Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,    
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;    
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,    
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,    
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

***
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,    
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;    
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,    
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,    
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

***
New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;    
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;    
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,    
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,    
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

The Present Crisis, James Russell Lowell

I resisted mightily the temptation to quote the whole poem.  In my head the great Welsh tune, Ebenezer, swirls; and it all I can do to keep from singing it out loud.  Do go read the rest, will you?  Thank you very much.


The reason why I decided to blog on Endurance arises from frequent complaints about the pace of change in the last half year, together with alarm bells ringing regarding the current fate of health care reform.  I write musing on the question,  How much basic change do we have a right to expect in a half year?  Not how much do we have a right to demand, but how much do we have a right to expect?"  I make my living dealing with the Past's blook-rusted key, so this question is of more than passing interest to me.  In a nutshell, I guess I would answer my own question demand much, expect little, don't give up, persevere, ENDURE.  

This past election saw a historic outcome: the election of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to the highest offices the nation has to offer.  How long was the road to this achievement?  With in our own culture's history, I would provide this merged dateline-hitting just a few highlights to keep this entry from spilling over into next week.  If I miss your favorite, I apologize in advance...please add it to the comments.

The Enduring Struggle for the Rights of Blacks and the Rights of Women.

• 1700.  Samuel Sewall Publishes The Selling of Joseph

    The Numerousness of Slaves at this day in the Province, and the Uneasiness of them under their Slavery, hath put many upon thinking whether the Foundation of it be firmly and well laid; so as to sustain the Vast Weight that is built upon it. It is most certain that all Men, as they are the Sons of Adam, are Coheirs; and have equal Right unto Liberty, and all other outward Comforts of Life.

 
Yes, this is the same Samuel Sewall who presided over the Witchcraft Trials in Salem Village less than ten years earlier.  He repented publicly for that, in person, in public.  He asked his participation be forgiven, not forgotten.

• 1742.    John Woolman becomes convinced that slavery is "inconsistent with the Christian Religion".  Acting on his conscience he refuses to write wills if they include the transmission of slaves as property, and he begins a life-long anti-slavery crusade.

• 1776    Abigail Adams writes her husband, John, March 31:
  

"I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors."

"Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands
.
"Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."

• 1784.     Anthony Benezet publishes Caution to Great Britain and her colonies : in a short representation of the calamitous state of the enslaved Negroes in the British dominions,

The Quaker Benezet published other anti-slavery documents and wrote many letters on the subject.  Through his efforts and those of like-minded individuals, many Quaker meetings expelled slaveholders.

• 1784.  John Woolman's Journal published.

• 1822.    Denmark Vesey plans the Charleston Rebellion.  Vesey had purchased his own freedom and was not willing to live in freedom while slavery remained.  Four whites joined him in seeking to overthrow slavery.  Vesey was hung, the four whites fined and imprisoned.

• 1831.    Nat Turner mounts an insurrection which is repressed, and Turner goes to the gallows.

• 1831.    William Lloyd Garrison begins the publication of The Liberator in which he sets the international standard for passionate rants.  Among them,
  

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity?  I will be  as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice.  On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation.  No!  no!  Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.  I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.  The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.

• 1837, The Old Man Eloquent, John Quincy Adams accused of violating the Rules of the House of Representatives by attempting to introduce petitions against slavery in the District of Columbia--including petitions from slaves themselves.  One version of the censorship petition read 
  

Resolved, That John Q. Adams, a member from the State of Massachusetts, by his attempt to introduce into this House a petition of slaves for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, committed an outrage on the rights and feelings of a large portion of the people of this Union, a flagrant contempt on the dignity of this House; and by extending to slaves a privilege only belonging to freemen, directly incites the slave population to insurrection; and that the said member be forthwith called to the bar of the House, and censured by the Speaker.

• 1841.    The Lowell Offering begins publication.  Women take over the editorial responsibilities in 1842

• 1848.    In Convention at Seneca Falls, those in attendance, female and male, black and white, subscribe to a series of Declarations and Resolves.  Among them this: 

    Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.

• 1849    Henry David Thoreau publishes Civil Disobedience 

    The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.

• 1854    Abraham Lincoln argues in Peoria, Illinois,

   I  think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska--and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.

    This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world--enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites--causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty--criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest .

     * * *
    And this:  Equal justice to the south, it is said, requires us to consent to the extending of slavery to new countries. That is to say, inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not object to you taking your slave. Now, I admit this is perfectly logical, if there is no difference between hogs and negroes. But while you thus require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the south yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? It is kindly provided that of all those who come into the world, only a small percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no larger in the slave States than in the free. The great majority, south as well as north, have human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies in the bosoms of the southern people, manifest in many ways, their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in the negro.

In the same speech, Lincoln argues his personal choice would be to abolish slavery and ship the former slaves to Liberia.  Great men are not perfect men.

• 1863    The Emancipation Proclamation is published.  It frees no slaves, applying only to persons held "within the rebellious states".

• 1865 - 1870.  Congress enacts and the States ratify Amendments 13, 14, and 15.  The so-called emancipation amendments:  One hundred-seventy years after Sewall wrote "The Selling of Joseph". 

Of course no emancipation for women-that story is barely begun, and with the compromise of 1877, Jim Crow begins his strange career.  So I've briefly touched on half the story. 

I'll give the moral now, and continue it if there's any interest in a part two.

If we get health care reform, don't go home to celebrate.  Start working on better health care reform.  If we don't get health care reform, don't go home to mope, start working on replacing those in Congress who blocked it.  The same admonition applies regardless of the causes dear to your hearts.  Progressive forces have been at their weakest when they thought they've won.  The other guys never go home.  We need to develop an endurance greater than theirs.

Thanks for reading.




The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.