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JASON: And now I am here in New England. This afternoon I am meeting with Sandra Simon in her apartment in Boston. Sandra is of Irish/English descent with family going back to the early colonial settlements in and around Boston. We are in the second bedroom of her apartment which is set up as an office den with book cases lining three walls. The remaining wall has two windows looking out onto a green space that is part of the Boston College campus. She is a youthful looking thirty years old, with short cropped auburn hair and remarkable green eyes. I image this is the Irish blood that I am seeing display itself. Let’s start there. I want her to tell me a bit about her ancestors through the decades.
SANDRA: “”Well, as you know the folks in this part of New England are very proud of our origins as some of the original European settlers of this country. My family, and others like us, have spent time researching and recording the lives of our ancestors – most of it is accurate and, I suppose, some of it might be a bit exaggerated or fanciful.
All the history books have accounted for the hardships of the original settlements and the forming of the Thirteen Colonies under the British. So where to start? . . . . It gets interesting in 1776 when we colonials decide we have had enough of sending tax monies to Britain and having to purchase expensive goods only from Britain or its colonies. There was great resistance to this, especially when they increased these taxes in 1775. So much so that they had to send their redcoats to enforce their position. The British felt that the Colonies should repay them a debt for defending us during the French and Indian wars. It wasn’t that they wanted too much, it was more that they could do as they pleased with us, and we had no control.
Some armed skirmishes in the colonies escalated to the point of a declared revolution with our Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. We were not all that impulsive in thinking we could gain independence on our own. We expected support from the French who were traditional enemies of the British and were still smarting over their defeat by the British in Canada some seventeen years earlier. The declaration was the easy part. The battles waged on for some seven years. In the end, the French Navy helped force the British to surrender in the port of Yorktown, Virginia and that essentially led to the end of the War with the signing of Treaty of Paris in 1783.
So, I suppose you could say that our national birthday of July 4, 1776 was a bit premature since the war did not end, and the British did not admit defeat and grant independence until some seven years later. But history is always written by the victors, as they say””.
JASON: “” Yes the first of the modern democracies, with a new constitution. Taking some the democratic parliamentary processes of England, as well as some of the policies of the new revolutionaries in France. In addition, Benjamin Franklin is also reported to have studied and incorporated some of the Indigenous governing practices, most notably of the Iroquois nation””.
I know that few New Englanders have read the Declaration, but virtually all are familiar with the opening sentences in the Preamble which contains the words “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness . . . “ A noble cause when it states all men are created equal (and presumably are to be treated that way). However, we know that 41 of the 56 signatories to the Declaration were slave owners at the time, and after. And that over the next 100 years that nine of the Presidents before Lincoln were also slave owners.
But, the Preamble was mainly designed to justify the reasons for independence by listing some twenty-eight injuries the colony had suffered at the hands of the British King George III. Only two of which the scholars have found to be valid. But it was a spectacular piece of salesmanship since it did not depict the enemy as some faceless nation or some nameless group of parliamentarians; no, it personalized all claimed offences against one man – George III. Even though at the time the English monarchy had been reduced to a symbolic figurehead for over a hundred years since the government was being run by Parliament – as it is today.
Yes, the reign of George III was over a constitutional monarch where Royalty was symbolic and the elected British Parliament ruled the country. George had spoken out repeatedly in favour of abolishing slavery in Britain and its colonies – although this was not listed in the Declaration, it might have been a major influence at the time. But, I will not mention this. Even though the justifications may have been largely trumped up, it was indeed time for the rapidly expanding colony to emerge as a true nation.
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SANDRA: “”It was a great success, our independence and the establishment of a democratic Republic in North America. What followed was a period of massive immigration as families in Europe were fleeing religious persecution, famine, and serfdom servitude that was close to slavery for some. In the New World, there was the promise of jobs, land, and a fresh start.
By the early 1800s New England stretched along the Atlantic shore from Maine in the north all the way to Florida after it was purchased from Spain. But new lands were needed for this expanding population. We looked to the north. President James Madison expected to march in and easily take over what is now Canada with a summer season of fighting.
