EVOLUTIONS OF ART

I Believe!

I believe in Art. Yes I have Faith, and believe in God... and have strong ideas where He is concerned, but I am talking here about a different kind of faith. My study of history has shown me some important facts which I rely upon today- and this confidence is embedded deep... a faith if you will, in Art as an important element in community and international communication and social healing. Therefore some form of art will always be necessary. Yes it will change to different mediums... substrates, adapt to new technologies. But we have to have art... our culture does, our society does, in order to advance and prosper.

Art provides several powerful, essential services. It is a bridge between cultures, and generations, and is a basic form of communication- of philosophies and values and social priorities. It can be mere decoration, or be harnessed to manipulate the masses through advertisements, or it can educate and inspire. Or just provide a cheap vacation on a hectic day. It can be entertainment, or propaganda or even a channel for physical healing. Our society cannot function without it.

In these times when factions of our society are literally turning against many statements of art around the country, with protests and destruction and anarchy... hopefully just temporary group insanity, I look to history for what to expect next. As America goes through a moment not dissimilar to the French Revolution, which was a class war that erupted against most forms of power and wealth, we as artists can see how our kinsmen in France, led by a mother and the most famous painter of mothers, served their society and eventually became a unified voice in it.

Berthe Morisot with her mentor and lover, Aime Millet, 
who tried to make a sculptor out of her. She broke off 

their engagement and followed her destiny as a painter 

instead. France and art would never be the same after 

she gathered a bunch of rejected artists and goaded them 

beyond their individual potentials. When her daughter 

Julie was born, Berthe put her art career in the backseat,
 and raised a beautiful girl who became a legendary model
 for herself and eventually Renoir.

[Among the hundreds of historical tintypes I discovered in what I refer to as the Harper Bros image boneyard, were scores of photographs of the French Impressionists and their friends, models and families. The world is seeing these rare images for the first time in this blog. They might well have posed for Edgar Degas, who was quick to recognize the importance of photography and learned the techniques of it.]

In the blink of an eye, the dominance of Italian art, firmly associated with the Vatican, which had ruled all art trends and standards of art for a thousand years, became an anachronism and voila- gone and replaced with Humanism, Deism, even Agnosticism. It was harsh, that's the nature of social change... but it was, for the first time, an “even playing field.” Ignored today is what a killing field it was first.

After Napoleon was routed and then the French people revolted in response to a century of terrible losses and the depravity in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war, the French, and the world, were ripe for a pleasant breeze of rest and peace... a true refuge. And artists led the way. Needless to say, art had not been an important factor in all the death and destruction which saturated French history. War and the guillotine had repeatedly stifled, if not snuffed most artistic aspirations.

 Monet

The Impressionists, then just a bunch of undisciplined, privileged youth who would not even attend art schools to learn their craft, the equivalent of 1970's “hippies,” had been drafted into the fray, or fled to England. Monet and Pissarro found refuge across the English Channel, while Monet's best friend Frederic Bazille joined the army, and Renoir and Degas were conscripted into the National Guard. The elder mentor of this motley group, Gustave Courbet led the “Communards,” a militant group of socialists and anarchists.

Pissarro

The occupying Prussian army commandeered and destroyed Pissarro's home and studio, using his canvases for aprons and groundcloths. In the end Courbet went to prison for his communist passions and then was banished from France. Renoir, still determined to paint plein air in his off-time, was suspected as a spy and almost executed, but at the last minute his former sympathies to a Communard leader in a similar crunch won him mercy and he escaped with his life. Poor, generous and vastly talented Bazille, perhaps the most gifted of all of them, was killed in an inglorious retreat on a muddy road in a useless war. France lost a great talent and a greater human being, and Monet lost his benefactor and painting partner.

Pierre August Renoir with his two baby sitters,

 Paule and Jeannie Gobillard, and son Jean.

Massive class indignation had led to the trashing of the old France, the near extermination of the educated and professional class, abandonment of the church, destruction of proud French archives and institutions, and the tearing down of the Monarchy, their statues, many government museums, and in its place ushered in a new nationalism built on hatred of the merchant class and any symbols of wealth. This animosity soon evolved into fascism and totalitarianism, a return to the Napoleonic model, which led to total disaster... and eventually the obliteration of national pride.

Devoted yet constantly fighting friends, 

Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt pose

 with a beautiful  model, on the left.

Yet somehow, and this is the point of this diatribe, after the smoke had evaporated, the bloody revolution, the hubristic Napoleonic aggressions, and civil war and total bankruptcy of the country... Art blossomed. Miraculously France soon led the world in art and fashion from that time on... until WWI. Unbelievably, draft dodgers and communists and National Guardsmen came together and the love of art and beauty united them.

When she first came to France, Mary Cassatt 

studied under Jean Leon Gerome, a rare opportunity

 for an American female.  She found him too rigid 

and obsessed with his process and minutia, then 

found a home among the Impressionists, whom 

Jerome persecuted as a Salon judge out of spite.

Humility and desperation helped all of them to gain a new desire for tolerance and freedom of expression. And eventually, actually led by two strong women, who shared almost none of their affinities, the French Impressionists emerged and prevailed in spite of organized, institutional opposition, to become the vanguard of the modern art movement.

Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot were very different

 but quite unified in steering the Impressionists and 

their movement. When Morisot got married and was

distracted with motherhood, American Cassatt stepped

 in and provided crucial consistency, and timely financing and vision.

France was the place to be. American artists, Belgians, Brits, Germans, Dutch, all came to sup from the French stream of consciousness. The pain had turned into gain. Truly great art has always emerged out of some significant human struggle. Spanish and Italian artists took note... and began to look to France for direction. Truly the Spanish masters such as Goya and Velasquez had been a great influence on them, with their painterly style, and strongly injected with political fire, and Courbet's socialistic ideals, the French artists chose genre art as their platform. Popes and generals and kings and queens no longer mattered. It was the working man's and woman's life which was worthy of study and edification. Regular people... living their peaceful lives, enjoying French food and wine and culture, and their children... or a simple picnic or boating on the lake... these former trivialities would now occupy their canvases. And this had never been done before. These were subjects considered, up until then to have been unworthy of Art.

Edouard Manet (center) with his best friend Emmanuel Chabrier (left)

and brother Eugene Manet, (right) who married Berthe Morisot.

Being of French ancestry, I am glad to acknowledge these achievements, and since I count myself as an American Impressionist, a descendant of their traditions, and someone who appreciates their artistic vision, and the fact that their movement was the last sane moment in the history of art!

We as artists, the real ones, the ones who paint or sculpt because we must or lose our sanity, we must not give up because sales are down. We are the only true free voices in society. No publishers, no art police to constrain us, free from the political agendas of most of the Media and other sources of information.

