DEEP HISTORY

DAUNTING AND DEEP HISTORY History is best studied in small doses, being very strong medicine. Yet, if history is studied, restudied, continuously, for decades, no one can ever know it all, for the period of the study soon flows into history as well , yielding additional study. It can be most humbling, indeed, humiliating, to discover that there are crevices, folds, of history that were not studied in areas that one had already thought that had been well studied. History's multiples and magnitudes are daunting and deep. Once loosed the genie of history stalks its prey relentlessly down, demanding no surrender to myth, to lies, miseducation, irreligious doctrine, preaching or forgiving . Such was the case with thousands free African American settlers and some abolitionists supporters, who continued to adhere to the stirring words of and in the "Declaration of Independence" under whose aegis many of their of our forefathers had fought, died, despite their having later been burned out, shot down, vilified in the church and press for continued belief in its premises! Pamphleteer Thomas Paine, whose "Common Sense" series of news, anonymous aphorisms and analysis unquestionably lifted the spirits of the Continental Army, according to George Washington, would clearly be the American journalistic ideal, icon, but for the fact that he was an abolitionist. Paine's abolitionism is plainly evident in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Paine wrote; but that Thomas Jefferson edited out, as a Virginia slaveholder, as part of the 5-delegate Continental Congress' special editing committee. Future President Thomas Jefferson was a delegate to the convention, unlike "Founding Father", Thomas Paine, an eloquent, itinerant Englishman, who was brought over here by Benjamin Franklin to aid the cause. The misattribution of our nation's epic founding document to the slaveholding Thomas Jefferson, rather than to abolitionist, Thomas Paine, is another purposefully misleading historical distortion inserted in our American historical narrative to throw off, to deceive the unwary, and the supercilious. Despite my having long read history with a healthy skepticism, from different perspectives, I was upended by Anna Lisa Cox's THE BONE AND SINEW OF THE LAND: AMERICA 'S FORGOTTEN BLACK PIONEERS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY (2018). In her masterful work, she points out the heresy, hypocrisy, that leading American journalists, politicians, preachers, churches, businesses, persons, played in "riling up the ilk" (poor whites) to kill, loot, burn out the successfully achieving colored people , who had not only: 1. disproven the inferiority of Africans' thesis, used to justify slavery; 2. defeated the dependency fable about slavery's "benefits" for the slave; and free African Americans ' success 3. had proved by example that indeed all men are by God "created equal" as stated in the Declaration of Independence which the traducers of black people, American doctrinal traitors, and counterrevolutionaries, most wanted to disprove by violence! Violence was used in 1830-1840s in the North, and Northwestern Territory against free African Americans' and white abolitionists' persons and property who clung tenaciously to founding principles! White mobs struck in Cincinnati (1829, 1836, 1841), Pennsylvania (1834, 1838), Illinois (1837), New York City (1834), New Haven, Connecticut (1834, 1836) , Boston (1835), Utica (1835), Washington, DC (1835), Providence , RI (1831), Detroit (1833). They struck the free, successful, thriving blacks. "And no matter what their numbers, African Americans in the North were blamed for every imaginable ill; economic hard times; taking jobs from deserving immigrants with lighter skin; brothels, robberies , murder, rape. Whether the stories were true or not, these prejudiced papers were blaming free African Americans for almost every single problem in American society. "So African Americans, especially the many who had elevated themselves, who were successful, educated, and outspoken, tried to be perfect . But even perfection was no protection . Some abolitionist and human rights leaders, both black and white , pointed out that many prejudiced whites openly hated black success . And when whites rose in violence, their targets were invariably the most noble , powerful, admirable and sacred products of the African American community: its schools, shelters for the poor, meeting houses, printing presses, and churches. " P. 125 Heretofore, I had associated the 1830s-1840s with the Rev. Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, and the outlawing of black preachers and black literacy in the South and Border States . Little did I know of the number of white mobs rioting in the North, in addition to state legislatures outlawing black voting and literacy, that earlier existed. These hidden facts have deepened my love and appreciation for our strong forbears, who forded these treacherous shoals to get us here, with a reasonable portion of grace and mercy, sense and sensibility , patriotism, knowledge, and power!