Who Was Marjory Stoneman Douglas?

Review by Bill Doughty

Regrettably, "Marjory Stoneman Douglas" High School will always be remembered the way "Sandyhook" and "Columbine" are remembered – places of learning devastated by murderous gunfire. Students at MSD High School, "the Eagles," are demonstrating resilience and redirecting their anger and grief toward positive change.


So who was Marjory Stoneman Douglas?

Seventy-one years ago Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998), newspaper journalist and freelance writer, wrote "The Everglades: River of Grass" (Pineapple Press, 1947).

The book is a fascinating history of "the great pointed paw of Florida," describing its nature, peoples, history of conquest, and challenges in the face of development and destruction of the Everglades.

Fellow writer John Hersey, author of "Hiroshima," called Stoneman Douglas's description of the Everglades "an unearthliness, a strong rhythm, a compactness of natural imagery that is dazzling, and, above all an organization and discipline that approaches poetic form."
Here's an example of her poetry in prose:

"The water moves. The saw grass, pale green to deep-brown ripeness, stands rigid. It is moved only in sluggish rollings by the vast push of the winds across it. Over its endless acres here and there the shadows of the dazzling clouds quicken and slide, purple-brown, plum-brown, mauve-brown, rust-brown, bronze. The bristling, blossoming tops do not bend easily like standing grain. They do not even in their own growth curve all one way but stand in edged clumps, curving against each other, all the massed curving blades making millions of fine arching lines that at a little distance merge to a huge expanse of brown wires or bristles or, farther beyond, to deep-piled plush. At the horizon they become velvet. The line they make is an edge of velvet against the infinite blue, the blue-and-white, the clear fine primrose yellow, the burning brass and crimson, the molten silver, the deepening hyacinth sky. The clear burning light of the sun pours daylong into the saw grass and is lost there, soaked up, never given back. Only the water flashes and glints. The grass yields nothing."

Science meets art in her writing, much like Rachel Carson, as Stoneman Douglas paints with her words.

Baby bald eagle in the Everglades. (National Park Service)

She describes the destruction of birds, killed out of greed for their feathers, their plumes. At sunset, like birds everywhere, birds of the Everglades would return "in their white thousands and tens of thousands, with the sounds of great stiff still banners ... rivers of birds pouring against the sunset back to the rookeries ... down to the right next in the clamor and squawking and curious yelping, and queer deep grunting of the fuzzy open-beaked hungry young."

"When the sun rose the ethereal whiteness of the plumed parent birds shone like frost against the blue, blue sky. They  were white in the nights under the moon, or to the torches and firepans of the men with clubs in canoes slipping along behind the lights. A few men with clubs or shotguns rising suddenly by those low rookeries could kill and scalp hundreds of birds in a night. By morning the bloody bodies would be drawing the buzzards and alligators. The great black Florida crows that shed the light like water from their feathers would clean out the dying young. Ants in long lines as fine as pepper would carry off the rotting pieces of their bones."

White egret (Photo courtesy National Park Service)

In "The Everglades: River of Grass" Stoneman Douglas takes us through millennia – Cretaceous, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene – to more recent history of the Age of Exploration and Conquest, through the Civil War and into the first half of the 20th century.
"History," she writes, "the recorded time of the earth and of man, is in itself something like a river."

So is childhood – or a journey through high school.

We learn about colorful characters in Florida's history, including Billy Bowlegs, King Carlos, Juan Ortiz, Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando De Soto, Col. Zachary Taylor, Maj. Francis Dade, Andrew Jackson (who waged war against the indigenous people 200 years ago, 1817-1818), Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, and Osceola.

Osceola

Osceola would become a "patriot and warrior" hero who was to "epitomize for future history the highhanded injustice" of captivity, a symbol in the first half of the 1800s to  those, including Indians and escaped slaves, who fought for freedom and righteousness. A town, lake, county, many individuals, and even a species of snake were named after him. So were several U.S. Navy vessels, including a gunboat during the Civil War, harbor tug and seagoing tug #47, all called Osceola.

Stoneman Douglas brings the imagery of the sea into her writing, and she seems to have a special affinity to the tough and gritty sailors who ventured aboard wooden ships and into the unknown.

