FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN

I hate to disappoint you, but Betsy Ross did not create the American flag. The creator was the lawyer, songwriter and New Jersey author Frances Hopkinson, who, a year earlier, had signed the Declaration of Independence. We know it was Hopkinson because he actually submitted two bills for his design work – the first one for about $18. But the stingy Continental Congress balked at paying that. So he lowered his price to “A quarter cask of Public Wine”; meaning, the cheap stuff. I think he was trying to make a point but even then he didn’t get paid. The bureaucrats argued that Frances was already on salary, which meant they had already paid him for the design. He failed to pursue his case because he died in early May of 1791, during an epileptic seizure. But then, I don’t want to write a treatise on the vexillology of the American flag. I want to talk about the pledge of allegiance to it.

You see, the pledge was written as a sales gimmick to sell flags. This is pretty big business today, considering about 100 million American flags are currently sold every year. That’s enough profit to justify the formation of the “Flag Makers Association of America”, a lobby group required because American-made American flags are 30% more expensive than Chinese-made American flags. But I digress again because my point is that faith in capitalism requires a certain amount of rationalization , and profiting from the symbol of our nation is just another one of those. And it was that particular rationalization that was part of the job description for another Frances.

In 1892 Frances Bellamy (above), who was a fired Baptist minister, was working as the publicity director for a Boston magazine called “The Youth’s Companion”, He was also responsible for planning the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of America,  for the National Education Association. And since the magazine had a nice side business going,  selling American flags to schools (their goal was to have one in every classroom),  Frances thought that a pledge for this special occasion would be an inexpensive way to increase the sale of flags. After all, you can’t pledge allegiance to the flag unless you have a flag.

His pledge, published in the 8 September, 1892 issue of the magazine (above), was just 23 words long and could be recited in less than 15 seconds - about the attention span of the average eight year old child - then. Today it is about half again that long.  It originally went just like this -  “I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  On 29 October that pledge was first recited in American classrooms,  and at the opening of the Chicago Columbia Exposition. Like the Gettysburg address, Bellamy’s pledge was eloquent in its simplicity. But even Frances could not resist tampering with perfection. He added an unfortunate salute.

Well, it was called the Bellamy Salute, but he did not invent it. It was the brainstorm of  James Upham, junior editor of "The Youth’s Companion".  But it was Frances who laid out instructions for what I would call "a salute too far".  They read. “…At the words, “to my Flag,” the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation.” Forty years later the extended arm salute would be preempted by Adolf Hitler, and thereafter tactfully dropped from the American pledge.

Not that people ever stopped trying to improve upon the pledge. In 1923 the America Legion, then made up mostly of veterans of World War One, the Spanish American War, and the Philippines Insurrection, decided that the phrase “my flag” was too open to interpretation. So they added an entire phrase, so there would be no confusion about what country we were talking about. The pledge now began, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” I guess calling it "my country" was too ambiguous.  In 1940, with a World War once again looming, the Supreme Court ruled that even Jehova’s Witnesses could be required to stand at attention and recite the pledge in school, which the Witnesses had argued violated their faith.  On 22 June, 1943 Congress made the pledge the official pledge of allegiance to America - by law.  Because of the new law, the Supreme Court reversed itself, and the "official" pledge was no longer compulsory for Jehovah Witnesses.

Then in 1951 the Knights of Columbus decided the words “Under God” were desperately needed in the pledge, and on “Flag Day”, 14  June, 1954, Congress made that addition official, as well.  The oath now officially reads “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”. The pledge was now 31 words long. And to be honest with you, I don’t think the longer version is any clearer. As a kid I always thought it was God that was indivisible, not the country. The pledge became something closer to the old joke about a camel being a horse designed by a committee.

Consider the oath, just as a piece of language. If the oath were to stop after the word “stands” we would have a simple sentence (“I pledge allegiance to the flag) with two modifying phrases (“of the United States of America”, and, “and to the Republic for which it stands”.) In this case the Republic is the modifier of the flag, which makes sense because the original intent was to sell flags; remember? Not the republic.

But that was not good enough for all those who honestly wanted to improve on the oath, to make it clearer, and avoid confusion and misunderstandings. I'm not sure how many misunderstandings there were, but you know what they say about cooks and broths - the more the better. Right? And this  kind of thinking produced four modifying prepositional phrases on top of the two we already had – making six in all.  How is that clearer?

