I remember hearing a dramatization of the Pilgrims’ voyage to what became Plymouth Colony and their first year there. I had known about most of the events dramatized in the recording, notably the major Atlantic storms they had to traverse which cracked the main beam, which event almost caused the entire enterprise to be abandoned in favor of a return to England.
However, there was one event which I had not known: the suicide of Dorothy Bradford, William Bradford’s young wife. The dramatization posited that she greatly missed he 3-year-old son which the couple had left in England pending a future voyage once the colony had been better prepared to receive the child. That longing developed into a discouragement which compelled her to jump into the icy bay.
The drama treated this event with great sensitivity; however, that did not diminish my wonder as to why I had never heard this before.
As the years went by, I learned that although Dorothy Bradford did indeed die in 1620, there is no contemporary evidence that she died by her own hand. William Bradford, self-effacing as ever, merely lists her death as one of the many that first year. The great New England clergyman, Cotton Mather, 80 years later, wrote a history of Plymouth Colony in which he notes that William Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, died by accident, falling overboard and drowning in the harbor in December, 1620.
Mather’s account makes much sense given that the weather had turned bitterly cold that December and we know many on the Mayflower suffered from scurvy, malnutrition, and overall weakness, all of which would exacerbate the danger of the icy decks on which a passenger walked and slipped into the freezing cold bay waters.
Imagine my surprise when I later learned that the suicide narrative originated from a mid-19th Century work of fiction published in Harper’s.
We await for a talented biographer or, if primary documents are not available, a sympathetic novelist to develop a true-to-life story of Dorothy Bradford: her marriage at 16 to 23-year-old William Bradford; her entrusting her 3-year-old to family in England; her suffering from scurvy and malnutrition; her seeing the Massachusetts shore and bidding her husband farewell as he went ashore with a scouting party to seek a decent site for the colony; and her accident on an icy deck which resulted in her death by drowning.
Such a biographer or novelist might also weave his or her work in such a manner as to demonstrate that a short life devoted to God, husband, and son can also serve to propel great things which she never saw in her life on earth, but will understand One Day.
Her and William’s son, John Bradford, arrived in Plymouth in 1640, twenty years after his mother’s death.
My (modest) library includes the late Clarence Carson’s six volume A Basic History of The United States, which, by the way, I happily recommend to anyone interested in our country’s history, especially if you have school and university age children or grandchildren.
The third volume is titled, The Sections and The Civil War (1826-1877). Dr. Carson vividly describes a country whose divisions, culminating in a catastrophic war, “constituted a major break in the continuity of American history …. the memory and resentment lingered on … long after the desire for revenge or retribution, or the memory of the animosities had died out ….”
Dr. Carson goes on to demonstrate how the 20th Century wars and politics reflected many of the impulses manifested in the Civil War, but that is not the focus of this post.
My point is that after the war and the reconstruction which immediately followed, the wounds and resentments were very real and impossible to heal, apart from God’s grace.
One of the tools for healing was the publication in 1872 and 1874 of the two-volume Picturesque America. This massive work included 900 wood engravings and fifty steel engravings of scenes from Maine to Florida, from New York to California, and countless places between. About twenty years ago I found a two volume centennial edition which, although not as magnificent as the original, 19th Century editions, was nevertheless beautiful and, importantly, affordable. I purchased it for our children’s curriculum.
Picturesque America was edited by the poet, William Cullen Bryant and includes works of art and essays by numerous artists and authors.
As I consider the very real anger and hatred towards our history and heritage, knowing that however irrational and ahistorical it is — and it is ahistorical — it is nevertheless very genuine … and dangerous.
This is not a situation amenable to short-term correction.
However, a publication such as Picturesque America would surely be a balm on these angry waters for it illustrates that our land is truly beautiful with a lifetime of scenes and adventures to relish and experience, should one have the time and budget and discipline to do so.
But even if one simply cannot personally visit any of these sites, he would certainly be able to read descriptions and histories or appreciate photos or paintings thereof.
The intent of Picturesque America was to help heal the divisions and promote a unity among our country’s peoples. My personal opinion is that there was a growth of unity in the late 19th Century and into the 20th. However, this was due primarily to religious factors which we cannot discuss in this post. Nevertheless, those factors enabled an appreciation of the publication along with a love for the land and her people: in essence a love for one another.
May we see a like spirit in the days ahead, whether or not we are once again blessed with a similar publication.
A good friend recently asked for my thoughts on the military buildup in the Caribbean.
This post is my reply to him.
Hello G____:
I believe the relevant information can be summarized in my Bands of Robbers post earlier this year.