"These were not the men of the Mediterranean galleys, the long narrow ships that went mincingly on the tideless inner sea, from headland to known headland, by the banked oars of slaves. These were free men of that limitless, turbulent ocean, the men of the bucking, hardy cargo carriers, the round ships, broad of bow and beam, that thrashed forward only before the wind in their single, clumsy square sails. They came about only by a miracle and could hardly beat to windward at all. Many a ship and crew was blown far out into the unknown and disappeared under the unturning, savage, westgoing wind. Not that that mattered. There were men in every port eager to follow them. Their concern was not safety. Their concern was going out. Sailing. Finding out. Seeing. Never mind the coming back."

Seagoing tug USS Osceola

We see how early explorers, Spanish Catholic crusaders, and English traders fought over the "paw" of Florida and subjugation of the people there. 
The U.S. Navy, under USS Flirt and Fort Flirt, played an important role in Florida's early history, protecting against piracy and bootlegging and eventually in the Civil War fighting against "the accepted evil of slavery."
Admiral David Porter – and later his son David Dixon Porter – protected Florida, commercial trade and the United States on both sides of the peninsula.
Stoneman Douglas offers a meticulous description of the lives of the earliest residents of the Everglades, the indigenous "Indians": Calusa, Mayaimi, Tekesta, Talasi, Yochi, Tallahasee and others. Eventually they would be lumped together under a catch-all name: Seminole.

Calusa

By the mid 18th century the original people of the Everglades had disappeared. "Only the scattered Calusas were left, ranging throughout the area. It has been repeated often that after 1763 they left for Cuba en masse. I do not believe that there was ever a time when the Glades were empty of villages," Stoneman Douglas concludes.

"They had great courage. They came of people who had lived hard and savage lives and their children were not weakened," she writes.

The author was successful in convincing people to conserve and preserve much of the precious Everglades. In December 1947, the year her book was published, President Truman dedicated the Everglades National Park, helping people realize the life-giving value of the ecosystem – and the dangers of draining the water, leading to fires and rising salt water.

"Unless the people will act the fires will come again. Overdrainage will go on. The soil will shrink and burn and be wasted and destroyed in a continuing ruin. The salt will lie in wait. Yet the springs of fine water had flowed again. The balance still existed between the forces of life and of death. There is a balance in man also, one which has set against his greed and his inertia and his foolishness; his courage, his will, his ability slowly and painfully to learn, and to work together."

The Courage... the will... the "ability slowly and painfully to learn, and to work together."

Her legacy lives on.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School family – students, teachers and loved ones – are taking a stand on behalf of those who were killed by promoting common sense gun safety to prevent more tragedies. Their school's namesake channeled her passion toward positive change on behalf of something she deeply loved too, part of a resilient ecosystem that supports life.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

The U.S. Constitution's Amazing 'Visionary'

Review by Bill Doughty

"John Quincy Adams: American Visionary" (2014, HarperCollins)

This book was recommended recently by John Kirby, spokesman for Secretary of State John Kerry and former Chief of Navy Information.

Like his father, John Quincy Adams was a complicated hero of a young nation. A voracious reader, world-traveler and deep-thinking moralist, JQA recognized the sin of slavery and saw the need for a strong navy and army.

In "American Visionary" we get an international perspective at a time when "The United States still had no army or navy of consequence."

John Quincy Adams – and books – in 1843.

JQA had a front-row seat to French and British confiscation of American ships, British impressment of American sailors (which brought about the War of 1812), the return of Napoleon in France, and the effects of a trade embargo. He was intimately involved in the nation's response of the British warship Leopold agains USS Chesapeake, and he was intensely interested in the inventions of Robert Fulton, including the steamboat and torpedo.

Adams was an early proponent of strength through national inclusion, innovation and infrastructure-building. He "strongly believed that the roads, canals and harbors were essential to the future prosperity of the country and the promotion of national unity."

Two hundred years ago, just after the War of 1812, John Quincy Adams served as a diplomatic envoy in London. A lover of poetry and literature, he immersed himself in the evenings in reading, reciting and studying William Shakespeare and attending theatrical performances of Shakespeare's work.

