Growing Freedom in Adirondack Wilderness

 

Horace King (1807-1885) was the most respected bridge-builder in Alabama, Georgia, and northeastern Mississippi during the mid-nineteenth century. Enslaved until 1846,

Horace King Horace King Horace King (1807-1885) was the most respected bridge-builder in Alabama, Georgia, and northeastern Mississippi during the mid-nineteenth century. Enslaved until 1846, King and his owner, John Godwin, worked as partners on major construction projects. By 1860, he was one of the wealthiest free blacks in Alabama. Both in slavery and a free black, King traveled without any restrictions throughout the Deep South. After reluctantly working for the Confederacy, he served as an Alabama legislator during Reconstruction. His role as an engineer and contractor, during a period when few professional opportunities existed for African Americans, earned him a legendary status that was enhanced over time by towns eager to claim, sometimes erroneously, their own Horace King covered bridge, warehouse, mill, courthouse, church, elaborate Gothic house, or staircase. After his death, local historians and journalists frequently cited Horace King as an example of a successful African American. Although he certainly was an exceptional bridge architect and builder of massive heavy-timber frame structures, his career as an entrepreneur was limited by the racial biases of his time. Eufaula Bridge Born in 1807 into slavery in the Chesterfield District of South Carolina, Horace King was of mixed African, European, and Catawba ancestry. He was purchased by John Godwin, a contractor in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1830 and may have been related to the family of Godwin's wife, Ann Wright (1808-1854) of Marlboro, South Carolina. In 1832, the Godwins, along with Horace, his mother, brother, and sister, relocated to Girard (present-day Phenix City), Alabama, across the river from Columbus, Georgia, and the town hired Godwin to construct the first bridge across the lower Chattahoochee River. By 1837, John Godwin had transferred the ownership of the King family to his wife Ann Godwin and her uncle and financial guardian, William Carney Wright of Montgomery. This was perhaps done to prevent King from being seized by John Godwin's creditors. In 1839, King married Frances Gould Thomas, a free Black woman who was also of mixed ancestry. Her legal status guaranteed freedom for their children. The unusual sanction of such a marriage by Ann Godwin and William Wright underscores the social latitude afforded the enslaved King because of his exceptional talents. Building a covered bridge required many skills, including erecting tall rock or timber piers and constructing lattice framework (trusses) of sawn lumber for the sides connected to massive hand-hewn support timbers. Builders also needed to join all the elements with treenails (large wooden pegs) and ensure that the bridge truss formed a slight arc, known as camber. Godwin probably taught King these skills, but the pupil quickly became more skilled than the teacher. Between 1838 and 1840, King supervised construction of Godwin's massive toll bridges across the Chattahoochee River at West Point, Eufaula, and Florence (present-day Florence Marina), Georgia. Financed by private investors, each span cost close to $22,000—an indication of the economic potential of toll bridges. Robert Jemison Jr. During the early 1840s, King designed and constructed bridges in Alabama and Mississippi while Godwin remained in Girard. Tuscaloosa resident Seth King (no relation to Horace), rather than Horace King, built the initial bridge in 1834 across the Black Warrior River in that town. Seth King, along with Robert Jemison Jr., a state legislator and Tuscaloosa entrepreneur, invested in Horace's bridges at Columbus, Mississippi, in 1843 and Wetumpka, Alabama, in 1844. Godwin negotiated Horace's fee with these investors, but Horace designed the bridges and supervised their construction. Historians believe that Godwin and Horace King probably shared the revenue. The investors made money by collecting tolls on these bridges. Jemison and Horace King continued to collaborate and developed a close working relationship. In early 1845, while working for William Carney Wright, King bridged the Tallapoosa River at Tallassee. Later that year King oversaw construction of three small bridges for Jemison near Steens, Mississippi, where Jemison owned saw and grist mills. In February 1846, Jemison guided an emancipation bill for King through the Alabama legislature, and the Godwins and Wright freed him. King later asserted that he bought his freedom, possibly with income from his projects with Wright and Jemison. Whatever the factors of King's emancipation, he and Godwin experienced a unique relationship. After Godwin's death in 1859, King erected a monument over Godwin's grave. During the early 1850s, the state of Alabama hired King to perform carpentry work, including elegant circular staircases, on the new capitol building in Montgomery. In the mid-1850s King built Moore's Bridge, over the Chattahoochee River on the road between Newnan and Carrollton, Georgia. In 1857, Milledgeville residents hired King to bridge the Oconee River at Milledgeville, Georgia's capital at the time. King's crews just had begun cutting timbers when a conflict arose between King and the investors. At the same time, Nelson Tift, an entrepreneur, newspaper owner, and legislator, contracted with King for a span across the Flint River at Albany, a town founded by Tift in the 1830s. According to local historians King quit the Milledgeville venture, loaded his timbers on a railroad car, and shipped them to Albany. Dillingham Street Covered Bridge By 1858, King and his family had moved to Moore's Bridge. During the next few years, King's activities contradict the idea of free blacks being restricted in terms of their mobility. He constructed bridges and large timber-frame buildings in Alabama and Georgia and often rode the train between his two houses at Moore's Bridge and Girard. King's wife Frances and their children collected tolls and farmed at Moore's Bridge until July 1864, when Union cavalry under Gen. George Stoneman Jr. burned the span. Frances died in Girard about three months later, and in June 1865 King married Sarah Jane Jones McManus. During the Civil War, King attempted to continue building bridges as an independent contractor, but necessity forced him into war-related work. After the war, King maintained that he had always been a Unionist, and that he always "begged and talked for the Union." Even so, Confederate officials in Columbus forced the pro-Union King to blockade the lower Apalachicola River to prevent Union navigation, and the Alabama governor pressed him into the same activity along the lower Alabama River. King also erected a large mill structure and supplied wood products for Confederate naval facilities in Columbus. King maintained good relations with local naval officers, but in 1864 he wrote Jemison, then a member of the Confederate Senate, asking what would happen if he stopped working for the Confederacy. Jemison's response, if any, has not been preserved. Wetumpka Bridge ca. 1880s During Reconstruction, King became a nominal, moderate Republican, serving twice as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 1870 to 1874. He rarely, if ever, occupied his seat during the initial year of his first term and played a limited role in later sessions. He was pre-occupied with the physical reconstruction of wagon and railroad bridges, grist and textile mills, and cotton warehouses. He had also built the initial Lee County courthouse in Opelika in 1867. King reportedly had financial problems but historians have not determined the circumstances. In 1872, King and his family moved to LaGrange, Georgia, where he and his sons continued to build bridges, stores, houses, and college buildings until Horace's death, on May 28, 1885. Lengthy obituaries in white-owned Atlanta, LaGrange, and Columbus newspapers reveal the extent of his fame. King's children—Washington W. (1843-1910), Marshall Ney (1844-79), John Thomas (1846-1926), Annie Elizabeth (1848-1919), and George (1850-1899)—continued their father's profession. Washington moved to Atlanta and built bridges throughout Georgia; his spans, now greatly modified, can be seen at Stone Mountain and Watson Mill State Park near Comer, Georgia. Other members of the family became prominent in the black middle class of LaGrange. Both John and George were builders, and John owned a lumberyard and George operated an annual African American fair. John was the leading layman in the local Methodist Episcopal Church and served as a trustee for that denomination's Clark University from the 1890s to the 1920s. His reputation as a builder extended into Atlanta, where he served as one of two contractors who built the Negro Building at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895. In February 2017, the Alabama state government unveiled a portrait of King in the State Capitol that he had helped to build; it is the first portrait of an African American to hang in the seat of the Alabama government. Further Reading Cherry, Rev. Francis. "History of Opelika . . ." 1883. Reprint, Alabama Historical Quarterly 14 (1953): 193-97. Lupold, John S., and Thomas L. French Jr. Bridging Deep South Rivers: The Life and Legend of Horace King. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2004. Robert Jemison Jr. Papers, 1797-1898, W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. External Links New Georgia Encyclopedia Alabama Legacy Moments: Horace King

