What did the
reputation for piracy and violence do
to the new United States? Even before the Revolution, Samuel Johnson considered
Americans “a race of convicts.”[1]
Indeed, many Americans – both white and black – came to American shores as
criminals in chains. As surely as Alexander Hamilton, smuggler John Hancock, and the terrorist Samuel Adams, the pirate
“criminal” Edward “Blackbeard” Thache might have been
one of our earliest founding fathers, six decades before Washington, Madison,
Jefferson, or Franklin. We may have seen Thache as stirring “up all Heroick and
Active Spirits… to benefit their Prince and Country… and immortalize their
Names by the like noble Attempts,” as one British author wrote in 1716 about
the pirate Sir Francis Drake, the quoted author’s “English Hero,” a “Great Man” in
American history![2]
Thache, however, lost his revolution and certain British factions murdered him
as certainly as King George III would have done the same to our founders –
found guilty of treason and hung or shot Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and
Franklin – if they had also lost their
later revolution.
As for Donald Trump’s alleged betrayal of the United
States with Russia, George Washington clearly saw “foreign influence” in our
affairs as disgraceful. For an American Administration to collude with
foreigners is a betrayal of the nation. Let’s be clear, though – America
diverged from Britain. This betrayal is still not considered “treason” as
President Trump himself often accused of his many detractors, including the
famed “whistleblower” exposing Trump’s extortion of Ukraine’s president – oh,
no – it’s not treason. Again, according to the U.S. Constitution, no war had
been declared by America – the “Commonwealth of Pyrates!” So, neither Trump nor
his opponents can be accused of actual “treason” in the course of their
betrayal of the United States of America! Trump et al basically pirate or rob our “democracy” to fill their coffers
of treasure and stay in power – ostensibly indefinitely! These political
brigands cared not with whom they colluded to obtain their goals – even
America’s longest-term enemy, Russia!
After that second successful Revolution, America
restored the older Stuart-like conservative atmosphere that it had cherished
for centuries. This time, however, the United States became a sovereign nation
and had no mother country chastising their actions. Owing to a distrust of
outsiders – even other states – they first intended to form a “confederation”
or loose separate governments held by a pact to support one another. This
proved difficult during the Revolution – prosecuting tactics become problematic
when thirteen separate governments don’t all agree – and it was decided against
in the later Constitutional Convention in favor of Federalism. A more
centralized government proved necessary. Owing to great divisions between the
Puritan descendants of northern states and West-Indian-like southern states,
the Confederate States of America, however, attempted to split – secede from
the union – and reform a confederation in 1860.
“Piracy,” as a term, had been tainted by the Golden
Age, but a new, slightly variant economic ideology had come more to the front
with sugar and rice production for United States’ elites to rhetoricize –
capitalism. The old zero-sum methods of the early Stuart period had given way
to production of wealth by abusing slave labor rather than theft – not for
noble reasons, by any means – still for greed and still immoral. The Deep South
grew quite wealthy under this plantation capitalist economy – before losing the
Civil War and industrialization later gave the North the capital edge. Still,
little had changed – the same wealthy gentlemen ruled America. This slightly
modified second “Stuart Restoration” became the narrative under which we all
live today – as well as our stringently stubborn and Southern anti-government
far-right politics. Pirates/capitalists/larcenists refined their methods and
donned better clothes!
It is often mere convenience today to assume that a
progressive, or truly unified capitalistic America “belongs” here, that it
developed into a great nation through natural progress based on righteous
principles of laissez faire capitalism.
This is the notion taught to me in high school. It may be flattering and
comforting, but it truly stretches the truth. The so-called “United States” has
always tended toward battling within itself – moderated upon the old quarrel
between North and South. Most of our “greatness” came by way of corruption and
crimes against humanity masquerading as refined and cultured laissez faire capitalism. Barbadian
descendants of Charles Town, South Carolina have usually been the primary
culprits throughout this history, but there were northern notables as well.
The South has been more brutal and feudal in their
methods, not despite of, but because of,
their strong reverence for a supreme being. This was not the beneficent Jesus
of the Bible’s New Testament – more like the vengeful jealous God of the Old
Testament! Many have termed him the “god of the slave-master.” Furthermore, the
South has usually been a reluctant participant in the “American Experiment” of
democracy.