Do not quit, or get discouraged because Americans are not buying art right now... and galleries (mostly irrelevant parasites), are going out of style... or because a social upheaval is disturbing the flow of our economy, or worse the flow of our creativity... These things are temporary.

WE MUST PAINT. I believe in art. It was art that lifted France out of her own self-inflicted mire, and began a century of art experimentation; an infinite evolution of art “isms” and a great gift of a myriad of the art choices we enjoy today. Hard times, social change, even cultural change, can be another door... the next avenue for artists to lead the next cultural revolution. Our country, in fact the developing world needs us more than ever, to paint... create, to feel our way through the dark, to help define what is our next platform for peaceful, artistic exchange; to establish the positive fruits of our negative human struggles: To discover the new “isms,” the new technologies which will speak to the people... in a universal language. Without words.

That is how and why I don't just make art, I BELIEVE IN IT.

The public is distracted right now. Ignore the lull, believe in your role as an important outlet- for yourself and for our social conscience, and understand the important role that free artists play in the lasting threads of our social fabric. We are the strands which hold our culture together... it's a thankless job... it's never been about the money... it is a calling... like a missionary. Besides raising children, it's the most important thing you will ever do.

A picture is worth a thousand questions

History is a funny thing. It reminds us of our victories and our failures. It inspires us and it haunts us even more. My intensive research during the writing of Mothers Teach Your Children has been infinitely improved by Internet resources, and yet it has also exposed a vast reservoir of yet unknown history which I would rather have not dealt with.

I kept coming to unsolvable enigmas while embroiled in countless hours of photograph comparisons, as I made identifications of the people in this book. I would be engrossed identifying a prominent family, parents and their children, and their extended families... their associates, and my house of cards would suddenly threaten to collapse over some boy's ear. You see, people can often look like a famous person, share key distinguishing features, but then totally have the wrong ears, which in many cases was my deciding factor, in believing I had found another rare tintype of a important Victorian personality.

Ears. Big ones, little pointed ones, with long lobes, or no lobes... earlobes were huge in this tedious process. Everything in a certain visage would be right except some person's earlobes, and suddenly a potential $1000 image became a $10 one. But the farther I delved into the puzzle, the more challenging it got, because there were times I knew that, well, the person's ears had changed. And people's ears do not change that much, except over a long time they get larger. They don't ever get significantly smaller. They don't suddenly become lobeless, or grow big healthy lobes where there had been none.

Of course, little children's ears can grow quite a bit... until puberty. Women can develop small earlobes after some years of wearing heavier ear rings. Old men's ears will stretch and droop and become quite large. But for the full grown and middle aged, ears are pretty stable. So what was going on with some of these people's ears whose faces were identical but the ears did not match?

I became convinced that Victorians had access to plastic surgery, to an extent far more prevalent than one would suspect! The possibility showed up first in my study of Western outlaws. I would have photos of the same person, I was sure, yet the better known photo seemed to have had his ears trimmed. Yes, actually trimmed. Earlier photos of them, in my collection, if they were the same person, betrayed much larger, almost comically protruding ears, and much more easily recognized, which could not have been reduced by any natural means.

In Victorian times, photographers were often referred to as artists, often able to touch-up photos, eliminate backgrounds, enhance features, even change clothing on the subjects. In the early days an artist might actually paint a portrait from a poor image, then make a Daguerreotype, Ambrotype or tintype of it. Later they would create an enlargement, do the cosmetic changes, then photograph those renderings and print them as cabinet cards. Sometimes, for a fee, they would make their portraits more “flattering,” and scars or moles could be removed, and yes, ears reduced for posterity. That was one explanation.

I often delayed decisions in these cases, as I had plenty of photographs of folks whose ears had not been doctored. Everything coasted along, and then about 600 tintypes later I was forced to deal with the question. A prominent Southern family seemed to have had some of their children endure rhinoplasties!

When had plastic surgery come into practice?

Would you believe around 500 BC? A surgeon in India is thought to have pioneered the practice. It became fairly common in Europe in the 1500's for certain daring surgeons to repair noses ravaged by syphilis, which had become rampant in those days. American surgeons began to experiment with early forms of plastic surgery in the late Nineteenth Century. But European doctors had it down much earlier, and Americans who needed a tuck or a correction could attain a do-over if only they could find a way to cross the big pond.

Knowing this was a game-changer, in understanding the variables in my comparisons. And it hit me, all of those hundreds of years of sword fights and dagger injuries had made our ancestors experts at stitching, grafting if necessary, multitudes of injuries sustained in the most common type of armed conflict, long before guns put neat little holes deep inside one's enemies. Those big holes called for a whole new generation of medical innovation. And still, plastic surgery could eventually minimize bullet-made surface wounds as well.

Certainly by the 1930's criminals like John Dillinger were getting pretty sophisticated procedures done to hide their identity. Moles removed, dimples filled, ear lobes trimmed. Suddenly it was not so far-fetched for Bill Dalton to have sought a surgeon out in California who could change his appearance in the 1890's. It might explain why he went way out there for a few years, and behaved well enough to dabble in politics, before he returned home to Oklahoma re-invented, only then to succumb to his violent fate.

The anomalies in my photos just kept throwing up barriers to progress in my years of research, until I came upon an astounding possibility; that Some Victorians utilized plastic surgery to obscure their bi-racial heritage. And these surgeries had stupifying, far-reaching implications. Instantly I began to perceive why history can be so... secretive.

We know today what the people before us wanted us to know. And they hid a lot from us. They had many reasons, but human pride and avoidance of social rejection were at the heart of many deceptions. And totally clueless, we never knew or suspected any more than they wanted us to.

Victorian women had become experts at concealing pregnancy. For a century or more, men and women wore wigs as a fashion accessory. Flamboyant clothing, high heels, flashy jewelry, all “made the man.” Paintings were designed to embellish and flatter. Who knows what Martha Washington really looked like?

All of this came to the front of my brain one night, at 3:00 in the morning, and got me out of bed to face and consider it. I had been acquiring some old original tintypes of prominent families in the Confederacy, when something bizarre was becoming unavoidable: Jefferson Davis, the first and last president of the Confederate States of America was very possibly married to a woman of bi-racial ancestry.

Varina Davis, first lady of the Confederacy

Internet blogs poke at the possibilities, based on the unavoidable conclusions by more than a few people, from merely looking at Davis's beautiful, African-American looking wife. There were actually plenty of clues found within their own lives and writings, that Varina Anne Banks Howell Davis was a raisin in the sun, at least for her “Northern” attitudes and her opinions and her undiplomatic way of sharing them, which made her less than popular in the short, violent life of the Confederacy. But if she was bi-racial, (and she probably was) that would have been more than enough to feed the fires of Davis's Southern racist critics, who kept him tormented during his presidency.