During the day he worked to represent the interests of the United States in Europe, including negotiating trade agreements, and  helped the needs of American citizens abroad. Here's a very early look at veteran homelessness from Kaplan's and Adams's description:

"And there was constant applications from American sailors, often reduced to begging, who had been impressed (forced) into the British Navy, and from American prisoners of war released from the infamous Dartmouth prison ... British poverty was palpably visible. Hungry wanderers begged for food at the door of Little Boston House, 'each with a different hideous tale of misery ... The extremes of opulence and of want are more remarkable and more constantly obvious in this country than in any other that I ever saw.' ... That there were beggars in America John Quincy knew from experience. But the numbers in Great Britain made American poverty seem minuscule and easily managed. In the United States there was more work to be had, even in hard times. It pained Adams to see starving Americans, many able-bodied, some damaged by war and imprisonment, forced to beg in the streets of a foreign country. He worked tirelessly, and stretched his own and the embassy's resources to assist them."

Adams had a long and distinguished career as a statesman even at an early age. He had lived throughout Europe. He played a role in patching up misunderstandings, reaching compromises and building peace.

In 1817 President Monroe appointed him Secretary of State.

That pivot point in JQA's life ignites Fred Kaplan's biography.

Adams's journey from England to the United States in July and August of 1817 to accept appointment as Secretary of State took 51 days, a time to consider challenges with France, Britain and Spain over the Great Lakes, Louisiana and Florida, among other areas and territories.

"On shipboard, he pondered his and his country's future. As much as he worried about foreign affairs, he had an even more pervasive anxiety: the internal health of the nation. Like both his parents, he believed as deeply in the union as he believed in his life. During his father's presidency, both Republicans and Federalists had threatened disunion. After the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson and Madison had claimed the right to secession. Now the South as demanding that new states allow slavery. Whether they had moral objections or not, Northern states objected to the additional congressional and electoral votes that the South would have. The British could be handled, though there would be difficulties. So too could Spain, which Adams had reason to believe would in the end capitulate. There were trade issues with France, though at their worst they were not not likely to result in armed conflict. To Adams, domestic tensions seemed most threatening in the long run. The Declaration of Independence and slavery were, he believed, incompatible. Still, maintaining the union was paramount. 'Much as I must disapprove of the general tenor of Southern politics I would rather even yield to their unreasonable pretensions, and suffer much for their wrongs, than break the chain that binds us altogether ... if it is once broken we shall soon divide into a parcel of petty tribes at perpetual war with one another.' The War of 1812 had 'revealed our darkest side, or tendency to faction, sectionalism, and disunion.' The future contained the threat of 'the dissolution of the Union and a civil war.'"

Adams saw the Sandy Hook lighthouses as his ship came close to the American shore. He visited officials in New York, going aboard the first steam frigate that used both sail and steam, USS John Adams, before heading to see his parents in Quincy, Massachusetts aboard the steamship Fulton. In a visit to Boston he boarded both the the USS Constitution and USS Guerriere.

Kaplan reveals the internecine political thorns Adams faced close to the seat of power as Secretary of State, a position both Jefferson and Monroe had held. "More so than Monroe, Adams believed that American prosperity required greater power for the federal government to promote internal improvements and a modern banking system, encourage manufacturing, advance education and science, and strengthen the military."

"Slaves Waiting for Sale" first sketched by British artist Eyre Crowe ten years after Adams died.

Kaplan shows us his strong aversion to slavery and so-called "divine rights," a full generation before the nation plunged into the War Between the States.

His one term as president was followed by service in the House of Representatives, where he became a strong and committed voice for abolition, "proposing a constitutional amendment 'abolishing hereditary slavery in the United States, prohibiting admission of new slave states, and abolishing slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia.' He had moved from discreet tactfulness to outspoken radicalism," writes Kaplan. Congress voted 114 to 108 for a continuing gag rule to prevent voting on the amendment, and Adams earned countless death threats from slavery proponents.

