James M. Redwine

Slavery

Uncle Tom’s Gaza

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I read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin when I was in the Seventh Grade because my Seventh Grade Social Studies teacher told our class the book missed the true meaning of the Civil War. My teacher was also my Junior High football coach and I liked and respected him. He was a solidly built white man about thirty-five years old. He ran his Social Studies class using the same system he used to coach.

He gave clear instructions and we players and students followed them. We won football games and accepted his interpretation of America’s cultural history the same way we players absorbed extra wind-sprints for mistakes on the practice field in 90º heat in September.

Both our football team and our Social Studies class were comprised of white kids as Oklahoma had not as yet integrated its schools. I do not know if there was a Social Studies class for Junior High, what we then called Colored kids, in my small hometown. Thus, I have no knowledge if they would have been taught Uncle Tom’s Cabin was enlightened or misguided or if it was simply ignored.

I remember the firmness in my teacher/coach’s voice as he described Mrs. Stowe’s novel as a book of fiction written by a northern Yankee whose uninformed views on slavery were influenced by her family’s brand of the Christian religion. As our Christian instructor told us, “The Civil War was not about slavery but State’s Rights”. That was not what I had been told by my Osage Indian Sunday School teacher or my parents. It was confusing.

However, football was more important than whether some long-dead writer was an accurate observer or a fervent abolitionist. So, I took in the lecture and let it roll off as most of the other stuff. That is, until the day my friends, Abby and Jack, brought the issues of State’s Rights and human rights into perspective.

Abby sat near me in class and Jack sat right next to her. Jack liked Abby but was unskilled in the ways to a girl’s heart. He sought her attention but thought to get it through pre-teen means. When our teacher left the classroom to get a book, Jack saw his chance to garner Abby’s ardor by slipping a thumbtack on her chair. She sat down on it just as the disciplinarian returned. She yelled and our teacher immediately went into coach mode.

At that time I had not learned about the tender mercies of Simon Legree but I got a preview from the Coach. He had always been ready with one of the paddles he kept hanging from the chalkboard. But this time the lesson of the power structure between teacher and student was graphic. Coach chose a thin paddle and pressed two thumbtacks through it. Then he proceeded to apply maximum behavioral modification to Jack.

That next Saturday I checked out Uncle Tom’s Cabin from the public library and read about slavery from the northern viewpoint. The aphorism “Power Corrupts” became an on-the-ground example to me. Those thoughts have reoccurred now I am an adult and have observed the corruption of the Israeli Zionists immense power over their neighbors, especially the Palestinians.

As I re-read Uncle Tom’s Cabin these past two weeks, my thoughts have been, where is a Harriet Beecher Stowe’s outrage at what is the incomprehensible cruelty of babies being starved and mothers being bombed. Harriet, we need you to visit Mr. Trump as you did Mr. Lincoln. Or, perhaps, we all need to read your book again.

 

The Battle of Honey Springs

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In the Honey Springs Battlefield Gift Shop. Photo taken by Peg Redwine

Just as my public-school education failed to lead one to analogies involving America’s Manifest Destiny and slavery or the genocide of indigenous peoples, it often concentrated on the perceived benefits bestowed on both Negroes and first Americans by their white governors. Black and Indian contributions to our shared history were generally omitted or diminished. My knowledge of these significant influences on America’s unrelenting march from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico came mostly by coincidence. Such was the case when Peg and I heard about the Civil War Battle of Honey Springs.

Our first exposure to this most important Civil War conflict in Indian Territory came from a brief mention of it on PBS just this past spring. We researched it, on the Internet of course, and discovered it occurred July 17, 1863 near Checotah, Oklahoma which is only about an hour and a half from our home in Osage County, Oklahoma. It was readily apparent why this “Gettysburg of the West” is barely a blip in our nation’s consciousness. Although the battle determined whether the Union or Confederate forces would control the vital Texas Road that protected supply lines from Mexico to Kansas right through the heart of Indian Territory (Oklahoma), the soldiers who fought the desperate fight consisted of white, Black and several tribes of Native Americans who supported both sides.

Photo by Peg Redwine.