It was 1812 and he was misguided in thinking that the people in a foreign land would welcome the prospect of a free and mighty New England government with open arms. A thought that sometimes still emerges today.
He was aware that the population of Canada was much smaller than New England, and that the majority of their citizens had been originally New Englanders who left at the time of the Revolution some thirty-five years earlier. However, those who fled during that time were not called United Empire Loyalists for no reason. Many had strong feelings about remaining true to their British roots, and many had to leave behind farms and factories with no compensation when the revolutionaries took over. He also thought his timing was favourable because at the time the British were occupied at home in a mortal battle with Napoleon in Europe. However, James Madison’s dream of an easy march north was met with strong resistance.
The war with Canada ended after just two years with the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. We had gained no land by the adventure, and instead the British purchased what was called the Indian Territories between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. This was their commitment to the tribes that had been instrumental in the defense of Canada. These lands were purchased by the British for the sum of 15 million dollars and became the Canadian Territories of Michigan, Ohio and Northwest New York””.
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JASON: We know this was a time of great immigration of peoples from Europe to the new North America. Fleeing persecution in some cases, and seeking a better living and way of life in all cases, these people came by the thousands. The population of New England had ballooned to four million by 1800 and had expanded to some ten million just thirty years later. They landed in the main Atlantic seaports of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. These cities were under great strain, so their governments promised free lands if they travelled inland away from the crowded coastal area.
The newspapers in New York, and also in Europe, were full of notices offering free land. All you needed was transportation and some basic tools and farming equipment to make a fresh start. In fact, for the most part, the local governments had no ownership or right to offer these lands, but they felt that these were wilderness areas and no one had the ownership. Certainly, the indigenous tribes who had been there for centuries were not taken into account. Little did the tribes suspect that they would suffer for the next fifty years, while the European immigrants would prosper.
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SANDRA: “”The incoming immigrant hoards needed space to settle. President Madison’s misadventure with the invasion of Canada had not worked. But other appropriations of land for settlers met with more success. The large tracts of land in the southeast states were populated by the native tribes who had farmed the very fertile land for hundreds of years. They had established large villages with local political structures to govern themselves and they prospered with their harvests of corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and sunflowers. To the European colonists they were known as “the Five Civilized Tribes”: Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles. They lived in harmony with the settlers, but it was not enough – more land was needed for the settlers and th elarge cotton plantations that were bringing great wealth, and thousands of slaves, to these lands.
President Andrew Jackson, adopted the earlier “principle” made famous by James Monroe. The Manifest Destiny, which had become known as the Monroe Doctrine, claimed that the New England colonies were destined – by God – to expand dominion across the entire North American continent. This was all the justification President Jackson needed in 1830 when he decreed that the Indian nations must vacate their ancestral lands and relocate to what was to be called Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River by force of arms.
Most did make the months long journey west of the Mississippi in what was later called the Trail of Tears rather than face the alternatives. Thousands died through disease and starvation as they travelled on foot westward. Others accepted the small reservation lands allotted to them in Georgia and the Carolinas. Some tribes resisted the take-over of what they claimed as their ancestral homelands. They were duly exterminated.
Eventually we set our eyes on some of the territory west of the Mississippi for ourselves, but we became preoccupied with an internal disagreement over slavery, that led to an unfortunate and bloody Civil War in 1865. There was a great loss of life on both sides. Some 750,000 soldiers died and an untold number of civilians. The total population was much smaller then, so to put this into context that would be equivalent to seven million dead soldiers today.
You know that the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the right to bear arms, had been signed into law just a few years after our independence from Britain. It was felt necessary to have armed citizen militias to protect against unwanted government control as had just happened with the British. I suppose this perceived need for arms became an actual need in the minds of the Confederate states during the Civil War as civilians on both sides of the dispute were well armed and at the ready.
But in the end, the outcome was successful in one regard when President Lincoln’s dream of the abolition of slavery in all of New England was achieved.