Address by J. Sella Martin, Eulogy of John Brown

While many whites believed that John Brown was a madman, African Americans recognized the slave system as madness and celebrated Brown’s willingness to die for the anti-slavery cause. Brown was rare among white abolitionists in his insistence on full equality between blacks and whites; throughout his adult life he interacted socially with African Americans on an egalitarian basis to a degree unprecedented in antebellum America. On December 2, 1859, the day of Brown’s execution, African Americans and abolitionists observed a "Day of Mourning" to honor his martyrdom. Gathering in churches and meeting halls that night, they used speeches, proclamations, and songs both to commemorate Brown and to call for further action to advance the abolitionist cause. In Boston, nearly four thousand abolitionist supporters, both black and white, gathered in and outside the Tremont Temple. J. Sella Martin, pastor of Joy Street Baptist Church and former pastor (and first African-American pastor) of Tremont Temple, addressed the crowd and defended both Brown’s methods and the caution of the Virginia slaves who refrained from joining his armed stand. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, -Today a solemn question has been asked this nation. The Pilate of Providence has asked America-" Whom will you that I deliver unto you - the Barabbas of Slavery, or the John Brown of Freedom?" And, intimidated by the false majesty of despotic enactments, which have usurped the place of Christianity, corrupted by a false policy, and stung to phrenzy by the insinuations of our political high priests, we have cried out, as a nation-"Release unto us the Barabbas of Slavery, and destroy John Brown." And, true to this horrible, this atrocious request, John Brown has been offered up. Thank God, he said, "I am ready to be offered up." Men say that his life was 'a failure.' I remember the story of one of the world's moral heroes, whose life was just such a "failure." I remember one who, having retired to the deserts of Judea, to wring from the hard, stony life of those deserts the qualifications of a moral hero, by living an ascetic life, had subjugated the lower desires of his nature, and who, with all those qualifications, and with all this purity, was brought into a corrupt and voluptuous court. I remember, too, that in that court, not its favorite, notwithstanding the corruption and luxury of the times, he preserved himself the same stern man, and said to the King-- "It is not lawful for you to live with your brother Philip's wife." These were the stern words of John the Baptist and John Brown -- for John Brown, like John the Baptist, retired into the hard and stony desert of Kansas, and there, by the weapons of heroism, by the principles of freedom, and the undaunted courage of a man, wrung from that bloody soil the highest encorniums of Freedom, and the most base acknowledgements of slavery, that the one was right and the other wrong. (Applause.) I know that John Brown, in thus rebuking our public sin, in thus facing the monarch, has had to bear just what John the Baptist bore. His head to-day, by Virginia, - that guilty maid of a more guilty mother, the American Government, (cheers, mingled with a few hisses, which were at once drowned in an outburst of vehement applause) -has been cut off, and it has been presented to the ferocious and insatiable hunger, the terrible and inhuman appetite, of this corrupt government. To-day, by the telegraph, we have received the intelligence that John Brown has forfeited his life- all this honesty, all this straight-forwardness, all this self-sacrifice, which has been manifested in Harpers Ferry. My friends, his life was just such a "failure" as all great movements have been. The physical failure has been the death of the seed, externally, which has given life to the germ, which has sprung forth to spread its moral boughs all over this corrupt nation. (Applause.) I have not the slightest doubt that this will be the result... John Brown has died, but the life of Freedom, from his death, shall flow forth to this nation. I know that there is some quibbling, some querulousness, some fear, in reference to an out-and-out endorsement of his course. Men of peace principles object to it, in consequence of their religious conviction; politicians in the North object to it, because they are afraid that it will injure their party; pro-slavery men in the South object to it, because it has touched their dearest idol; but I am prepared, my friends, (and permit me to say, this is not the language of rage,) I am prepared, in the light of all human history, to approve of the means; in the light of all Christian principle, to approve of the end. (Applause.) I say this is not the language of rage, because I remember that our Fourth-of-July orators sanction the same thing; because I remember that Concord, and Bunker Hill, and every historic battlefield in this country, and the celebration of those events, all go to approve the means that John has used; the only difference being, that in our battles, in America, means have been used for white men and that John Brown used his means for black men. (Applause.) And I say, that so far as principle is concerned, so far as the sanctions of the Gospel are concerned, I am prepared to endorse his end; and I endorse it because God Almighty has told us that we should feel with them that are in bonds as being bound with them. I endorse his end because every single instinct of our nature rises and tells us that it is right. I find an endorsement of John Brown's course in the large assembly gathered here this evening; I find an endorsement of the principles that governed him in going to Virginia, in the presence of the men and women who have come here to listen to his eulogy, and sympathize with his suffering family. I know that all have not come for that purpose, but I know there are seven thousand still in Israel who have not bowed the knee to the political Baal. (Loud applause.) Now, I bring this question down to the simple test of the Gospel; and, agreeing with those men who say the sword should not be used, agreeing with them in that principle, and recognizing its binding obligation upon us all, yet I believe in that homeopathic principle which operates by mercury when mercury is in the system, and that that which is supported by the sword should be overthrown by the sword. I look at this question as a peace man. I say, in accordance with the principles of peace, that I do not believe the sword should be unsheathed. I do not believe the dagger should be drawn, until there is in the system to be assailed such terrible evidences of its corruption, that it becomes the dernier resort. And my friends, we are not to blame the application of the instrument, we are to blame the disease itself. When a physician cuts out a cancer from my face, I am not to blame the physician for the use of the knife; but the impure blood, the obstructed veins, the disordered system, that have caused the cancer, and rendered the use of the instrument necessary. The physician has but chosen the least of two evils. So John Brown chose the least of two evils. To save the country, he went down to cut off the Virginia cancer. (Applause.) I say, that I am prepared to endorse John Brown's course fully. He has said that he did not intend to shed blood. In my opinion, speaking as a military critic, this was one of the faults of his plan. In not shedding blood, he left the slaves uncertain how to act; so that the North has said that the Negroes there are cowards. They are not cowards, but great diplomats. When they saw their masters in the possession of John Brown, in bonds like themselves, they would have been perfect fools has they demonstrated any willing-ness to join him. They have got