He stepped up before the Supreme Court to successfully defend  imprisoned Africans aboard the Amistad after the slave ship was rescued and recovered by USS Washington, when "racism, proslavery sentiment and national politics were a toxic mix."

Kaplan presents Adams as a respected statesman who was selected to present the nation's eulogy for Lafayette, help establish the Smithsonian Institution and protect the rights of American Indian tribes. His position against annexation of Texas in support of  Great Britain in the opium war in China – not to mention women's rights – are perplexing until we consider his circumstances.

Human nature dictates that people are often limited in their imagination by their place in space and time. JQA was no different, believing women were denied the right to vote, for example, because of "nature's foundation in natural law and God's will" and that "the preservation of the values of the Declaration and the Constitution did not require it."

Nevertheless, Adams argued for progress in the nullification of slavery using founding documents. Kaplan writes:

"The values that should shape the present, he argued, as he had done many times before, were those inherent in the history of the nation and in its foundational documents. His major target was the doctrine of nullification, its arbitrary and willful insult to the facts and values of American history. The history he summarized was, of course, Adams' version, with its emphasis on the rationale for the revolution in specific events and natural law. Freedom was everything. Liberty and morality were the highest values. The Declaration of Independence provided the principles, the Constitution the implementation. The brilliance of the Constitution was that it was both stable and elastic – it was both stable and elastic – it was a living document. The Bill of Rights, he observed, had corrected a flaw. More corrections were necessary. The Constitution mandated that the federal government 'promote the general welfare.' That meant new initiatives, such as public improvements, that the authors could not have anticipated but had made provision for in general terms. And its most precious gift was union. It was a sacred contract."

Sailors present a wreath at the tomb of John Quincy Adams in 2009. (Photo by Lt. Chad Murphy)

Kaplan gives us details of the challenges, triumphs and failures in Adams's long life, a life filled with illness and injury, including a hand seriously hurt by a misfiring handgun leading to infections, and problems with his eyes – extreme problems for a poet, writer and reader. In addition to Shakespeare, Adams read Plutarch, Cicero, Voltaire, Hume, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, John Milton, the Bible and a French translation of the Koran (Quo'ran).

A theme of JQA's life was "stoic courage and acceptance of adversity and death." He experienced the death of most of his immediate and extended family, often at an early age. One son, George Washington Adams was "erratic and unstable" and committed suicide. Another son, John Adams II, died from the effects of alcoholism at 31.

The book opens with his father's death, as Quincy Adams hurries home, hoping in vain to see his beloved father before he died.

Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson passed away hours apart on July 4th, 1826.

U.S. Navy Frees Cuba

Review by Bill Doughty

The United States Navy helped the people of Cuba achieve independence from "corrupt, repressive Spanish colonial reign," writes Ivan Musicant in "Empire By Default" (Holt, 1998), a comprehensive reference about a decade of "profound turbulence."

The 1890s included a major economic depression, the annexation of Hawaii, and war with Spain over Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Also during the turbulent decade that led to what the author calls the dawn of the American century:

"The powers, East and West, were carving up the prostrate body of defenseless imperial China. Great Britain, Germany, Russia, France and Japan had scooped out large chunks for naval bases, railroads, mining concessions, and trading zones, eyeing one another with the deadly suspicion of thieves splitting the loot."

Africa was still being partitioned by imperial powers, an "avaricious Japan" was already setting its sights on East and South East Asia, and tensions were high with Germany over Samoa. And in 1895 some Americans were nearly ready to go to war again with Britain over its "arrogance" in the Americas, including over Venezuela's boundaries.

Meantime, Germany, Japan and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt were inspired by the strategic concepts of Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, author of "Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660, 1783." A stronger more powerful Navy was the advantage in the Spanish-American War.

Author Musicant opens and closes the 658+ page "Empire By Default" with references to the great naval thinker. It's another indication of how great Mahan's influence is to the development of the modern Navy and American century.

"Empire" includes copious notes, an extensive bibliography, supporting photos, and a helpful index. Historical profiles are provided on Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo, General Campo, General Weyler, Secretary of the Navy Long, Commodore  Dewey, Capt. Sigsbee, Senator Proctor, Capt. Sampson, Brig. Gen. Shafter, and Commodore Schley, among others.