Besides, is love of country really that complicated? Does the detail actually make things clearer, or more confusing? It sounds as if those seeking more detail, are looking for an iron clad contract they can sue somebody over. Isn’t it enough if your lover says “I love you”?  Does adding a pre-nup increase or decrease your odds of ending up in divorce court?

I guess the basic question is, are you looking for an affirmation of love, or an affirmation of suspicion, giving your heart, or getting protection against having your heart broken? Because, you can’t have both, particularly when you are talking about love of a democracy.  You can't force people into heaven. And you can't force them to love the same country you do. Somethings you just have to take on faith. Sometimes that's the whole point.

- 30 -

WINNING THE NOMINATION

I know that Abraham Lincoln read Shakespeare, which makes the events at the Illinois Republican state convention in Decatur on 9 May, 1860, so revealing. Three times the 22 delegates demanded that Lincoln “identify your work!”, and three times their nominee refused to claim the boards supporting his campaign banners had come from logs he himself had split. Like Julius Caesar three times refusing the crown of a Roman king, each display of modesty drove the crowd into a greater frenzy. It was this invention of “Lincoln The Railspitter” which marked “Honest Abe” as a real contender for the Presidential nomination, one week later at the Republican National Convention. Clearly, Abraham was prepared to perform exactly the kind of theatrics required in politics.

Just a year earlier Lincoln appeared to have given up any Presidential ambitions. In March of 1859 he had written a friend, “Seriously, I do not think I am fit for the Presidency.” But two events in early 1860, changed his mind. First, at the end of February, Lincoln gave a speech at the prestigious New York City private college, the Cooper Union. His arguments against slavery were reprinted in newspapers across the north and positively received. And secondly, in the last week of April the Democratic Party convention in Charleston adjourned after 57 ballots, unable to agree on a nominee. With Democrats splitting into three wings, the young Republican party had a real chance to win the November election.

Senator William Seward was the presumptive Republican nominee. At 70 members, his own New York delegation was the largest. The dour NYC banker and merchant Edwin Morgan (above), also a Seward man,   was the Republican Party National Chairman. And the crafty Thurlow Weed, “The Wizard of the Lobby”, who had helped build Seward's reputation for more than two decades, was in Chicago.  Chairman Morgan had even chosen the city of 100,000 on the lake as a bribe for Illinois Party Chairman Norman Judd., and was the tempting offer to name Judd, Seward's nominee for Vice President.  Even eight members of the Illinois delegation preferred Seward to Lincoln, or so Thurlow Weed had been heard whispering. 

All that Lincoln had to offer was himself, but for a few that was enough. Their leader was the imposing Judge David Davis (above).  He had presided over the Illinois Eighth Circuit Court, deciding almost 90 cases lawyered by Lincoln.  And although he decided only forty in Lincoln's favor, Davis trusted the younger man enough to ask him to substitute as judge occasionally.  Davis described Lincoln as “a peculiar man; he never asked my advice on any question.” 

But when new lawyer Leonard Swett joined the circuit, he was introduced to Davis and Lincoln, dressed in their nightshirts, as they engaged in a boisterous pillow fight.  Swett became Lincoln's most trusted friend.  Also working for the prairie lawyer was Lincoln's longtime law partner, the big, jovial hard drinking Virginian born, Ward Lamon (above).

Judge Davis was an abolitionist. Lamon's family owned slaves and he hated abolitionists. Swett (above) preferred a good fight, a guitar and a jug of whiskey over politics. This diverse group, Davis, Swett and Lamon - along with a few dozen others -  sacrificed their time and money to win the nomination for Lincoln because they considered him a good man who, some how, made them better men. 

The Lincoln team had started late, having to beg unknown families to give up their rooms at the Tremont hotel (above).  Davis spent $700 out of his own pocket, and more , to stock the rooms with whiskey and food.  But on the Friday, four days before the convention opened, the Lincoln men were headquartered at the Tremont, ready to the seduce the arriving delegates.  Said Swett,  “I did not, the whole week I was there, sleep two hours a night.”

The delegates arrived by foot and horseback, carried on lake steamers or the dozen rail lines serving Chicago - 10,000 delegates, alternates, reporters and spectators, all converging five blocks from the Tremont, at a two story, 5,000 square foot timber building which had not existed five weeks earlier. They called the $6,000 structure “The Wigwam” (above). 