sense enough to know that until there is a perfect demonstration that the white man is their friend - a demonstration bathed in blood -it were foolishness to cooperate with them. They have learned this much from the treachery of white men at the North, and the cruelty of the white men at the South, that they cannot trust the white man, even when he comes to deliver them. So it was not their cowardice, nor their craven selfishness, but it was their caution, that prevented them from joining Brown. I say this because I think it is necessary to vindicate the character of the Negro for courage. I know very well that in this country, the white people have said that the Negroes will not fight; but I know also, that when the country's honor has been at stake, and the dire prejudice that excludes the colored man from all positions of honor, and all opportunities for advancement, has not interfered to exclude him from the military, he was gone with the army, and there displayed as much courage as his white brother. To some extent, I sympathize with the suggestions of the Boston Journal, that we should consider the state of excitement among the people of Virginia; for I know what that state of excitement is. I know that if a rat should happen to strike his tail against the lathes, they would all be up, looking through the house--taking good care always to make a Negro go before. (Laughter.) I am ready to say, if he has violated the law, if he has taken an improper course, if he has been the traitor that the South brands him as having been, and the madman that the North says he has been, John Brown is not to be blamed. I say that the system which violates the sacredness of conjugal love, the system that robs the cradle of its innocent treasure -- the system that goes into the temple of manhood, and writes upon the altar its hellish hieroglyphics of slavery -- the system that takes away every God-given right, and tramples religion under foot - I say that that system is responsible for every single crime committed within the borders where it exists. (Applause.) It is the system, my friends. I hold that that is a false logic which talks about good slaveholders. I hold that it is folly on the part of the slaveholder himself when he attempts to keep his slaves by mild means. The more a man learns, the more kindly he is treated, the more he aspires for liberty, the more restive he becomes under the yoke. -- Hence it is not an accident, but a necessity of the system of slavery, that it should be cruel; and all its devilish instrumentality, and enginery, and paraphernalia must be cruel also. It is folly for us to talk about the slaveholders being kind. Cruelty is part and parcel of the system. If slavery is right at all, then all its terrors and horrors, -- the whip, the manacle, the thumbscrew, the paddle, the stake, the gibbet -- are right also; if it is not right, then all these are wrong. The people of the North have said John Brown was a madman -- I suppose mostly because it is on the eve of an election: but if he was mad, his madness not only had a great deal of "method" in it, but a great deal of Philosophy and religion. I say, my friends, that no man ever died in this country as John Brown has died to-day. I say it because John Brown was a praying man. I remember hearing an incident in reference to his praying, from the lips of a man in whose presence and in whose house it occurred, and I loved him the more when I heard it. Coming to Henry Highland Garnet, of New York, some two years ago, he said to him, after unfolding all his plans, "Mr. Garnet, what do you think of it?" Said Mr. Garnet, who is at once a Christian, a gentleman, and a scholar, -- "Sir, the time has not come yet for the success of such a movement. Our people in the South are not sufficiently apprised of their rights, and of the sympathy that exists on the part of the North for them; our people in the North are not prepared to assist in such a movement, in consequence of the prejudice that shuts them out from both the means and the intelligence necessary. The breach between the North and the South has not yet become wide enough." Mr. Brown, looking him in the face as his keen eye was lit up with its peculiar fire, and his soul seemed to come forth with all its intellectual energy to look out and scan, if possible, the whole horizon of Providence, said, "Mr. Garnet, I will ask God about it"; and he got down upon his knees, and there poured out his heart to that God who is peculiarly the God of the bondman. He then showed the depth of his religious feeling -- the intense interest that he had in the emancipation of mankind, and the heroism of his soul. Mr. Garnet says that never in his life has he been so moved by a prayer as he was by that prayer of John Brown's. When such a man as this dies as he has died to-day, with the prayers of five millions of people going up to Heaven in his behalf - for I know that at least that number of Christians have prayed for him - when such a man dies, I am sure that his death under such circumstances affords us a great, an almost demonstrable evidence of the success of the movement that he has inaugurated and of the final accomplishment of the great object of his soul. (Applause.) I say that no man has ever died in this country as John Brown has died. While his soul has gone up to God, and his body has been taken down a lifeless corpse, thank God all over the country, meetings are being held-to-night to give expression to that great feeling of sympathy which is to swell the great tornado. -Let Virginia thank herself for it! In her guilty planting she has sown the wind; let her thank herself if in her terrible harvest she reaps the whirlwind of destruction. (Applause.) Go down to Virginia, and see that firm old man as he comes out from his prison, leaning upon the arm of the sheriff and with his head erect, ascends the dreadful steps of the gibbet. We see as he goes his way to the top, and every step he takes seems to be inspired with that feeling which the poet Longfellow describes as animating the heart of the young man climbing to the top of the mountain -"Excelsior" -until planting himself ready for his martyrdom. Though his body falls, the spirit of slavery and despotism falls with it, while John Brown goes up to heaven. Thank God! Thank God! (Applause.) I have detained you long enough. This is not the time to vindicate his cause. I have made these remarks only because they seem to be suggested here. I close by saying, my friends, that John Brown . . . shall slay more in his death than he ever slew in all his life. It is thought by the slaves-and it is a beautiful conceit, though coming from slaves - that the meteors from the heavens are sparks that . . . strike upon the craters of volcanoes, and that is the cause of their eruption. From the firmament of Providence today, a meteor has fallen. It has fallen upon the volcano of American sympathies, and though, for awhile, it may seem to sleep, yet its igneous power shall communicate … to the slumbering might of the volcano, and it shall burst forth in one general conflagration of revolution that shall bring about universal freedom. (Applause.) I feel, my friends and fellow-citizens, tonight, that courage, the adamantine courage, which has today been blasted by the terrible enginery of slavery will serve as the grit in the grindstone upon which the slave shall sharpen his weapon . . . I believe that every drop of blood shed today will be gathered up by the ever vigilant spirit of freedom . . . by whose resplendent light the darkest hovels of slavery shall be penetrated until the chains shall be melted from every limb, and the slave stand forth "regenerated and disenthalled by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emancipation". (Loud Applause.) Source: The Liberator, December 9, 1859.

