While the
South licked her wounds, the North
engaged in a similar endeavor. The first drilling for “rockoil” by Edwin L.
Drake on 28 August 1859 in Pennsylvania ushered in the American Industrial Age.
During the Civil War in 1863, John D. Rockefeller entered the oil business and
soon monopolized control of all oil refineries in Cleveland. In 1870, he began
Standard Oil Company. Rockefeller introduced kerosene and gasoline to a country
that no longer needed candles to read or horses to pull their carriages. This
was a revolution and oil made Rockefeller the wealthiest American of all time
and the richest person in modern history – virtually a “god of profit” anointed
with the almighty dollar. That’s how Americans saw Robber Barons as they first
appeared after the war to possess society. A war-torn nation welcomed their
ingenuity and wealth. Like the older discovery of the profit potential of sugar
production, the world changed with the discovery of oil. Oil magnates now had
more power than any god imaginable and these gods of industry sat upon a “black
gold” throne glistening with their new lucrative treasure!
Robber Barons of the following so-called Gilded Age lorded over an era of rapid economic
growth, especially in the North and West. It perhaps reflected the old days of
piracy in terms of political corruption and corporate financial misdealings,
creating many wealthy industrialists who lived extravagant lives. In this time,
corporations became the most common form of business and unions began to fight
abuse of labor by those corporations. This essentially created the economic
stratification we experience today – with a short hiccup brought by FDR’s New
Deal in the 1930s and 40s. Although not directly related to the South’s recent
abuse of human slave labor, the Gilded Age created an equally abusive period of
labor exploitation from a new breed of conservatives – essentially, slavery had
been reborn, taking advantage of whites as well as blacks. At least, the new
white “slaves” could take comfort in the fact that they would never be viewed
as lowly as black slaves in the South! Democratic President Lyndon Baines
Johnson later commented upon this notion when he signed the Civil Rights Act in
1964.
Southern conservatives lost the Civil War, but they
did “rise again” and their economic ideals and fear of suppression by Northern
government found a new home in the next ironically-named “Progressive Era”
(1890-1920s), targeting regulation of huge monopolies and corporations – the
spawn of those hated Yankees. Some Progressive Era conservative Southern
Democrats like William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson re-awoke racial social
conservatism and attempted to maintain segregation, established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 – and white
supremacist domination over their former slaves and their children. As
previously mentioned, during this Progressive Era, occurred the 1898 Wilmington
Race Riot – killing as many as 500 African-Americans out of fear of a
culturally-hated “Negro Rule.” Newspapers such as the Raleigh News and Observer (think: Fox News) wielded enormous political power over American thought – political
piracy in the printed word comparable to another “counterfactual” as written by
Johnson-Mist in 1724. They spread this fear of “Negro Rule” as shown in figure
2.
Figure
2: A cartoon from an issue of the Raleigh
News & Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina from 1898. It shows the
political issue that North Carolinians most feared during the special election
that year – “Negro Rule” or African-American Rule – an election during which
the sitting relatively-liberal governor, Lindsey Russell nearly avoided
assassination on a train home to Wilmington to cast his vote! This cartoon
depicts an African-American as a bat reaching to grab at fleeing white women.
This copy has been annotated with the source and enhanced the caption for
easier viewing. For more detail, see LeRae Umfleet, A Day of Blood: the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot (Raleigh: North
Carolina Office of Archives and History, 2009).
Oddly, they were joined in fighting government
corruption by Republicans such as “trustbuster” Theodore Roosevelt. Progressive
Era Republicans had forgotten the “Party of Lincoln” sobriquet, but still did
not wholly share their Southern counterparts’ racial prejudice at this time.
Most Republicans had re-invented themselves from abolitionists (1854-1877)
after Reconstruction to follow the new treasure, capitalizing on mostly oil
profits and war materiel – though some were still after South American sugar profits.
They fought in Progressive politics against not just government “corruption,”
as it were, but government control over their business practices – essentially,
corporate rights – particularly over the gold standard which they greatly
relied upon to turn profits in the “Roaring Twenties.” These Republicans and
their wealthy oligarch corporate lords would abuse the markets so much that
they actually caused the Great Depression of 1929.
