Over the past two years I have read Ron Chernow’s comprehensive and excellent biographies of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Ulysses S. Grant. In addition to these historical tomes, I have read Isabel Wilkerson’s powerfully compelling narratives, “Caste” and “The Warmth of Other Suns.”
There has been great value in studying the historical record contained in these books. The history is absolutely essential to know. But the value of the books goes beyond gaining historical knowledge of founding facts or efforts to save and perpetuate the union. More on that in a minute.
In the last years of the woefully divisive tragedy of the previous administration, these days of pandemic and sequester, there have been other benefits to reading these books as well.
One of those benefits is that, while it has not been easy, studying the historical record in these books is that it has made it possible for me to watch, listen to and read the daily news without losing hope or being filled with despair. The reading has prevented me from succumbing to current political and religious opportunists who benefit from promoting a national mythology based on the fake news that our once great, Christian, country is in need of a cultural war (led by white, nationalist patriots) for its restoration.
While we are certainly a divided country, our divisions are not new. The divisions of political positions and cultural perspectives have been making progress difficult (and many times impossible) in every generation. Indeed, there was not majority support for the War of Independence. The Constitution was not received as Revealed Truth, but narrowly won and constantly challenged.
Our founding parents – not just founding fathers – argued about all the things which currently divide us. While George Washington united the citizenry to the degree that made eventual support for a representative democracy possible, the form of our government of three branches under a federal constitutional authority often experienced gridlock. Thomas Jefferson could not stand John Adams or Alexander Hamilton. James Madison thought Washington was growing senile. They all worked against each other and promoted favorite news outlets to demean the intelligence, moral character, and motives of one another.
We have often experienced violence against one another, particularly along racial lines with the added dimension that supremacist factions armed themselves and fostered insurrection. There have been armed militias wantonly butchering Native American people. There have always been white supremacist terrorists advancing their idea of God-ordained nationalism with legalized brutality. There have been contested elections, successful state legislative efforts at voter suppression and times when today’s tragic examples of police killing black men pale in light of the record of the past.
Imagine, for instance, the record of a lynching of a black citizen in America every four days from 1889 to 1929! Do the math! Nearly 4,000 people! Imagine a crowd of 15,000 white people gathered in Waco, Texas, many bringing their young children to observe an 18-year-old black teenager named Jesse Washington being burned alive for “acting like a white person” in May of 1916. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?
The historical record of our stormy past often makes me wonder how this country has ever survived. While there have been many examples of heroic, loving, sacrificial people making an aspirational America possible, there is for me no doubt that the better angels of our nature have often been encouraged and made possible by an invisible hand at work among us that belongs to a far greater power than ourselves. How else does one explain a force calling out tens of thousands of us to take to the streets in this country – amidst pandemic shutdown – to affirm that Black Lives Matter? It was not just community organizing and social media. Something far greater has been at work.
I have the belief that we have survived the stormy past in large part because some great presence is at work among us; a presence with a demonstrable history of preventing our human hatreds, prejudices, and capacity for barbarism, no matter how well armed and supported, to win the day.
In the 5th Chapter of the ancient Book of Daniel there is the story of the presence of a spiritual, guiding hand enabling liberating handwriting to appear on the wall; handwriting conveying the defeat of rampant, wanton tyranny. That hand is still among us directing us to the righteous side of history and preventing our continual disposition for self-inflicted social and national wounds from proving fatal.