William Ellison was one of the wealthiest men in the South as well as being a black, former slave. He owned cotton gins, plantations, and 68 slaves… and from accounts of the time, he wasn’t very nice…

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History repeats because human nature remains the same…

But Then It Was Too Late

What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. Continue reading →

Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States. Continue reading →

This famous depiction of the Boston Massacre was engraved by Paul Revere (copied from an engraving by Henry Pelham), colored by Christian Remick, and printed by Benjamin Edes. The Old State House is depicted in the background. / Library of Congress

Different Conceptions of Colonists’ Relationship to Britain

Article by Samuel Adams in the Boston Gazette about the Boston Massacre

Following the the Boston Massacre in 1770, there were different ways in which both onlookers in the British government and the colonists ended up wondering, each one, if the other one was somehow engaged in a plot. Right? And I mentioned that the British were perhaps wondering if this had all been a plot to rob the customs house; the colonists were wondering about the possibility of this being some kind of ongoing plot to subdue and repress the American colonists. So clearly at the end of the lecture from last week you can really begin to sense a growing sense of mounting hostility, even among some people a sense of growing alienation.

And you can hear this on both sides coming from the accounts of the Boston Massacre by both Gage and Adams. And I did mention in class when I read from them that they were of course writing with a purpose in mind so they were interested in being particularly bold and dramatic in what they were saying. Gage really had to excuse what happened and Adams was trying to promote people to get upset about what had happened, but even so you can hear even just in the way that they framed their accounts some of what I’m talking about here with growing hostility, growing alienation. Continue reading →

The Union’s financial success depended on military success. As presidential aide John Hay wrote in an anonymous newspaper article in January 1862 when any movement by the Union Army was stalled: “The Secretary of Finance has displayed wonderful zeal and ability in filling a bankrupt treasury and supplying the sinews of war. In this respect, Mr. Chase has accomplished a herculean task, but all his plans and efforts will end in ruin unless followed by wholesome legislative enactments and decided military movements. Already the treasury notes have commenced to depreciate, and a few months of Congressional and military inaction, they will sink to a level with the old Continental Scrip or the assignats of the French Revolution.” Continue reading →

Two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, American slavery came to an end and a celebration of freedom was born

Since this article was first published in 2011, Juneteenth celebrations have attracted increased attention around the nation. According to the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, 45 states and the District of Columbia had, by 2017, passed legislation officially recognizing the holiday. With the current unrest over the killing of another African American man at the hands of the police, the pervasive scars of the nation’s long history of enslavement and racism has again dominated the news. Protests across the country have brought renewed attention to the holiday, as has President Trump’s recent announcement of a campaign rally being held in Tulsa, itself the site of a horrific race massacre, on Juneteenth.

Amid all of this, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic that is disproportionately affecting the country’s black population, Americans have even more reasons to continue learning about the roots of racism in American history. We must confront the great contradiction in our past—that a “nation conceived in liberty” was also born in shackles.
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“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” ~ Albert Einstein

Erasing History ~ Image: Lance Page

~ Forewords ~
The following is based solely upon my understanding of what I have uncovered so far by a study of history. If any of my facts are incorrect I beg that those more knowledgeable than I please correct me, and I will issue a statement reflecting where I have erred. However, if you disagree with anything I say simply because it is not what you were taught in school, or because it offends you, then I also kindly ask that you keep your comments to yourself. ~ Neal Ross, author and historian Continue reading →

It was early March 1836; a sad little procession moved slowly down a south Texas road. A young mother rode a pony, holding her fifteen months old baby daughter, and a black man walked beside her, acting as escort. Just a few days earlier, this trio of weary travelers had witnessed the fall of the mission fortress, the Alamo. There, the Mexican forces of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna made the woman, Susannah Arabella Dickinson, a widow. Continue reading →

National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed by elements of a Para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

Siege of Boston, April 20, 1775

Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement. Continue reading →

A lost volume of American history finds the light of day…

The Constitution is traditionally seen as the culmination of the American Revolution. But in the fifth and final volume of Conceived in Liberty, the libertarian firebrand Murray Rothbard portrays it as a reactionary counterrevolution against the Revolution’s radical principles, orchestrated by a powerful array of monied interests who hoped a more centralized government would reproduce many hierarchical and mercantilist features of the 18th century British state. Continue reading →

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865 in the aftermath of the Civil War, abolished slavery in the United States. The 13th Amendment states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Continue reading →

John Quincy Adams is generally regarded as an excellent diplomat and an outstanding abolitionist but not a great president. That’s not an altogether fair assessment. Adams did not enjoy universal respect due to the manner in which he became president. (He finished second in the popular vote and electoral college, but since no candidate had a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives decided the outcome.) Adams was stymied by a Congress controlled by his political enemies. His lack of doling out patronage appointments didn’t win him any friends either. But as president, Adams made some strides in modernizing the American economy and promoting education. He also succeeded in paying off much of the national debt. Continue reading →

Taxes caused the Civil War: Although I’m no scholar of American history, there are a few seminal events that I’ve always felt confident in having a basic understanding of. One of those is the cause of the Civil War, which was slavery, of course. But then, I did some research, and I had to rethink everything.

It seems that the root cause of the Civil War was not slavery, it was taxation. Continue reading →

Many know the Vietnam War as one of the bloodiest and most unpopular wars in U.S. history. Some even label it a mistake. During the 1960s, the spread of communism brought fear to the American people. For the U.S. government, communism posed a political threat as the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and other countries started emerging as “red” states. They were afraid more dominoes would fall, so they placed themselves between them. American representatives were sent to Vietnam and neighboring countries to prevent the spread. This is where the story of my people begins. Continue reading →