We, The People in Order to Form a More Perfect Union
This 4th of July last, I found myself ruminating on all that
I know about your country and mine. I decided to place what I
recalled inside my own place in cyberspace as a visual scrapbook of where we
have been as a nation. Sooner than later, my mind began to ramble and sprawl as
minds - and epic tales - are wont to do. One thought led to another and well,
as it turns out, the country is a tad older than I remembered. So, as the world keeps turning, this is Part
One.
The American experiment is marvelous and fully worthy of
celebration. However, the pervasive strain of cruelty and oppression and the
irredeemable stains of slavery and genocide force anyone not subsumed in the culture of
jingoism to question the fundamental nature of our national character. Our
collective lust for violence is not easily explained and cannot be ignored. If
there is a deity on “our side” then I, for one, prefer said deity remain
sidelined and indifferent to our plight because, we the people, are quite capable
of muddling through and mucking it up all by ourselves.
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when Amerigo Vespucci discovered his
own continent and named it after US!
Ponce de Leon (1460-1521) never found the fountain of youth but he did find Florida.
Spanish Conquistadors plundered under the sign of the Cross.
The Spanish Conquistadors made gallows just high
enough for the feet of the Indians to nearly touch the ground … then they burned
the Indians alive.
After they had tied him to the stake but before they lit
the fire, Hatuey, an Indian leader, was offered a spiritual reprieve by a
Spanish priest. Would he like to ensure the certain passage of his soul to
heaven by embracing Christianity? he was asked.
Hatuey contemplated the proposal. ‘Are there people like
you in heaven?’ he replied. When the priest reassured him that there were,
Hatuey responded that he would prefer to go to hell, where he would not know
such cruel men.
The Chosen Ones sailed and sailed
looking for a brand new start.
While Others, also chosen, sailed in chains.
The Middle Passage
Who Owns Original Sin?
Give it back to the Indians?
Peter Minuet (1580-1638) bought Manhattan for $24.00 in trinkets.
Pequot, Narragansett, Wampanoag, Mohegan
Metacomet, (1638-1676) son of Massasoit and Chief of the Wamapanoag tribe and rechristened King Phillip by the British settlers lost the war and his life.
Tea Party Time
Taxation without representation is tyranny!
Shots heard Round the World
"I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country".
George the Father, John and Sam, Hamilton and Burr, Jefferson,
Franklin, Madison and even Old Tom Paine.
A Declaration and Bill of my Rights. Slavery; a question deferred
President Washington marches Federal troops into Western Pennsylvania to quell The Whiskey Rebellion.
Oh Say, Can Francis Scott Key! Fort McHenry and the War of 1812
Whitney and his cotton gin
A cash strapped Napoleon sells Jefferson 828,000 square miles of the for 3 cents an acre. 1803
The Dred Scott Decision (1857)
The United States Supreme Court held that African-Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be american citizens and therefore had not standing to sue in federal court and the federal government had no power to regualte slavery in territories acquired after the creation of the United States.
Harriet Tubman
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Fort Sumter - April 12-14, 1861
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Quick come see; there goes Robert E. Lee!
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Quick come see; there goes Robert E. Lee!
The Emancipation Proclamation
Gettysburg
Lee surrenders to Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse
Our American Cousin
From the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the removal of the last Federal Troops from the South in 1877.
The Golden Spike, driven at Promontory Summit Utah territories, on May 10, 1869, united the Union Pacific and Central Pacific transcontinental railroad
General George A. Custer leads 210 soldiers against 1,000 or more Dakota Indians led by Sitting Bull at his Last Stand - 1876
Comanche. Apache. Arapaho. Sioux. Sitting Bull. Geronimo.
Wild Bill Hickok. Wyatt Earp. Buffalo Bill Cody. Kit Carson.
All gone the way of the buffalo.
Seward's Folly and the Gold Rush in on!
They told Marconi wireless was a phony ...
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the War.” William Randolph Hearst
found a thousand uses for the peanut Suffrage
"They're selling postcards of the hanging" is the opening lyric to Bob Dylan's song,
"Desolation Row". The reference is to the incident headlined below.
"Desolation Row". The reference is to the incident headlined below.
Strange Fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Astor, Carnegie, Duke, Marshall Field, Jay Gould, Mellon,
J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller,
Schwab, Stanford, Vanderbilt, philanthropists and robber barons all.
Prohibition (1920 - 1919-1933 opened the door
for this
until we came to our senses
and banned this instead
STRIKE!
STRIKE BUSTERS!
The Salinas, CA Lettuce Strike of 1936
Sheriff Carl Abott and his deputized strike busters.
December 7, 1941 A Day That Will Live in Infamy (Color Footage)
There'll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover
Occupied Paris
Normandy Beach 1944
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