It was the time of “Great Man” redeemer “histories”
written by former Confederate soldiers like Attorney-General George Davis,
Samuel A’Court Ashe, and William L. Saunders. Redeemers elevated former slavers
to “great man” status once again – “Redeemers” or redemption of those who
suffered their costly “Lost Cause” a half-century before. “Pirates” retook
their status and their history. Again, politically useful “counterfactual”
narratives – like those of Johnson-Mist in A
General History – returned!
Southern conservative resurgence of this time skewered
Edward “Blackbeard” Thache’s reputation the most. The British maintained
control over their biased Golden Age narrative from the early eighteenth
century, but Americans turned it around and wholly adopted it as their own in
“Redeemer” histories. This involved the subtle political manipulation of
historical truth as in the “counterfactual” described by Dr. Manushag Powell.
Much like Nathaniel Mist writing as “Capt. Charles Johnson” with A General History of the Pyrates, we
turned our own historical narrative around 180 degrees for entertainment, but
also to demonstrate our new-found technological progress and hide from our
violent past. Because of this turn of weaponized history, though, America was
robbed of even further social progress! Personally, I suspect that this is when
we also stopped enjoying or even learning our history – again, another
characteristic that we do not share with our British cousins. We had to suspect
that even our basic history was replete with lies and half-truths.
After separation, our own capitalists controlled that
narrative for their own purposes from the turn of the nineteenth century. This
helped them deflect their corrupt behaviors and to contrast the angelic and
racist “Columbia,” who they claimed saved us from these “notorious villains,”
into a new era of worthy “American Progress,” our divinely-assured Manifest
Destiny! Actually, it still resembled the Carolinian Domitus cultoribus
orbis, “to dominate and conquer
the world,” as Barbadians anointed for themselves in their Carolina Seal
of 1663. Little had changed in the American profiteer mindset. Ask any Native,
Central, or South American if you’re so inclined to learn the truth!
Demonizing the old Golden Age “common enemies of all
mankind” became a way of demonstrating technological and social advancement
brought by the new “champions of industry.” Conquering the pirates of old
opened the way for the worship of great feats of capitalism. Again, shiny
treasure drew the eye while suppressing the mind. But, it was nevertheless
entertaining!
Aiding the efforts of our capitalists in this new
anti-historical approach were anti-historical pirate tales of fiction. Robert
Louis Stevenson is best known
for his classic Treasure Island, an icon of pirate literature that stirred a renewed
interest in pirate history – or maritime ahistory – in the late nineteenth
century. A look at Stevenson’s changing politics is quite revealing for this
period. In 1877, Stevenson was only twenty-six years of age. Before writing his
major fictional works, Stevenson at that time reflected on his transformation
from a “Socialist” into a quintessential American, as he saw it:
For my part, I look back to
the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret. I have convinced
myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we
call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than
the little, peering, partial eyesight of men… Now I know that in thus turning
Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and
travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions. I submit to this, as I would
submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing
animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the
better—I dare say it is deplorably for the worse.[1]
Figure 3: American Progress "Spirit of the
Frontier" was painted in 1872 by John Gast (1842-1893) - This
representation of Manifest Destiny illustrates the divinely-inspired angelic
Columbia. This angelic spirit represents the United States and the expansion
out West - as unclothed and "primitive" Native Americans, flee from her.
She holds telegraph wire and there is a train in the background symbolizing the
industrialization of the West. “Manifest Destiny” was based on the belief of
cultural and racial superiority over other peoples - the obligation to bring God,
civilization, and enlightenment to other races. The phrase "Manifest
Destiny" was coined by the journalist John O'Sullivan in 1845. This
imperial notion is most frequently associated with the massive territorial
expansion of the United States over just fifty years from 1803 to 1853 and its
westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean.