I agree with the administration in that Venezuela is indeed a criminal enterprise which has wreaked — and continue to wreak — havoc not only on the Venezuelan people but on the land itself — the Orinoco Mining Arc is truly a disaster zone. And the drug market has enriched and continues to enrich the Communists in charge of the chaos, while the poor and what’s left of the middle class, suffer.
According to several estimates, about 20%, or more, of the country’s population has emigrated since Chavez in the late 1990’s. That’s about 8 Million souls.
So if the current people in charge recognize the 2024 elections, which they lost in a landslide, AND peacefully transfer power to the legitimate victors, that would be a positive development but no panacea.
My concern is that, for generations, since well before my birth, Venezuelans have been taught that Democracy is good and that it is in essence the same as Socialism. They don’t declare it quite so bluntly, but that is what it is. In other words, our deep troubles did not begin with Chavez. Nor would the hope in the Venezuelan military, a hope shared by many, including dear friends, ever be realized, because, historically, the military was and is as left wing as the political leadership. Even more so.
Once again, we can credit Simón Bolívar, whose idolization of the French Revolution did so much harm to South America. His overwhelming influence determined the course of Venezuelan public and private education, which for the entire 20th Century was based on the French model, including centralization and, in essence, rule by “experts” — meaning left wing.
So, again, if the administration’s actions, successfully pressure the current leadership to recognize the true 2024 victors, so much the better. However, if the victors are not recognized and the current despotism simply abdicates and leaves a vacuum, we or the administration, would be truly naive to expect something good to fill it.
As for the 2024 victors, their political platform is encouraging on the economic side, including free-market principles and deregulation. I understand Machado appreciates Ludwig Von Mises and Milton Freedman over Douglas Bravo and Karl Marx. Unfortunately, on the social issues, she is not as conservative. However, on balance, if I had my druthers, I would prefer her over the current mafia in charge. Hence my desire that the current president and his followers truly and cleanly transfer power to them.
But we have no guarantee of that — at least at the moment.
As for military action — as opposed to offshore pressure — I am not in favor. History has shown that wars’ results are unpredictable and this is especially true in the case of Venezuela. She is a very large country and the Castro-Chavez-Maduro triumvirate has hundreds if not thousands of its own ideologically aligned minions ensconced in positions of leadership throughout the country. It has also armed its own to the teeth. This would be a very bloody enterprise which can expect highly unpredictable results for both Venezuela and the United States.
No matter what, we can take comfort in God’s overruling Providence, regardless of the actions taken.
My father was born on November 4, 1917, 108 years ago today.
Although interventionist breezes blew strongly before that pivotal year — witness the Spanish-American War, for example — such did not compare to the hurricane force winds of 1917 which saw American troops shipped to France to engage in war on that continent for the first time in our history.
According to John Barry’s The Great Influenza, the cataclysmic “Spanish Flu” was propelled by troop shipments initiated in that year, although the catastrophic evidence of that pandemic would not be widely seen until the following year. Barry documents how government officials, as mendacious back then as they are today, were quick to call the flu “Spanish” even though all the evidence was that it originated either on the American continent or perhaps in Asia — it is debated to this day.
These officials also strove mightily to obscure the exact nature of the epidemic in order to not bring the war effort into question.
Regardless, that flu cost an estimated 100 Million lives. There are reports of men getting symptoms in the morning and being dead by nightfall. The age group most affected were children 5 and under. The exact opposite of a more recent infectious event. In sum, the flu killed far more people than all the soldiers and civilians killed in the war.
A few days after my father’s birth, the Russian Civil War broke out between the “Whites” and “Reds”, eventuating in the ultimate installation of the Leninist and Stalinist tyranny which ruled most of Eurasia for the next 70-plus years and still rules in China, albeit not as overtly as during Mao’s despotic rule. The Leninist – Stalinist rule is encapsulated well in their treatment of the royal family. If the reader would like to know more about this, Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra is an excellent source.
The family and a small entourage was arrested earlier in 1917. After several relocations, they were eventually situated in the outskirts of Siberia and, anticipating a “Whites” victory in 1918, were massacred: The czar and his wife along with their five children, Olga, Tatiana, María, Anastasia, and Alexis. Also their entourage — the doctor, Eugene Botkin, who cared for Alexis, who suffered from hemophilia; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and cook Ivan Kharitonov.
Their guards were changed, not only from location to location, but also in the same location up to a day or two prior to the murders. This was done because Lenin, a man completely unacquainted with pity, insisted that no opportunity be given for guards to come to feel compassion for the family.
The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, stripped, mutilated with grenades and acid to prevent identification and buried. The “Whites” did take over the city and investigated the room where the massacre had so obviously occurred. The Soviets only admitted to the atrocity in the mid-1920s.