Musicant shows how a mysterious explosion aboard USS Maine ignited war, how Col. Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders took San Juan Hill, and why readiness is so important to success in warfare. "In training, discipline, education, seamanship, and engineering, the Spanish navy was woefully behind its American enemy."

The Spanish-American War demonstrated the capabilities of expeditionary forces, reminding the nation of the significance of the Marines, the need for interservice interoperability, and the importance of accurate assessment of capabilities.

"The war for Cuba – and the Philippines and Puerto Rico as well – would depend, in chief, not on the strength and number of soldiers in the field, but on who controlled the sea, and here Spain had not the slightest chance of success. Falling into a fatal mode of military fantasy, in 1895 Spain adopted a new rating system for its navy that was wholly unrealistic and went far to dupe the nation and even foreign naval observers, who should have known better, into classifying the Spanish navy into a much higher material category of strength and readiness than it deserved."

The defeat of Rear Adm. Cervera in Cuba was a turning point not only for the United States Navy but also for the world against imperialism and monarchy. The Spanish Empire was coming to an end just as the United States "forged a new empire" based on altruism and independence, according to Musicant.

The Spanish American War guaranteed the building of a canal in Central America so the Navy could move from ocean to ocean.

And, with the annexation of Hawaii, the nation became "a commanding presence in the Far East ... as a naval base projecting power to the Orient."

"The battle had wrested for the U.S. Navy total control of the sea," Musicant writes. "America, as Alfred Thayer Mahan had predicted, now looked outward."

Antislavery Writings in Resolving Hypocrisy

Review by Bill Doughty

George Washington ensured his slaves were freed but not till after his death.

By the time George Washington died he had resolved the greatest hypocrisy of his life. 

Much of the "Last Will and Testament" of the first American president, a man who fought the Revolutionary War for liberty and equality, is dedicated to freeing his slaves and funding their care and education. In many parts of the young country at the time it was illegal to teach slaves how to read.

Jefferson did not resolve the same hypocrisy and, in fact, compounded it through his actions.

Lincoln confronted and resolved the issue on behalf of the nation five decades after Washington's death.

"American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation," edited by James G. Basker and published by the Library of America, offers hundreds of stories, narratives, poems, letters and songs. The book includes Washington's will related to his slaves.

Among the several passages written by Abraham Lincoln in this book is Lincoln's "Peoria" speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which permitted slavery in the new territories leading to the West. Lincoln argued for the blessings of freedom and against those who found legal and biblical justification for slavery as morally justified.

"Let us turn slavery from its claims of 'moral right,' back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of 'necessity.' Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south -- let all Americans -- let all lovers of liberty everywhere -- join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations."

One of the highlights in this exceptional compilation is an excerpt from "Twelve Years a Slave," the 1853 narrative of Solomon Northrup.  "Northrup presents a detailed sketch of the sadistic slave master Edwin Epps that is almost mesmerizing in its graphic horror," Basker writes. (Northrup's memoir was depicted in a top movie of 2013 directed by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael K. Williams, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt.)

From the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Another highly recommended gem in "American Antislavery Writings" is the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Slave Ships."

Of course, this book includes abolitionist writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and John Brown.  It also includes words of patriots and poets such as Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, Edmund Quincy, Emily Dickinson, William Cullen Bryant, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Former president John Quincy Adams represented Joseph Cinqué and other African captives who had freed themselves from captivity while aboard a Spanish schooner slave ship. Amistad was discovered off Long Island by the U.S. Navy brig Washington. 

President Martin Van Buren ordered the Amistad's slaves be returned to Spain, but Adams argued before the Supreme Court, "the right of personal liberty is individual." He said, "The moment you come, to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided."

One of the strongest condemnations of slavery in America comes at the end of the book in Charles Sumner's "Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln."

