TILL THE COWS COME HOME

 

I admit that eventually we must all bow to the will of genetics, even if we aren’t cattle. And when you come up against a human family like the Smith’s of Glastonbury, Connecticut, any argument of nature verses nurture seems almost pointless. Zephaniah Hollister Smith graduated an ordained minister from Yale, but he gave it up because he did not believe in mixing prophets with profits. Allegedly he excommunicated his entire Methodist congregation, and they returned the favor. Swinging to the other extreme Zephaniah then became a financially successful lawyer. 

His wife, Hannah Hadassah Hickock Smith was a linguist, a mathematician and a poet -  all the more amazing an achievement since she lived in the second half of the 18th century when women were little more than chattel. The couple shared a fascination for astronomy, a passion for the abolition of slavery... and five girls.

 First there was Laurilla Aleroyia Smith, born in 1785, who painted portraits in her own studio just down Main Street from the family home at 1625 Main. . She also taught French in nearby Hartford, and taught both Art and French at Emma Willard's School in Troy, N.Y.

Then there was Hancy Zephina Smith, born in 1787. She was of a mechanical mind. She built her own boat, and invented a machine to shoe horses.  She was also a devout abolitionist. She died of whooping cough in 1871.  

Then there was Cyrinthia Scretuia Smith, born in 1788 with a green thumb. She raised fruit trees, grapes, strawberries, and grafted her own varieties of apple trees. In her free time she was also a scholar of Latin and Greek literature. But the real revolutionaries were the two youngest girls.

They told an amazing story about Julia Evelina Smith (born in 1792.) While trapped during a long stage trip with the Chancellor of Yale College and a professor, “Miss” Julia felt insulted when the two men began an animated conversation in French, ignoring her completely. After listening for several minutes, Julia spoke up, saying “Excusez-moi, mais je comprends le français.” Without an acknowledgement of her presence, the two men immediately shifted their discussion to Latin, whereupon Julia interrupted again; “Excuse mihi , EGO quoque narro Latin.” The intellectuals were appalled at the continued interruption and shifted to Greek, and Julia responded with “Και κατανοώ επίσης ελληνική". Finally the Chancellor spoke to the lady directly, demanding, “Who the devil are you!?”

She was a singular woman.  She taught Euclidian Geometry at Emma Willard's School for women during the 1820's. And Julia also spoke and wrote in Hebrew, and had been conducting her own study of both the Old and the New Testaments. 

You see, in December of 1843 many of Smith's neighbors had expected the world to end, and Julia taught herself ancient Hebrew and Greek so she could read the bible in it's original languages, so she could figure out for herself why doomsday had not decended.

The  youngest sister, Abby Adassah Smith (above. born in 1797) was the quietest of the five, and much to everyone’s surprise (including herself) was perhaps the best public speaker of all. It seems a pity to point out that none of men in the area seemed to have been bright enough to garner any of the ladies’ interests in marriage,  

It also seems a pity that of this entire family, all of them independently financially successful, intellectually powerful and culturally sophisticated, only the father, Zephaniah, was politically empowered. And when he died, on 1 February, 1836, the richest, best educated family in central Connecticut, was no longer allowed to cast a single vote in elections.  

This oddity lay simmering beneath the surface until November of 1873. By now most of the members of the Smith family had gone on to meet their maker - and probably correct him on few items. 

That left only Julia,  now aged 82, and Abby,  now aged 77, remaining to carry the Smith genetic code. 

It was then that the male officials of Glastonbury made the decision to raise the property tax assessment on the Smith farm (above)  by $100. The sisters would have no trouble meeting the obligation, but the increase bothered Abby, and she looked into it. 

What Abby Smith discovered was that in the entire town, only three properties had suffered the reassessment; the Smith farm, and the properties of two widows. Not a single male property owner had been reassessed. 

Abby was so incensed,  she wrote a speech, which she delivered at the next town meeting.  She said, “…here, where liberty is so highly extolled and glorified by every man... one half of the inhabitants…are ruled over by the other half...All we ask of the town, is not to rule over them as they rule over us, but to be on an equality with them.”

Well, the male citizens at the meeting responded to Abby's speech in the same way the Yale Chancellor and professor had responded to Julia. They ignored the little lady. So, the sisters decided more radical action was required. 

