of Independence was intended to do, and that is what it did; it did not create freedoms and we do not celebrate “freedoms” on the 4th of July’ rather we celebrate freedom the the tyranny of a mad English King, to wit:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
end quotes
There is the Declaration of Independence boiled down to its essence.
So let’s go back to the Newsweek article where we have as follows from the perspective of some real ignorant PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS in Nancy Pelosi’s Democrat-controlled “People’s House,” which is actually is not, to wit:
As Biden’s White House readied fireworks and burgers for America’s annual celebration of nationhood, progressives expressed their views on what the Fourth of July means from the Black American perspective.
end quotes
Which again raises the question of how many different meanings can there possibly be to what the Fourth of July actually stands for, which is nothing more than the birthdate of this nation, as imperfect as it may have been at that time, keeping in mind that the day before the Declaration of Independence, the 13 colonies were exactly that – colonies of Great Britain ruled by British Royal Governors appointed by the King in England.
Getting back to Newsweek:
“When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people.”
end quotes
And what absolute stupid bull**** that is.
The 4th of July is about America’s bid to get free of the yoke of an TYRANT ENGLISH KING!
And freedom for white people?
What freedom?
What freedom do white people have as a result of the 4th of July that BLACK people do not also have, given we had a BLACK president, we now have a BLACK vice president and these ignorant DEMOCRAT members selling this HORSE**** are themselves BLACK?
Getting back to the ignorant Democrat horse**** being peddled by these ignorant PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS, we have:
“This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free,” tweeted Missouri Rep. Cori Bush.
end quotes
This land is stolen land?
Stolen from whom?
And Black people still aren’t free?
Then how the hell did she manage to become a member of congress if she is not free?
As to who this PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT moron is, Cori Anika Bush (born July 21, 1976) is an American politician, registered nurse, pastor, and activist serving as the U.S. Representative for Missouri’s 1st congressional district, which district includes all of the city of St. Louis and most of northern St. Louis County.
Not at all surprisingly, soon after being sworn in, Bush joined “The Squad”, a group of progressive Democratic lawmakers including the wingnut AOC, the up-jumped terrorist Ilhan Omar, and the foul-mouthed Rashida Tlaib.
Showing her fascist side to the candid world, on January 6, 2021, hours after pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Bush introduced a resolution to remove every Republican who supported attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election from the House of Representatives.
In announcing her support for the second impeachment of Donald Trump, Bush called the attack on the Capitol a “white supremacist insurrection” incited by the “white supremacist-in-chief.”
All of which serves to illustrate the fact that this woman has some very serious mental issues that one would think would preclude her from serving as a congressperson, but since an idiot or moron or completely insane person has the same rights and freedoms as anyone else, regardless of skin color, to run for congress, especially as a PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT, these are the kinds of morons we have ended up with in the “People’s House” under Nancy Pelosi, which takes us back to Newsweek as follows:
California Rep. Maxine Waters, the House Financial Services Committee chair, echoed Douglass’ sentiment on Sunday, tweeting, “July 4th… & so, the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal.”
“Equal to what?”
“What men?”
“Only white men?”
“Isn’t it something that they wrote this in 1776 when African Americans were enslaved?”
“They weren’t thinking about us then, but we’re thinking about us now!”
end quotes
Maxine Moore Waters (née Carr; August 15, 1938) is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for California’s 43rd congressional district since 1991.
The district, numbered as the 29th district from 1991 to 1993 and as the 35th district from 1993 to 2013, includes much of southern Los Angeles, as well as portions of Gardena, Inglewood and Torrance.
And yes, people – the Declaration of In dependence does indeed say all men are created equal, to wit:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
end quotes
And yes, the people who wrote those words were white.
Did the Black folks in Africa who were the enslavers of other Black people in Africa for a sale as slaves to the British also believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?
And that answer is not hardly!
That was a uniquely American sentiment not shared by the Black folks in Africa.