Writer Isaac Hill Bromley described the scene, “The stage proper (above, left) was of sufficient capacity to hold all the delegates, who were seated on either side of a slightly elevated dais...

 The galleries were reserved (FG) for special guests...the miscellaneous public (center)...four or five thousand stood in the aisles and all the available unoccupied space....the delegates could be seen from all parts of the auditorium...Something of convenience was sacrificed to dramatic effect. The convention was just then ‘The greatest show on earth.”

There were just 465 voting delegates from 24 states, and the District of Columbia. As they arrived - but especially the delegates from the four swing states that would likely carry the November election,  Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey -  they were met and courted by agents representing Seward, Lincoln and a half dozen other “favorite son” candidates. The Seward men,  headquartered in the upscale Richmond House, were particularly blunt in their tactics. Before the convention had even started, on Tuesday, 15 May, the Illinois delegation was offered a campaign chest of $100,000 for the fall, if they would vote for Lincoln as Seward's Vice President. The same offer was made to the Indiana delegation, and New Jersey.  It was an attempt to derail Lincoln, and win the nomination for Seward on the first ballot.  But it backfired. Illinois party chief Norman Judd felt betrayed, realizing he could was probably just one of many offered the V.P. spot.  When the convention opened the next day at ten minutes after noon, Judd threw his full support behind Lincoln.

The 54 members of the Pennsylvania delegation were pledged to vote for their “favorite son”, Senator Simon Cameron (above) on the first ballot.  Cameron, meanwhile had assured Thurlow Weed he would sell his delegation for a cabinet post, and Seward expected to win the nomination on the second or third ballot.  In fact almost half of Cameron's delegation hated him so much, they were secretly prepared to vote for anybody else. The only question was for who? 

In another sign Thurlow Weed had over played his hand, the dapper Illinois party chairman Norman Judd (above) managed to isolate the New York delegation in the back of the stage, and seated the Keystone delegates between the Indiana and Illinois delegations – 22 and 26 delegates each– where Illinois Lieutenant Governor Gustave Koerner and Indiana Gubernatorial candidate Caleb Smith could reminded the Pennsylvanians that Lincoln was an alternative to Seward and Cameron.

Missouri's delegate's were pledged to vote for Representative Edward Bates (above), despite his being an unrepentant Know Nothing, who despised Catholics and foreigners - such as the German Catholics in St. Louis, Chicago and Cincinnati.  

Bates was being marketed by the owner and editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley (above). Even tho the newspaperman had never been west of Iowa, Greeley was an Oregon delegate, and would deliver Oregon's 8 votes, along with Missouri's 18, to Bates because Greeley was convinced Seward was too radical to carry the swing states.  Ohio's 48 delegates were pledged to support Salomen P. Chase, who was openly opposed to slavery, and therefore even more un-electable, than Seward. 

Seward's perceived radicalism also worried party leaders in Maine and Massachusetts – 16 and 26 delegates respectively. The New York Senator (above, right) had told the truth, that democracy and slavery were in "irrepressible conflict",  just as Lincoln had said "a house divided against itself, can not stand". But Seward told his truth in 1858, on the senate floor, and earned the hatred of Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis (above, left). The perception was that Seward was the radical. So the New Engenders had already reached a quiet deal with most of the delegates from Pennsylvania and Ohio to jointly, after the first ballot, abandon their favorite sons and support somebody, anybody, but Seward. The only question was, who?. The possibility that kept coming up was Lincoln. 

Although he had been a favorite son candidate at the 1856 convention, Lincoln was still an unknown quantity to most of the delegates.   But thanks to Judge Davis' strategy, he had become, the convention's second choice.  If they couldn't have Seward, or Bates, or Chase, then the vast majority of delegates was willing to nominate Lincoln.  But to strengthen that argument, Judge Davis figured Lincoln had to get at least 100 votes on the first ballot, just under half way to the 233 needed to win the nomination.

It is true that Lincoln telegraphed from Springfield, warning Judge Davis that he would not make political compromises to become President.  But years later Chicago Attorney Wirt Dexter suggested that Davis was guilty of the same sin he had accused Thurlow Weed of - offering duplicate rewards to politicians from several delegations. “You must have prevaricated somewhat”, suggested Dexter. To which Judge Davis shouted in his high pitched voice, “PREVARICATED, Brother Dexter? We lied like hell!”