In fact, the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry was instrumental in the battle for the Union and several Black soldiers fought alongside Creek, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole and Chickasaw warriors who had divided loyalties for both the North and the South. The commander of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry was the only white man for that brigade.

Honey Springs, the location of this battle involving several thousand soldiers for each side, was named for a gigantic beehive that was attached to a large oak tree near the running spring. As with much of military history the outcome of the battle hinged on the weather. The Southern forces were in that location because the commander of Southern Forces in the Indian Territory, Maj. Gen. William Steele, ordered the capture of fairly nearby Ft. Gibson. Steele dispatched troops under Brig. Gen. Douglas Cooper to meet up with other Confederate troops under the command of Gen. Cabell whose men were about 25 miles from Honey Springs. His soldiers did a forced march through rain, mud and swollen streams but arrived late to the battle between Cooper’s and Union Gen. James G. Blunt’s soldiers. The fight was already a Union victory and the Texas Road as well as Ft. Gibson remained in Union control throughout the remainder of the Civil War.

Photo by Peg Redwine.

History may normally be written by the victors but America’s history has usually been written by white people east of the Mississippi River. Such is the case of Honey Springs. Some Civil War analysts posit this battle crippled any chance the Confederacy could recover from U.S. Grant’s victorious siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi that caused Southern Gen. John Pemberton to surrender to Grant on July 04, 1863, two weeks before the Union victory at Honey Springs.

Vicksburg secured Union control of the Mississippi River and the South’s loss at Honey Springs prevented the South from circumventing the Mississippi via the Texas Road. Gen. Cooper blamed the loss on inferior gunpowder that the South had to purchase from Mexico. Also, the rain made the inferior powder even more defective.

But what I suggest I and other Americans should have learned is the service of Black and First American conflicting loyalties and the reasons for them. Also, it should be noted that the “Gettysburg of the West” was and is deserving of a place in our country’s Volksgeist. If you are prone to Civil War reenactments, Gentle Reader, the Battle of Honey Springs reenactment will take place after the intense Oklahoma July heat is more kind to woolen uniforms on November 8, 2025. You can find more information about the battle and the reenactment weekend activities online at www.okhistory.org.

 

Photo by Peg Redwine.

Democracy At Risk

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Lake James, Indiana. Photo by Peg Redwine

Donald Trump did not find fault with his election victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 even though many Americans were astonished. However, four years later President Trump and many others questioned President Joe Biden’s victory. Some Trump supporters even marched and more on January 06, 2021 in protest as still sitting President Trump verbally urged them on.

Former President Trump is now seeking the presidency again, but some are protesting his right to do so. These never Trumpers are asserting that Trump is now prohibited from running by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that provides:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

As many of us learned in high school, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were ratified by Congress soon after the Civil War. Generally, the 13th prohibited slavery, the 14th provided for Due Process for Blacks, including citizenship, while the 15th gave Black men the right to vote.

I do not know about you, Gentle Reader, but I had never given a moment’s thought to Section 3 until after January 06, 2021 and until former President Trump announced his intention to run again. I do recall Alabama Governor George Wallace who defied the United States Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 in Brown vs The Topeka, Kansas Board of Education that ordered an end to school segregation. In Wallace’s inauguration address on January 14, 1963 he declared, “…segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. Yet, Wallace was allowed to run for the presidency only five years later in 1968 without anyone raising the 14th Amendment. America’s voters made their free democratic choice and rejected Wallace’s racist position.

The first time I heard mention of Section 3 being used to keep Trump off the ballot I remember my bemusement. Then, as the tiny tinkling of the anti-Trump candidacy tocsin became a loud tolling of ballot disqualification, my bemusement became concern.

Some who advance the preemption of Trump’s second term warn that our democracy would be in danger if he is reelected. These self-anointed saviors assert that to preserve our democracy we must assure the MAGA fanatics cannot steal our self-government. And the best way to do this is to disenfranchise them by eliminating their candidate from the ballot. Well, you see the oxymoron of saving democracy by denying it to those they dislike. Yet, that is the petard the Section 3 crowd is raising. Of course, they know that just as with Bush vs. Gore 2000, the matter will end up in the tender mercies of the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. How did that work out for our democracy? Can you say Iraq War?

