No Pettifoggers

Good morning! Today is Seth's birthday! Twelve years ago he decided to make his entrance to the cold hard realities of life on earth and what an interesting twelve years it has been. He arrived before the midwife did and had the cord wrapped around his neck and was somewhat blue when he was born. With Cedric I learned that a baby can be born without the mother ever actively pushing and with Seth I learned that unassisted birth really is okay (Cedric was unassisted as well but somehow that fact never registered). Seth pinked up okay and has been a lot of fun to have around.

Yes, we have hyacinths growing in the house.

In 1759, Charles Carroll wrote to his son, indicating a desire for him to stick to his studies at school. He wrote, “It is a shame for a gentleman to be ignorant of the laws of his country and to be dependent on every dirty pettifogger.”

Also these white flowers.

I had to look pettifogger up because I'd never even seen the word before. It is a noun and according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is 1. a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable, or 2. one given to quibbling over trifles.

The book I am currently reading, The Cultural Life of the American Colonies is quite intersting. The title put me off a bit because, as most people who know me well enough know, I have a real issue with the way we in the United States have this terrible habit of referring to ourselves as Americans as if we are the only people with that right. Canadians, Mexicans, Peruvians, etc., are Americans as well and so I think we have no business calling ourselves solely Americans. We are citizens of the United States of America. Admitted, there is no good, short, term to use when referring to ourselves but Americans just doesn't cut it for me. Because, you know, we aren't the only ones.

So, the title put me off a bit. The first sentence in the Preface mollified me a bit: “...the thirteen British colonies which later became the United States...” I'm okay now. Mostly. And I'm learning something. Which is good.

What comes to mind if I mention plantation owners in Virgina and Maryland or any of the other colonies? Silk waistcoats and impractical buckled shoes. White powdered wigs and leisurely time for reading, studying, drinking, consorting, etc., etc., etc. That's what I thought of.

Alexander Hamilton

I think it is important to remember that the first Europeans came to the continents that would be known as the Americas not until the 1400s. Even then, they mostly ended up in central and south America and on the islands of the Caribbean. In the 1500s there was some action in what is now Florida and Canada, some in the southern part of what is now New Mexico, and a bit in the Carolinas but it wasn't until the 1600s that colonists from England, Holland, France, Sweden, and Scotland came. Based on that, these people hadn't had a whole lot of time to build a society like those in Europe. Never mind that different groups of people had been taking over and then been taken over for centuries.

George Washington with family members and others

This really provides a lot to think about. For one thing, if you own a business and you want it to be successful, are you going to sit around wearing designer jeans that cost $500 and snakeskin shoes that cost $1000 and a designer hoodie that cost $300 while other people do the work? Well, actually, in today's society, that might be the norm. Generally I'm thinking that most people who own a business and want it to be successful get out there and do some work. They get their hands dirty. They work alongside those they've hired to work for them.

Guess what? That is exactly what these plantation owners did. Do you know why they had slaves? Because they didn't know about soil depletion and after growing tobacco for seven years in the same soil, it would no longer grow tobacco and they needed more and more land to produce the same amount of product. That took more and more people to do the labor. Yes, there were white slaves. Some of them were indentured servants but not all of them. There were more slaves from Africa. This represented issues because owning slaves was not an inexpensive endeavor.

Did plantation owners have time to sit around playing, reading, dueling (which they didn't do on a regular basis; it actually seems that this was the exception rather than the rule), drinking, socializing, etc.? No. Not only that, but many of them also had civic duties. Many of them had inherited a sense of obligation to serve and often they were not paid for this service. So, party-goers in silk waistcoats? Not so much.

That said, there were some who were drunkards. There were some who gambled more than they should (owning a business is something of a gamble in and of itself). There were women who were drunkards. Society wasn't as decorous as we have a tendency to think it was.

And Kitty. Queen of the couch yesterday.

In the last couple of decades or so, we hear a lot about what horrible people the Founding Fathers were. What makes them horrible? That they owned slaves? Not all of them did and I won't condone slavery but it's been around for thousands of years. It exists today, even in the United States. How can we diminish what they did because of it? That they had mistresses? That's laughable. Look at what we've had in the White House since then—the two most notable that pop into my head are John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. So they may have had mistresses; so do people now. Basically, if we want to bring up all the sins and shortcomings of the Founding Fathers, we'd better make sure we don't have any of the same problems.

I think from now on, I will think of the Founding Fathers, and the people who built this nation as imperfect people who were doing the work that needed to be done. Which I have issues with but recognize it as something that needed to be done. Which I have issues with but we're not going to discuss them right now.

Now that I've taken far too long to get this done, I'll be off for now.

Grandma, your package arrived yesterday. Cedric wants to grow just a bit so he can wear it. Until then, I'll keep it with other woolly stuff.

Have a fantastic day!