Syracuse's first Black resident paid $80 for his own freedom, helped dig the Erie Canal | Isaac Wales

Liberation Psychology / How Frantz Fanon came to view violence as therapy

Fanon the Universalist / The New York Review / Susan Neiman

"Fanon came to believe that colonialism was a system of pathological relations masquerading as normality." Adam Shatz argues in his new biography of Frantz Fanon that the supposed patron saint of political violence was instead a visionary of a radical universalism that rejected racial essentialism and colonialism. June 6, 2024 issue

Henry Kissinger, the Hypocrite - Opinion Guest Essay By Mr. Rhodes is a former deputy national security adviser.

Henry Kissinger, who died on Wednesday, exemplified the gap between the story that America, the superpower, tells and the way that we can act in the world. At turns opportunistic and reactive, his was a foreign policy enamored with the exercise of power and drained of concern for the human beings left in its wake. Precisely because his America was not the airbrushed version of a city on a hill, he never felt irrelevant: Ideas go in and out of style, but power does not. From 1969 to 1977, Mr. Kissinger established himself as one of the most powerful functionaries in history. For a portion of that time, he was the only person ever to serve concurrently as national security adviser and secretary of state, two very different jobs that simultaneously made him responsible for shaping and carrying out American foreign policy. If his German Jewish origins and accented English set him apart, the ease with which he wielded power made him a natural avatar for an American national security state that grew and gained momentum through the 20th century, like an organism that survives by enlarging itself. Thirty years after Mr. Kissinger retired into the comforts of the private sector, I served in a bigger post-Cold War, post-Sept. 11 national security apparatus. As a deputy national security adviser with responsibilities that included speech writing and communications, I often focused more on the story America told than the actions we took. In the White House, you’re atop an establishment that includes the world’s most powerful military and economy while holding the rights to a radical story: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” But I was constantly confronted by the contradictions embedded in American leadership, the knowledge that our government arms autocrats while its rhetoric appeals to the dissidents trying to overthrow them or that our nation enforces rules — for the conduct of war, the resolution of disputes and the flow of commerce — while insisting that America be excused from following them when they become inconvenient. Mr. Kissinger was not uncomfortable with that dynamic. For him, credibility was rooted in what you did more than what you stood for, even when those actions rendered American concepts of human rights and international law void. He helped extend the war in Vietnam and expand it to Cambodia and Laos, where the United States rained down more bombs than it dropped on Germany and Japan in World War II. That bombing — often indiscriminately massacring civilians — did nothing to improve the terms on which the Vietnam War ended; if anything, it just indicated the lengths to which the United States would go to express its displeasure at losing. It is ironic that this brand of realism reached its apex at the height of the Cold War, a conflict that was ostensibly about ideology. From the side of the free world, Mr. Kissinger backed genocidal campaigns — by Pakistan against Bengalis and by Indonesia against the East Timorese. In Chile he has been accused of helping to lay the groundwork for a military coup that led to the death of Salvador Allende, the elected leftist president, while ushering in a terrible period of autocratic rule. The generous defense is that Mr. Kissinger represented an ethos that saw the ends (the defeat of the Soviet Union and revolutionary Communism) as justifying the means. But for huge swaths of the world, this mind-set carried a brutal message that America has often conveyed to its own marginalized populations: We care about democracy for us, not for them. Shortly before Mr. Allende’s victory, Mr. Kissinger said, “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” Was it all worth it? Mr. Kissinger was fixated on credibility, the idea that America must impose a price on those who ignore our demands to shape the decisions of others in the future. It’s hard to see how the bombing of Laos, the coup in Chile or the killings in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) contributed to the outcome of the Cold War. But Mr. Kissinger’s unsentimental view of global affairs allowed him to achieve consequential breakthroughs with autocratic countries closer to America’s weight class — a détente with the Soviet Union that reduced the escalatory momentum of the arms race and an opening to China that deepened the Sino-Soviet split, integrated the People’s Republic of China into the global order and prefaced Chinese reforms that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. The fact that those reforms were initiated by Deng Xiaoping, the same Chinese leader who ordered the crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square, speaks to the ambiguous nature of Mr. Kissinger’s legacy. On the one hand, the U.S.-Chinese rapprochement contributed to the outcome of the Cold War and improved standards of living for the Chinese people. On the other hand, the Chinese Communist Party has emerged as the principal geopolitical adversary of the United States and the vanguard of the authoritarian trend in global politics, putting a million Uyghurs in concentration camps and threatening to invade Taiwan, whose status was left unresolved by Mr. Kissinger’s diplomacy. Mr. Kissinger lived half of his life after he left government. He blazed what has become a bipartisan trail of ex-officials building lucrative consulting businesses while trading on global contacts. For decades, he was a coveted guest at gatherings of statesmen and tycoons, perhaps because he could always provide an intellectual framework for why some people are powerful and justified in wielding power. He wrote a shelf of books, many of which polished his own reputation as an oracle of global affairs; after all, history is written by men like Henry Kissinger, not by the victims of superpower bombing campaigns, including children in Laos, who continue to be killed by the unexploded bombs that litter their country. You can choose to see those unexploded bombs as the inevitable tragedy of the conduct of global affairs. From a strategic standpoint, Mr. Kissinger surely knew, being a superpower carried with it a cavernous margin of error that can be forgiven by history. Just a few decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the same countries we’d bombed were seeking expanded trade with the United States. Bangladesh and East Timor are now independent nations that receive American assistance. Chile is governed by a millennial socialist whose minister of defense is Mr. Allende’s granddaughter. Superpowers do what they must. The wheel of history turns. When and where you live determines whether you get crushed or lifted by it. But that worldview mistakes cynicism — or realism — for wisdom. The story, what it’s all about, matters. Ultimately, the Berlin Wall came down not because of chess moves made on the board of a great game but rather because people in the East wanted to live like the people in the West. Economics, popular culture and social movements mattered. Despite all our flaws, we had a better system and story. Ironically, part of Mr. Kissinger’s allure stemmed from the fact that his story was uniquely American. His family narrowly escaped the wheel of history, fleeing Nazi Germany just as Hitler was putting his diabolical design into effect. Mr. Kissinger returned to Germany in the U.S. Army and liberated a concentration camp. The experience imbued him with a wariness of messianic ideology wedded to state power. But it didn’t leave him with much sympathy for the underdog. Nor did it motivate him to bind the postwar American superpower within the very web of norms, laws and fidelity to certain values that was written into the American-led postwar order to prevent another world war. Credibility, after all, is not just about whether you punish an adversary to send a message to another; it’s also about whether you are what you say you are. No one can expect perfection in the affairs of state any more than in relations among human beings. But the United States has paid a price for its hypocrisy, though it’s harder to measure than the outcome of a war or negotiation. Over the decades, our story about democracy has come to ring hollow to a growing number of people who can point to the places where our actions drained our words of meaning and “democracy” just sounded like an extension of American interests. Similarly, our insistence on a rules-based international order has been ignored by strongmen who point to America’s sins to justify their own. Now history has come full circle. Around the world, we see a resurgence of autocracy and ethnonationalism, most acutely in Russia’s war against Ukraine. In Gaza the United States has supported an Israeli military operation that has killed civilians at a pace that has once again suggested to much of the world that we are selective in our embrace of international laws and norms. Meanwhile, at home, we see how democracy has become subordinate to the pursuit of power within a chunk of the Republican Party. This is where cynicism can lead. Because when there is no higher aspiration, no story to give meaning to our actions, politics and geopolitics become merely a zero-sum game. In that kind of world, might makes right. All of this cannot be laid on Henry Kissinger’s shoulders. In many ways, he was as much a creation of the American national security state as its author. But his is also a cautionary tale. As imperfect as we are, the United States needs our story to survive. It’s what holds together a multiracial democracy at home and differentiates us from Russia and China abroad. That story insists that a child in Laos is equal in dignity and worth to our children and that the people of Chile have the same right of self-determination as we do. For the United States, that must be a part of national security. We forget that at our peril. More on Henry Kissinger Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped the Nation’s Cold War History Nov. 29, 2023 Kissinger spoke to The Times in 2011 about the perils of diplomacy. Nov. 29, 2023 To Many Chinese, Kissinger’s Death Ends an Era in U.S.-China Relations Nov. 30, 2023 Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, is the author of “After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made.”

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Remembering Robert Potter, the North Carolina Castrater, Idiot of Yesteryear - GAWKER