On Friday, as the temperature and emotions inside and outside the Wigwam climbed, Thurlow Weed pulled a final rabbit out of his hat - retired bare knuckle champion, Tom Hyer (above). The 6'2”, 185 pound boxer earned his living as an enforcer for William “Bill The Butcher” Poole, leader of a notorious New York City five points gang -  until,  that is,   Bill was shot and killed in an 1855 bar fight. 

The now 41 year old Hyer was reduced to a Know Nothing celebrity thug. And this Friday he was leading a brass band and 2,000 New York “pug-ugly” Seward (above) supporters, marching to the Wigwam, singing “Oh, isn't he a dar-ling! With his grace-ful ways,. And his eye so gay. Yes, he's a lit-tle dar-ling. To me he is di-vine. He loves me too, with a heart so true. This charming beau of mine.” 

It was an impressive and enthusiastic parade, until Hyer and his iron voiced shouters reached the convention hall, where their way was blocked by a crowd of perhaps 25,000. When they finally worked their way to the doors and presented their tickets, they were denied entrance to the Wigwam. The spectator gallery, even the standing space between the aisles was already full. And every person inside and outside had a ticket. .

The man responsible for this feat of legerdemain was Lincoln's hard drinking Virginian troubadour,.Ward Lamon (above). He had printed up several thousand counterfeit tickets for the Wigwam, and the Lincoln supporters had presented their forgeries at 9 a.m., flooding the building an hour before the Tom Hyer's men had arrived. The Seward forces made desperate calls for the Sargent-at-arms to check spectator tickets, but given that the day before Judge Davis had charged the Seward forces with handing out counterfeits, and that the building was crammed almost to bursting, the functionaries decided not to get involved in the infighting.   Besides, the real battle was on the stage, among the delegates.

When Lincoln's name was placed in Nomination, the screaming was so loud the Wigwam’s windows trembled “as if they had been pelted with hail.”  Said Swettt, “Five thousand people leaped from  their seats, women not wanting...A thousand steam whistles, ten acres of hotel gongs, a tribe of Comanches might have mingled in the scene unnoticed.”  On the first ballot, Seward (above center, being thrown overboard) led as expected,. with 173 votes.  But Lincoln (above, at the stern tiller) was second with 102 votes. Cameron got 50 of Pennsylvania’s 54 votes, just ahead of Ohio's Salomen Chase's 49 votes. The best that Horace Greeley's (above, seated to the right of Lincoln) candidate Edward Bates (to the right of Greeley)  could collect was 48, with 8 other favorite sons getting less than 14 each.

Immediately Lincoln's men moved for a second ballot, before Thurlow Weed (above) could get the attention of the chairman, or could reach out to sway any delegates. At the same time Judge Davis managed to solidify a deal with the the sleazy Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, agreeing to make him Lincoln's Secretary of War.   In fact the Pennsylvania delegates had already agreed to bolt for Lincoln, and on the second ballot Weed gained 11 votes for Seward, but Lincoln gained 79, most of those coming at the expense of Cameron and Bates.

Seward's fate was sealed on the third ballot.  He lost 4 votes. Lincoln gained another 50 votes, most coming from Maryland, Kentucky and Virginia.  The Rail Splitter was now just one vote away from the nomination. The Wigwam erupted in shouting, cheering and cursing, until the chairman of the Ohio delegation, David Cartter, got the chairman's attention, and stuttered, “I-I arise, Mr. Chairman, to a-announce the ch-change of four votes, from Mr. Chase to Abraham Lincoln!” .

Writer Bromley observed the pandemonium as delegation after delegation clamored for the Chairman's attention to shift their votes to Lincoln “On the platform near me...the Indiana men generally were smashing hats and hugging each other; the Illinois men did everything except stand on their heads; hands were flying wildly in the air, everybody’s mouth was open, and bedlam seemed loose. The din of it was terrific. Seen from the stage it seemed to be twenty thousand mouths in full blast…” The final count for the official third ballot gave Lincoln 364 votes. Lincoln had won.