They publicly announced that until they received representation (the right to vote), they would no longer submit to any additional taxation. Oh, they paid their property taxes each year, and promptly, but they refused to pay the $100 reassessment.  

In response the tax collector, Mr. George C. Andrews, seized seven milk cows from the Smith farm. The bovines were almost pets of the Smith sisters -  named, Jessie, Daisy, Proxy, Minnie, Bessie, Whitey, and Lily. The cows were valued well beyond the $101.39 additional tax bill. So the determined sisters dispatched an agent to buy the beloved pets at auction, paying far in excess of the tax bill to save four of them. The remaining three were sold at auction, although I doubt they proved to be worth the price since none of the cows were willing to be milked unless Julia was present.

Meantime, the Springfield Massachusetts Republican newspaper reprinted Abby’s speech, and it was picked up and reprinted in newspapers nationwide. The story was even repeated in Europe. It was, wrote one newspaper, “A fit centennial celebration to the Boston Tea Party.”

In April Abby was denied time to speak again at the next town meeting. So she climbed on board a wagon (above) out side and delivered her remarks from there, this time heard about equally by men and women. When tax time came around again, the sisters still refused to pay the additional assessment. 

This time Mr. Andrews seized 15 acres of Smith pasture, worth about $2,000. And this time he moved the location of the auction at the last minute, so the sisters could not even buy back their own land. The valuable property was bought by a male neighbor for less than $80.  

In response the sisters sued Mr. Andrews in local court,  and they won. The court ordered the property (and the cows) returned to the sisters, and fined Mr. Andrews $10. The city appealed, and the case began the tortuous climb through the courts. In the midst of this trial, Julia married 86 year old Amos Parker of New Hampshire. She was the only one of the five sisters to ever marry.  I'm sure the city fathers of  Glastonbury were expecting the ladies would die before their case reached the state supreme Court, but the ladies had good genes, and they were still breathing in November of 1876, when the high court handed them a total victory. The city could either grant their right to vote or pay for the seized property.  The city finally accepted it had been beaten by two very smart lady spinsters and paid up, to avoid letting women suffrage.  

Julia wrote an account of their adventure, “Abby Smith and her Cows”, published in 1877. That made the sisters famous, and they spoke at suffragette meetings, until Julia’s (below, left) death in 1878.  

Abby (above, right)  followed her in 1886. But women still could not vote in Connecticut until the 19th Amendment to the National Constitution was officially passed, in August of 1920. The Smith family home was finally made a National Historical Landmark, but not until 1974. 

The story of  Julia and Abby Smith, and their cows, ought to be considered by members of the modern Republican Party. who would seek to deny citizens the right to directly influence their government. But along with that right comes the obligation to support the government, which wealthy conservatives currently also deny.  You can deny the connection between those two elements of democracy until the cows come home.  But, as these two brilliant women pointed out, both the right and the obligation are essential to any future of America.  You can advocate the destruction of the political system for only so long, because if you succeed in destroying it, you lose everything.

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ORIGINAL SIN, Chapter Seven

Lee Atwater's infamous Willie Horton campaign ads got Geroge Herbert Walker Bush elected 43^rd President of the United States in November of 1988, winning 426 electoral votes over Micheal Dukasus's 111 electoral votes. However the popular vote was much closer, with Bush winning by only 8.5 million out of the 91 million cast. But it was enough to be spun as a landslide. Lee Atwater was rewarded by making him Republican National Chairman. He could now the stamp of his personality on the entire party. And he began doing that immediately.

Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger". By 1968, you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you...So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and...cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites....So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.”

Lee Atwater

Atwater's first target was the new Democratic Speaker of the House, Tom Foley from the state of Washington. He had voted for the Voting Civil Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968, the bill making Martin Luther King's junior's birthday a federal holiday, and he help override President Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.

The very day Foley was sworn in as Speaker, the RNC released a memo written by Communications director Mark Goodin and Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. It was vintage Atwater, and was titled, “Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet”. The memo compared Foley's voting record with that of Congressman Barney Frank, who was openly gay. Of course, as both men were Democrats, it would have been shocking if their voting records had been in conflict.

