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AzcrazyArt's avatar

What a great story...I love how you tell them and how applicable they are to current events. Now may we figure out how to reclaim democracy again.

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Michael Monroe's avatar

Well written and powerful as usual! But I do hope you'll spill some ink (or illuminate some pixels?) regarding how tied to slavery and its economy the entire North, and indeed the whole of the United States, so thoroughly was.

My dad's family's story on this continent begins in Boston in 1652, when unwilling Scots on the wrong side of Oliver Cromwell were exiled here. I live just a few kilometers (#GoMetric) from where their ship, the John & Sarah, docked that year after a trecherous winter crossing of the Atlantic. My mother's history in Boston begins with her folks starting in the 1920s (she passed of Covid back in May at the age of 86 by the way - I'm just 44 myself, she had me late). Her dad, my grandfather, had a stint co-running the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham & Women's) back when it was a small outfit just finding its sea legs after he graduated Harvard Med School.

And it was my mother's brother, a well-connected jazz artist who played and produced records until he passed about 8 years ago now, has childhood memories of very old Civil War soldiers marching in the streets of Boston on July 4th (he actually played his way through the Army years later) and he always said the Civil War was America's "long shadow," a rift that we've never truly recovered from.

Let's take Faneuil Hall, for example, dubbed the "Cradle of Liberty" since the American Revolution -- it was absolutely financed with money from Peter Faneuil's slave trading business. More and more are we (re)discovering these truths. I want to be honest with you, Professor - sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes I find some (not all) aspects of your narrative concerning these United States of America a little too tidy. A little too attached to this narrative habit we've had in Boston for quite some time - that we've been the enlightened home of abolitionists, and the South has been source of racist rot in our country.

One of my ancestors was legal witness in the 17th century to one of the, shall we say, "shady real estate deals" that was vehicle for the colonization of this continent, the violent cultural and physical genocide our nation is entirely predicated on.

I'd really appreciate it if you chose to delve a little more unflinchingly into America - the full story. For example, we all should learn the horrible history of Thanksgiving. Abraham Lincoln, whom you venerate reasonably on some counts, proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving in 1863, right? And the federal government declared the last Thursday in November as the legal Thanksgiving holiday in 1898.

However, the meaning of Thanksgiving is whitewashed with the happy feasting Pilgrims & Indians story. And yes, that did happen. Once. In 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. (As you know, they left behind smallpox which almost entirely wiped out those who'd escaped.) By the time the Pilgrims got to Mass Bay, they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who'd survived slavery in England and knew English. He taught them to grow corn and fish and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.

Hurrah.

BUT, as word spread in England about this new world paradise, religious zealots (you guessed it, the Puritans) began arriving by the boatload (no, they were not all fleeing religious persecution - they actually had a great deal of religious freedom - most were pursuing an economic opportunity). In any event, finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be public domain. Joined by other British settlers (whom my highland ancestors would later fight in the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester), they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest.

The Pequot Nation, however, hadn't agreed to this peace treaty that Squanto negotiated and dared to fight back.

The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought. In 1637 near today's Groton CT, over 700 men, women and kids of the Pequot Tribe were having an annual "Green Corn Festival." In the predawn hours the slumbering tribe members were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were then literally burned alive inside (yup, pretty horrid - if any tried to come out, they were of course shot).

The NEXT day, Mass Bay Colony governor John Winthrop declared “A Day Of Thanksgiving” because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered. Elated by the “victory” God granted them, the "brave" colonists attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with as many as 500 slaves regularly left New England ports.

Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford CT, the churches announced a 2nd day of Thanksgiving to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked-off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief, Metacom (son of the original welcoming Massasoit, whose statue you can find in Plymouth) was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts where it remained on display for ~25 years after King Phillip's War (which was arguably this continent's first battle for independence, or cultural survival, however you look at it).

Anyway, the killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. Eventually we get to George Washington himself, who finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later still, our beloved Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War (on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota).

So, professor Richardson, that version of the story doesn’t have quite the same fuzzy feelings associated with it as the one where the Indians and Pilgrims are all sitting down together at a big feast, and I've been kind of hoping you'd write more about the things we need to unflinchingly reckon with as a nation. I think you'd agree we need to look at history square in the face, so I truly hope you continue to work in service of the truth of our mutually conjoined stories.

Sincerely from Somerville (once Charlestown, which was later annexed anyway and is now Boston),

Michael Monroe

P.S. Connected with James Monroe, yes - I actually share his birthday. By the way, he owned enslaved people. None of us are of noble blood, and I really think we, as white people, need to talk about it A LOT more.

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