Unfortunately Lincoln did not live very long to enjoy the glory, since he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth just five days after the end of the war. But the story does not end there. Booth was part of a seven-man conspiracy who were southerners to the core, and were enraged by what they saw as the end of slavery. Booth escaped after the assassination but was tracked down miles away in Virginia a few days later hiding in a tobacco barn. Orders were given to capture him alive to stand trial, but one of the squad, a religious zealot named Boston Corbett, decided to follow different orders he had received from “above” and fatally shot Booth. And it does not end there. 296Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmXqK9KXVbY
Booth’s seven co-conspirators were captured, tried, and hanged for their part in the act. But the public was still outraged by Corbett’s actions since he had deprived them of a trial and public execution - closure that they demanded. Corbett was haunted and persecuted for the rest of his life. He had to be committed to a mental institution, from which he escaped, and then disappeared, never to be found again. Just one of the many assassinations and attempted assassinations of our Presidents, more than a dozen to date and counting. Fortunately, only four were successful””.
JASON: “”The northern states did not resent the slaves who fled to freedom in New France and Canada before and after the Civil War. But the southern states did. They saw their way of life and prosperity running away from them. All that was left for them was to enact State laws to hold the remaining free Blacks in submission. This was largely successful for almost 100 years up to the civil rights movements of the 1960s. And I would say that is pretty much where we are today””.
SANDRA: “”Yes, after these major events of the late 1800s New England settled into a period of unprecedented industrialization and innovation that has produced our prosperity of today. The two World Wars created a massive need for manufacturing of all kinds, and the fact that we were protected from all the destruction by two oceans, resulted in our emerging as a major economic power by the 1950s. Moreover, our culture of innovation has made us leaders in the new digital and electronic technologies of today.
New England today holds on to its long held feeling that it is the envy of the world. Which is probably valid if you consider the creation of wealth, and the ability for our citizens to aspire to, and in a few cases achieve, enormous wealth. We are a nation of independent people in that regard. We are not held back by supporting the larger population with handouts and freebies. Everyone is free to be as poor or as rich as their aspirations take them. In that regard, we are different from our predecessor western nations in Europe, Canada, and the others.
We honour the individual, not the collective. We seek private ownership of goods and services, not government ownership. As individuals, we take responsibility for ourselves and do not depend on government institutions. The most significant demonstration of this is that we take some responsibility for policing and defending ourselves with open and concealed arms, and do not always trust, or wait for, government or their police forces to do it for us.
Another example is we take responsibility for our own heath care and can choose to go with or without health insurance. Millions do choose to not have health insurance, as is their right. Perhaps because it is not affordable for them, but it is still their choice. Other western countries have the government pay for their services through taxes – another example of their collective obsession instead of the individual’s rights. In our mind, our way is superior and this fantasy of all citizens living happily in similar economic means is just another example of European poetry.
We are also fortunate to be, for the most part, a cohesive, monocultural, white nation. We have very small ethnic minority populations, small enough that they are not a problem as in some countries. This is probably one of the biggest transitions we have made after the earlier time when there was a much more multicultural presence with Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Indians. But many of them made the move to new homelands in New France, New Spain, and elsewhere. Through strong immigration laws we have been able to secure and maintain this cultural identity, without dilution””.
JASON: “”Many of the features of New England life today differ greatly from your North American neighbours. Even different from your ancestors in Great Britain and Ireland. But it seems you still can cooperate on the many areas where you do agree””.
SANDRA: “”Well, New England participated in both World Wars along-side our allies from Britain and France. We were a bit late in joining both wars, especially World War I since the enemy was in retreat by the time the New England regiments arrived overseas. But we made up for it in the Second World War when we arrived late but played a critical part in the success.
This wartime alliance against a common foe made it easier for New England to join a North American free trade alliance with Canada, New France, New Spain and Mexico similar to the ECC which was formed at the same time among European countries after the War. So we are all closely knit as each other’s largest trading partner. And of course we also share some of the more common cultural aspects such as movies, TV, magazines, and also clothing styles””.
JASON: “”Thank you Sandra.I think this is as good a place as any for us to conclude our journey. The spirit of cooperation among the nations of North America. Different ways of thinking, different ideologies, liberal and conservative, but perhaps in the end more similarities than differences. And of course, culturally richer for the differences. The five nations of North America. Canada, Mexico, New Spain, New France, and New England””.
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