When challenged by the press Atwater insisted the memo was factually accurate”, but the the party leadership condemned the gay bashing of an old colleague, even if he was a Democrat. Senator Bob Dole called the the memo “garbage”, and the press corps refused to repeat is homophobic hints. Realizing Lee had gone too far, President Bush forced Atwater to fire Goodin. But as he had his entire life, Atwater gave ground grudgingly. 

“I’ve always thought running for office is a bunch of bullshit. Being in a office is even more bullshit. It really is bullshit,” he wrote. “I’m proud of the fact that I understand how much BS it is.”

Lee Atwater

Then on 5 March, 1990, Atwater collapsed at a fundraising breakfast and suffered a seizure. A CatScan discovered a grade 3 astrocytoma brain tumor. Despite aggressive treatment, including experimental radiation implants, the boy wonder was left paralyzed on his left side and in sever pain, with the cancer having spread. Still he would not resign as chairman of the RNC.

Soon afterward, Lee was visited by the ninety year old conservative Jesuit Priest Father John Hardon,  According to Hardon, “I introduced myself and then began the shortest instruction in the faith that I have ever given.” The instruction in Catholicism was, in total, about ten hours, over two days, provided to a very sick man. But Father Hardon also added, “every minute that I was in Lee’s room, there was someone from the Republican Party. So Lee was never left alone with me.” Hardon also said, “...it was very clear that he was in what I would call protective custody.” His keepers were, the Republican party, and one is left to wonder if they feared this conversion might be real, leading to even a semi-public confession.

Aware that he was dying, Lee Atwater began to write letters of apology to many of his victims, and others visited him in the Washington D.C. hospital where they gave him comfort by accepting his words. But he spent most of the last year of his life confined there.  But he did not resign from the RNC until January of 1991.  Father Hardin insists Lee converted to Catholicism, and was presented with a bible. Atwater died on March 29, 1991. He was 40 years old. However Lee Atwater's funeral service was held in a Protestant Church, and he was buried in a Protestant graveyard.

After Atwater's death, Bush White House Communications director Ed Rollins (above) told Mary Matalin, who ran the RNC for the year Atwater was in the hospital, how much comfort Lee had drawn from the bible he received from Father Hardon's organization. But Matalin responded, “Ed, when they were cleaning up his things afterwards, the bible was still wrapped in cellophane and had never been taken out of the package.”

Since his own death, Father Hardin, is being groomed for sainthood, despite his being disciplined for allowing a priest who molested children being given access to even more children. For that moral failure the Jesuits forbid Hardon from teaching at any Jesuit institutions. Father Hardon referred to this punishment as his “white martyrdom.”

Almost every acolyte of Lee Atwater moved on to support Donald Trump in all three of his runs for President. Roger Stone (above, center), who learned hatred and manipulation at Atwater's feet, described his teacher this way, " “We both knew he believed in nothing....I had the feeling that he sold his soul to the devil, and the devil took it."  Another student, Tucker Eskew said that after Lee, "Resentment became the future of the Republican Party."

And whatever damage that Trump does to the American political and moral soul, should be laid at the cold dead feet of Lee Atwater and those who invited him to enter their house.

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Six

 

"In recent years, I have come to believe that “conservatism”....has become an arrogant defender of ideological excess and entrenched interests and privileges...(of) Wall Street, Big Energy, multinational corporations, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Religious Right, the Market Extremist think-tanks, and the Rush Limbaugh Axis...."

Kevin Phillips “Why I am No Longer A Conservative” 7 October, 2002

In the early summer of 1988 Lee Atwater (above, right) asked twenty-eight year Republican “operative” Roger Stone (above, center) to come to his Washington, D.C. Office. According to Stone – who is far from an unimpeachable source - Atwater locked the door of his corner office and then popped in a video tape. Atwater said, “`I got a couple boys going to put a couple million dollars up for this independent.'' He meant the ad had been funded by a political group with no ties to the Bush campaign. But the fact that Atwater, who was running the Bush campaign, had an advanced copy of the 30 second spot belied any claim the two groups were working independent of each other.

At 18 years of age Roger Jason Stone (above, right) had cut his dirty tricks teeth on Nixon's 1968 campaign. Before the New Hampshire primary Stone made a donation to one of Nixon's Republican competitors in the name of “The Young Socialist Alliance”, than passed the receipt for that payment to the conservative Manchester Union-Leader newspaper, which eagerly smeared the unwitting target. 