Politics is not Bean Bag. If you have never run for political office and lost, you may not appreciate the visceral impact it has. Most people have played on or supported some sports team and have experienced the disbelief and angst from some loss they attribute to a bad call by an umpire or referee. Well, I assure you, Gentle Reader, a loss of an election is a much more gut-wrenching experience.

As one of my brothers told me after he lost his only foray into local politics, “I cannot understand how I lost, everyone I talked to told me they voted for me”. No matter how graciously a losing candidate handles a loss, many of them wonder if, in fact, they won and somehow the outcome should have been otherwise. Ergo, Donald Trump was a part of that, “I can’t believe it!”, tradition. Was he wrong? Was he a poor sport? Was he a jerk? Yes, yes and yes. Did he take up arms against the United States? No.

Should we attempt to save our democracy by keeping him off the ballot? No! Let the voters decide. Part of democracy means allowing people to make poor choices or, at least, choices we dislike. However, democracy means making sure we all have the right to do so.

The Founders

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Reminder at a coffee shop in Batumi, Georgia

When our son, Jim, was stationed with the U.S. Army in Germany he visited the old Soviet Union just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He told us the very few other Americans he saw in what became modern Russia were easy to spot; they were the only ones smiling. I noticed that same phenomenon among the public when I worked for a couple of weeks in the Republic of Ukraine in 2000. Then when Peg and I spent a week working in Russia in 2003 we noted everyone but the two of us wore dark clothes and dark expressions.

Our recent eight-month experience working with the judiciary in the Republic of Georgia, once part of the old Soviet Union and bordering Russia, reinforced these impressions of uncertainty given out by the Georgian people who are ostensibly in a now free and democratic country; however, they appeared to us to be hedging their bets due to fear of their Russian neighbor.

Peg and I could not have been treated any more courteously than we were by our new Georgian friends who were generous and great fun to live and work among. We had a marvelous experience and learned a great deal. One thing we already knew, but had not fully appreciated until sharing with the Georgians whose small country is across the Black Sea from Ukraine, was how fortunate we are as Americans to not only be free but to feel free.

The people of Georgia were open and friendly with us whether at court, our other meeting places or on the streets. We were fully accepted, often objects of curiosity and were constantly asked, “How are things done in America?” You see, Gentle American Reader, Russia occupies 20% of the “Republic” of Georgia and is a constantly looming presence, at least mentally, in most Georgian psyches. Freedom there is established by law but is quite uneasy. The friendliness and good will of the countless Georgian citizens we worked and socialized with was unforced and generous. However, our Georgian acquaintances usually found an opportunity to express their good will and appreciation toward America and their almost universal desire to come here. It was reassuring and gratifying to experience how other people respected our home country.

I guess it is sort of like Mark Twain’s epiphany, “When I was a teenager, I could not believe how ignorant my father was, but by the time I turned 21 I was amazed at how much the old man had learned.” In much the same manner, Peg and I were brought to fully appreciate living in a truly free country. It is one thing to be physically in a country called a democracy, and it is an entirely different feeling to live in America where, as Lee Greenwood sings, “I am proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.”

The dreams and aspirations of our new Georgian friends also affected our understanding of people risking their lives and sacrificing everything to get to America, you know, as many of our ancestors did. Even native-born Americans such as Peg and I owe huge debts to the brilliance and courage of many immigrants and their progeny who helped make these United States, as Katherine Lee Bates and Samuel A. Ward wrote in America the Beautiful, “Oh beautiful for pilgrim feet whose stern impassioned stress, a thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness.”

Or as Frances Williams and Marjorie Elliot in their song Hymn to America, Let There Be Music called for, an America where, “May kindness and forbearance make this land a joyous place, where each man feels a brotherhood, unmarred by creed or race.” We recognize our country’s imperfections and sins of the past and present. But, America’s beacon of freedom expiates many of our failings. And, once one leaves America she or he understands why regardless of our shortcomings, as Neil Diamond sings, “From all across the world they’re coming to America.” Why? Because, “They only want to be free.”