The Scottish Stevenson, in 1877, was – like many –
excited by “Columbia” and dreams of greatness. He made an effort to become an
American and attempted to emulate American upper-class society at the time –
i.e., he sought the “American Dream” of capital wealth “beyond the lines of
amity” – as did many seventeenth and eighteenth-century Englishman before him
in the West Indies. His later novel, The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde may have reflected upon his moral
struggles at the time. Capitalism won out it appears, much to his own chagrin.
Six years later, he penned Treasure
Island, originally a tale for boys, but one that invigorated
in Americans a broader renewed interest in all things pirate. Treasure Island also made Long John
Silver, a nasty pirate of questionable morality and greed, a
household figure for the rest of our history. It seems that the inner pirate
won the fight within Stevenson’s soul and molded the perfect “pirate” character
for Disney’s future film, Blackbeard the
Pirate in 1952. This film had done far more damage to Edward Thache’s
reputation than even “Capt. Charles Johnson” had ever dreamed!
Johnson-Mist’s “villainous Blackbeard” character arose like a phoenix – or like the South –
to new life! Moreover, Confederate redeemers like Samuel A. Ashe found a
template on which to damn Edward Thache and other pirates, while also redeeming
their Family’s actions in that notorious affair – and establish themselves as
truly “great men” of the honorable state of North Carolina! Amateur writers
like John Watson of Pennsylvania, ex-Confederate soldier Thomas Upshur of
Virginia, and Ellen Winslow of Perquimons County, North Carolina began to speculate
on Edward Thache’s origins and intricately weaved him into their local
histories. Then, trained historians, like Dr. Hugh Rankin, felt empowered
enough by Blackbeard’s alleged evil to officially “trash” the Royal Navy
veteran and businessman. Of course, Rankin did not trash Edward Thache for his
crude early capitalism, but for the “wicked,” “traitorous,” demonic,” and
“notorious” methods and his violation of womanly virtue as A General History’s demonic character Blackbeard. Armed with a century old tradition of the new
anti-pirate redeemer “counterfactual,” it became easy for even professional
historians like Dr. Rankin to accept that Capt. Charles Johnson’s A General History of 1724 must have been
absolutely true! Any mind abused by redeemer rhetoric could easily pick up a
copy of Treasure Island and read how
all pirates must have truly behaved! This finished any remnants of Thache’s
good reputation while, at the same time, it hid American capitalism’s true
origins in crude West Indian methods.
The longer these merchant-pirates plundered in
America, the greater the returns became; the longer they ignored humanity for
the sake of profit, the more unique they became. Over the next few decades,
Robber Barons like
Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie nearly destroyed our economics with the Great
Depression as surely as they destroyed Native American populations for railroad
profits. Some of us persevered. Still, we barely survived
these piratical corporate forces; but, oddly, we never tried them for their
crimes because we couldn’t wholly separate their criminal mindset from the
histories we were taught in school! Robber Baron oligarchs were always “too big
to fail” or too well accepted as necessary – too much of heroes to America.
After all, we were like them – maybe would be
them one day – maybe catch some of that “American Dream” profit as it trickled
down upon us from the sugar, silver, gold, and “black gold” shiny treasures!
Democracy was hopelessly lost in this treasure-filled
maelstrom of greed. Thousands of Native Americans – not to ignore the millions
who previously died of disease – died for the “Dream,” the profit – money. As
the territory and “outsiders” (ironically, the native population) to conquer
faded, so did the focus: our capitalist mercenaries searched inward for new
prey. They had the entire Western Hemisphere to capitalize upon, as dictated in
the Monrone Doctrine. Remaining focused on treasure, they found ready adherents
to the capitalist cause among their own kin. And, the great fortunes that they
had been able to amass for themselves accrued with every expedition west and
south – sending their agents to steal land, kill Indians, lay rail, and pray to
their vengeful god to survive the next Indian uprising in their remote frontier
outposts. They merely hoped God’s vengeance would be turned upon their
adversaries!
[1] Robert Louis Stevenson, Crabbed Age and
Youth and Other Essays (Portland: Thomas B. Mosher, 1907), 11–12.
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