Buckeye newspaperman Murate Halsted disagreed. “The fact of the Convention was the defeat of Seward rather than the nomination of Lincoln.” That may have been true in May of 1860, perhaps even in March of 1861 when Lincoln took the oath of office as President. 

But on January 1^st, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation became law, Lincoln became more than a mere politician, more than a mere victor.  He achieved the potential that diverse group of men from the 8^th Circuit Court had seen in Lincoln, the reason they had sacrificed and worked,to make him president, not because he could be, but because they knew he should be, President of the whole United States of America.

On that Friday evening, some of the delegates who had just voted to nominate Abraham Lincoln, were lining up out side of McVicker's Theater, to see Tom Taylor's two year old play, “Our American Cousin” (above).  Lincoln was too busy to see it,  until one month short of five years later,  at Ford's Theater in Washington, the night he was murdered.  In 1869 the Wigwam burned down, leaving nothing of the 1860 election still standing.... except the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States - "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States..."  -  the 14th Amendment -  "All persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States..."  -  and the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States - " The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."  Lincoln had come to see these amendments as essential to the future of the re-united states. And in his honor, even those not as  certain of the issues as him,  felt obligated to listened to the "better angels" of their  nature.     

- 30 -

BLAMING GOD

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

KJ Bible, Genisus 2:17

I admit it is a little unfair to blame 53 year old Boston Puritan,  Increase Mather (above) for the 4,000 deaths in Jamaica. The Reverend did not actually kill those people - unlike the 25 he helped murder in Salem, Massachusetts.   But he was so damn certain in his ignorance, that his certainty ran over a lot of honest doubts that might at least have given those 4,000 deaths meaning.   An Anglican minister and the son of a preacher, "The Godly" Increase always pontificated from a pulpit standing on solid moral bedrock - even as the sand beneath his feet liquefied and swallowed his soul.  The Reverend Mather was certain, for example, that what Yehaweh said about the Port Royal earthquake of 1692 was "All of those people were sinners and deserved their fate!"  And that seems a little arrogant, doesn't it?  Considering he did not actually know any of those people.

"God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand."

Richard Feynman Nobel winning American physicist

As the 17 million square miles of the South American Tectonic Plate drove west at just over an inch a year, it elbowed aside the 1 million square miles of the Caribbean plate, shoving it at half an inch a year into the southeastern edge of 29 million square miles of the North America plate. These large collisions accommodated the curvature of the earth by cracking like a plate of glass dropped onto a concrete slab. For example, Cuba rested firmly on the North American Plate. 

But just off its southern shore was the 25,000 foot deep and 250 mile long Cayman trench, which was consuming the 73,000 square miles of the Conave micro-plate, driving north.  Ninety miles to the south the island of Jamaica is thus being shoved inexorably toward that trench.  Some day it will be consumed by it. But in the meantime Jamaica was also being pulled apart by the Walton fault, moving west at half an inch a year, connected by transverse faults to the Plantain Garden Fault, slipping west at a full inch a year and running 300 miles from the island of Hispaniola to the once volcanic Blue Mountains in Jamaica's interior. As the waxing quarter moon set on the evening of 6 June, 1693, the delicate balance of all this intricate geological machinery was on the verge of breaking.

"Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah...Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities..."

KJ Genesis 19:24 - 25

Dawn of Wednesday, 7 June, 1692 greeted Port Royal - the second largest English city in the New World and "the richest and wickedest city in the world"- with the continued promise of unending wealth. 

Approaching Jamaica from the Caribbean Passage any Spanish or French threat had to first navigate the mile wide entrance between the eastern heights of Salt Pan Hill, defended by a row of cannon called the 12 apostles, and the 14 guns in the star shaped brick edifice of Fort Charles, perched on western tip of the 18 mile long sand spit called the Palisadoes.

Protecting the 60 full rigged transports, slave ships, schooners and cutters anchored safely in Cagway Bay this morning were the 26 cannon in Fort James and Fort Carlisle.  

Blocking any land assault across the narrow neck of the Palisadoes was Fort Rupert with another 22 guns. And for good measure defending the south sea side of Port Royal were the 26 cannon of Fort Morgan, named to honor the 4 year deceased Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica and infamous privateer, Sir Henry Morgan.

"Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped."

William H. Bragg 20th century British Nobel physicist, chemist, and mathematician.