A comparison to known photographs 

and a miniature painting on ivory, (top left)

Born in Natchez and raised on a Mississippi plantation, then educated in Philadelphia at a prestigious girl's school, Varina's pedigree was never-the-less short and cloudy. Much like Martha Washington, she was olive skinned, dark-haired, but she also typified all the characteristics of the most beautiful African-American stars known in Hollywood today. Huge expressive eyes, very full, even voluptuous lips, and a wide nose typical to Native Americans or Negroes, but rarely seen among Anglo/ Caucasians. Indeed, she had sometimes been compared by her detractors to the lovely “octaroons” and mulattoes famous in nearby Louisiana in her own time. But none of this speculation proved anything.

She could have been a “black Irish” girl, or her ancestry salted with a little Native American blended in somewhere. Varina gave Jefferson Davis beautiful children, but sadly only a couple of them lived long enough to marry and provide grandchildren. Several of them showed definite bi-racial characteristics early on. After the war, and two years in a federal prison, Jeff Davis spent a great deal of his post-war marriage chasing business opportunities throughout the States and in Europe, trying to rebuild the fortune he lost as titular head of the rebellion. Varina was not amused, and less amused by several scandalous relationships he pursued during their strained relationship.

Jefferson Davis was presumptuous, overbearing and annoyingly energetic, and found that the two got along better when they were apart. So he made sure they got along. Later on one of his devoted lady friends gave him a grand home upon her death, and the whole family relocated to New York. The Davises traveled extensively, and Varina and her youngest daughter, also named Varina, wrote books which were well received.

Varina was boldly transparent about her feelings about the Confederacy. She had always been outspoken, even warning that it would come to no good end. During the war, several of her slaves suspiciously managed to escape, never to be seen again. After it was over, she wrote that the right side had won, and she was glad of it. Unlike most Southerners, she seemed to celebrate Emancipation, and may even have rushed it a little with her own slaves. I would not be surprised if some of them were relatives. This may sound preposterous, but it is not. As discussed in my book, Mary Custis Lee, General Robert E. Lee's wife, had a half-sister born to an Arlington plantation slave, whom her father freed and gave a home with acreage when she got married.

As I dug into the Davis children and their possible ethnicity, the implications began to loom up in a surprising geyser of race issues.

Oldest Davis daughter, Margaret, was experimenting,

trying to find a way to wear her hair.

One of the “Southern traditions,” lost when slavery was finally ended, was the pervasive practice on large plantations of many masters providing the “seed” for the slave offspring. There may have been some practical reasons for the practice, and certainly some very selfish ones. Thomas Jefferson had done this. The Supreme Court Justice in the Republic of Texas, John Hemphill, never married but fathered his children through his slave, with whom he co-habitated for almost fifteen years. Confederate General John R. Jones had four “outside” children, one who grew up to be one of the founders of the NAACP. He astonished and incensed his community by educating and providing for them as his children, leaving his two mulatto sons everything when he died. Likewise, Mary Custis Lee's father, George Washington Custis, did the fair and proper thing, even if it embarrassed his whole family. But not all Southern men were so noble. Many more shrugged and declared ignorance... and for self-serving if not totally unjust reasons.

Scores of illegitimate mulatto children of slaveowners, if acknowledged, would thus rightfully share in the family's inheritance. The master's white children would suddenly share just a sliver in a limited pie, and in the South, those pies had already shrunk to oblivion after the war.

Maintaining “whiteness” became paramount. The mixing of race only went one way. There was whitening of Blacks, but there was no blackening of Whites. Besides there being laws in some states forbidding inter-racial marriage, and casting all citizens with even a drop of Negro blood as black, there were ancient myths and strong prejudices about race, which would destroy the lives of bi-racial persons if their mixed race genealogy was ever detected.

The metamorphosis of Margaret Davis, 

first daughter of the Confederacy.

All photos are historic sources.

Here is where my research answered my own questions in the matter. If the Davis children needed crafty cosmetics or surgery to “whiten” them, the ex-president's travels and dealings in Europe would have offered him the means and the opportunity to provide them the best in medical care. And somehow, the Davis's beautiful large-eyed, wide-nosed, black-haired children grew up to sport pointed noses, and brown hair. Their ears stayed the same.

My photographs seem to document lifelong struggles to manage their hair, lighten their complexions, do whatever it took to maintain their racial status in the apartheid South.

The Davis's second daughter Varina had 

more Caucasian characteristics. 

Image from my collection 

Starting out with very black hair, Varina seems

 to experiment with degrees of curliness. 

She ends up blonde. 

If I am correct, then the implications are legion. One important one would be that it was not racial hatred which propelled the South into the Civil War. The examples above were just a sampling of Southern romance and familial connection to Negro slaves. You do not touch or spend time or attention with something or someone you hate... much less make love with them, virtually adopt their children within the limits of the marriage laws, and even educate them in violation of the laws of the land. You do not, in some cases ignore societal stigmas, risk ostracism, and break the rules of your native culture for anyone you hate, or have contempt for, or judge as something less than human.

Artists over the decades have struggled on just how

 to portray Varina, Davis's youngest daughter, who gave him

 grandchildren... she was a blonde Arian, or mulatto, 

or Black! 

It was complicated, it was wrong, but it was far from hate. These bi-racial relationships were witnessed all over the South, and were the most honest and transparent evidence of an unspoken undercurrent, a shadow society of sorts, which had been growing for over a century.

Apartheid was inspired as much by greed, concerns about inheritance, as it was about hate or notions of racial superiority.

The quandary was well illustrated in the Texas county where I lived for almost fifty years. Sheriff Garrett Scott came home to Grimes County from the war to become a popular lawman, and was elected several times. A “reconstructed” Confederate veteran, and a son of a slave owner, he did not break ties with his former slaves, but represented their interests and pushed for reforms in Black education. He maintained a romantic interest in his former slave lover, whom he never married, but with her fathered at last one child. Eventually his open-minded ideas were challenged and the county ended up in a shooting war, assassinations of Black officials, and the ending of Black rights and enfranchisement. Scott was wounded and his brother killed, and then he was run out of the county, requiring a militia to escort him to safety. These kinds of things happened, where some White men had the courage to admit their affections and loyalties to Blacks, common to many more Whites than ever admitted, at great cost to themselves.

So after the war, some Southern men were driven as much by love, or at least duty and common decency, as others were by prejudice.

Abolition of slavery would have led to making Negroes equal citizens in many ways not considered by Abolitionists, and suddenly made them members of white families, with implied co-ownership, inheritances, and other legal rights. Southerners like Lee, Custis, and Davis hated slavery, and were knee-deep in a family nightmare, which was growing exponentially, and frantically trying to divest themselves from the “peculiar institution.” But it was a family affair. They wanted to deal with it, and while saving face, pay off some, more or less adopt others, and pick and choose who was “freed,” and who remained informally enslaved on the farm like the rest of their children!

