This week, I gave a “talk” to a group interested in “resisting” our current political leadership. They wanted to hear how America dealt with division in the past. Here’s what I said.
Divided
We seem so deeply divided – not just by ideology – but by the definition of truth.
I have a friend that I’ve known for almost half a century. We were competing Coaches at opposing high schools, trying to have better teams. But we are also friends, and worked together to make the sport better for everyone. I recently saw him, and while we can still tell all of our old “war stories”, there is now a barrier between us.
The barrier is as obvious as News Nation versus MSNBC. He worried that police cars were burned in Los Angeles, and said we should “send in the Marines!!”. Of course, there weren’t police cars burned, it was 5 driverless taxis. But that’s the divide between us is in what is the “truth”. We don’t share common “facts”, and because of that, what’s happening in our nation is a subject we can no longer discuss. To try to talk about it threatens our friendship.
Remember Vietnam? Some of us protested against that war (of course, we were very, very young!!). But all Americans could still agree on the facts. The “mainstream news” delivered us daily footage – body counts – that countered the false narrative of the government that said we were “winning” the war. We argued with each other, often parent and child, about why were there. While we didn’t agree on that “why”, we could at least agree on “what” was happening.
Civil War Fact
There are a couple of other times when America had the kind of “factual” crisis we are in today. The first was before the American Civil War. And, before we go forward – what happened then has NOW become a subject of controversy again, another FACTUAL Crisis.
So here’s MY basis of fact:
- The Civil War happened because of slavery
- Take slavery out of the equation – and there is no Civil War
- The romantic “Lost Cause” narrative now making a “comeback” in our classrooms is a myth. (See William Faulkner’s Pickett’s Charge Quote).
The Southern States were not looking for some kind of mythical independence from an overwhelming Federal government, today’s “State’s Rights” argument. They simply wanted to maintain the right to enslave other humans. And, that doesn’t mean the average farmer from Pataskala was fighting to free slaves. They were fighting for the Union. But the “revisionist” history that slavery wasn’t “THE ISSUE”, is just another argument against the “truth”. It’s Fake News.
Two Truths
But before the Civil War, there were TWO truths – an anti-slavery truth, and a pro-slavery truth.
These “truths” were laid out in the literature and the newspapers of the time. The Anti-Slavery Truth might best be represented by Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It’s a fictional book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe (of Cincinnati). She laid out the worst of slavery: the beatings, the rapes, the family separations, the exile to the Deep South (sold down the river), the humanity of the enslaved versus the inhumanity of the “Peculiar Institution”.
Pro-Slavery Truth is also represented by a contemporary fiction novel: The Planter’s Northern Bride. It was story of an anti-slavery northern woman who marries into a Southern slave owning family. The book showed her discovery that the enslaved “needed white” guidance and help, and were happy to be enslaved. White Southerners were portrayed as victims, in fear of slave insurrections that were exacerbated by abolitionists. The same was true of newspapers and other publications.
The Law For Enslavement
And – THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WAS ON THE PRO-SLAVERY SIDE.
It was against the law to help runaway slaves, a Federal Offense punishable by fines and imprisonment: “Don’t cross the line!!!!” (Doesn’t that sound like Tom Homan??)
In the South there were “slave patrols” to prevent insurrections and catch runaways. They covered the neighborhoods and countryside of the south nightly and are the precursor to American police today (NAACP). And they sometimes crossed the Ohio River or Mason-Dixon Line in hot pursuit to continue their quests to “catch slaves” in the “free states”.
The House of Representatives was so divided that they literally banned the discussion of slavery, imposing the “gag rule” for eight years (Former President, then Congressman John Quincy Adams finally broke the “rule”). And the expansion of the US was driven by slavery/anti-slavery. The Missouri Compromise required a free state for a slave state so that the “balance” in the Senate remained constant. There was Maine for Missouri, Michigan for Arkansas, Iowa for Florida.
Rebellion
Leading up to the Civil War, some Americans, Black and White, stood up to the abomination of enslavement. Black’s openly rebelled, much more than is commonly acknowledged. Some, like the Nat Turner Rebellion in Virginia and the German Coast Rebellion in Louisiana are better known. But there were between 250 to 311 rebellions from the beginning of enslavement in 1620 to 1860, roughly one a year. Slaves did not “go quietly”. But news of rebellions were suppressed at the time, and after the Civil War and even now. It’s a part of the “two-truths”, buried by the Lost Cause myth.
(In the same way, we don’t talk about the attacks and massacres by whites on black communities in the 1900’s. Wilmington NC; East St. Louis, Illinois; Chicago; Tulsa; Rosewood, Florida; are just a few. But those too are “buried” in history, not taught to America’s children).
