On a Same Sex Relationship

Historically in the United States, same sex relationships have been against the law from a legal standpoint, sin from a religious standpoint, and an unspeakable offense and/or a mental derangement in the social realm. Yet, all of that never stopped same sex couples from existing and even flourishing throughout American History.

Now, of course, these were not relationships that were generally out in the open; there was no flaunting of sexual orientation because of the backlash such behavior would cause in the law, church, and society at large. And people created euphemisms for men who lived with men and women who lived with women. If two women were life-partners, many times that was referred to as a Boston Marriage. Wellesley College near Boston was where women of the upper middle and upper class would go to receive an education. Being women of some means, these Wellesley students weren’t as dependent on men for their livelihoods and preferred the company of other women. So, they would cohabitate, and that’s where the sobriquet sprang from. Now, to be fair, some of those Boston Marriages were not sexual in nature, but the living arrangement certainly went against the norm for that time period. For men, the euphemisms were a bit more subtle. Up until the past few decades, if a gay man died, his obituary would often list a “friend” or say that he was “a life-long bachelor” or “he never married,” and those in the know would be able to read between the lines.

Let’s take the case of a devoted couple who lived not too far outside of Baltimore, Maryland, about 175 years ago. Let’s call them Aunt Fancy and Miss Nancy, because that’s what people who knew them called them. The pair lived together for some years, and they would be seen at social functions together, even at gatherings where it was understood that the spouse or significant other was supposed to make an appearance. They also managed to work in an occupation that would normally not be acceptable for people with same sex attraction–the government. And that work often separated the two. The letters we have found (most were destroyed by their embarrassed family members after the couple died) that the pair exchanged were long and expressed, passionately, how the other one was terribly, terribly missed.

It’s rather interesting that Nancy and Fancy would’ve gotten together in the first place. Nancy was from Pennsylvania originally, while Fancy hailed from the Cotton Belt of Alabama. It was amazing that they ever got together at all. Nancy had even been engaged once, but the wedding was called off when the fiancé died suddenly–much to Nancy’s relief, a later letter would admit. And, like the examples of other couples as in the Boston Marriages, they both came from money. But their personalities were different; Fancy was, well, fancy; a quiet and refined gentility oozed from every pore and hair. Nancy was loud and boisterous and enjoyed a bit of a drink every now and then where frivolity would ensue. Yet, the relationship worked for many years. Writing to a relative while waiting for Fancy’s return, Nancy confessed, “I am now solitary & alone, having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them.”

Sadly, Fancy died in 1853 of tuberculosis. Nancy would follow 15 years later. Oh, and their names? Those were the names that they were called in derision, first given to them by none other than Andrew Jackson. While we don’t know for sure if the nature of the relationship between the two was sexual, we do know that some of their contemporaries and political foes and even friends certainly thought so. You see, you know Aunt Fancy as William Rufus King, who was the Vice-President under Franklin Pierce, and you know Miss Nancy as President James Buchanan himself.

On an Obscene Funeral Guest

Andrew Jackson spent his life collecting enemies. Few people in American History garnered as much hate as Old Hickory did (and still does, in some quarters). This was a man who grew up with a white-hot hatred for all things British (he and his family suffered at the hands of British soldiers during the American Revolution), all things associated with First Nations/Native Americans, and pretty much anything not White, Anglo-Saxon, and protestant.

And then there were the personal and political enemies he accrued in his lifetime. Jackson was the object of an assassination attempt while in the White House, in fact. He had fought several duels and carried a pistol ball in his shoulder for much of his adult life from one of these interactions.

On the other hand, many of the “common folk” of America loved him.

In fact the common folk flocked to the place where Jackson’s funeral was held at his house, the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee. However, it was his close political friends and foes and friends who, by and large, were allowed inside the building at the funeral when the former general and president died in 1845. The event was hosted by the Rev. William Norment, a strict man of the cloth. In Rev. Norment’s recounting of that day, he spends a good deal of time describing an event that upset not only the minister but also much of the crowd inside the funeral at Jackson’s home.

If Norment’s notes are to be believed, the situation began when one of the mourners who was close to Jackson in life was brought into the room. It was before the sermon, and the group of prestigious guests were still gathering. This particular guest began to speak loudly about his hatred for Jackson.

Now, I’ve been to many funerals and have presided at several as well, and I’ve heard my share of whispers about the different deceased people. Some of the dead were described as being jerks in life, cheats, scoundrels, and worse, but none of those things were said out loud, in public, for all to hear.

But this was different. In this case, the funeral guest began to swear–loudly–about the dead man. He called Jackson every name in the book and some that weren’t even in the book, apparently. The crowd grew silent as the tirade continued. The screed lasted for several minutes. The good Reverend was shaken by the outburst. He motioned for a couple of Jackson’s pall bearers to remove the offender, but the source of the rude outburst was loathe to go. Finally, this particular funeral guest was forcibly removed from the room, and the funeral continued. But the damage was done. Many felt that the loud cursing at Jackson had cast a pall (no pun intended) on the proceedings. Newspaper accounts of the event highlighted this scene as well.

