"America's Longest Siege" by Kelly Joseph (2013)

The Siege of Charleston really began long before the American Civil War. In some respects the city was under siege since the first day it was settled by the English colonists who found themselves pitted against Spanish and French settlers along with their Native American allies. That was in 1669.

By 1739 they would be fighting with their own slaves in the Stono Rebellion, which began when the Spanish lured the slaves from Georgia and South Carolina with the promise of freedom. The result was that Georgia and South Carolina both invaded Florida to retrieve their slaves.

The following year brought the great fire of 1740, which many believed to have been started by slaves, and burned the whole commercial district to the ground. With these auspicious beginnings, author Joseph Kelly begins a tour de force accounting of the history of South Carolina through the Civil War and Reconstruction, drawing upon the rich history of the state to explain some of the seeming idiosyncrasies of the South Carolina we know today.

A good book will always lead you to explore further than the boundaries of its own cover; and to that effect Mr. Kelly has done a superb job. I consider myself to be a fair armchair historian, yet I found myself looking for more information on some points at least 5 times while reading this book. That means this book taught me some things which I did not know before, while clarifying the things I already know in a highly entertaining fashion.

Charles Town; the name would not change until after the Revolution; was a major battleground of the war, with many key players hailing from the state. The author explores the lives of father and son Henry and John Laurens, and their attitudes concerning slavery. This brings into play the different practices which prevailed at the time; from simple serfdom to the more complex arrangements of manumission, whereby a slave could purchase his own freedom; and even some “liberal” masters who allowed their slaves to worship freely. That practice was based on a belief called “gradualism”, which held that the African slave could gradually become intellectually acclimated to a life of freedom. Of course this totally ignores the fact that the slaves were free until they were enslaved.

One of the best chapters in this book concerns Vesey Denmark and his so called rebellion, for which he was hung. This man managed to win a lottery while a slave, collecting $1,500 in 1799. He immediately bought his own freedom and lived the life of a free man in Charleston. One day a slave at the docks heard another slave talk about the rebellion in Haiti, in which the slaves had massacred their masters and taken their freedom. Vesey Denmark had nothing at all to do with this. When the slave who had heard this talk ran home and told his master it set into motion a chain of events resulting in the torture of 134 slaves in order to gain a confession about the plans for a rebellion which did not even exist except in the minds of the inquisitors themselves. 34 men, including Vesey Denmark, were hung as a result.

Urban slavery is explored in a way that is remarkable not only for the author’s technique in writing about it, but also because of the circuitous thinking which had to have taken place in order to justify the practice to oneself. In an urban setting, with houses so close, it was not considered “proper” to beat a slave. It wasn't so much out of consideration for the slave as it was for the sake of appearances with one’s neighbor. With few exceptions though, the lot of the urban slave was not that much different than that of his plantation counterpart. Neither was truly free.

The 1822 Negro Seaman Act is explored here as well. This was a South Carolina law requiring that any seaman of African descent; free or not; and working aboard  any ship; foreign or domestic; be jailed and held prisoner when the ship entered port in the state of South Carolina. It was fought in court and became the landmark case of Gibbons vs. Ogden which stated that the federal government was responsible for regulating interstate commerce, which the Negro Seaman Act was clearly in violation of. (This was one of the times I had to leave the book and reacquaint myself with something. And note that even  Gibbons vs. Ogden relies upon treating the slaves as an issue of commerce, rather than human rights.)

The author also finds time to juxtapose what is happening in America with what is happening elsewhere at the same time. For instance, very early on in the book he points out that slavery was abolished on the island of Great Britain in 1772, a full 4 years before our own Declaration of Independence would be written. This I already knew. But what I learned is how it came about.

On June 22^nd of that year Chief Justice of the Courts, William Lord Mansfield, found that John Somerset; who had been a slave since age 8 and was currently the property of an English tax collector; had been transported to England as a servant. He escaped and spent 50 days hiding in the slums of London before being arrested and tried. The result was the court decision which held that involuntary servitude could not exist on the English Isles proper. This was akin to our own struggles with the Fugitive Slave Act and the Missouri Compromise 50 years later, and I found it to be very informative.

The connection between Irish-Catholics and their struggle with the English crown has certain similarities to the struggle of slaves and the rise of the Abolitionist Movement here in America. It’s no surprise that so many Irish-Americans fought against slavery in the Civil War. What is interesting though is that so many Irish fought for it in South Carolina, in spite of the slave like conditions at home which had forced so many of them to flee to America in the first place.