It may come as a surprise to find that West Indian
families of the South held American democracy hostage in both 1776 and 1789,
for the sake of their “peculiar institution” of slavery. Furthermore, these
direct descendants of West Indians fought to preserve slavery throughout the
antebellum period and they also instigated the violence in the Civil War. They
still proudly discourse their firing on Fort Sumter, a federal installation –
truly an act of treason or war – depending on whether or not you accept the
sovereignty of the Confederate States – against the United States. Most like
their Caribbean ancestors, they more quickly relied upon violence to solve
their problems – force their own will over democracy or the will of the people.
Understand that I’m trying not to be unnecessarily harsh on my own Southern
culture – it’s simply the truth!
Thomas Jefferson saw the irony in a new nation based
on freedom, yet still with an enslaved population. He included an anti-slavery
clause in a draft of the Declaration of
Independence, agreed to be a unanimous contract between all colonies.
Remember, it was almost impossible to get these widely different colonies to
agree – unanimously. North and South Carolina delegates demanded that this
clause be removed before they would sign that “unanimous” document, however.
They threatened to remain loyal to Britain, nearly denying a start to our
unique American democracy. Jefferson removed the anti-slavery clause and the
Carolinas relented. Not long afterward, during the Constitutional Convention,
they made the same demand. Upon the constitutional debate following the
American Revolution, John Routledge of South Carolina – in a rare moment of
secular truth for the godly South – argued that “Religion and morality have
nothing to do with this… interest alone is the governing principle with
Nations.”[3]
Note that he spoke of capital interests and not
those of the majority of the people who had rarely possessed extra change in
their pockets. There was absolutely nothing democratic about slavery. For the
Old South, all roads led to profit. Routledge, with an eye toward protecting
his interests – specifically slavery – represented the Deep South as Colin
Woodard described in American Nations. Lack of morality most
certainly influenced Routledge’s argument. He used the South’s greater
plantation wealth, derived from slave labor, as leverage at the Constitutional
Convention – a leverage used to force legitimization of slave labor for most of
the history of this undemocratic democracy of the United States. “The true
question,” he said, “is whether the Southn. States shall or shall not be
parties to the Union,” a financially depleted Union that badly needed the
South’s dominant economic power.[4]
This was more than seventy years before the South decided finally to secede
from a democracy for which they cared so little from the start.
The work of Colin Woodard helps us to see the disjoint
nature of America more clearly and especially the sacrifice of democracy,
merely an insincere political promise during the Revolution, in favor of
privatization and capitalism. Woodard asserts that
the U.S. Constitution itself was a betrayal of revolutionary principles:
[This document was]
intentionally designed to suppress democracy and to keep power in the hands of
regional elites and an emerging class of bankers, financial speculators, and
land barons who had little or no allegiance to the continent’s ethnocultural nations.
Indeed, the much celebrated Founding Fathers had made no secret of this having
been one of their goals. They praised the unelected Senate [like England’s
House of Lords] because it would “check the impudence of democracy” (Alexander
Hamilton), and stop the “turbulence and follies of democracy” (Edmund Randolph), and applauded the enormous federal districts because they would
“divide the community,” providing “defense against the inconveniences of
democracy” (James Madison).[5]
Woodard tells how Vermont formed apart
from New York to escape the union, forming
their own progressive state “governed by a liberal constitution that banned
slavery and property requirements for voting.”[6] Vermont was a precursor of
the later United States. Still, West-Indian immigrant from Nevis, Alexander
Hamilton appealed to the wealthy and pressured
Vermont’s most elite land barons to give up this democratic effort. Moreover,
Appalachian Borderlanders in Pennsylvania stormed out of the state’s
assembly when they learned that a constitutional vote was to be forced upon
them. Woodard tells “These delegates were later
dragged out of their beds by a posse of ‘volunteer gentlemen,’ taken to the
assembly hall, and literally dumped into their seats to create the necessary
quorum.”[7] He also asserts that
“Borderlanders weren’t against taxation or creditworthy behavior [as the