Consider the Akan people of Africa who waged war on neighboring states in their geographic area to capture people and sell them as slaves to Europeans (Portuguese) who subsequently sold the enslaved people along with guns to the Akan in exchange for Akan gold.
Akan gold was also used to purchase slaves from further up north via the Trans-Saharan route.
The Akan purchased slaves to help clear the dense forests within Ashanti.
About a third of the population of many Akan states were indentured servants (i.e. Non-Akan peoples).
The Akan went from buyers of slaves to selling slaves as the dynamics in the Gold Coast and the New World changed.
Thus, the Akan people played a role in supplying Europeans with indentured servants, who were later enslaved for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In 2006 Ghana apologized to the descendants of slaves for the role the Ashantis had played in the slave trade.
end quotes
Or how about the academic paper titled “Slavery and Post-Slavery in Madagascar: An Overview” by Denis Regnier and Dominique Somda, where we have as follows concerning “equality” in Africa, to wit:
Slaves have been traded in the maritime networks of the western Indian Ocean for at least 2000 years.
In Madagascar, the existence of slavery may date back to the first Southeast Asian settlements, which probably occurred between the 4th and 6th century.
Scholars seeking to reconstruct the early occupation of the island find it plausible that slaves were among the South-East Asian settlers, since ship crews from Indonesia were probably made of people with different social statuses and may have included slaves who were left behind in the semi-permanent settlements of this remote colony.
If not earlier, slaves probably made an important part of the population of Madagascar as early as in the 10th century.
By that date, two main commercial systems existed in the western Indian Ocean.
One was in the hands of Muslim merchants from the Persian Gulf, southern Arabia and the Swahili coast who traded along the shores of East Africa and in the northern Indian Ocean, and the other was in the hands of the Southeast Asians who sailed to the Comoros and Madagascar.
It is likely that slaves circulated in both systems, since during this period Muslim merchants sent East African slaves to southern Arabia and the Gulf, while the South-East Asians probably used slave labor in the iron industry of their settlements.
end quotes
So when PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT California Rep. Maxine Waters TWEETED on July 4th, “July 4th… & so, the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal,” obviously in Africa, they were not.
Consider the DW article “East Africa’s forgotten slave trade,” where we have as follows:
The island of Zanzibar is today considered one of East Africa’s best destinations: white sandy beaches, crystal clear waters and hotels offer tourists from all over the world a holiday to remember.
Long forgotten is the dark past that overshadowed this sunny paradise 200 years ago.
The archipelago, which today is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, was then regarded as the center of the East African slave trade.
In addition to valuable raw materials such as ivory and the coveted cloves, one thing stood out above all others in the colorful markets: hundreds of slaves.
From Eastern Europe to North Africa
The sale of African slaves can be traced back to antiquity.
It became popular in the seventh century when Islam was gaining strength in North Africa.
This was seven centuries before Europeans explored the continent and ten centuries before West Africans were sold across the Atlantic to America.
n central East Africa, ethnic groups such as the Yao, Makua and Marava were fighting against each other and entire peoples within the continent traded with people they had captured through wars.
“Thus Arab Muslims encountered already existing structures, which facilitated the purchase of slaves for their purposes.”
For Abdulazizi Lodhi, Emeritus Professor of Swahili and African Linguistics at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, slavery was part of different African cultures.
“When it came to exports, tribal Africans themselves were the main actors.”
“In many African societies there were no prisons, so people who were captured were sold.”
end quotes
Maxine would do well to inform herself that there would not have been slaves in America but for the Black folks like her in Africa making them slaves in the first place, and besides, the Fourth of July has absolutely nothing to do with slaves, period, except it is thanks to those words in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal that resulted in the end of slavery in this country, while in the homeland of the Black folks in Africa, slavery persisted well into the 1900’s, so Maxine, who are the Black folks equal to?
Going back to Newsweek, we have another burst of pure ignorance concerning Independence Day, to wit:
In a searing op-ed for the Grio, Touré, an author and former MSNBC host, criticized the Fourth of July, arguing that it “wasn’t Independence Day for Black people.”