Citizen Rights
Both Blacks and Whites helped enslaved people get to freedom, either in the North, or beyond US borders in Canada. Some openly violated Federal law (the Fugitive Slave Act) to help along the Underground Railroad, a series of safe houses connected by dark country roads, including one that led right through here; Pataskala, Ohio. From the Ohio River to Cleveland or Niagara or Detroit and onto Canada, they helped get enslaved blacks away from their owners. Some stayed in “Black Communities” here in Ohio – towns like Xenia, Wilberforce, and Poke Patch in the Hocking Hills.
Some abolitionists took other direct action: some wrote books, pamphlets, and newspapers, some ran for office. They became a political force. Abolitionists in the Whig Party (the Party of Presidents Harrison, Tyler, Taylor and Fillmore) forced the demise of their own party, and the advent of the new Republican Party of William Seward and Abraham Lincoln.
Straight Lines
And some of the women of the abolitionist movement became the founders of the women’s suffrage movement. They continued their efforts after the Civil War, writing and protesting for the right to be equal citizens. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and the Women’s Declaration of Rights in 1876 formalized their demands. They continued to press for reform, until the 19th Amendment was added to the Constitution and women had the right to vote in 1920. They are the direct antecedents of the women’s right movement today – a straight line from Seneca Falls to “Me Too”.
Of Course the Civil Rights movement obviously had its birth in abolitionism. The Rights Amendments: the Thirteenth banning Slavery, the Fourteenth guaranteed due process and citizenship, and the Fifteenth guaranteed black men voting rights; were great advances of the post-Civil War era. But the Nation, and the Supreme Court, soon refused to allow those amendments to be enabled into law. So while slavery was banned, the almost Feudal share-cropping was allowed. While citizenship was guaranteed, equal citizenship rights were curtailed for Blacks. And while voting rights were established, it took almost 100 years to enable them into law (1965 Voting Rights Act).
The Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century may be the “model” for Resistance today. There were community groups, often organized around churches, that cooperated throughout the country to keep pressing for equal rights. There were lots of defeats, but also small victories, that kept the movement going from the 1870’s to today. There’s a straight line there too, from Frederick Douglass to the NAACP and Civil Rights groups of the present.
Critical Incident
So if the “Abrego Garcia kidnapping” is the critical incident of our time; the critical incident of the pre-Civil War era took place in 1859.
John Brown was born in Connecticut, but grew up in Hudson, Ohio, just north of Akron. His father was a tanner (made skins into leather) and employed a man named Jesse Grant – who later became Ulysses Grant’s father. Brown became what in today language we would call “radicalized” during the Bleeding Kansas era. Folks there fought a mini-civil war over whether the Kansas territory would be free or slave. After Kansas, Brown moved to a small farm in Southern Pennsylvania – just a few miles up the road north from the US Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
At the farm he plotted with a couple of dozen men, some black, some white and including Brown’s sons, to attack the Arsenal. Their goal: get weapons to arm slaves and begin a slave rebellion in Virginia that would spread throughout the South.
Insurrection
John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry was an insurrection. It incited riot to free the enslaved, by attacking US Government property. The US military was called out led by a senior officer, Colonel Robert E. Lee, along with his Lieutenant, JEB Stuart, to put down the revolt. Ten of Brown’s men were killed, including two of his sons.
To Abolitionists, Brown became a “hero”. He put into action the ideas they wrote and spoke about. But to the South, Brown was a meddling Northerner inciting slave rebellion. He was exactly what they feared.
A Federal Court found him guilty of murder and quickly executed him. Brown’s final words:
Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments. — I submit; so let it be done! . . .
When the northern states elected Lincoln a year later – the South had nowhere else to go and seceded from the Union. The crisis was resolved, with the blood of millions.
The Great Depression
We all know that the Great Depression began with the Stock Market Crash on Black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929. From that day through the next few weeks, the Stock Market lost over half its value – the equivalence of losing 20,000 points on the Dow Jones today.
We also know that the banks were heavily invested in the market. So when those investments went bad, folks lost their savings. There were “runs on the bank”, just like in Jimmy Stewart’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Banks didn’t have the money on hand and closed, and folks life-savings simply disappeared. They didn’t have money to buy products, sales fell, and so more folks were laid off. The cycle went on and on. Ultimately – unemployment was close to 25% – 1 out of 4 out of work.
Since the “supply of money” shrunk, the value of money, what money could purchase, went up. But access to money went down. It didn’t matter if a movie cost a nickel if you didn’t have a nickel to pay. American wages fell 75%.
My grandparents, just bought their first home in 1924 for $8000. They had to sell it in 1932 for much less. Grandpa managed to keep his job at the Cincinnati Post for a quarter of his salary, but the remainder of the loan on the house was still due, even though they sold it. They moved to a rental house with their two kids and several cousins. Grandma went to work as a real estate agent. And they were “better off” than many.
Polarization
Americans grew concerned that our “Capitalist Democracy” wasn’t working. In the 1920’s there was already signs of polarization: there was a Communist scare right after World War I and on into the early 1920’s. The “great” rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan happened at the same time. 20,000 Klan members marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1925 and 1926, hoods up. They wanted everyone to know who they were.