To them it was about pride, self-determination and social acceptance, but being as fair as they could, and protecting their assets and most of all, their white children. Since there was often five to ten of those, it was definitely about ducking responsibility to a number that could double or triple that count. So they would fight a war over … yes “states rights,” which governed these kinds of family complications. And those soldiers in gray in many cases were not so much fighting for slavery, but their own parcels as described in their daddy's Will. Freedom and equal rights for enslaved people would mean financial disaster for them. They would die to protect that from happening. It was selfish, and wrong, but it sheds a different light on what has always been blamed on White “superiority” and racial hatred.

Multiple sins had been tolerated over a long period of time, until Southerners were so steeped in a quagmire of wrongs and injustices, that their only defense was the U. S. Constitution. So dependent on slave labor, so embroiled in systematic adultery, and so guilty of race persecution in order to maintain a status quo, the South found few sympathetic allies around the world. And worse, half of its own countrymen ready to force the issue, even go to war over it. The question which can never be answered, is what might have happened if the South had been allowed to deal with its family complications on its own, in its own time. Might the South have gone through a similar social reversal like that in the North, where slavery had grown into disfavor. The South was not that far behind, seeing how slavery was still the law of the land, and the slaves in the North were not officially emancipated until deep into the very war over the question. The flag of the United States had flown over legal slavery for almost one hundred years. The Confederacy lasted only four. And the war that they fought, which took so many lives, solved nothing.

In the South, there became a revealing pejorative among whites which needs addressing. About the lowest thing you could call a person, even if you loved Negroes, was a “Nigger Lover.” Somehow this was considered to be some kind of betrayal, especially among White wives who had few rights themselves. It was a term of suspicion and a dreaded threat rooted very deeply, and for most white kids, we could never imagine how deep. We just repeated it because grown-ups were so horrified by the term. White children over the years picked up on the severity of the term, but not its actual meaning. They used it often and indiscriminately, without understanding its origins.

After the Civil War, one of the biggest casualties was Southern propriety, as countless black housemaids let be known the identity of the fathers of their light-skinned children... And countless White wives faced what should have been obvious, that their husbands had been unfaithful, and fathered numerous “mulatto” children, and they were in fact, “Nigger lovers.” The very existence of this term, stupidly repeated by schoolchildren, suggests that there were significant numbers of southerners who “loved” Negroes. Enough for them to be a group derided more than Blacks themselves. Surely, for some the term was a euphemism, but there can be no doubt, a faction represented by some of the most prominent Southerners, that love was indeed... love. And love or not, this marital betrayal of White women could be traced right to the steps of Arlington-Lee mansion.

Much, much later Americans learned that even Thomas Jefferson had been a lover of a Negro. “Loving” Negroes had not been just some low-life pastime of ner' do wells, but the tradition of Southern slaveholders for hundreds of years. It had been a contemptible practice, of breaking Biblical taboos and vows of marriage, violating vulnerable Black women and denying their children their due inheritance. It was not that loving Negroes was bad, the white men obviously thought it quite acceptable, it was the conditions surrounding it, and the denial afterwards. The duress; The dehumanizing, predatory nature of the so-called loving. But these assumptions about the circumstances are merely conjecture. Looking back on it today, it was not so different from the kind of love many White women received during that same era.

Some Black women found short-term advantages to these truly sordid relationships, and many even traded love for shadow marriages which gave their children a better future. But after the War Between the States, women black and white no longer had to look the other way, or pretend ignorance, or tolerate a... “Nigger Lover.”

But there was another angle to this term. If Jefferson, Custis, Lee, and Davis and others were implicated in this insidious system, and they were, what could be said about the South but that it was run by men who made love to Negro women often, and had invented an ideal sex arrangement, (for them) and racial prejudice was far less a part of this paradigm than male dominance and gratification. It was the racial divide which provided the curtain for their sexual adventures. Then some like Jefferson and Custis came clean and actually did make a stab at doing the right thing by their bi-racial children. They were true Negro lovers.

Jefferson Davis Jr. 

Tintype from author's collection

When General Lee signed that surrender to General Grant at Appomattox, there was a crashing of the Southern culture, and it needed to crash. But immediately some Southerners began to speak of Lee as an illegitimate spokesman for the Confederacy, and they felt he had no authority to end their fight for their “way of life.” There was talk of continuing the battle of Secession, to protect their assets, even making a final stand in Texas. Many Southerners had already moved their money and slaves to Texas where they believed they were out of reach of the Yankees. They thought Texas could hold out, even go back to being a sovereign nation again. Thousands of displaced slaves were transported and congregated along the plantation regions along the Brazos River, awaiting the end of the war.

If the South had won, or at least obtained a satisfactory truce, then they would remain slaves, and their master's assets would be secure, and they could be marched back home. If the South lost, then these extended Black families, many of them blood relations of white plantation owners, had been cleverly relocated- and disoriented and without any means of travel, probably, conveniently, never to be seen again. Through emergency relocation, the problem of plantation inheritance was made to disappear. And Brazos Valley towns found themselves overrun with homeless freedmen. These thankless, heartless slave owners, who avoided monumental costs and complications and accountability by transporting their slaves across the Mississippi, were the original “Nigger lovers,” eventually considered the lowest form of White Southerner, who fathered countless bi-racial children and then exported them too far away to be reunited. When Texas Blacks hint at the perpetual injustices they have suffered since slavery times, this was the beginning of it.

It was not the supposed beatings and whippings depicted in Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was the cheatings and quippings of master Billy Bob. Robbed of their beneficial associations, denied their kinships, reduced to chattel and spoken about by insulting pejoratives, African Americans have a right to remind America what outrageous wrongs were instituted by its fathers, and perpetuated by elitist monsters for generations. And perhaps the greatest injustice was the imposing of White standards of beauty, which started with bi-racial Southerners trying to pass for something they were not.

Young Jeff appears, according to the known 

historical photographs, to have had his ears

 trimmed significantly, whereas mine suggests

 the changes were done in stages, ears first,

 then the nose was narrowed.

In a White world, Blacks were left to construct their own social structure based on whiteness. The presence of so much white blood in their demographic resulted in a regrettable hierarchy based on lightness or less-blackness; A paradigm built on shame and self-loathing. And Jefferson Davis's own children may have led the way.

All of this to say, the causes of the Civil War were very complicated and almost beyond our understanding today. My first chapters attempt to reveal some of those paradoxes which led to a terrible war, and try to help today's generation understand the reasons why our country chose reconciliation, rather than execution of the Southern rebels after the war.

INVITATION: To The Narrow Path- America's Legacy.

Life is a car.

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." 