He wrote that Juneteenth casts a “long shallow over Independence Day, making it look like a hypocrite and a damn fool.”
“Independence for who?” Touré asked.
“It wasn’t independence for Black people, for our ancestors, so why would we celebrate the Fourth of July?”
He also cited the Pulitzer Prize-winning essay for the “1619 project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones, which noted that colonies sought to emancipate from Britain partly to protect the institution of slavery.
“America wanted to protect its cash cow and, even more, it was wealth derived from slavery that allowed the colonies to afford to pay for the War of Independence,” Touré wrote.
“The founding of this country is intertwined with slavery.”
“Why would we celebrate that?”
end quotes
And how does on rationally deal with such stupidity and ignorance as that?
I would suggest some real American history as found in the political essay “Brutus III” by Brutus on November 15, 1787 on the subject of the 3/5’s compromise:”
“In a free state.” says the celebrated Montesquieu, “every man who is supposed to be a free agent, ought to be concerned in his own government.”
“Therefore the legislature should reside in the whole body of the people, or their representatives.”
But it has never been alledged that those who are not free agents, can, upon any rational principle, have any thing to do in government, either by themselves or others.
If they have no share in government. why is the number of members in the assembly, to be increased on their account?
Is it because in some of the states, a considerable part of the property of the inhabitants consists in a number of their fellow men, who are held in bondage, in defiance of every idea of benevolence, justice, and religion, and contrary to all the principles of liberty, which have been publickly avowed in the late glorious revolution?
If this be a just ground for representation, the horses in some of the states, and the oxen in others, ought to be represented — for a great share of property in some of them consists in these animals; and they have as much controul over their own actions, as these poor unhappy creatures, who are intended to be described in the above recited clause, by the words, “all other persons.”
By this mode of apportionment, the representatives of the different parts of the union, will be extremely unequal: in some of the southern states, the slaves are nearly equal in number to the free men; and for all these slaves, they will be entitled to a proportionate share in the legislature — this will give them an unreasonable weight in the government, which can derive no additional strength, protection, nor defence from the slaves, but the contrary.
Why then should they be represented?
What adds to the evil is, that these states are to be permitted to continue the inhuman traffic of importing slaves, until the year 1808 — and for every cargo of these unhappy people, which unfeeling. unprincipled, barbarous, and avaricious wretches, may tear from their country, friends and tender connections, and bring into those states, they are to be rewarded by having an increase of members in the general assembly.
end quotes
So much for no white person in America at the time of INDEPENDENCE not caring for the Black folks, but when one is dealing with moronic idiot PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS like Cori Bush and Maxine Waters, who have their minds made up and firmly closed so that no truth or facts can come in, that message will never be heard!
And staying with these ignorant, hate-filled and false July 4, 2021 TWEETS on TWITTER cited above here by Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and Maxine Moore Waters, the Democrat serving as the U.S. Representative for California’s 43rd congressional district, which poisonous and toxic TWEETS call into question TWITTER’s enforcement of its own rules, given their policy towards Trump, there was a time in America, long since gone now, when very likely, neither of these ignorant, hate-filled fools would have been seated in the House of Representatives of the United States of America.
In our history, both houses of the United States Congress have refused to seat new members based on Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution which states that:
“Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as each House may provide.”
That section of our Constitution used to be interpreted that members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate could refuse to recognize the election or appointment of a new representative or senator for any reason, often political heterodoxy or criminal record, where “political heterodoxy” is a deviation from accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs.
However, in 1969, in the famous Supreme Court case Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969), the United States Supreme Court held that the Qualifications of Members Clause of Article I of the US Constitution is an exclusive list of qualifications of members of the House of Representatives, which may exclude a duly-elected member for only those reasons enumerated in that clause, and in a sense, as we see from the above, where we have these two Democrat Representatives spewing the most incredible hate-filled racist nonsense, the world turned upside down here in the U.S.