It wasn’t a coincidence. We were conflicted. America was now a nation where women had the newly won national right to vote, but was also cracking down on immigration, the largest in US history (maybe until today). We were no longer “Lifting our lamp beside the Golden Door”. And finally, we now were a nation where alcohol was prohibited, yet a majority of the nation continued to use it. That conflict, “common behavior” now illegal, was concerning. My “daily beer” was your “breaking the law”.
The fractures were already there – then the Great Depression happened. For some, democracy wasn’t working, and the “siren song” of Fascism played from across the Atlantic. First, Mussolini made the “trains run on time” on Italy. Then Hitler delivered an economic “rebirth” under Nazism in Germany (at what cost?).
Fascism in America
Many Americans listened. Some of the most prominent were men like Charles Lindbergh (flew solo across the Atlantic) and Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company), who was a rabid anti-Semite. They were interested in a strong leader, who could control the nation regardless of Constitutional rights. And they had a strong voice, Father Coughlin, who advocated for authoritarian rule on his nationwide radio show broadcasting over the “clear channel” of WJR in Detroit. He was even “better” than Sean Hannity, or Joe Rogan.
The American Nazis, tens of thousands of Americans, were in the German/American Bund that openly favored Hitler. The famous 1939 Rally in Madison Square Gardens had a portrait of George Washington centered between two Nazi swastika flags, and Americans marching with Nazi Armbands. Anti-Semitism was a key part of all of their messages. (The Police held even more anti-Nazis back from the Hall – Remember Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally in 2024, and Elon Musk’s Heil-Hitler salute soon after?)
Franklin Roosevelt was called a socialist and communist, and a Jew and England lover. While he saw the coming struggle, he could do little to involve the US. He started the draft in 1940, and helped arm Great Britain with the Lend-Lease program, but ultimately there was no appetite in US for another World War. It all could have gone differently, except for – December 7th, 1941.
Turning Point
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and declared war on the US, the US declared war on Japan. Then Germany declared war on the US and the US reciprocated. The important point: war wasn’t declared on Germany until they first declared on us. Roosevelt had to have a clear case against Germany – and the German declaration gave it to him.
The American people, in “their righteous might” as FDR said, would respond. The issue was resolved with the “blood of millions”.
The Fascist movements in the United States disappeared – literally in days. Charles Lindbergh, “Lucky Lindy” was denied a rank in the US Armed Forces. Ford changed his “tune”, and started building tanks and bombers.
But the underlying anti-Semitism remained as did the racism of the KKK and the scare tactics of the right. It would return in McCarthyism in the 1950’s, the John Birch Society of the early 1960’s, the success of George Wallace third-party Presidential candidacy in 1968, and the “New Republican” Southern Strategy on the 1970’s and 80’s.
And here it is now – Project 2025. There is a “straight line” from the Fascism of the 1930’s to Project 2025 today.
Resistance
We have been here before. It took cataclysmic events: the Civil War and World War II, to reunite the Nation, and for some the divides were never resolved. And the problems, some as old as the Constitution itself, still exist today. But throughout our history there has also been “Resistance” to the inequities of racism, fascism, and anti-Semitism. Often it was “underground”, as quiet as a wagon slowly going up Main Street in Pataskala, right outside our doors here, transporting enslaved peoples to freedom in the dark of the night.
And sometimes it’s “loud and proud”, like those standing in Los Angeles today protesting the clear racism of the Trump Administration’s ICE use of police powers, just like the “Slave Patrols” of the 1850’s.
We are the Abolitionists. We are the Suffragettes. And we are the Civil Rights activists. We already have the legal action going on in Court after Court. We have the Democratic Party, the ACLU, Mark Elias and Democracy Docket all representing us. But – we cannot depend on the Supreme Court today. We can only hope that they see the Constitution as the Founder Fathers did, not as their financial benefactors want.
We can still hope that elections make a difference. And we can do all the “legal” things to make our voices heard in the election. But how far has our Nation gone toward authoritarianism?
We live in Ohio, we KNOW that our legislature can and will rig the process against us. Look at the Gerrymandering amendments to the Ohio Constitution. We’ve passed them twice, and they have been ignored.
Right Now
What we can do is:
- Organize
- Protest
- Vote
- Make Our Voices Heard in every way
- Not Allow the Forces arrayed against us to take over the narrative.
We may not be “in agreement” with some of our neighbors – we do live in Pataskala. But, I believe, that there are many who are silent; looking for someone to stand for them, even though they are afraid to join in. Intimidation, from Steven Miller and Tom Homan to the Trump flag on the back of the pickup truck down the street, is strong in our world. You and I, like the Abolitionists and the Suffragettes and the Civil Rights activists, can show them the way.
That’s where we start, right here, right now.