                                                           Jesus

Most people will never know the passion, some would call it obsession it requires to write a book. And that is probably a good thing for them. As Hank Williams Jr. sang about his alter-ego, “Bosephus,” “It's in me and its got to come out.” And that is the crux of the matter. Publishing... others reading it, possible profit... those were all secondary. All kinds of forces drive a person, and for me it was a sense of possessing something which did not belong to me... and wanting to hand it off. Wanting to find a way for it to be transferable. And gladly transferred.

If you stuck with it- this unfolding, you know that there are no accidents, few coincidences, and everything, every person, every event fits somehow into a Cosmic plan... designed by God. Even our rebellious nature, or disbelief. My personal credo is that nothing ever falls together. Only with God's creative energy does anything ever “fall together.”

Science has never witnessed one incident where anything fell together by spontaneous generation. Not a single Cadillac, or can opener, or a simple amoeba ever fell together. Only God can make anything from raw materials into a complex organism, which then in most cases only makes excrement, and if it is lucky, some off-spring. No accident of nature, or millions of them over millions of years, ever made so much as a sea sponge. Just imagine how much fun we would be having right now, if mankind really understood the mysteries of Creation and life. We wouldn't be making movies... we would be making every kind of slave and monster.

Good things have never just “fallen together”... and when they seem to have, God was the author of it. And once you trust that truth, you can enjoy life as a spectator in an unfolding drama, in which you have free agency, but relatively little impact on the world around you.

If life was a car, you would only be in control of the steering wheel... but God is the manufacturer, and wrote the owner's manual, and the master of state inspection, and the motor, the transmission, and even the exhaust. It is your life, your car, but it is His deal. It's all about Him.

You might go places, leave a few tread marks or have a few wrecks... but only when the motor, fueled by God, allowed you to. God is not so concerned about our travel log as He is about us merely recognizing that without Him, our car will just end up a junk heap in a wrecking yard. It is not so important where we went, but why we went, and who we tried to carry with us. He provides us with power, comfort and speed, and huge windshields for protection and beautiful views of the world. He cares about our motivations more than our destinations here on earth, which reveal our souls, because the real point is our eternal home with Him. Some people get distracted and love the car instead of Him, love the places they go and forget the motor who made it all possible.

We were made to worship a wondrous and generous God. We were put in our car to find out where our eternal soul would choose to go, if it was set free. And we are allowed, if we so choose to wander down the most lonely and darkest roads. If we go cruising through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, looking for sin, we will find it. Or we can choose to steer, with His guidance, towards His light. And He is generous in His “wonders to perform.”

Knowing this, 400 years ago my ancestors steered down a very dark road... and came to this country at its very beginning, when it was a vast, dangerous wilderness. One of my ancestors arranged for the Mayflower and the Speedwell to bring immigrants to the New World when there were no roads or stores or real protection of any kind; No local government, no churches, no doctors, not even a harbor to sail to. Those pilgrims had rejected the ways of their society, and possessed a passion which drove them to forsake all, and step into the unknown... so that they would be free to believe, and practice their religion, and trust their fates to that all-knowing God. This is exactly what God wants all of us to do.

Half of them perished the first year. They suffered terribly for their sense of adventure and aberrant Faith. Lesson number one was that these freedoms, of association, of speech, of religion, were worth dying for. And if not for some miracles, they might all have ended up dead like the settlers at Jamestown who preceded them. Lesson number two was that God does not always provide a safety net, even for those whom He loves. Our survival as mortals is not as important as our preparation for eternity. So hunger, disease and massacres reduced their numbers and their other countrymen who followed after them. Still, whatever misery they knew in the Old World drove them from European shores to continue a great migration across the sea. It was an epic evacuation of the disillusioned and discontented. And the historic landing of the doggedly hopeful.

It may seem unfair to say, but I believe, that the followers of that society stayed behind. The pathfinders, the inventors, the leaders gradually went to a better place of opportunity, which was more precious to them than safe existence. And in their hands and minds were the true Faith, and the polity which could save the world from itself. Lesson number three was that no matter how scary things appear, God has a plan, which will serve all of mankind. And yes, he blesses those who obey Him.

Even while still on the sea, the pilgrims envisioned a country of freedoms and democracy; a way of life built not on leader or servant classes but on the teachings of a servant Savior, who commissioned servant-leaders. “He who would be last, shall be first.” The rest you know well. They put down their dreams and signed it. It was called the Mayflower Compact, and that covenant, and the spirit behind it, was what made them different from many other attempts to settle in the New World.

Two of my ancestors, then unrelated, were signers of the Mayflower Compact. One of them, Isaac Allerton, himself a bit of scamp, had a daughter who became famous among the pilgrims, as a kind of care-giver, a frontier nurse and social worker, recognized as one who labored and sacrificed even more than the others. Her name was Mary Allerton, who had arrived at Plymouth on the legendary Mayflower, a ship contracted by her future father in law, and she survived the many toils and snares. Sixteen years later she married Thomas Cushman in 1636 and they had many descendants. He would eventually serve as ruling elder at Plymouth for many years, and later someone wrote of her deeds, and dubbed her the “Mother of the Pilgrims,” something my grandmother took great pride in. Her name can be seen carved in stone at Plymouth. Often reminded of these facts by my grandmother, I knew these facts before I began this quest, to get this book out of me, in an attempt to remind American mothers of who they are, who they have been, who they must be.

And then as I began this project, Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation began to spin and circulate- and amaze me all the more... as things fell together.

My very first impression was that the old tintypes featured in this book were from the collection of Mark Twain, because some of the very first ones I obtained were people within his family and sphere of influence. Then, because of all of the Old West tintypes, that theory morphed to Twain's biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, who had been a frontier photographer. But Paine turned out to be a somewhat controversial if not scandalous character, and to my shock, was a direct ancestor of another tribe of Cushmans, distant cousins of mine, whose family history was unknown to me. My heart was heavy if my story at that point was to go any further, as the Twain/Paine story, at least my impression of it, is not a positive one. But the tintypes kept coming, and coming, and eventually I realized that although there were images which may have been photographed by Paine, or collected by Twain, they were not the whole story.

It was even bigger. And much closer to my own family schematic. In fact a bizarre example of a grandiose family affair. Towards the end of the avalanche, more tintypes of writers began to show up, and like Twain and Paine, almost all associated with Harper & Bros... a huge Victorian era publishing house which dated far back... a large operation which produced magazines and books and might have had need to own all of these likenesses at one time or another, to cover the news of the day. For me it was mystery solved. Later a very knowledgeable person who had researched Laura Ingalls Wilder cemented my hunch, providing some welcome “good news” and verifying that Rose Wilder Lane and her mother had provided rare family photos to Harpers... but most were never used and thought by her and others to have been returned. But she also offered some “bad news,” summarily dismissing my tintypes as not being what I thought they were. Not even close.