For those unfamiliar with the case, or too young to remember it, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. November 29, 1908 – April 4, 1972), a DEMOCRAT, was an American Baptist pastor and politician who represented the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the United States House of Representatives from 1945 until 1971.
He was the first African-American to be elected to Congress from New York, as well as the first from any state in the Northeast.
Re-elected for nearly three decades, Powell became a powerful national politician of the Democratic Party, and served as a national spokesman on civil rights and social issues.
At the time in question, he was embroiled in scandal, specifically around allegations that he had refused to pay a judgment ordered by a New York court, misappropriated congressional travel funds, and paid his wife a congressional staff salary for work she had not done.
In the 1966 election, Powell was re-elected, and in January 1967, the 90th Congress convened and Speaker of the House John William McCormack asked Representative Powell to abstain from taking the oath of office.
The House adopted H.Res. 1, which stripped Powell of his House Committee chairmanship, excluded him from taking his seat, and created a select committee to investigate Powell’s misdeeds.
After the select committee conducted its investigation and hearings, in March 1967, the House adopted H.Res. 278 by a vote of 307 to 116, which excluded Powell from Congress and also censured him, fined him $25,000, took away his seniority, and declared his seat vacant.
Powell, along with 13 of his constituents, filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, naming McCormack and five other representatives as defendants.
He also named the Clerk of the House, the Sergeant at Arms, and the Doorkeeper.
Most of these parties were named in an effort to get injunctions barring the enforcement of H. Res. 278:
* To prevent the Speaker from refusing to administer the oath of office
* To prevent the Clerk from “refusing to perform the duties due a Representative”
* To prevent the Sergeant at Arms from withholding Powell’s salary
*To prevent the Doorkeeper from barring Powell from Congressional chambers
The suit claimed that excluding Powell amounted to an expulsion, but an expulsion would not have garnered the necessary two-thirds vote.
The district court dismissed the case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
However, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed the district court, and in an opinion by Warren E. Burger, soon to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the court held that the federal courts did have subject-matter jurisdiction, but dismissed the case on two grounds: that Powell lacked standing to sue, and that the case represented a non-justiciable political question.
Thereafter, while the suit was making its way through the court system, Powell was re-elected in the 1968 election and was ultimately re-seated in the 91st Congress.
The House adopted H.Res. 2, fining him $25,000.
Because he was seated when his appeal came to the Supreme Court, the defendants argued that the case was moot.
The majority opinion of the Supreme Court was authored by Chief Justice Warren, and signed by Black, Brennan, Douglas, Harlan, Marshall, and White, and the opinion stated that the case was justiciable, and it did not constitute a political question that pitted one branch of government against another.
To the contrary, all it required was “no more than an interpretation of the Constitution.”
The opinion stated also that Congress being the sole judge of its members’ qualifications (Art. I, § 5, cl. 1) and the Speech or Debate Clause (Art. I, § 6) do not preclude judicial review of Constitutional issues raised in the case (but not necessarily in all cases touching upon the subject of speech and debate or Congress’s judging the qualifications of its members) because “no branch is supreme,” and it is the duty of the court to ensure that all branches conform to the Constitution.
The majority opinion held that Congress does not have the power to develop qualifications other than those specified in Art. I, § 2, cl. 1-2.
Article I, section 5, of the U.S. Constitution states that “Each house shall be the judge of the… qualifications of its own members,” but then immediately states that each House has the authority to expel a member “with the Concurrence of two thirds.”
The Court found that it had a “textually demonstrable commitment” to interpret the clause, which, in this case, the Court did.
The Court’s interpretation was that the subject clause meant that the process that led to the expulsion of a member, duly sworn and enrolled upon the body’s rolls, was the only method for a House to give effect to its power to determine the qualifications of its members.
The Court reasoned that the authority of Congress in this matter was post facto: That is, it attached only after a member-elect had been elected under the laws of the state in which the congressional district was located, and after said member-elect took the oath of office.
