Tag Archives ⇒ civil war

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

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More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen­house – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868. The lives of Quak­ers and enslaved peo­ple have been inter­twined from the ear­li­est days of the Amer­i­can colonies. The Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends (Quak­ers) were out­spo­ken oppo­nents of slav­ery and the slave trade begin­ning in the late 17th cen­tu­ry. In 1758, the Friends in Lon­don issued an unequiv­o­cal denun­ci­a­tion of the slave trade, and lat­er that year, the Philadel­phia Meet­ing moved past its warn­ing against trad­ing in slaves, now propos­ing that Friends who held slaves should set them free. Quak­erism came to South Car­oli­na in the 1670s, and a Meet­ing was estab­lished in Charleston by 1682. The Quak­er pop­u­la­tion in South Car­oli­na peaked by 1800 and suf­fered dra­mat­ic decline there­after as Quak­ers migrat­ed to slave-free Ohio. By 1822 only a weak Charleston Meet­ing remained, and it too ceased to exist by the time of the Civ­il War. A hand­ful of Quak­er women remained in Charleston after the Civ­il War, car­ing for new­ly freed peo­ple dur­ing the Recon­struc­tion peri­od. Per­haps one of those women dis­trib­uted this pam­phlet to those peo­ple still resid­ing in the kitchen house after eman­ci­pa­tion. Did she offer them com­fort, hope, a way out? Was it pur­pose­ful­ly hid­den in the walls or car­ried there by rodents? We will nev­er know… but the pres­ence of Quak­er lit­er­a­ture is a tan­ta­liz­ing glimpse into the lives and con­vic­tions of the peo­ple liv­ing here in 1868.

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Taxes then and now

March 13, 2015
· Martin Kelley

WW I pie chart.indd

Every year as April’s tax dead­lines comes near, the War Resisters League pro­duces a pie chart show­ing mil­i­tary spend­ing as a per­cent­age of the fed­er­al bud­get. This year Ed Hede­mann went back in time to see what the chart would have looked like dur­ing World War I:

A strik­ing dif­fer­ence between this fic­tion­al WW I era pie chart and today’s ver­sion is how much sim­pler the fed­er­al bud­get was back then. Not only was it a lot small­er – vast­ly small­er – there were many few­er cat­e­gories. A hun­dred years ago, the bud­get was most­ly mil­i­tary (75% of the bud­get) – even before entry into WW I – a large part of which was to pay off expens­es incurred dur­ing the Civ­il War from 50 years ear­li­er and the recently-ended Spanish-American War. The non­mil­i­tary por­tions were labeled “Indi­ans,” “Postal Defi­cien­cies,” and “Civ­il and Miscellaneous.” 

H/t The Pick­ett Line

Christian peacemaker Teams News

March 23, 2006
· Martin Kelley

On Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 26, 2005 four mem­bers of “Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams”:www.cpt.org were abduct­ed in iraq. On March 20th the body of Amer­i­can Quak­er Tom Fox was found; on March 23rd, the remain­ing three hostages were freed by U.S. and British mil­i­tary forces.
Here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org, we have always been impressed and high­ly sup­port­ive of the deep wit­ness of the Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams. Their mem­bers have rep­re­sent­ed the best in both the peace and Chris­t­ian move­ments, con­sis­tent­ly putting them­selves in dan­ger to wit­ness the gospel of peace. Not con­tent to write let­ters or stand on pick­ett lines in safe west­ern cap­i­tals, they go to the front­lines of vio­lence and pro­claim a rad­i­cal alternative.
While we can be grate­ful for the release of the three remain­ing hostages, we should con­tin­ue to remem­ber the 43 for­eign hostages still being held in iraq and the 10 – 30 iraqis report­ed­ly tak­en hostage each and every day. As iraq slips into full-scale civ­il war we must also orga­nize against the war-mongerers, both for­eign and inter­nal and finde ways of stand­ing along­side those iraqis who want noth­ing more than peace and freedom.

Here’s links to recent articles on the situation: https://​deli​cious​.com/​m​a​r​t​i​n​_​k​e​l​l​e​y​/​n​e​w​s​.​c​p​t​-​f​o​u​r​.​f​o​x​m​e​m​o​r​ial

And a per­son­al note from Nonviolence.org’s Mar­tin Kel­ley: I myself am a Chris­t­ian and Quak­er and one of our folks, Tom Fox, of Lan­g­ley Hill (Vir­ginia) Friends Meet­ing is among the hostages. I don’t know Tom per­son­al­ly but over the last few days I’ve learned we have many Friends in com­mon and they have all tes­ti­fied to his deep com­mitt­ment to peace. Some of the links above are more explic­it­ly Quak­er than most things I post to Non​vi​o​lence​.org, but they give per­spec­tive on why Tom and his com­pan­ions would see putting them­selves in dan­ger as an act of reli­gious ser­vice. I am grate­ful for Tom’s cur­rent wit­ness in iraq – yes, even as a hostage – but I cer­tain­ly hope he soon comes back to his fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty and that the atten­tion and wit­ness of these four men’s ordeal helps to bring the news of peace to streets and halls of Bagh­dad, Wash­ing­ton, Lon­don and Ottawa.

Action Step:

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Thirty years later: Kissinger’s war crimes

December 7, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Newly-declassified doc­u­ments from the U.S. State Depart­ment show that for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State “Hen­ry Kissinger sanc­tioned the dirty war in Argentina”:www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1101121,00.html in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 peo­ple were killed.
bq. “Look, our basic atti­tude is that we would like you to suc­ceed,” Mr Kissinger is report­ed as say­ing. “I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be sup­port­ed. What is not under­stood in the Unit­ed States is that you have a civ­il war. We read about human rights prob­lems, but not the con­text. The quick­er you suc­ceed the bet­ter … The human rights prob­lem is a grow­ing one … We want a sta­ble sit­u­a­tion. We won’t cause you unnec­es­sary dif­fi­cul­ties. If you can fin­ish before Con­gress gets back, the bet­ter. What­ev­er free­doms you could restore would help.”
For­giv­ing away human rights abus­es in Latin Amer­i­ca was stan­dard U.S. pol­i­cy in the 1970s. Wash­ing­ton favored strong mil­i­tary pow­er and con­trol over messy unpre­dictable democ­ra­cy (a for­mu­la­tion which could be a short­hand def­i­n­i­tion for post-Nazi _fascism_). After read­ing this week that the U.S. is wrap­ping entire iraqi vil­lages in barbed wire, it’s hard not to see us return­ing to this era. What will declas­si­fied doc­u­ments reveal about today’s White House occu­pants thir­ty years from now?