But by that time I was conditioned to having my precious bubble popped... and the book was written, and I was fairly committed, and very sure of myself. Too much had gone for many months like a magic carpet ride. Even my skeptical little brother agreed that the images were rare, authentic images of famous persons.

I had acted on faith, followed my passion, and prayerfully met and processed each day what God, or chance had put in front of me. And I had something else. Those little things that happened along the way which encouraged me daily- told me to keep on- little things which would mean nothing to anyone else. Such as finding stunning commonalities with several of my subjects. And finding commonalities between them. Commonalities were one thing our country was in dire need of at this point in history. I had been finding an undercurrent of wisdom connecting many of them to me, America, and the family of man; And finding for instance, unknown to me, I shared genealogical lineage with the Delano branch of the Roosevelts.

We all had descended from the same pilgrim ancestor... then spelled de la Noye. Remembered by genealogists as Phillipe de Lannoy, he too had been on the ill-fated Speedwell, and come to America on the Fortune with my Cushman ancestors in 1621, and his descendant Mary Soule, a double Delano descendant, married into my line in the early Nineteenth Century. Thus I was also distantly related to Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose, also Delano descendants. Bizarrely, out of the hundreds of tintypes which I had collected, and scores of possible interesting American mothers I might have written about... I had unknowingly identified, purchased, researched... then chosen three which were related to me by blood! (OK, in Eleanor's case, by marriage) And they were even closer related by cultural legacy.

Although that blood relation was distant, it seemed to prove something which I believe, that there is an unseen hand involved in and guiding our lives, powering our car, a Cosmic Artist according to Sagan, speaking over the centuries to people, through whom He has been communicating with his children for centuries. And the combined spirit of freedom, with the Holy Spirit of Faith, the origins of America... is a gift and a legacy which runs deep. It has been carried by a remnant all along. Way back, God made promises to them... through Abraham [“father of the multitudes”], and He intends to keep those promises. And the beautiful part is, through Christ, anyone can choose to graft themselves into that family, that stream of consciousness, whenever they choose, and begin their own epic journey.

And once you join that stream, these kinds of “coincidences” just flow. For me they had been cascading all of my life. In my family, we were raised to take great pride in our American patriarch, Thomas Cushman, just a teen-aged son left on these shores by his father Robert Cushman, who was never to be seen again. Elder Cushman had managed to follow his passion, and obey God... to contract the ships, arrange the voyages of the Mayflower and Speedwell, survive a leaky vessel and still make it the next year, and to preach the first sermon recorded on American soil. He left his son indentured to Governor Bradford, and then disappeared into the fog of legend. Names like Cushman, Allerton, de Lannoy, all mean something to those who live their lives in thanksgiving of this magnificent country, grateful for sixteen generations of guidance and blessing, and being and seeing the fruit of this family tree. And being keepers of the flame.

Ironically, when I was just a boy, my father researched our genealogy, and he thought he may have found, jokingly where my brothers and I might have been related to Jesse James, through my mother's grandmother. So even though I have no proof of that, I had long since embraced his story as a humbling part of my potential legacy. Even if his Reynolds side was of distant relation, the potential outlaw in the family made my life choices more clear. Whose example would I follow? Every person has that same kind of choice to make. So to a considerable degree, this book is a study of my distant relatives.

One of my favorite preachers always makes sure and tells his flock the “take away” from his sermons; what he wants you take out of the service when you leave. As an artist, I have been accustomed to letting go of my product and leaving it to people to interpret, if they want to, or not, and anyway that suits them. But today's reader is less investigative, and has joined many art viewers I have met who absolutely hate symbolism, obscurity, and therefore do not respond to subtlety. So, just in case, here is the take way... my intended take away for this work:

1. Mark Twain was right in one respect. This world, our lives, can be all the hell anybody needs to ever experience. But often it is because we make it that way. We create all the hell we need through bad choices and negative habits. Karma is true to a large part, but it is not the final reward. Conversely, life can also be a taste of heaven... if we have not made a mess of it.

2. Yes, history repeats itself, and part of that repetition is people ignoring it. And doing the same stupid stuff over and over again... the Bible is an excellent proof of that. People who ignore the lessons of history ignore valuable lessons which would make life less a challenge, less chaotic, as they neglect truths which would make life more manageable.

3. Jesus Christ and America were two major intrusions which broke the theme and tempo of man's history, his inhumanity to man... and both have been obstructed, corrupted, and attacked. Both are still trying to save the world.

4. Mothers are wired by God to instinctively provide the love and nurture which insures man's survival. Mothers are our North star, our earthly home, and our alter ego. Our country cannot survive without a regular production of them.

5. Science is not and never will be at war with God. God created all of its parts. But Science is and will always be very limited, like an ant trying to understand the Internet. Science can never and will never replace its creator. It is foolish to look to Science for many answers, which are still mysteries, and will always be. It is foolish to hold God to any standards of proof invented by man. But I would yield to those standards if Man ever proved his own scientific theories, which seem to challenge the existence of God. But he cannot.

6. Atheists find what they are looking for. Seekers of God can find Him if they are sincere. For the most part, life is your car and you drive it where you want to go. It is your bed and you make it. And you will eventually sleep in it a long, long time. And God is quite fair and unobtrusive. Everybody gets the eternity that they wanted.

7. People who chose to believe in a creator God founded this country and gave Him something He always wanted, a people who govern themselves under His Word and His authority. The combination was dynamite. America is the hope of the world, but only if we maintain that partnership.

8. It is all, the survival of our values, our culture, our future, up to our mothers. Mothers wiped our noses, and our tears, bandaged our wounds, fed us wholesome food and ideals, took us to Sunday School, met with our teachers, cheered for us on the ball field, and listened patiently to our teen-aged nonsense... and waited patiently by the phone to hear from our adult lives... ready to mother some more. They are God's living example of His unconditional love. And they do so until they die.

So you are a mother and you have never been told any of this before. Where do you begin?

God is constantly giving you clues... road signs, which will draw you unto Himself. The more you ignore them, the farther you go away from Him. Until one day, you are deep in the weeds. And actually, some people love the weeds. In the end we all get whatever we seek. Start by truly seeking Him. Reading, asking. You never know, you may be the next Eleanor Roosevelt.

I loved God... and history... photography and writing... and God gave me this incredible project- based on one of the most important historic finds of this generation... or as some would suggest, an amazing, uncanny, seemingly impossible parallel universe, designed to entertain me in my last years... as I swam around in my own self-delusion. You can understand why I believe the former, but it was a great gift to me either way.

It gave me something to do after a couple of heart attacks; an intense dive into American history, imagery, and the love of countless mothers. It may have all been a serendipitous illusion, even a distraction from my disability and the evaporation of my art career, in these changing times. But the bird's-eye view of America was awe-inspiring and gave me a high unlike any other creative endeavor, more ecstatic than I can relate- to discover this cache, digest and share these lives and legacies and loves. To feel, through each story, a little of that mystical, powerful connection with my own mother.