"Traitorous assassination struck him down. But do not be too vindictive in heart towards the poor atom that held the weapon. Reserve your rage for the responsible Power, which not content with assailing the life of the Republic by atrocious Rebellion, has outraged all laws human and divine; has organized Barbarism as a principle of conduct; has taken the lives of faithful Unionists at home; has prepared robbery and murder on the northern borders; has fired hotels, filled with women and children; has plotted to scatter pestilence and poison; has perpetrated piracy and ship-burning at sea; has starved American citizens, held as prisoners; has inflicted the slow torture of Andersonville and Libby; has menaced assassination always; and now at last, true to itself, has assassinated our President; and this responsible Power is none other than Slavery. It is Slavery that has taken the life of our beloved Chief Magistrate, and here is another triumph of its Barbarism. On Slavery let vengeance fall."

This book also includes a chronology of the slave trade in the colonies and efforts to abolish it in the new nation under the 16th president and 13th Amendment.

This week my generation remembered the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the Beatles from Britain to the United States. In 1964, the Beatles, like Elvis before them, skyrocketed to fame playing music inspired by African-American Rhythm & Blues. (Recommended: timeline  in Dr. Portia K. Maultsby's "History of African American Music.")

The 50 year marker back to 1964 can be used as a yardstick back in time.

Muddy Waters helped plant seeds of rock & roll.

Subtract another 50 years. What were people listening to in 1914, the year World War I began?  The great blues artist Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) was born the year before. Big Bill Broonzy, who would be a key influence to John Lennon years later, was already playing music and getting ready to move to Chicago. It was the very early beginning of commercial jazz and blues, but the hot group was the American Quartet, who performed top hits, "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary," "Rebecca of Sunny-Brook Farm" and "Do You Take This Woman for Your Lawful Wife."  Sobering to think that, in 1914, women did not yet have the right to vote.  

Back another 50 years -- 1864, popular forms of music were "parlor" and "minstrel."  That was the year songwriter Stephen Foster died.  Foster's complicated and evolving views about slavery are discussed in an online essay by Matthew Shaftel in University of California at Santa Barbara's "Music and Politics" journal.

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln fought for emancipation.

Another 50 years -- from 1864 to 1814 -- puts us in the midst of the War of 1812 and four years before the birth of free-thinking philosopher Frederick Douglass. Beethoven and Schubert produced music of the time and Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner ("O'er the land of the free...").  Key was a slaveowner who helped found the American Colonization Society, which strove to send free African Americans back to Africa and led to the establishment of Liberia.

Back another 50 years: Fifty years prior to 1814 takes us to 1764, when Bach and Mozart were producing music 12 years before 1776. 

Phillis Wheatley, 1753-1784

Those few 50-year yardsticks take us back quickly to the beginning of our nation when slavery was the norm but when the voices of abolition were already building. 

"American Antislavery Writings" includes a number of songs and poems starting with the brilliant Phillis Wheatley, America's first African American woman writer.

Wheatley addressed the hypocrisy of slavery in a letter to the Rev. Samson Occum just two years before the Declaration of Independence, addressing her thoughts to "those whose avarice impels them" to support slavery.  "This I desire ... to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Words and Actions are so diametrically opposite. How well the Cry for Liberty, and the reverse Disposition for the Exercise of oppressive Power over others agree, -- I humbly think it does not require the Penetration of the Philosopher to determine."

Basker's compilation includes uncredited Anonymous authors, with many voices rising to a crescendo in the 1840s. Women used verse to illuminate the plight of mothers separated from children and vice versa.

Margaret Lucy Shands Bailey of Virginia wrote for anti-slavery periodicals including "National Era," in which Harriet Beecher Stowe first serialized "Uncle Tom's Cabin."  Bailey's "The Blind Slave Boy" was put to music and published in 1844.

"Come back to me mother! Why linger away from thy poor little blind boy, the long weary day!I mark every footstep, I list(en) to each tone, And wonder my mother should leave me alone! There are voices of sorrow, and voices of glee, But there's no one to joy or to sorrow with me; For each hath of pleasure and trouble his share, And none for the poor little blind boy will care."

The case against slavery was won with a combination of cold logic, warm emotion and hot passion that led to a necessary war to preserve the United States.

This book shows how the nation lived up to the ideals expressed by Jefferson, fought for by Washington and realized by Lincoln.

This is a recommended read for this Presidents Day and during Black History Month.