It was unclear whether a vote of two thirds would have been reached if the House resolution had specified expulsion (Art. I, § 2, cl. 5; Art. I, § 5, cl. 2) rather than exclusion.
Thus, the Court found that Powell was wrongfully excluded from his seat.
The Court found that Congress is the whole body of initially candidate members who have been elected by the laws of the several states (in and for each state’s apportioned congressional districts), who assemble at the seat of the federal government on the 3rd day of January after the preceding November’s congressional elections.
On that date, they are sworn in by their individual oaths of office and thereby collectively become the Nth Congress (89th, 95th, 105th, …).
The Court did not reach, because it determined it did not need to in this case, the question of which Congress the Constitution was referring to that had the power to expel one of its members.
The Court determined in this case that no Congress could exclude a future member, a candidate member, from being sworn in and taking a seat in the House.
The Court found that if the Congress went beyond a determination that a candidate member had satisfied the Constitution’s qualifications for membership and had been duly chosen by and through the laws of their state, it could not, under the Constitution, go further in examining and possibly reject a candidate member before administering the oath of office and seating him.
The Court did not explicitly decide whether a particular Congress (105th, 106th, etc.) had the power to expel an individual from a future Congress without that future Congress from being required, after the re-election, the re-swearing in, and the re-seating of a formerly expelled member, to expel the member all over again.
The Court, in effect, decided that states were not prohibited from putting on their congressional district ballots and the voters were not prohibited from electing an individual who had been expelled from a previous or current Congress.
Once the Congress had satisfied itself that a candidate member had been presented to it, from a congressional district, in accordance with the congressional district’s state constitution and laws but was not in conflict with the congressional qualifications set down in the US Constitution, the US Congress had an affirmative constitutional duty to administer the oath to, to swear in, and to enroll the candidate member as a member of Congress.
The challenge to the Court in its analysis and decision was devising a proper course of action that was both coordinate and consonant between the sovereign authorities (the Congress over itself and its members, the people and the states over the Congress) each in their own sphere, over the choosing of members to the Congress.
The Court looked at the historical precedent of the House, the history of its candidate members, and the role of the states and their voters in choosing their representatives.
The Court concluded that the US Constitution (the word and will of the people), the weight of history (the record of how the people have used their constitution), and the federal structure of the government (the role of the states in organizing and managing elections within their borders) required the Court to decide that the sovereign will of the people, as expressed in the democratic process, and the coordinate role of their states must be made consonant and held supreme, in the responsibility to create candidate members for the Congress.
The people, by their Constitution, affirmatively posited, defined, and delimited all qualifications for standing in elections for membership in the Congress.
The states, under the 9th and 10th amendments explicitly retain unto themselves the power to make the laws for the government and regulation of elections for federal offices that are apportioned to them (the states) by the US Constitution.
Therefore, the people and the states together have the sole authority for the creation, production, and generation of candidate members of the US Congress through the operation of the laws of the several states and the articles and clauses of the US Constitution.
Thus, the Congress itself is become a creation of and subordinate to this process.
Congress’s processes and procedures for the management, administration, and discipline of members (once they have taken the oath, been sworn, and entered upon the rolls) are constitutionally subordinate to the sovereignty of the people and the states respectively over the creation of the membership of Congress.
So that today, as is obvious in the case of these ignorant, poisonous, toxic and decidedly racist TWEETS of Cori Bush and Maxine Moore Waters on the Fourth of July, if the people of a congressional district want an ignorant hater to represent them in the House of Representatives, so be it, their will be done.