She has been gone since I was a young man... I have missed her for almost 40 years. And I never had the sense to say to her, what I have tried to say here to all of you girls.

So I thank God for the awesome ride, and for this final destination... and a chance to say:

Thank you mom.

Thank you God, for her, and what she did and what she tried to do. And all of those mothers before her. Thank you God for someone here on earth to be my nurturer and everlasting angel... and my most devoted fan; My best, most wise, most passionate teacher. Someone to point lovingly, carefully, to your Everlasting Love and Glory.

Amen

Welcome!

"The universe was made on purpose… In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe."

                                                               Carl Sagan

The great, iconic scientist and insistent agnostic, Carl Sagan was no Christian, but compared to skeptics such as Stephen Hawking, he might easily be proclaimed a “prophet of our age.” Regardless of labels, in his ambitions he could easily have been judged by many standards as a godly person. And in spite of his doctrinal aloofness, his writings betray a fierce tolerance for religious faith in general. Sagan could not say with assurance that there was a god, nor could he say with any proof that there wasn't.

This prophet of our age saw all human activity as obviously secondary, “subsumed” by a more powerful intelligence, which was the overarching source of everything. Man's search for understanding was a snail trail on a mountain of mystery. If not a prophet, then Sagan was surely an iconoclast, and like every woman or man, there was an invisible mold on him which fired his intrigue and also formed his conclusions; the agnostic academics which prepared him to represent and speak for his generation. 

He was a pathfinder in spite of many cultural and physical roadblocks, and had the passion to live within our intellectually oppressive societal structure and engage in the investigation of the universe beyond it. Like Hawking and many scientists, his fascination began with the vast wonders of the Universe, of Nature, but his ultimate philosophical paradox was predestined- and thus inhibited by the trends of his generation.

Sagan was a truth seeker, especially of scientific truth, and suspicious of soft modern standards of scientific proof, and unlike many of his contemporaries, and often in spite of them, he was open to evidence which might prove the existence of God.

That is fortunate, since our whole system was inspired by the concept of God. As was this book. In fact the foundations of both depend on it. And as America leads the world into a brighter future, she needs to hold on to the unique foundations which so swiftly propelled her into the most envied and powerful nation on earth.

Our position in the world, in the history of man, is no accident and our God and his principles have guided us well. To throw them away for any reason would be foolish and self-defeating. But that is exactly what many academics, scientists and social engineers are trying to do as they hawk political agendas which debunk religion, Free Enterprise, Capitalism, and our Constitution.

It is an exhausting but winnable argument that could silence these relentless contrarians, but most of us are busy living our lives, enjoying American prosperity, while they devotedly gain influence and momentum. But “Right Wing” Americans must learn how to explain and defend their values, if they or their principles are to survive, or else watch them flushed down the sewer of history, just like those of other great empires of the past. And we need to start that campaign for survival with the defense of our most foundational elements, like motherhood.

It was our mothers who were entrusted by society, who raised us from birth, taught us right from wrong, and built our characters by instilling American values like personal responsibility and self-determination; about “God and apple pie.”

Thankfully, most of what mothers instilled in us has never been fully discarded. With all that he knew, Carl Sagan could not ignore religion, and still held out the possibility that there was much more to know, and he would have bet on it:

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

Perhaps Sagan's god was the unknown. Many people, especially scholars, major in asking questions rather than listening to answers. But he was right, because there is an incredible God waiting to be known... Sagan thought those who called themselves atheists had prematurely shut down an ongoing search for truth... even spiritual truth. For Sagan and his tribe, the jury was still out, and atheists could no more know that their belief, that there was no god, was any more defensible than any believer's. Perhaps he was reflecting Shakespeare's Hamlet when he admonished...

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

Or perhaps Sagan had encountered and embraced Albert Einstein's views about God. Einstein rejected most religions because of their corruptions, but like many Jews, was a great admirer of Jesus, whose teachings he thought well could have solved all social ills in the world, had they been heeded. He too saw a certain genius behind Nature, which denied random, spontaneous generation. “God does not play dice with the universe.”

Einstein was another prophet of his time who could not ignore the obvious; “... everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe- a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.” 

We will see the same kind of logic emerge from the subjects within these pages. So I ask that you receive the following words with that same kind of open mind; The curiosity and objectivity of Sagan. The depth and wisdom of Einstein.

I am not a professional writer, or a pedigreed historian, or even a political pundit. I am an artist. My profession, unlike most of my contemporaries, led me into “Realism,” and a lifetime of research and illustration of America's colorful past. My parents raised me in a rich environment for preparation for my career; my father was a historian, my mother an artist and antique dealer. So I had always been a history buff, as a child scrawling great, apocalyptic battles on manila paper and later in collecting and trading in icons of the American spirit. It is no wonder that I ended up painting many thousands of square feet of murals in schools and museums, depicting our majestic heritage.

My qualifications are not what you may be accustomed to, when approaching American History. True, I look for the picturesque. But my gifts of observation and analysis, required of any historical illustrator, prohibit the indulgence of a tinted lens, and greatly retard a bias. In the “school” of my artistic idols, Tom Lovell, and Winslow Homer, art was to be engaging, awesome, but always based on historical and scientific accuracy. Just like my college Life Drawing classes, where we were taught the anatomy of the body, before we put skin on it, I learned to understand the importance of investigating the core of a thing. The skeleton of principles. The organs of administration. The nerves of public consensus. The lifeblood, which in history alternates between ideals and greed- sometimes altruism, sometimes the dollar.

America's heart, the center of her soul, was truly inspired and then perpetuated by conflicted minds, who treacherously accused and fought one another. Our founders collectively reflected the conflicted soul of every person, reaching for the sublime. The Apostle Paul explained this dilemma when he complained that “The spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.”

Sometimes our leaders have improved on the model, but they often corrupted it. These “greater minds” have primed our pump many times with noble and ignoble mediums. The same system which gave us the Bill of Rights, gave us Slavery and a war over it; Established a U. S. Treasury and then handed our banking and currency operations over to untouchable profiteers; Promised Civil Rights and then took one hundred years to enforce or protect them. Every American can agree on one thing, that our government and its fruit has never represented the better “America” so well formed in our minds.

So ultimately, to grasp and appreciate America, we must dissect the American mind... if we can. So this book is an artist's attempt, a literary illustration of America's collective brain. And that brain trust has been cherished and lived by American mothers, more than anyone.

There is my worthy yet daunting challenge, as minds are abstract things, impossible to actually investigate. And there are so many different species. Thank God there is no pattern, other than a human being, endowed with certain inalienable rights, for an “American.” Our founding fathers did not have one either. Conversely, it was their diversity, supported by common courtesy, and Christian charity which constructed the greatest nation ever devised by man. And that core of tolerance and benevolence was best demonstrated by our women.