Stone became such a Nixon loyalist, he had “Tricky Dick's” face tattooed across his back. Stone insisted he did nothing illegal during the Watergate scandal, but when it later became public he was working for Senator Bob Dole, Dole felt forced to fire him. Seeking a legitimate income source Stone formed a political “consulting” firm with old friends Charlie Black and Paul Manafort and later, Lee Atwater.

Stone  (Above left) was recruited for the 1980 Reagan campaign, learning from, among others, the infamous Roy Cohn (above, right) , who had been the brains behind Republican Senator Joe McCarthy.  As an operative, Stone admitted delivering a cash filled suitcase to a lawyer representing the Liberal Party of New York. 

In the 4 November general election Reagan beat Democrat Jimmy Carter in New York by just 165,000 votes. Liberal Party candidate John Anderson siphoned almost half a million votes, ensuring Reagan won New York's 41 electoral votes. Not that Reagan needed them that year. But in any case, Lee Atwater knew fully well who he had invited to view “his” commercial.

What came to be called the “Furlough” ad began with pictures of George Bush and Micheal Dukakis side by side. The narrator began, “Bush and Dukakis on crime.” Now only Bush's face was center screen. “Bush supports the death penalty for first degree murderers,” said the narrator.

Now only Dukakis' image appeared. “Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first degree murders to have weekend passes from prison.”

Now the grainy booking photo of William Horton taken from the foot of his bed in the hospital ward, appeared. Horton seemed to be gazing down at the viewer, his tall “Afro” hair defiant, his eyes clouded with pain killers. Intoned the narrator, “One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times.” 

A photo of Horton being moved in police custody was then shown. “Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison.” 

Then, as each additional offense were named, the key words appeared on the screen. “ Horton fled”, said the voice.” KIDNAPPED a young couple, STABBING the man and repeatedly RAPPING his girl friend.” 

Then Dukakis' face appears again, under first the words (also spoken by the narrator) “Weekend prison passes” and then the words, “Dukakis on crime.”

Nothing stated in the ad was untrue. But according to Stone (above), his reaction was immediate. “That's a huge mistake”, he claims to have told Atwater, “You and George Bush will wear that to your grave. It's a racist ad. You're already wining this issue. It's working for you. You're stepping over a line. You're going to regret it.'' 

 According to Stone, Lee Atwater responded at the time, ``Y'all a pussy.' But for every Republican who seems determined to argue into perpetuity that the ad is not racist, the first reaction of Roger Stone stands unchallenged – if he said it - “It's a racist ad.”

Whatever the truthfulness of Stone's version of events, something caused Atwater and or Ailes to contact the National Conservative Political Action Committee, whose name was on the ad. NCPAC was the 2 year old creation of Floyd Gregory Brown, out of Oregon. He had raised enough money through direct mail and telephone marketing to bring himself to the attention of conservative billionaires like Charles and David Koch, Robert Mercer and Peter Thiel. These wealthy extreme conservative contributors had pumped $9 million into NCPAC, and saw that it hired its most important employee, Larry McCarthy. The “Furlough” ad was physically his creation.

Lawrence C. McCarthy was Brooklyn born. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1974, he worked for several Republican congressmen, on their campaigns and as a press officer. Then in 1981 he became a senior executive for Roger Ailes. Late in 1987, however, Larry abruptly shifted to working for NCPAC. The separation from the Bush Campaign and Roger Ailes was thus no more than one degree and just a few weeks in time.

Larry McCarthy now re-edited “Furlough”. In the new version the in-hospital booking photo of William Horton was completely absent. It was replaced by a longer hold on the middle distant image of Horton in police custody. It was this new “Furlough” which was presented for “clearance” to the advertising directors of the various television stations and cable systems. 

Once they had cleared that version for broadcast, McCarthy then substituted the original “Furlough”, containing “Willie's” ominous image.

Any skepticism about the overt racist message of “Furlough”, or the more subtle version of the coming “Revolving Door” ad, should be buried six feet deep along with the later obfuscation, denials and justifications by Lee Atwater (above),  Roger Ailes and all future generations of Republican apologists. The only reason for a “Cleared” copy and a “Broadcast” copy of “Furlough” was that, in 1988, both conservatives and liberals damn well knew the party was selling racism.

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