During the first 50 years of English occupation, Jamaica's income had come from stealing what the Spanish had stolen from the Aztecs and Incas - piracy. But within the last decade the economics had shifted. Jamaica's Royal Governor, the Earl of Inchiquin, was no longer the unquestioned lord, and the dominant arm of the British government was no longer the Royal Navy, Both of those powers had been superseded by  the corporate-like Board of Trade and Plantations. 

Civilian lawyer and businessman John White, the new Vice President of the Jamaica Council, was the regional head of operations, directly responsible for the 4,000 Europeans in Port Royal that June morning, men, women and children, who were all employees one way or another, of the Board of Trade. There were also 2,000 to 2,500 Africans - but they were not people, but property

"Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."

KJ Bible Judges 1:7

Port Royal was a company town - a slice of London transplanted to the Caribbean, 2,000 Tudor brick and mortar multi-story homes and shops tightly packed into 51 sandy acres between the sea and Cagway Bay, where Puritans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Jews and Muslims labored with one purpose - to get rich. The venal sins of the sailors and pirates were tolerated since they were making so many so wealthy. 

In the words of observer Edward Ward, Port Royal was “...as sickly as a hospital, as dangerous as the plague, as hot as Hell, and as wicked as the devil”.  Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck saw, "The parrots of Port Royal gather to drink...ale with just as much alacrity as the drunks that frequent the taverns that serve it."  

As Rector of St. Peter's Anglican Church near the junction of the High and Lime Streets, the Reverend Doctor Emmanuel Heath was God's official representative to this den of hypocrisy. Before ten this morning he walked the few yards south to the Merchants' Exchange, to have coffee with Vice President White. The Reverend would later credit Mr. White's lively conversation with delaying his luncheon date with the garrison's commander, Captain  Rudend,  and his family, on Queens Street along the harbor front - and thus saving Dr. Heath's life.

"I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance."

Christopher Marlowe, Elizabethan author

Some 20 minutes before noon, on 9 June, 1692, the rocks which restrained one of the faults to the north or west of the Jamaica snapped.  As it did the primary compressing wave of energy raced away from the epicenter of the break at 4 miles a second, like a giant hammer, slamming each successive molecule of rock in to the next. Just behind it came the Secondary wave, "...perpendicular to the direction it is traveling" and moving at 3 miles a second. The combination of the 2 waves produced the shaking, which lasted for about 4 minutes - estimated as the equivalent of a magnitude 7.3 on the standard Richter scale. 

In that brief time the over 4 million square miles of Jamaica jerked a foot or more closer to Cuba, dropping parts of the southern shore of the island as much as thirty feet. A pocket watch found on the harbor bottom 260 years later recorded the time of doomsday as 11:43am.

"Let death steal over them...for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart."

KJ Psalm 55:15

Seated in the tavern, Emmanuel Heath and Vice President White felt the earth begin to "heave and roll". "Said I, “Lord, Sir, what’s this?” He replied, very composedly, “It is an earthquake, be not afraid, it will soon be over.” But...(when) we heard the church and tower fall...we ran to save ourselves." In other words, they did the one thing you should never do in an earthquake - run outside where your head has no protection and all the heavy things are falling to the ground. 

Another survivor described the scene which greeted them. "The sand on the street rose like waves at sea, lifting up all persons that stood upon it....And at the same instant water rushed in...Some were seen catching hold of beams and rafters of houses."

"It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgment by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law."

Franz Kafka, 20th century writer

It seems likely John White was hit by some of the falling debris, and in a panic the Reverend abandoned him, running south for the safety of Fort Morgan. But as he reached it, "...I saw the earth open and swallow up a multitude of people, and the sea mounting in upon us over the fortifications." The sea did not so much rush in as rise up from the sand. The vibrations released the water table bonded to the sand grains a few inches below the surface, which could no longer support weight. Forts, buildings, animals and people simply sank into the quicksand. 

A Frenchman, Lewis Galdy, was swallowed by it.  But as the street that swallowed him dropped thirty feet into the harbor, his buoyancy sent him bobbing to the surface of what was abruptly the enlarged bay. Half an hour later he was picked up by a rescue boat.

"For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain."