resulting federalist rhetoric accused them], but were resisting a scheme so
corrupt, avaricious, and shameless it ranks with those of Wall Street in the
first decade of the twenty-first century.”[8]
Certain Founding Fathers of
corrupt intent are best known today by their lines not-quite-sincerely praising
“democracy,” feared as “mob rule.” Golden Age pirates today, also, are best
known by terms that the independent Borderlanders may have used to describe
these particular Founding Fathers – terms like “villain,” “bloodthirsty,”
“rogue,” even “demons from hell.” Indeed, some early Founding Fathers were
outsiders - immigrants themselves and often had no prior familiarity with the
North American mainland. As Woodard says, “English-born [Robert]
Morris and West Indies-born [Alexander]
Hamilton both saw North America as the British had: as a cow to be milked for
all it was worth.”[9]
One must understand that
ideology did not stop at the water’s edge. A latecomer to sovereign nations,
America is an orphaned child of eighteenth-century Britain, sharing its
history, a semblance of social structure, and a large portion of its older
Stuart ideology. Grown frighteningly powerful and imperialistic, its
independent political structure and that of its mother ironically remain almost
identical – differing only slightly in name and procedure. The two political
systems still largely mirror one another. Structurally-speaking, England’s
executive is a prime minister; America’s, a president. England’s bicameral
legislature consists of a House of Lords and a House of Commons called
“Parliament;” America’s is a similar body called “Congress.” We use the same
language and the cultural family resemblance is uncanny – if more harsh than
it’s liberalizing mother. Particularly in post-Revolution southern America, a
new “England" had been restored on the Stuart model – a “piratish” model
more in tune with the unique American brand of “freedom.” In this conservative
atmosphere, it was almost as if America had forgotten the old British “Poor
Laws” of the seventeeth century which had recognized that government had a
responsibity to care for the poor and disabled. It was as if American thinkers
had to re-invent social justice all over again. Today’s Social Security
Administration’s website elucidates this history in the passage “Old Age in
Colonial America,” although the time period actually centered upon the first
few decades of the United States:
One of the first [American]
people to propose a scheme for retirement security that is recognizable as a
forerunner of modern social insurance was Revolutionary War figure Thomas
Paine. His last great pamphlet, published in the winter of 1795, was a
controversial [but, why controversial in light of England’s Poor Laws of almost
two centuries earlier?] call for the establishment of a public system of
economic security for the new nation. Entitled, Agrarian Justice, it
called for the creation of a system whereby those inheriting property would pay
a 10% inheritance tax to create a special fund out of which a one-time stipend
of 15 pounds sterling would be paid to each citizen upon attaining age 21, to
give them a start in life, and annual benefits of 10 pounds sterling to be paid
to every person age 50 and older, to guard against poverty in old-age.[10]
[1] James Boswell, The
Life of Johnson, ed. Christopher Hibbert (London, 1979), I76.
[2] R. B., The
English Hero: or, Sir Francis Drake reviv'd. Being a full account of the
dangerous voyages, admirable adventures, notable discoveries and magnanimous
atchievements of that valiant and renowned commander. I. His Voyage in 1572, to
Nombre de Dios in the West Indies, where they saw a Pile of Bars of Silver near
70 Foot long, ten Foot broad, and twelve Foot high. II. His incompassing the
whole World in 1577, which he perform'd in two Years and ten Months, gaining a
vast quantity of Gold and Silver. III. His Voyage into America in 1585, and
taking the Towns of St. Jago, St. Domingo, Carthagena and St. Augustine. Also
his Worthy Actions when Vice-Admiral of England in the Spanish Invasion, 1588.
IV. His last Voyage in those Countries in 1595, with the manner of his Death
and Burial. Recommended to the Imitation of all Heroick Spirits. Inlarged,
reduced into chapters with contents, and beautified with pictures, (London, 1716),
A2.
[3] John Routledge quoted from Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the
Constitution of the United States (1913),
Dover ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 2004), 213.
[4]Ibid.
[5] Woodard, American
Nations, 157.
[6]Ibid.
[7]Ibid., 158.
[8]Ibid.
[9]Ibid., 159.
[10]
“Old Age in Colonial America,” Social
Security Administration, https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html.
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