Our author Levi Coffin remembers, “Perhaps no case” regarding “fugitive slaves attracted more attention and aroused deeper interest and sympathy than the case of Margaret Garner, the slave mother, who killed her child rather than see it taken back to slavery.” This is a troubling story. I do not wish […]
General Grant remembers: “The North had become very much discouraged. Many strong Union men believed that the war must prove a failure. The elections of 1862 had gone against the party which was for the prosecution of the war to save the Union if it took the last man and the last dollar. Voluntary enlistments had ceased through the greater part of the North, and the draft had been adopted to fill up the ranks. It was my judgment at the time that to make a backward movement from Vicksburg to Memphis, would be interpreted, by many of those yet full of hope for preservation of the Union, as a defeat, and that the draft would be resisted, desertions ensue, and the power to capture and punish deserters lost. There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory.” […]
How did Henry Box Brown escape from slavery? Simple, in 1849 he “had himself boxed up and forwarded to Philadelphia direct by express.” The box was “made to fit him most comfortably,” it was “two feet eight inches deep, two feet wide, and three feet long.” With him were “one bladder of water and a few small biscuits,” with but one hole for breathing.
After he “entered his box, it was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops and was addressed” by a friend to William Johnson in Philadelphia marked, “This side up with care.” The box was transported right side up, but for many miles it was transported upside down, which “had him on his head for miles.” This box went from steamboat to wagon to railroad, the delivery time was a little more than a day. […]
Had the law surrounding this issue had not continued to evolve, this indeed would be a troubling precedent. But the issue did evolve, and in 1969 the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren decided that Congress could not deny any duly elected Representative their seat in Congress unless they did not meet the qualifications for office listed in the Constitution, that they be at least twenty-years-old, have been a citizen for seven years, and live in the district they represent. The House of Representatives had attempted to refuse to seat Adam Clayton Powell, a controversial black congressman who was embroiled in credible financial scandals. There was only one justice who dissented on technical grounds. […]
Dr Laura opens this reflection: “People spend a lot of time redefining stealing in order to increase their comfort zone as they assert themselves in a world of needs, wants, possessions, power struggles, fame, fortune, desire, envy, loss, hurt, greed, and antisocial personalities.” This observation implies that many people steal because they feel that they are being taken advantage of, or they themselves were the target of loss, hurt, and greed, and they want to get even with the world, though she does not develop this thought in depth. […]
Anders Nygren emphasizes that “Old Testament piety with its devotion to the Law was by no means the external legalism it is often assumed to have been. There was an inward bond that held the godly man to the Law. The righteous felt no sense of external compulsion when confronted by the Law, but a sense of inner solidarity with it. Its observance gave him value and made him acceptable to God. His prevailing mood was expressed in Psalm 1,” the Psalm that sings of Law as Gospel. […]
The challenge facing all of us is the difficulty in distinguishing between the elderly who have dementia from those who are cantankerous or troublemakers. Indeed, even the experts may not be able to tell when dementia is in its earliest stages. So be patient with cantankerous elderly neighbors, they might be suffering from early-stage dementia, evaluate whether they have enough to eat and drink. Be quick to call the police and welfare agencies to evaluate the situation, but in Florida and other states, the police need to be the first contact.
You cannot even say that since this person has a long history of being a troublemaker, then this person is not in an early stage of dementia. Dementia is not like the common cold, when today you have a cold, and yesterday you did not. Dementia often progresses slowly, which means that the personality of someone with dementia does not change as much as it evolves, and often their worse behavior will worsen. Someone who is angry will often simply become angrier. Often their actions are captive to their emotions, which means that the person with advanced dementia literally cannot be blamed for their actions. […]
Webster knew that “the question of paramount importance in our affairs is likely to be, for some time to come, the Preservation of the Union, or its Dissolution; and now power can decide this question, but that of the People themselves.”
South Carolina not only set bad precedent, but she had also enacted a state law that stated that state militia could resist federal forces sent in to enforce the laws passed by Congress under the Constitution. Thus, you could argue that the Civil War did not start in 1864, that it really started in the 1830’s. […]
After spiriting so many slaves to freedom, a massive bounty of $40,000 was placed on Harriet Tubman’s head, which is equivalent to many hundreds of thousands in today’s money, enough to buy hundreds of slaves. If she had been caught, she likely would have been lashed with a hundred lashes bleeding out, she likely would have died from the punishment. She was bold, she would go to the market pretending to be an old woman, once she brushed past one of her former masters!
Before the Civil War, she made nineteen trips to Maryland to rescue more enslaved relatives, and slaves on other plantations. In this account she remembers she rescued three hundred souls from slavery, other accounts say less than a hundred. […]
Why don’t the Roman Stoics discuss justice as much as Plato? In the direct Radical Democracy of Athens, the citizens served on the juries and passed the laws, which meant that ordinary citizens participated in rendering justice. This is why Socrates sought to educate ordinary citizens on justice. But in the Roman Empire, the totalitarian Emperors and their servants were responsible for the administration of justice, the ordinary citizens no longer directly influenced the administration of justice. But that is not the case in modern America and most democracies, many ordinary citizens serve on juries and vote for many political officials, local and national. Justice should be our concern.
You can make a strong argument that Stoicism, like Judaism and Christianity, is founded on the two-fold Love of God and neighbor, that you should Love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Plus, we have the St Maximus the Confessor corollary, that we should be eager to forgive our neighbor. […]
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