In the case of Cori Bush, who self-describes herself on TWITTER as “Congresswoman, MO-01. Nurse, activist, organizer, single mom, & pastor. Leading with radical love, fighting for regular people,” and who continues to make ignorant, racist TWEETS on TWITTER, where she has 832.2K followers and acolytes, on a daily basis, such as one on 1 July 2021 that said “(I)t can’t be made any clearer: Black, brown, and Indigenous people are going to lose their ability to vote for the change that we need to literally save our lives if the Senate doesn’t abolish the filibuster and pass our agenda. We’re tired of waiting. Our lives are on the line.”, and another on 5 July 2021, that said “(I)t’s not a coincidence that the people who are saying Black people have full freedom in our country are the same ones trying to prevent teaching the truth about white supremacy in our classrooms,” to which Michael A @michael092218, self-described on TWITTER, a platform for idiots, mental midgets and those incapable of thinking, as “Progressive but pragmatic. Democrat, gay, theatre actor,” replied at 3:24 PM · Jul 5, 2021, “(T)ell it like it is, Congresswoman!,” and Joanna Fernandez @Joannafersulli, from Oakland, replied “TRUTH,” at 3:26 PM · Jul 5, 2021, which is how this ignorant bull**** gets disseminated on TWITTER, Missouri’s first congressional district that she supposedly represents, or is representative of in terms of her beliefs, is in the eastern portion of the state and includes all of St. Louis City and much of northern St. Louis County, including the cities of Maryland Heights, University City, Ferguson and Florissant, and the district is easily the most Democratic in Missouri, which is why they want a real good racist hater representing them in the House of Representatives, and it has a population in 2019 of 727,772.
Cori Bush won the election with 249,087 votes, in a district that is 49.3% Black, 40.9% White, 3.4% Hispanic, 3.1% Asian, 3.0% other, and 0.3% Native American, so that all of those people now have a representative in Congress, who from her toxic TWEETS on TWITTER, is a flaming racist with a serious hatred of America and the white people in America.
And people wonder why it is we are such a hate-filled, divided nation!
Go figure!
And here, in the face of these ignorant TWEETS on TWITTER by Missouri Rep. Democrat Cori Bush, who self-describes herself on TWITTER as “Congresswoman, MO-01. Nurse, activist, organizer, single mom, & pastor. Leading with radical love, fighting for regular people,” which claim is pure HORSE****, we find ourselves two hundred forty-five (245) years after the Declaration of Independence confronted as a nation and as a people with what is known in political science circles as democratic backsliding, also known as autocratization and de-democratization.
Democratic backsliding, as we are seeing in this nation right now, since the Democrats took control of our national government, is a gradual decline in the quality of democracy and the opposite of democratization, which may result in the state losing its democratic qualities, becoming an autocracy or authoritarian regime.
Democratic decline is caused by the state-led weakening of political institutions that sustain the democratic system, such as censoring the Marketplace of Ideas, and although these political elements are assumed to lead to the onset of backsliding, other essential components of democracy such as infringement of individual rights and the freedom of expression question the health, efficiency and sustainability of democratic systems over time.
According to Wikipedia, political scientist Nancy Bermeo argues that blatant forms of democratic backsliding, such as classic, open-ended coups d’état and election-day fraud, have declined since the end of the Cold War, while more subtle and “vexing” forms of backsliding have increased.
The latter forms of backsliding entail the debilitation of democratic institutions from within.
These subtle forms are especially effective when they are legitimized through the very institutions that people expect to protect democratic values, like the U.S. House of Representatives.
And a vivid example of democratic backsliding in this country is this TWEET on mindless TWITTER, an internet platform for the promotion and dissemination of pure ignorance and gross stupidity, by Democrat Cori Bush at 9:41 PM on July 6, 2021, to wit:
Cori Bush @CoriBush
We said it six months ago and we’ll say it again today:
Investigate and expel the Republican members of Congress who attempted to overturn the election and incited a white supremacist insurrection.
end quotes
Now, it is fake news that there was a white supremacist insurrection, and it is a false statement that was RETWEETED 4,833 times, which is how TWITTER is able to spread ignorance and stupidity and falsehoods so quickly, and it also had 205 QUOTE TWEETS and 26,900 LIKES, which is a good indication of how many truly stupid and ignorant and misled people in America there are to believe that horse**** about a white supremacist insurrection, an example of which would be Jerod Rose: Black Lives Matter @JerodEwert on July 6, 2021, as follows:
Replying to @CoriBush
You shouldnt even need to say this.