Remembering Robert Potter, the North Carolina Castrater, Idiot of Yesteryear 35.27K Andy Cush 05/19/16 10:17AM Filed to: Idiots of Yesteryear Illustration: Angelica Alzona Welcome to Idiots of Yesteryear, a new series wherein we’ll remember the klutzes, cretins, and bumbling dunderheads who populate the cobwebbed dunce’s corners of the American past. In this great nation, for every gallant General Washington, who could not tell a lie, there is a doofy George W. Bush, who could not finish chewing a pretzel before trying to swallow it. Here, we will celebrate the blowhards, the two-timers, and the wretched scamps; we will honor the feckless morons and malevolent jerks who made our great nation in their images. Forgotten morons of history, we salute you. We begin with Robert Potter, U.S. Representative from North Carolina who, one sultry Sunday afternoon in the late summer of 1831, sliced off the testicles of two men he believed had been sleeping with his wife. Gather ‘round. Two Households, Both Alike in Idiocy Robert Potter (born 1800 or so, died 1842) is probably best known for his role in the Texas Revolution, the mid-19th century conflict in which the state declared its independence from Mexico, which ultimately led to its annexation by the United States in 1845. (You remember the Alamo, don’t you?) Potter, who emigrated to Texas in 1835, is credited with founding the Texas Navy, a provisional maritime force that protected Texas during the decade or so that it called itself an independent nation, and as a framer of the Texas Constitution and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Potter County, the 900-square-mile chunk of the panhandle that is home to the city of Amarillo, is named after him. But the most colorful parts of Potter’s story happened before he settled in the Lone Star State, when he was just a swashbuckling upstart state legislator, and later U.S. Congressman, in his home state of North Carolina. In 1824, after a five-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Potter ran for a seat in North Carolina’s House of Commons, the predecessor to the state’s current House of Representatives. A charming and argumentative young Jacksonian Democrat whose capacity for inflaming voters with populist oratory outpaced his legislative ability, Potter hoped to unseat Jesse Bynum, the conservative Whig who incumbently represented Halifax, a small town with only 50 or so registered voters. When Bynum won the seat amid violence at the polls, Potter did what any self-respecting man of the era would do: He sent Bynum a letter politely inviting him to a duel to the death. The letter, included in Founder of the Texas Navy, a Potter biography by Texas historian Ernest G. Fischer, contains a decent burn on Bynum, which I’ve bolded below: SIR: I foreborc to chastise your insolence at the polls yesterday because I was unwilling to invoke my brave and devoted friends in the consequences of a quarrel with you. I understand you have renewed your vaporing today; indeed you appear to have a wonderful itching to riot in the van of mobs. This is to invite you to the field of combat. I cannot say that of honor, your presence would deprive any spot of that character. You can choose your own weapon and distance. My friend, Mr. Burges, will make the necessary arrangements with any person you may think proper for that purpose. Fortunately for the purposes of our story, that punchline did not entice Bynum into participating. Potter was “not a gentleman,” Bynum said, and therefore not worthy of dueling against. He declined the invitation. Potter ran against Bynum once more in 1825, and the campaign was even more contemptuous. An 1859 report in the Fayetteville Semi-Weekly Observer, which looked back on the politicians’ feud with some perverse fondness, sets the scene. It was the period when the celebrated Bob Potter, Hal Potter, Jesse A. Bynum, and perhaps other noted characters and rowdies, flourished in and about the town of Halifax. That town was entitled to a Representative in the House of Commons under the old Constitution, and there being only forty or fifty voters, there was abundant opportunity for the exercise of every species of electioneering—the kind most in vogue being drinking and fighting. Pistols and dirks were commonly used, and every body looked for bloody accounts from a Halifax election. On one occasion (1825) no member was elected, the election having been broken up by a brawl between Potter and Bynum, and their friends. The Observer goes on to note that the Halifax Compiler, the local paper, was eager to fan the flames. For one issue documenting the Potter-Bynum battle, an employee supposedly made a surreptitious change to the type on the Compiler’s flag, so that instead of bearing the paper’s title, the front page read Hel-fiar (hellfire) Compilax. “In that way the whole edition of the paper was printed off and circulated,” according to the Observer, much to the chagrin of the Compiler’s editor. By Fischer’s retelling, the men had an altercation that was a good deal more brutal than the barroom antics suggested by the Observer’s account. It started with Bynum insulting Potter by placing his hand on Potter’s shoulder, apparently a no-no in those days. By the time it was over, “swords, pistols, knives, and clubs” had been used by both sides. Potter himself had been run through with a blade, and Bynum suffered a serious head injury. Both men survived, but the 1825 election was called off entirely, and the people of North Carolina’s Halifax borough went without a representative in the House of Commons that year. Everyone involved was ordered by local courts to stay out of trouble. Again, Potter challenged Bynum to a duel, and again Bynum refused. Finally, in 1826, the men faced each other for the House of Commons seat once more, and this time, Potter won, formally launching his political career. What was the source of Potter and Bynum’s bitter, violent resentment? It may have had as much to do with the pursuit of a woman as it did with their opposing politics. “There was a