1812: The Navy’s War

by Bill Doughty

We don’t know what we don’t know, and ignorance of history condemns us to repeat past mistakes.

That could explain why the bicentennial of the War of 1812 -- which has lots of lessons from the past, of the present, and for the future -- is so important to the Navy.

It was:

• Our second war for independence;

• A war with Great Britain and Canada, now among our strongest allies; and

• A rebirth for the U.S. Navy, inspiring the Star Spangled Banner.

Author George C. Daughan gives a Navy-oriented history lesson in his 2011 overview, 1812: The Navy’s War.  A reading of the history of the War of 1812 teaches why this conflict was so important to the nation’s development, especially as a world economic power.

We see familiar themes and how they apply today in chapters like “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” “Jefferson’s Embargo and the Slide to War,” and “From Temporary Amistice to Lasting Peace: The Importance of the War.”

The book reveals how the Navy committed to being a blue water, forward-deployed and ready force for a nation that was less than 40 years old, just 25 years since the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and a mere five years after two big milestones: Robert Fulton development of the first practical steamboat and the British Parliament’s declaration that it was illegal to buy, sell and transport slaves.

Daughan shows that the strength of the Navy -- demonstrated at Lake Erie, Plattsburgh Bay, Baltimore and New Orleans -- proved to the British that their former colonies made a formidable partner.  The collaboration and cooperation earned on the seas and in the littorals in 1812 would prove invaluable in the next century in two world wars.

Madison - Painting by Chet Jezierski 

The book begins and ends with a discussion of economics and commerce.  President Madison was enthralled with the British Empire’s economic might but, like Thomas Jefferson, championed the more French ideals of human rights and equality.

Daughan shows how Madison’s pragmatic approach with former enemies and strategic conduct of the War of 1812, “within the confines of the Constitution,” contributed to lasting military and diplomatic success.  “In conducting himself in this manner, he immeasurably strengthened the democratic forces that had been building in America since the start of the Revolution and that had accelerated under Jefferson.”

1812: The Navy’s War inspires the reader to think about the rise of nationalism, the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and everything else that was happening in the world during that pivotal time, including and how it might affect history in generations to come:

• 1812 - Napoleon led his Grand Army from France, Germany and Poland into Russia (read Tolsoy’s War and Peace), which had just finished fighting the Russo-Finnish War and was already fighting the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Persian Wars; 

• From 1808 to 1813 - Napoleonic Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal;

• From 1811 to 1818 - the Egyptian war with Wahhabis, with Egyptian forces retaking Mecca from the Wahhabis in 1813;

• From 1811 to 1825 - Latin-American wars of independence;

• 1812 - Russian establishment of Fort Ross outpost near Bodea Bay in Northern California, Fort Ross. (The Russians tried to lay claim to Alaska in the previous century and established three forts on Kauai, Hawaii beginning in 1817.)

• From 1804 to 1813 - Serbian Insurrection (with WWI implications); and 

• 1812 - Siamese invasion of Cambodia.

Connecting all of those nations, directly or indirectly: the world's oceans and a still-developing world economy.  The slogan for the bicentennial is  "America's Navy... Keeping the sea free for more than 200 years."  The Navy has a 200-years-ago-today timeline on its 1812 bicentennial site as well as an interactive map, historic paintings, classroom curricula, and a list of events, starting with the Navy's kickoff event in April 2012 in Washington, D.C.

Last year we reviewed books tied to the Centennial of Naval Aviation.  This year we look forward to exploring the significance of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and how it shaped the Navy, the United States and the world.

The USS Constitution had a special role to play in 1812, as did its skipper.
According to history.navy.mil: "Captain Hull's time on Constitution was eventful. He took the ship on a European cruise in 1811-12, returning home before the War of 1812 broke out between the United States and Great Britain. An enemy squadron closely pursued his ship off the East Coast in July, but Hull skillfully evaded them. On 19 August 1812, Constitution encountered the British frigate Guerriere at sea and pounded her to a wreck in an action that electrified the Nation and demonstrated that the small U.S. Navy was a worthy and dangerous opponent for Britain's otherwise overwhelming maritime might."