Gentle Reader, haven’t you often wished you could travel back in time to when our country was founded? Wouldn’t it be something special to meet and talk with such dreamers, heroes and revolutionaries as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and others? Perhaps we could have even joined in that difficult and dangerous struggle for freedom that now we can only read about, but thanks to them and others, we enjoy every day. Of course, who knows if we would have dared join in that revolt against Great Britain, the most powerful nation on earth in the 1700’s. And if we had lived then and had shown the courage of our Forefathers, we as they might have been blind to the hypocrisy and irony of fighting for our own freedom as we denied Native Americans, Blacks and women theirs. Heroes do not have to be perfect to strive for, “[A] more perfect union.”

Many of our Georgian friends are publicly standing up to a large portion of their government that has chosen to abide by Russia’s infiltration into Georgia. It takes courage to risk freedom to seek freedom. A large portion of the Georgian government is sympathetic to Russia while the majority of the citizens yearn for a true freedom that does not require a subtle fealty to what remains of the old Soviet Union.

Peg and I were impressed by the bravery of our Georgian friends and, especially, the boldness of the women. It reminded us of what it might have been like to know Martha Washington, Martha Jefferson, Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison and Eliza Hamilton. You know, our Founding Mothers, without whom we in America might well be the Georgians of today, “Yearning to be breathe free.” I will not name our courageous Georgian friends, both women and men, as the penalties for seeking a true democracy may well be severe. But I do admire their willingness to risk all for what our Founders risked for us. When Peg and I finally returned to Osage County, Oklahoma, U.S.A. we found ourselves gratefully humming that song by Woody Guthrie about America’s birthright, This Land Is Your Land. Apparently even depression era America felt good as long as it was free; freedom renders hardships bearable.

Our time working abroad showed Peg and me we had to leave America to truly appreciate what it might feel like to lose it. We are products of the 1960’s and have long recognized and often pointed out the U.S.A. is not perfect. But no place is and it sure beats all the alternatives we have seen. As for our Georgian friends, many of them are concerned that Russia will not respect Georgia’s 8,000 years of history and tradition and will seek to control the remaining 80% of that beautiful but small and vulnerable country.

That the concerns of numerous of our Georgian friends are well justified has been recently validated by the ruling political power’s attempt to push through two Russian influenced statutes that sought to prohibit and punish “foreign influence.” Due to strong public protests that some of our Georgian colleagues joined, the ruling party withdrew the bills, for now. However, under these proposed draconian laws, as Americans sent to Georgia to help Georgia’s judges seek more independence, Peg and I might well have come under scrutiny for our actions since our mission was fully funded by the United States Agency for International Development, the American Bar Association and the East-West Management Institute, all of which could be classified by Russia or the Georgian Parliament as “foreign influencers.” Judicial Independence is not a goal of Georgia’s controlling political party. Peg and I are glad to be home but are concerned about our Georgian friends as there is still much important and difficult work to be done and we hope America continues to “influence” our friends’ courageous efforts to do it.

The Briar Patch

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Joel Chandler Harris, AKA Joe Harris (1848-1908), was born in the state of Georgia before the Civil War and worked on a slave-holding plantation as a teenager. After the war he became an associate editor at The Atlanta Constitution newspaper. Harris had lived and worked around the evils of slavery and he had absorbed the folk wisdom of slaves who were prohibited by law from formal education. Harris created his fictional writings using Uncle Remus as a wise and shrewd observer of human nature hidden within animal behavior.

Harris intended his writings as compliments to the ability of Uncle Remus to explain human foibles by giving animals human failings such as arrogance. In the story of Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox contained in Harris’ Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, the meanness of the Fox is used by the Rabbit to escape by getting the Fox to “punish” the Rabbit by throwing him into a briar patch. Of course, that is exactly what the Rabbit really wanted.

Unfortunately, due to our current misguided wokeness in many areas, the slave dialect used by Harris now interferes with the appreciation of the literature of The Song of the South and a great number of those pro-African American folk tales are no longer read. However, for those of us whose time of birth helped us escape the ravages of the current misguided ignorance in the area of children’s literature, Uncle Remus is still imparting wisdom, such as enjoying a proverbial briar patch. Or in my case, Peg’s banishment of me to the solitude of our bunkhouse when I got COVID and Peg did not.

