Books: July was Black History Month for Minnie

By Minnie Apolis 
 
I recently read a couple of history books this summer, both of which, curiously enough, had something to do with biographies of black Americans or the issue of slavery in America. If only the courage of the founding patriots of this country had extended to dealing with the issue of slavery, specifically outlawing slavery as all the other civilized nations of the world were doing, we would not have had to deal with it in the terribly costly Civil War a century later.

Friends of Liberty: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and the Betrayal that Divided a Nation: Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull

by Gary B. Nash, Graham Hodges, Graham Russell Gao Hodges
Hardcover, 328 pages, Published March 25th 2008 by Basic Books
ISBN: 0465048145 (ISBN13: 9780465048144)

I really enjoyed this historical account of the intertwined lives of Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Agrippa ("Grippy") Hull. Who Hull? you ask. Agrippa Hull was a Massachusetts freeman who joined the revolutionary army and became the personal orderly of Colonel Paterson and later to Thaddeus Kosciuszko.

Both were very fond of the young Hull, who brought an unfailing good cheer and humor to his job. The tale of Mr. Hull is remarkable as an example of what free blacks could have accomplished for themselves if slavery had been dealt with and outlawed early in the life of the colonies and the young United States.

But the virus of slavery was not outlawed, even though there were regular petitions to do so. The virus festered until it finally boiled over into the main issue behind the Civil War -- I mourn the at least 618,000 who died in the Civil War who would not have been killed if this matter had been wrestled with early.

Mr. Kosciuszko at one point in his life had some funds invested in the young nation, and expressed a wish that this part of his estate be used to buy the freedom of some slaves upon his demise. This was not done, and the story behind that is a long and twisting one involving multiple wills and multiple claimants to the estate, but the bottom line is that the American funds still could have been used for their intended purpose if the existing laws of Virginia had not gotten in the way.

And as for the otherwise well-documented life of Mr. Jefferson, I probably do not need to detail any of it except for the fact that he did not follow in the footsteps of Mr. Washington in freeing his slaves upon his demise. No, he did not. He was possibly too far in debt in have the luxury of letting any of his property (that includes slaves) go without being sold. Mr. Jefferson owed about $17,000 in about the year 1815, and at the time of his death it had ballooned to around $100,000 -- an unbelievable total when translated into modern dollars.

At the same time, Mr. Hull through a disciplined program of investing the profit of his farming operation back into buying more land, died as the wealthiest black villager in Stockbridge. His widow received the house and lot, plus 28 acres of land, and $167.50 in the bank account. This was accomplished after spending six years in the revolutionary army and being discharged with absolutely nothing to his name.

The Kosciuszko funds invested in the young nation eventually accrued to about $20,000 through his wise management of the funds. If only Mr. Jefferson had taken a leaf from Mr. Kosciuszko's book on investing, he would have been able to afford to free his slaves upon his death.

I am probably spending too much verbiage on the personal finances of these patriots here, but trust me, there is a good body of researched material in this book, well worth your time to read. We get to learn about the personalities and characters of these men, not just the usual sketches we were given in grade school of brave young idealists who put their life on the line for liberty.

The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America,

by Barnet Schecter
Hardcover, 434 pages, Published 2005 by Walker and Company

The Devil's Own Work covers the period in the Civil War when violent protests

broke out in New York City and other places in response to the draft -- probably

directed by the Copperhead underground, who pit the poor Irish immigrants

against the black people, in hopes of weakening the Union war effort.

The New York City police of the era, the Metropolitans, were generally not

effective in breaking up the riots or in preventing the fires or lynchings that broke out.

It was left to a regiment of New York Union army to finally put down the rioting.

The book included interesting descriptions of the involvement of Horace Greeley, who

was a targetof the rioters for supporting the war, and who risked his life to go to work every day amid the violent protests outside the doors of the New Yorker, an influential

weekly newspaper that carried his impassioned editorials.

The riots lasted about a week but had far-reaching effects. Whereas before the riots, blacks had lived in scattered areas of the city, afterwards they tended to clump together in Harlem, seeking safety in sticking together in one neighborhood. If affected the political alignment of the Democratic and Republican constituencies, and was just about the death knell of the Tweed machine. 

Southern blacks -- in this era before the great Northern migration -- migrated to Oklahoma and Arkansas for agricultural jobs. It exposed the divide between the classes in America -- as it was possibly the first time that the class war was exploited for political purposes. 

And it inevitably affected the success or lack of it in the Reconstruction of the South economically and socially as an egalitarian society. It seemed like the war was fought for nothing when injustices were allowed to prevail and the black people were pushed back into a state of subjugation.