History has not recorded what happened to the offender afterward. We don’t know if anyone spoke to him or not, nor do we have proof of who took custody of him afterward.

All we know is that the solemnity of funeral of President Andrew Jackson was disrupted by the outrageous cursing of his pet parrot, Poll.

On a Policy that Never Happened

The racist hatred that white/European settlers in the early days of colonial settlement of North America would probably surprise even the most strident Klan member today. Governmental policy as practiced first by the British Parliament and then by the United States throughout much of early American History pretty much subscribed to the “good Indian is a dead Indian” philosophy even that that wasn’t overtly stated.

Not that it needed to be. In our national conversations about race, we carefully work our way around how native tribes were treated throughout the history of North America because we don’t want to address the facts of that hatred. Broken treaties. Unprovoked attacks and wars. Theft. Let’s not even get into the rampant abuses of the current reservation system. Terrible and disturbingly racist governmental policies. For only one example, look up what Andrew Jackson did to ignore a Supreme Court decision by using the US Army to remove the Cherokees from land in Georgia. It’s genocide, folks, and we have pretended it wasn’t for so long by casing it in language shaded with religious imagery by calling it such things Manifest Destiny and other such rot.

Well, some might argue, at least we didn’t use germ warfare against the native population. Or did we? The traditional story is that the British first came up with the idea in the 1760s to provide blankets to native tribes–blankets that had been laced with the smallpox virus. It’s not that this method of “taking care” of the “Indian problem” was more humane; no, it was more a case of the British feeling that such a method of killing was much more palatable to the soldiers who would ordinarily have to “endure” the difficult task of shooting.

Yikes.

And then the stories about the American Army giving similar smallpox-laden blankets to natives during one of the several Trail of Tears journeys during the first part of the 19th Century. There is anecdotal evidence of similar practices happening after the Civil War in the west when tribes were being moved onto reservations. What contributed to these stories was the fact that most native tribes often had a high rate of small pox infections. And blankets were given to native tribes. But, other than some possible talk in government circles about such practices in theory, there is no hard evidence that smallpox blankets were given to tribes–ever–by either colonial or state/federal governments or their agencies.

Again, some people will point to this myth as being only a myth and say that while natives were indeed killed, at least white people never conducted a systematic campaign of genocide against native tribes. But that’s like arguing that, while Hitler killed his millions, at least he never used a pea shooter to do it.

I’ll let the memory of the approximately 20,000,000 natives killed over the centuries since European colonization answer that argument.

On a Group of Displaced Persons

The concept of displaced persons is not new, although the designation of them as such is. As this is being written, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians are on the move. Ethnic cleansings have taken place throughout history, most recently in the Balkans and even going on today in parts of Africa and South America. Groups can be displaced due to wars, famine, acts of nature, and even sickness. Sometimes, people are displaced because other people want their land. This is one of those stories.

In this case, over 60,000 individuals were forced off their land in the years between the ’30s and the ’50s. The land was going to be used for resettlement purposes. The people behind the removal felt that God had ordained that they be granted the land, and, as you know, when people are convinced their cause (whatever it is) had some sort of divine imprimatur behind it, there’s not much that can be done to change their mind. Sadly, the displaced persons in this case had no power behind them to thwart the encroachment on or the removal from their land.

They argued that the land had been something they lived on for, well, as long as anyone can remember. This displaced group tried taking their case to both international and national tribunals. And, even though they won some of their court cases, those in charge of the removal of the displaced persons had a powerful military behind them. And, as you know, might makes right–even if what is “right” is not actually the moral or ethical thing.

Force is employed by oppressors, and these specific displaced persons had been subjugated by this group or that for centuries at the point of their displacement. History, again, is filled with such stories. Look at the removal and relocation of Palestinians, the pursuit by the European powers of their colonialization in the past 600 years, at the pursuit of empire throughout the millennia by every group from the Sumerians to the Americans, and even the movement of religious and ethnic minorities by both the Nazis and the Soviets.

This specific displacement of the more or less 60,000 families, individuals, children, old people and the housewares and animals they could carry with them looms large today because of where and how it occurred. It’s difficult today for us to think of a time when people had no choice about leaving houses, farms, businesses, and their ancestral homelands for an unknown place the military forced them to walk to. Many of them died enroute from disease, malnutrition, and even simply fatigue.

A Frenchman who witnessed the removal could not believe his eyes. “In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adieu; one couldn’t watch without feeling one’s heart wrung. [The people] were tranquil but somber and taciturn. There was one who could speak English and of whom I asked why they were leaving their country. “To be free,” he answered, and I could never get any other reason out of him.”

Yes, we can look at this clinically and call it forced displacement.

For the 60,000 and their families in the decades since, they know it as the Trail of Tears.