At first, I was offended when Peg handed me my toothbrush and a set of clean underwear and locked our cabin door behind me after she forcefully shut it. It was not that I wanted Peg to share in my experience of a sore throat, lethargy and endless amounts of crud being expelled from my body. It was more the feeling that a one-person leper colony was a rather lonely possibility, plus I really missed my favorite recliner and ready access to the refrigerator. Oh, and Peg too, of course.

Be that as it may, Peg sentenced me to two weeks of quarantine with the same lack of ceremony she would have exhibited if a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman had appeared with a sample case. You remember encyclopedias don’t you, Gentle Reader? You know, those things with pages, tables of contents and indexes that went the way of the dodo bird after Google came along. Well, that may call for a different column.

Anyway, here I am alone with the piles of books I never read, the piano I used to play and old photographs of friends and relatives I barely recognize. I have been rummaging through boxes and drawers filled with the most interesting stuff not seen by me since high school. What a strange looking dude I was with dark colored hair and a discernible jaw line. Who was that and who are those undecipherable young people around him wearing weird clothes?

Say, Peg, what is this thing that says Maytag on it? Is this where my clean clothes came from? It must be a miracle machine. How does it operate? By the way, there is no stove out here and after several days of eating the leftovers you sent with me, I am ready for some real food.

By the way, I have done my Paxlovid and am pretty sure I am not Typhoid Mary anymore. On the other hand, the bunkhouse refrigerator is stocked with leftover beer from our Fourth of July Family Reunion and the TV is constantly tuned to Gunsmoke reruns. The bunkhouse is the answer to every boy’s escape from his mother and every husband’s escape from constant inspection by his wife.

Clothes are in a pile where I take them off. The bed never has to be made to drill sergeant standards and every door knob and chair back is a hanger. But the most serendipitous of all? Peg is afraid to step foot in my little slice of heaven. I may claim to be eternally toxic. Bring on that Briar Patch!

Not Rocket Science

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The Rule of Law is not the stuff of artificial intelligence and differential equations. It is not about the James Webb telescope that may help disclose where and when we came from. It is not about a cure for COVID. No, the Rule of Law is far more complex, and perplexing, than any of those things. However, if properly applied, the Rule of Law can help us understand and deal with these challenges and others.

Law sounds simple. Treat others the way you wish to be treated. Respect the person and property of others. These principles are easy to say but thousands of years of human history prove they are extremely difficult to apply. Our Declaration of Independence sets out the basics of our legal system, “…[A]ll men are created equal,” and all men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When Thomas Jefferson penned those simple ideals he owned slaves, and had children he did not acknowledge by at least one of those slaves. Also, women could not vote and the property rights of Native Americans were not even an afterthought. Were Jefferson and the rest of the 1776ers evil? No, they were human. We call these concepts ideals because the realities are nearly impossible to achieve. That is why we need the Rule of Law, to encourage us to try.

Our Constitution sets forth America’s aspiration to form a more perfect union. Surely none of our Founders was naïve enough to believe perfect self-government was achievable. That is not why goals are set. Just as it is the struggle of life that can separate us from all other animals and, perhaps from some humans, it is government’s role to help us strive for perfection. We have often fallen short and we always will. But just as we are fighting the war on COVID in fits and starts we can face our past failures in how we have behaved and strive to be better. There will never be a cure for our occasional imperfect collective missteps. That is why we need to acknowledge our past failures and seek to avoid future sins. We should do this together.

In her book, On the Courthouse Lawn, Sherrilyn Ifill points out the irony of many lynchings being carried out by large numbers of a community right at the seat of justice, the county courthouse. Also, our courthouses are often the site where the legal system has been used to deny human rights, such as through the separation of Native American families and establishment of some guardianships that led to murder.

Community recognition of these subversions of the Rule of Law is important. Monuments that show society admits its wrongs, even if long past, can help people heal and avoid new injustices.