story,” Fischer writes, “that Bynum had refused to introduce Potter to a young lady to whom Potter desired an introduction.” It wouldn’t be the last time Robert Potter’s unconventional sense of romance got him into trouble. Fairwell, Gruesome Twosome A year after his election to the state House of Commons seat, Potter married Isabella Taylor, a woman from a “prominent family” in Granville, Potter’s home county. Thanks to Potter’s populist focus on railing against the state and federal banks, his star rose in state politics, culminating with his election to U.S. House of Representatives in 1831. Along the way, Potter and Taylor had two children. “This apparently happy situation,” University of North Carolina historian Carolyn A. Wallace writes ominously, “Ended on Sunday, 28 Aug. 1831.” Some of the particulars of that fateful day have been lost to history, but one fact is generally agreed upon: Two of Potter’s romantic enemies awoke on Sunday with four testicles between them, and they went to bed that night with none. Potter had evidently become suspicious that Isabella was messing around in the sack with two of her cousins, one a 55-year-old reverend named Louis Taylor, the other a 17-year-old identified by various names in different accounts. The congressman took the most direct route of vengeance available to him. The account of Robert W. Winston, a historian quoted in the Fischer biography, implies that Potter’s violence that day gave rise to a ball-cutting neologism that has evidently long since been forgotten: potterized. Mrs. Potter had two cousins who frequently visited the home, Reverend Louis Taylor, a minister of the Methodist Church, about 55 years old, and Louis Wiley, a youth of 17. Potter had conceived a dark, malignant hatred for these two men and had charged his wife with criminal intimacy with both. That Sunday Aug. 28 Taylor came out to Potter’s on a visit, not knowing Potter’s feelings towards him. Potter laid the charge of adultery on Taylor and after a few angry words, pounced on him like a wild beast, beating him senseless. He then whipped out his keen, sharp blade and castrated the man, “potterized” him. Putting him to bed he told him if he would keep quiet his disgrace would not get out. “I have been very merciful and kind to you,” Potter vouchsafed. “I have spared your life.” Potter then set forth in search of Wiley, who lived three or four miles nearer Oxford than Reverend Mr. Taylor’s home. Finding Wiley at home, Potter sprang upon him like a tiger, treating him as he had Taylor. Fischer’s biography also quotes from a primary-source letter that is dated just two days after the incident. Confusingly, the letter refers to the teenage castrato as Miller, not Wiley. Whatever the victim’s name, the writer spares no details about his fate. As Potter and Miller were attempting to corral a dog, he writes, They both got down to tie the dog, & while in the act, Mr. Potter, instead of putting the rope around the neck of the dog, put it around Miller, & drew it around so hard as to choke him & then lashed it around his legs & tied him hand & foot & castrated him completely... Potter was jailed the following day, without bail, and represented himself in court about a week later. The court convicted Potter for maiming his young competitor, sentencing him to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine. His assault on the older man never went to trial. Potter resigned from Congress before going to prison. However, the castration conviction did not even come close to ending the young lawmaker’s political career, as incredible as it may seem today. While Potter was imprisoned, Fischer notes, the North Carolina House of Commons ruled that his crime should be thereafter punishable by the death penalty. Upon his release, he ran once more for a seat alongside them. Potter’s wife divorced him, and her brother made a failed attempt at his life, but he won the election. “His victory under the circumstances,” Wallace writes, “was a remarkable demonstration of his popularity in his home county.” Potter remained in the House of Commons until 1835, when he was expelled for good after pulling a gun on another member during a gambling dispute. He fled to Texas, where he remarried and built up his name as a military man with the Texas Navy, and later as a lawyer and a two-term member of the Texas senate. But he did not leave violence behind. In 1842, Potter arrived at the doorstep of William Pinckney Rose, a neighbor with whom he’d been feuding. Rose was accused of murder, and Potter carried the warrant for his arrest, but when he got there, Rose wasn’t around. The following day, Rose showed up at Potter’s house with a gang of men. Perhaps sensing that the jig was up, Potter jumped into a nearby lake. When he came up for breath, one of Rose’s men shot, hitting Potter’s head and killing him. An (Ineffective) Public Servant to the Last For each of these entries, so as to avoid desecrating the dead too profoundly, we will point to a moment in each famous idiot’s career that merits genuine praise. Every dog has its day, and every drunken local lawmaker has some piece of legislation that may have actually done some good. Though Potter was not a man you’d like to cross, or be married to, or even spend any time around at all, really, at least one of his political hobbyhorses should be easy for modern readers to get behind. As a North Carolina state legislator, he advocated strongly for free public education. According to Fischer, Potter’s signature piece of legislation during his first term would have created a state agricultural college, where impoverished boys could learn the basics of farming without having to pay. (The bill ultimately failed.) Voters today might heed the moral of Potter’s parable: it takes more than a big personality and a pocket full of hilarious insults to make a great leader. The toughest-seeming guy in the room usually turns out to be a paranoid, ineffective bully. He usually turns out to be not that tough at all—no matter how willing he is to go after the other guy’s balls.