They should have been evicted on the 6th.
end quotes
Which raises the existential question of where on earth have these people gone to school that makes them so ignorant, starting with Cori Bush, who as a member of congress, should know hand’s down that the United States Constitution she swore and oath to, in Article I, Section 5, Clause 2, provides that “Each House [of Congress] may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”
So why is she ignorant of something she swore and oath to uphold?
As to the process leading to expulsion, at this time, the disciplinary process begins when a resolution to expel or censure a Member is referred to the appropriate committee, which in the House is the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (House Ethics Committee).
The committee may then ask other Representatives to come forward with complaints about the Member under consideration or may initiate an investigation into the Member’s actions, and sometimes Members may refer a resolution calling for an investigation into a particular Member or matter that may lead to the recommendation of expulsion or censure.
Rule XI (Procedures of committees and unfinished business) of the Rules of the House of Representatives states that the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct can investigate allegations that a Member violated “any law, rule, regulation, or other standard of conduct applicable to the conduct of such Member … in the performance of his duties or the discharge of his responsibilities.”
The committee may then report back to their whole chamber as to its findings and recommendations for further actions.
When an investigation is launched, an investigatory subcommittee will be formed and once the investigatory subcommittee has collected evidence, talked to witnesses, and held an adjudicatory hearing, it will vote on whether the Member is found to have committed the specific actions and then will vote on recommendations.
If expulsion is the recommendation then the subcommittee’s report will be referred to the full House of Representatives where Members may vote to accept, reject, or alter the report’s recommendation.
Voting to expel requires the concurrence of two-thirds of the members.
This is set out in Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution.
And for the record, in the entire history of the United States Congress, 20 Members have been expelled: 15 from the Senate and five from the House of Representatives, and of those, 17 of these 20 were expelled for supporting the Confederate rebellion in 1861 and 1862.
So how come Cori Bush is so ignorant of this process, and how come TWITTER is allowing her to use its platform to spread this ignorance, when they permanently banned Trump for doing the same thing?
Sauce for the goose, and sauce for the gander?
Looks it to me, anyway.
And while we are on the subject of finding ourselves two hundred forty-five (245) years after the Declaration of Independence being confronted as a nation and as a people with what is known in political science circles as democratic backsliding, also known as autocratization and de-democratization, which is a gradual decline in the quality of democracy which results in the state losing its democratic qualities, becoming an autocracy or authoritarian regime, as we are seeing today with the Democrats in charge of our national government, let us go back in time a bit to a BBC article entitled “Twitter ‘permanently suspends’ Trump’s account” on 9 January 2021, where we have as follows concerning the apparent double standard TWITTER has with respect to racist hate speech by this Democrat Cori Bush, to wit:
US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account is “permanently suspended… due to the risk of further incitement of violence”, the company says.
end quotes
If Trump was inciting violence on TWITTER, an internet platform for people who are stupid, then what, pray tell, is Cori Bush doing with this TWEET which had 2,974 Retweets, 115 Quote Tweets and 16,200 Likes, and was responded to by Foul-Mouthed Persister @G00dVibez0nly13, who TWEETED “Right! We don’t negotiate with terrorists” at 8:22 PM on June 7, 2021, to wit:
Cori Bush @CoriBush
In case you forgot, Republican members of Congress incited an insurrection, refused to convict the former president, and are working around the clock to cover up their actions.
I’m not interested in compromise with members that have no interest in governing.
8:21 PM · Jun 7, 2021
end quotes
At the minimum, if that is not a prime example of reckless hate speech, it certainly is an example of Cori Bush using TWITTER as her personal platform to spread malicious falsehoods, since there is no evidence of an insurrection incited by Republican members of Congress, and yet TWITTER in her case seems to have no problem whatsoever with her using their platform for that purpose, which takes us back to BBC and the banning of Trump