KJ Bible Isaiah 26:21

"Careened" at the docks - tilted so barnacles could be scrapped off her elm wood bottom - the HMS Swan, a 74 foot long fifth rate warship, snapped her lines and plowed into the sinking homes and shops along Queen street, perhaps killing Captain Rudend and his family.  In a primeval fit, the Reverend Heath chose to run home. "The houses and walls fell on each side of me; some bricks came rolling over my shoes...When I came to my lodging, I found all things in the order I had left them." Emmanuel Heath was lucky. His home was one of the 10% of buildings not destroyed, in the one third of Port Royal not swallowed by the bay.  He lived. His breakfast companion, John White, would also survive the shaking, but die of his injuries a few hours later.

"Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things."

Richard Dawkins, 20 century British evolutionary biologist

There were 2,000 dead in 4 minutes, and another 3,000 who would die over the following year of broken bodies, hearts and minds. The brick forts of James and Carlisle disappeared into Cagway Bay.  Fort Rupert flooded. The least damaged was Fort Morgan. More morbid, among the 33 acres dropped into the harbor was the graveyard, leaving the recently dead floating with their ancestors. Quaker John Pike later wrote his brother, “Great men who were so swallowed up with pride...now lie stinking upon the water, and are made meat for fish and fowls of the air” - and the target for human scavengers, “...their Pockets picked, their fingers cut off for their rings, their gold buttons taken out of their shirts."

“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

KJ Isaiah 66:24

The survivor Samuel Bernard dealt with directly with the trauma. "We shall be unworthy of God’s mercies if we be not by His judgments taught to learn righteousness.” John White's survivors on the Council declared themselves "an instance of God Almighty's severe judgment." But distance made the ignorant more certain, and mercenary. Wrote one, "A God of limited patience had punished a wicked people." 

London Presbyterian minister John Shower used the deaths as pulp for his first publication: "Practical Reflections on the late Earthquakes in Jamaica”, blaming the disaster on "Atheism, and infidelity...and barefaced deism..." He denounced those who thought there must be a rational cause for such horrors, because, "...the Hand of God is not to be overlooked in such things", and warned his readers, "If you do not truly repent...your judgment is near, your destruction is at hand." 

And in the largest English city in the new world, Boston, the Reverend Cotton Mather wrote to his uncle John, in terms that were almost jubilant. "Behold, an accident speaking to all our English America." He was looking for a victory, as that summer his father had executed five "witches" in Salem, but this only led to more witch trials.

"For the belief in a single truth is the root cause for all evil in the world."

Max Born, Nobel physicist and mathematician

Increase Mather was busy that summer, and would not set down his reaction to the Port Royal Quake for a decade - by which time his reputation was suffering because of the witch hunts. But disaster tales are always popular, and time had moderated the old Puritan's views. He now acknowledged  "...many times, earthquakes proceed from natural causes."  But then he asserted they were "...usually, a sign that men have sinned, and that God is angry.  Certain it is, that if men had never sinned, they had never been terrified with earthquakes...Whole towns...with all the people in them...(have) gone down alive into the pit.  Would such a thing be, if God were not infinitely displeased by the sins of men?"

"Early the next morning Abraham...looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah...and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace."

KJ Genisus 19: 27-28

But Increase, now over 60 years old, was just warming up, reminding his readers, "...Was it not so with the Sinners in Sodom? An earthquake swallowed up their houses, and all the bodies in them. But what became of their souls? Does not the scripture say, that they are suffering the Vengeance of eternal fire?...Shall we that call our selves Christians be worse than the heathen Romans, of whom it is said, that when they saw the earthquake they feared greatly...have we forgotten what God did in Jamaica thirteen years ago, when two thousand people (whites and blacks) perished by the earthquakes there."

"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

J.R.R. Tolkien writer

The people of Jamaica had not forgotten. Almost half a century after the earthquake, in solid ground across the bay in the new city of Kingston, they buried the mortal remains of Lewis Galdy. He had experience a religious rebirth after the earth spit him back up, but had used his time not to preach faith but live it, for better and for worse.  He remained a businessman, and in Jamaica. If he left little of value behind, that was not an act of God, it was an act of Galdy.  And when he died at 80 years of age - 16 years after and ten years older than Increase Mather when he died - Lewis's tombstone would read, "Beloved by all and much lamented at his Death".  If he was, he was more loved than bitter old Cotton

"Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone."

KJ Bible John 8:7

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