Beauford Delaney

Teaser - All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert

Obituary For Theodore Armour

Obituary For Theodore Armour Mr. Theodore Armour "Sonny" passed away on Friday, May 28, 2021 in Opelika, AL at the age of 84. Mr. Armour was born on March 13, 1937 in Salem, AL to the late Dave Armour and Hattie Dunn. Other than his parents, Mr. Armour was preceded in death by eight siblings, Jacob, Lindsey, Sr., Samuel, Marvin, Alzedia, Elvenie, Dot and Mildred. Survivors include a loving and devoted companion, Ardella Williams; one sister, Mary Akings; one brother, Royzell Aldridge (Audrey); and a host of nieces, nephews, relatives and friends. Homegoing services for Mr. Armour will be Tuesday, June 8, 2021 at Ft. Mitchell National Cemetery beginning at 11:00 AM. He will have a visitation on Monday, June 7, 2021 from 4 PM until 6 PM at Progressive. The Staff of Progressive Funeral Home is honored to be selected to provide end of life services. ***** Hattie Dunn was Granddaddy's 1st Cousin Rozell Aldridge was Grandmama's nephew

Omanii Abdullah and Nanette Bustanoby show the value of mentors

Omanii Abdullah and Nanette Bustanoby show the value of mentors

Published: Mar. 31, 2012, 9:48 a.m. NEW! By Kheli R. Willetts | Guest columnist 2012-03-27-sdc-occmentoring.JPGStephen D. Cannerelli / The Post-StandardNanette Bustanoby mentored Omanii Abdullah when he was a child. The mentoring turned out to be the beginning of a life-long relationship. Two months ago, a reader emailed and asked me to write about a local woman who had a significant impact in his life as well as the lives of other children growing up in the 15th Ward, on the South Side of Syracuse. I am always interested in learning about people who are positive influences in the lives of children. Even so, this email had a special resonance. The request brought to mind the words of sixth century B.C. philosopher Lao Tzu: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." In this case, the email suggested to me that one's journey through life often begins with a single act. The email was from poet, playwright and entrepreneur Omanii Abdullah, of Syracuse. He was writing about Nanette Bustanoby, of Marietta, who worked at the Rescue Mission for more than 20 years, beginning in 1952. Miss Bustanoby's single act was to care. That proved to be instrumental in shaping Abdullah’s world and how he lives his life today. I was intrigued by his assertion. Why would a 6-foot-2 black man, who is Muslim, single out a petite Christian white woman as one of his greatest influences? How could they form a bond that has lasted more than 40 years? So I contacted Abdullah and Miss Bustanoby. (I have to address her as Miss Bustanoby — even though she keeps asking me to call her by her first name. My upbringing and my respect for her 85-year journey is too great.) I also called two of Abdullah’s childhood friends, Larry Dowdell and Channie Myers. They share the same feelings about Miss Bustanoby. Their stories begin in the 1960s, when as children Larry, Channie and young John Grace (Abdullah's name before he found his spiritual home in Islam) and their families went to the mission for Sunday school, church services, mid-week Bible study and camp, among other activities run by the mission and overseen by Miss Bustanoby. She provided a safe space for these young people who were living in a turbulent, politically charged and complicated era as cultural empowerment by African Americans was emerging. Separately, Abdullah and Miss Bustanoby both recalled an incident to me. It offers insight into what makes their story so special, and it demonstrates the power that mentoring has in the lives of young people. One day, Omanii came into the mission very upset because he was teased for being dark-skinned. Omanii recalled, “Miss Bustanoby was very understanding. I could talk to her about things I couldn’t talk to my parents about.” Miss Bustanoby, telling the same story, shared how she comforted him and began to explain “how some white people are not nice to black people because they don’t understand.” To Miss Bustanoby’s surprise, the child that had teased Omanii was not white but black, but she also knew it was important to offer comfort and support. I believe this “single act” did something quite remarkable. Miss Bustanoby’s reaction showed Omanii that despite the political climate, there were white people who cared about and were aware of what was happening in the lives of black people, but it also it taught him and his friends that she saw them as black children and they were as important as everyone else. Channie still remembers that about her mentor. “Miss Bustanoby was a wonderful woman, great teacher, gentle and loving,” she said, later adding, “she could pull out the best in you, no matter your circumstances.” Miss Bustanoby believes “it’s important to see race ... it