This book has so much to offer, and does so in a highly readable and engaging style. A TV mini-series based upon this book would not be ill received. All of the color and flash necessary to hold your attention are here. Be that as it may, this book will have you engrossed from the very first page to the last.

"Constitutional Myths" by Ray Raphael (2013)

The Conservatives would have you believe that our Constitution is flawed, and that the Federalist Papers represent the framer’s original intent. Indeed, conservative radio talk show jock Jason Lewis once called for the removal of the Bill of Rights from the Constitution on his afternoon talk radio show in Charlotte, where he was working at WBT-AM, calling them unnecessary. 

The fact that he said this at the same time as he was signing off for the day, over his bumper music; allowing no time for rebuttals; infuriated me to the point that I phoned the radio station and finally the news director at their television station demanding that Mr. Lewis phone me ASAP. Much to their credit, his bosses made that happen, and I was able to remind Mr. Lewis that even God had found it necessary to write the corollary to the Bill of Rights with a finger of fire on a tablet of stone.

This book also takes the same tact as Mr. Lewis, claiming that the Federalist Papers are the real basis for the Constitution, which was written after the debate over the Federalist Papers, making them irrelevant after the Constitution became the law of the land. That Conservatives; who decry “big government”; would try to re-establish our country based upon the Federalist Papers; which, after all were merely opinion pieces exploring the type of government we should have;  shines a light on their true agenda. They want to roll back your Constitution.

Smaller Federal Government means larger local control with less oversight. Guess what? That makes people victims of local tyrannies. Imagine a country without a Bill of Rights to go along with the Responsibilities outlined in the Constitution, and then question the true purpose of placing the Federalist Papers before the Constitution as law. And, in a time when even Chief Justice Roberts states that “he looks to the Federalist Paper’s” when deciding Constitutional law in order to ascertain the framers “original intent”, you have legitimate cause for concern. Looking outside of the Constitution is decried when the Liberal Justices look to European Law, or even the biblical law; upon which Conservatives themselves claim we are founded; so why should I allow them now to look to something other than the Constitution themselves when deciding cases?

The author sites President Reagan as a proponent of "originalism" and quotes him on what were remarks made concerning the original intent of the Constitution itself, not the preceding Federalist Papers. He then goes on to use the case of United States v. Lopez as an example of justices looking only to the Constitution, rather than outside of it, when deciding a case. He quotes Justice Thomas' own agreement with the Court's decision, all the while issuing a separate opinion on the meaning of "Commerce", citing dictionaries from the 1790's as an example of what the founding fathers meant; or he thinks they meant.

The book is filled with facts, and first drafts of the “original” Constitution; all of which were later rejected in favor of the Constitution we have lived with for more than 200 years. Our Constitution allows the document to be amended from time to time, and this seems to be a source of irritation to the author, and most Neo-Conservatives in general.

When reading the Federalist Papers you have to realize that they were the first draft of what would become the Constitution. The kinks needed to be ironed out for our fledgling nation. And, due to the efforts of men like Hancock, Jefferson, Madison et al; they were. The result was the Constitution of the United States of America, which allows the document to be Amended as society deems necessary to meet the needs of a changing nation, and time in general. The doctrine espoused in this book calls for what has become known as “originalism”. This doctrine would have the nation eviscerate the Constitution, throwing us back to the days before we were even united by one. Remember, in the original drafts, only land holders had the right to vote, and servants were worth a fraction of a vote, only to be exercised by the servant's owner. I think they called it slavery; I mean state's rights.

The author states what the founding fathers thought and meant, but I take the attitude that what they thought and meant was written down in the Constitution. And that includes the Bill of Rights, which were the first of the planned Amendments and are the rock on which we, as a nation, stand.

Using one of my Constitutional Rights; which the author seems to wish to deprive me of; I have to tell you that, in my opinion, this is one of the most misleading books of non-fiction I have ever read. 

Ironically; that makes it an important book to read. Just be sure to have a copy of the actual Constitution handy, as the author has seen fit to write a 300 book about a document he doesn't want you to see in it's entirety. Although he does include the Articles of the Constitution, he does not ever show the Bill of Rights as a part of the Constitution, instead electing to show the reader Madison's draft of an additional twelve; and, in some cases altered, proposed amendments. It is a first draft version of what would become the Bill of Rights; which are the first ten Amendments to this sacred document.

The author then cleverly moves on to show the later Amendments; numbers XI through XXVII; all of which I presume he disagrees with. You need look no further than this "arrangement" to see that this book represents his own “original intent”, and as such, this author has an agenda.