Women were and are undoubtedly my biggest heroes, the nurturers of my intellect and my passion for art and history. My mother and grandmothers, my aunts, my school teachers... It seemed the men in my family were self-absorbed, distracted by entrepreneurial visions and their search for significance, and sometimes lured by ambitious delusions which often brought heartbreak. Meanwhile, the women were always stoically taking care of family business, life's essentials like making a home, feeding the family, and making life tolerable and even pleasurable. They did all of these things while enduring, even graciously overlooking our faults... husbands who drank too much, or gambled, or could not keep a job. Mothers saved our lives. That was what women were all about.

Then finally after millions of years of systematic suppression, doors of opportunity were opened where our women could apply their anciently-honed skills to the commercial “workplace.” It was a game-changer with innumerable unintended consequences that we are all still trying to adjust to. And yes, men are trying!

I make no apologies, I have written this book to memorialize my heroes: Women. And if you are a young woman, I am writing to you as well. You are smart. And you are capable. And you have all of these ideas, and abilities, but it sometimes seems the world is set against you. Well, I'm glad our paths have crossed, because I wrote this to encourage you. I wrote this book as a tribute to my heroes; To mothers and daughters and especially to young women at that “fork in the road”... considering their future; whether or not to marry, or pursue a career, or whether or not to have children.

I have been blessed with great, incredible women in my life and learned so much from them, and even though I am an imperfect instrument (a man!) to pass on their wisdom, I had to put it down, and repeat much of what they taught me. Their ideas will creep in here and there as I provide intimate dramatizations featuring my subjects. I believed they would inspire many women, who may not have heard or witnessed these wonderful and stellar viewpoints, taught to me by the great women in my life.

There is so much negativity and contention in the atmosphere today, it is smothering the inherent joys of Womankind... and a great deal more is at stake:

Truth be known, fair or not, our collective consciousness depends on women to invigorate and inspire the whole culture.

I grew up in the '60's as American women, including my talented mother, were unleashed on the professional world, and Americans, some skeptical and some triumphant, watched them discover their options and achieve the highest ambitions for any women in human history. They immediately became an essential asset to our economy, and they loved the freedom and mobility once denied them. But as women gradually rose through the ranks of the professional world, so did divorce rates. And abortion rates. It is no surprise then that birth and marriage rates plummeted.

The “Baby Boom” after WWII turned into a teen-age counter-culture which introduced the new American morality of self-indulgence; free love and long-sought independence from the Biblical foundations of our culture. Sex fairly quickly morphed from a sacred privilege of monogamy to a casual body function, between consenting adults. All moral boundaries were questioned and many were dispensed with. The Rock festival at Woodstock became the new Philadelphia, where our youth declared their new-found freedoms. By the time I was a freshman in college (1974), hundreds of young adults were "streaking," running wildly around the campus in groups, even on weeknights, naked but for their tennies, demonstrating how many different ways they could move around campus in the nude. On bicycles, the hoods of cars, grocery baskets, motor bikes... in the beds of pick up trucks.

Birth control became serious necessity in this bizarre, sexual playground. And a habit. Eventually everybody got bored with community nakedness and put their pants back on and got jobs and rejoined a somewhat sane, albeit “liberated” society. And American women understood more than ever what had to change. They had college degrees now. Plans. They had professions and ambitions, and children would only disrupt if not permanently derail them. They had every right, and they set out to do everything a man could do. But there was just one problem with this new freedom. Men could not do everything that a woman could do.

Not even a team of them.

In fact my experience was that men could not do most things that women could do, and did not want to. So now women were going to join the workforce in droves, and men would have some very threatening competition, and corporate America would thrive greatly from the sudden infusion of talent and intelligence and discipline. But who would have the babies? How would our culture survive without willing mothers? As the birth rates continued to drop, decade after decade, our social visionaries, especially from the Left, saw the obvious answer: America would open the flood gates and encourage immigration from hungry, neighboring countries. They were the ideal population, especially attractive to ruling elites.

Desperate Mexican or Central American immigrants would come in throngs for economic opportunity, with vague ideas about what their new home was, and no attachment to the old Constitutional paradigms. They would take a long time to organize politically, so there would be little problem managing them as a political block. Hispanics would be eternally grateful to whichever ruling party made their happy new citizenship possible. And they would vote for and support similar Socialist policies which they had grown dependent on in their countries of origin. 

Most importantly, being predominantly Catholic and family oriented, they would have plenty of babies. Happy baby-making would keep them at the bottom of the economic scale, their noses to the grindstone, and their earnings would fuel the healthiest tax base in the world.

This sea change in our society is in full operation now, and many “American” ideals which Right Wing Americans cherish may be overrun in another generation. Black and Caucasian women inadvertently chose personal freedom over the continuation of our cultures, as we all reveled in a society of “self-actualization.” The once naively touted Zero-Population growth resulted in hugely reduced American families; a significant redistribution of American demographics, which was for my group self-genocide. All we can do now is try to slow the tide and try with every ounce of our energy to indoctrinate these new Americans, so that all is not lost. If not our genes, perhaps we can still perpetuate the concept.

It was the concept after all which made America different, led it to supremacy, and then made it the envy of the human race; A concept birthed by philosophers like John Locke, who inspired our founders. Locke emphatically warned against a society built on atheism, as ignorance of God he believed would lead to a breakdown in society and ultimate mayhem. And although scientists have been trying to discredit the Bible and its authors, in order to take dominance over society, their most respected thinkers have reasoned and even warned against pure atheism. Sagan was only reflecting Newton and Einstein when he wisely stepped away from a godless, random universe, devoid of purpose. There is a God, and it was He who inspired America, and it has been uniquely blessed among nations. We have a grand purpose, and that in spite of our mistakes, which were manifold.

America has also enjoyed another mystery not understood by scientists... Divine Grace. Thus it has earned trust and envy like no other empire, and become not only the most prosperous, most powerful nation on earth, but the world's most benevolent giver, the most gifted innovator, and the arbiter of disputes. And that because of godly foundational precepts. A nation which only reached to God part of the way met a Divinity who reached and blessed infinitely. Now we ignore that sustenance to our peril.

This book is written to the last vestiges of our traditional American culture, who might endeavor to shape the next generations, building on our unique and exemplary past. With hopes that American women might discover in the reading the greatness of our country, the reasons for it, and the greatness of the women who birthed and raised and inspired the men who got credit for creating the greatest nation in history.

With this humble series of mini-biographies, perhaps now some American women will understand how their power and choices will define not only our character and our futures, but our very existence.



(Scroll down for INTRODUCTION next)

 Hulda Hoover and little Herbert, her second born, 

someday to become President of the United States.