matters.” Omanii, Larry and Channie needed to be seen, to have their experiences recognized and validated. Miss Bustanoby did so by teaching black history in addition to scripture and the books of the Bible. “Miss Bustanoby was a no-nonsense kind of person,” Larry reflected. “She taught us that if you are going to believe in something, you need to be very knowledgeable, read and study.” In our conversations, all three said Miss Bustanoby’s lessons fortified them and helped them through challenging situations, even as they grew older. She created a love of culture, faith and humanitarianism that manifest in their lives today. Kheli R. Willetts, executive director of the Community Folk Art Center, is a faculty member in the department of African American Studies at Syracuse University and an occasional columnist with The Post-Standard. Contact her at kheli_willetts@yahoo.com.

Lorenzo Dow, The Crazy, Unwashed, Beloved Methodist Preacher

Syracuse Chilled Plows by Fred Hinke

loudoun Heritage Farm Museum Blog All Posts Syracuse Chilled Plows by Fred Hinke December 14, 2020 In a previous blog, “Is a Chilled Plow Very Cold?”, we highlighted the invention of the chilled plow. The Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum has several plows, including plows manufactured by the Syracuse Chilled Plow Company. The company was a major plow manufacturer, employing over 300 people. From their 1900 product catalog, we know they had product distributors in Boston, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Columbus Ohio, Jackson Michigan, Madison Wisconsin, Marshalltown Iowa, and Wheeling West Virginia. In the early 1900s, they shipped over 100,000 plows a year all over the world. Their 1900 product catalogue is seventy-one pages long and includes, in addition to dozens of different types of walking and riding plows, a wide variety of cultivators, harrows, haying tools, road scrappers and over 15 different models of wheelbarrows. This page shows a few of the company’s right-handed and left-handed plows. Syracuse Chilled Plow Company Catalog Syracuse Chilled Plow Company Catalog One of these plows, the Model # 1, is a right hand 2 horse plow; the soil lifted by the plow is turned over and pushed to the right as the plow moves through the field. From the product description in the 1900 catalog, the plow weighs 138 pounds and cuts a furrow 5 to 8 inches deep and 12 to 15 inches wide and is “Unequaled for hard and stony ground”. Our own Syracuse Model # 1, first manufactured in 1878, is displayed in the Work Horse Collection Barn, which is open for special events and by appointment. Right-handed Syracuse Plow Model #1 Right-handed Syracuse Plow Model #1 John Deere also manufactured plows but they didn’t sell very well. So, in 1910, John Deere, looking to expand their product line and sales, purchased the Syracuse Chilled Plow Company. The Farm Museum has a John Deere plow, but the Syracuse name and Syracuse Model # 30 are in raised letters on the backside of the plow moldboard. The plow was almost certainly manufactured in the Syracuse plant which continued in operation until 1955. The Model # 30 is a left hand 3 horse plow, weighs 170 pounds and cuts a furrow 6 to 9-1/2 inches deep and 14 to 16 inches wide. It is also displayed in the Work Horse Collection Barn. John Deere Syracuse Model #30 - Left-handed John Deere Syracuse Model #30 - Left-handed Syracuse, John Deere, and other manufacturers sold a wide variety of both left hand and right-handed plows. But why both left handed and right-handed plows? For unknown reasons, farmers in Indiana and Ohio generally preferred left-handed plows; right handed plows were generally used everywhere else. Manufacturers had a significant incentive to only manufacture right handed plows including a reduction in inventory, spare parts, and tooling. In 1917 plow manufacturers entered into an agreement to discontinue manufacturing left handed plows; an agreement which would almost certainly have been a violation of antitrust law. Naturally, farmers who favored left handed plows rather strongly voiced their displeasure and the agreement died.

One Hundred Years Ago, the Harlem Hellfighters Bravely Led the U.S. Into WWI

One Hundred Years Ago, the Harlem Hellfighters Bravely Led the U.S. Into WWI: Their courage made headlines across the country, hailing the African-American regiment as heroes even as they faced discrimination at home

The Extraordinary Life Of Mary McLeod Bethune, The First Black Woman To Lead A Federal Agency

By Genevieve Carlton | Checked By Leah Silverman Published July 7, 2021 Updated July 12, 2021 A child of former slaves, Mary McLeod Bethune achieved the near-impossible when she became an advisor to five different U.S. Presidents in the Jim Crow era.

Eugene L. Meyer, "Five For Freedom"

Gene Jarrett, 'The Life and Times of a Caged Bird: Paul Laurence Dunbar ...