Hanging Together

From the Beginning

The United States has always been a nation-divided.  Even at the Second Continental Congress, the differences between New England, the Atlantic colonies and the South were apparent.  They lived different kinds of lives, with different cultures.  It was a struggle to find any kind of unity, even in the face of British troops threatening on many fronts. 

The decision to declare independence was rife with division.  Eight of the fifty delegates never signed the document.  Three states originally held back; Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted no, and New York abstained from voting.  It wasn’t until the final day of debate, that Pennsylvania and South Carolina joined in.  New York didn’t actually commit until August, more than a month after the “Fourth of July”. 

And tradition has it that, as the delegates left the formal signing at the Pennsylvania State House, the senior statesman Benjamin Franklin said:  “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

Common Cause

The United States has often been a nation of division as much as unity.  There has always been economic divides, between the “haves” and the “have nots”.  What did Thomas Jefferson of Virginia and John Hancock of Massachusetts have in common?  They both were wealthy men, and the wealth of both was impacted by British regulations and restrictions.  They found common cause not just in the intellectual foundation of their new nation, 

“…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.  That to secure these rights,  governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

They also agreed on the “complaints”.

• “For cutting off our  trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
•  He (King George III) has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns  And destroyed the lives of our people.”

Great Britain was cutting into their wealth, as well as their liberty.

Citizenship

But the ultimate time of division in American history was the Civil War, when a section of the nation determined that they could no longer remain united as states.  It was a battle for power, based in the determination by the minority South that the foundation of their economy, enslavement, would ultimately be outlawed by the majority North.  

But something to remember.  Not every Southern was in favor of secession, and not every Northerner was in favor of waging war to save the Union.  There were abolitionists in the South, there were Copperheads in the North.  And, not unlike our current climate, there were many who simply wanted to live their own lives in peace, but were forced to take sides.

In eighth grade American History we taught that before the Civil War, we were citizens of Ohio, or Virginia, or Texas; not so much the United States.  In my day (back in the late 1960’s) we were taught of the “agony” of Robert E. Lee, forced to choose between the Nation he swore an oath to serve for thirty-two years, or his native Virginia.  Back then, they taught he made a principled choice based on the ethics of his time.  Today, we would look more closely at the enslaved people that he either personally owned or managed for his father-in-law’s estate.

Eighth grade history taught us that the term, “American”, was a result of the Civil War.  That from then forward, “we” were a nation united, the “savior” of “the world” in World Wars One and Two.  

National Media

And I remember teaching specifically, how national media served to “nationalize” our citizens.  It was the “bad” media – “yellow journalism” that convinced our leaders and citizens to go to war against Spain in the 1890’s. Or it was the “good” media of nationwide radio.  Everyone shared in the adventures of “The Shadow” (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.  The Shadow knows!!!).  And Americans also heard the voice of their President, Franklin Roosevelt, in Fireside Chats that reassured them that the government and the Nation cared about their privations in the Great Depression.

We shared as a nation the two World Wars, and the economic highs and lows that came before and after. Unity is shared experience, and as a Nation the United States shared all of those calamities and triumphs together.  Newspapers, telegraphs and telephones, radio and ultimately television served the purpose of nationalizing a culture.  Think about this – why do all the “national” news anchors have the same accent, in a nation with so many variations on speech?  It is because we have our “regional” accent for local use, and a “national” accent as well.

But now we have found that the media that served to help make us a nation, is acting to divide us.  We hear our “news” in the same “accents”, but they tell us wildly different stories.  And while we can (as I’m doing now) sit in the sun in our own backyards and access seemingly all of the information of the world on our phones and computers, we pick and choose sources that match our preconceived beliefs.  Our “news” now is slanted to our differences. Rather than serving to unify, it serves to divide.

Lone Wolf

How big a deal is it?  Yesterday a man, polarized and divided, went out and tried to kill FBI agents in order to fulfill the “destiny” he learned through his media.  He succeeded only in killing himself, but who knows what will happen next.  David Hogg, one of the survivors of  the Parkland school shooting and a founder of March for Our Lives, tweeted: “When (the $%#@) will we stop acting like all these “lone wolves” are lone wolves?”  

They are being “sent” through their media, and they could be packed into more than just “lone wolves” as easily.

Yesterday’s  ”lone wolf” was shot in a cornfield near Wilmington, Ohio.  It was just down the road from the “73 Grill”, a restaurant and bar I’ve eaten in a couple times.  I have family living not far away from that cornfield, and that restaurant.  

Choosing Lines

Someone asked me “which side” of the line I’m on.  I had to think about what that meant.  The Mason-Dixon line was a fairly clear demarcation for the Civil War, but the “lines” for our current divide are less certain.  It is more urban and rural, coastal versus central.  Yet the “lone wolf” shooter of yesterday lives nearby here, in Columbus.   I thought Columbus would be on the “other side” of the line, I guess, the urban, “Blue” side.  But he lived there, and I live here, in “Red” suburban Ohio,  with the MAGA flags down the street.  Where are the lines for our possible Civil War??

Like the Abolitionists in the Confederacy, and the Copperheads in the Union; the lines of our demarcation are blurred.  We are divided by news source, more than anything else.  And Franklin’s statement is a correct today as it was on July 2^nd in 1776:

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

America, to survive our current disunion, must find a way to hang together once again.