Demonstrating yet again, that there is nothing new under the sun, despite official denials and stonewalling and obstructions, the burial site was finally discovered, by an amateur detective in 1979, but another 10 years had to slip by before DNA forensics could confirm the identities as being from the royal family. The remains were reinterred in 1998, exactly 80 years after their terrible murders. Incredibly, the remains of Alexis and a sister were discovered in another, smaller grave by — surprise! — amateur archaeologists. These were also reinterred.
My father was one year old when the Armistice was accepted by Germany on November 11, 1918, and not yet two years old when the Versailles Treaty was signed in June, 1919.
As a toddler, he knew about as much as the great minds of Europe on that day as to the eventual failure not only of that treaty but of the godless Socialist theories which eventuated in more blood shed and lives lost in that century than in all other centuries combined.
My father was not yet two. He can be excused. But what is the excuse of grown men ostensibly educated by the greatest colleges and universities, all with Christian heritages, which should have told them that anything built on lies not only cannot endure but must end in catastrophe.
Like most men in 20th Century America, my father voted for Franklin D Roosevelt; but unlike most, he came to regret his vote and felt honored in voting for Ronald R Reagan in 1980, the last general election he would witness. Not because President Reagan was God — he most certainly was not. But rather because he at least tipped his hat to eternal verities and sought to govern thusly, although he was not successful in many respects.
My father did not speak much about his work in the Army special unit. But every once in a while he would express his dismay at the shenanigans of the United States State Department and other departments and their seeming obliviousness to Socialist ideology and their nonchalant attitude towards the intellectual growth of such in our society and culture. He was incredulous at our media and our government as they expressed obliviousness towards Fidel Castro in Cuba — we now know they were not so oblivious after all.
All the men my father worked with or for are now gone. I can share a seemingly insignificant event which illustrates how far my father’s distrust grew over the course of the century. After a decade or so of non-activity, he received a communication summoning him to a meeting somewhere — I’ll voluntarily redact the location except to say it was not on the mainland but accessible.
Years later, my father told me about it. He decided not to attend.
Why? I asked.
I cannot trust them.
My throat tightens as I write this. My father was not a coward. But he was realistic and he did see that not only had times changed, but the people he knew and respected were no longer in the drivers’ seats. It was another team and their fruit was not good.
As serious as all this is, I must insert here that my father had a wonderful sense of humor and laughed with ease, as eager to tell a joke as to hear one. Being a sportsman, he was able to take wins with enthusiasm and losses with a determination to do better next time.
Not being enthusiasts for foreign interventions, we can nevertheless see God’s Providence working in all things — good and bad. As I read about the Spanish-American War, I am not a fan. Nevertheless it was that war that brought my grandfather from Massachusetts to Cuba where he remained after the war and married my grandmother and it was where my father was born.
And many years after that war, I worked for a public accounting firm in Puerto Rico, another fruit of that war, where I eventually met my own wife whom my father also met shortly before his own departure.
So, paradoxically, I am thankful for that war.
My father was murdered in October, 1982 in the Atlanta, Georgia area.
He continues to exert a powerful, beneficial influence on me and on my siblings.
And I am grateful.
Room where the Romanovs were murdered, the night of July 16-17, 1918
My grandfather, Max A Barnes (1874-1950)
My grandmother, Eustaquia R. Barnes (1893-1951)
My father and I, visiting family in Stockbridge, Massachussets, circa 1962
My father, Charles M. Barnes (1917-1982), circa 1948
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I had friends who pooh-poohed the concerns of many adults, such as my father, with Communist ideology and its seeming attractiveness to American intellectuals.
In my teenage years, this attitude of disrespect was evident, especially among the more affluent. I recall, in my twenties, spending a Saturday on a sailboat in St. Thomas with a couple who had sailed around the world twice. The husband was an outstanding, hilarious raconteur who made me wonder if he had not missed his calling as a Hollywood storyteller.
Inevitably, his stories devolved into mockery of American “scaredy cats”. Of course, the false fears he referred to were about Communism. As a young man, I must admit he had me somewhat persuaded. If this man, very streetwise, not only in America but in the Greek islands and the extremely dangerous, pirate-infested waters of the vast seas of Asia, saw no threat in the Communists ideology, maybe, just maybe, my father’s concerns may have been overwrought?
That man’s spell over me was strong enough to persuade me to expand my reading a bit. The Road to Serfdom was something of an eye-opener. And so was Witness, and The Ghosts on the Roof, both by Whittaker Chambers.
I began to realize that the issue was not so much a nuclear attack or military invasion, but rather the complete undermining and overthrow of the historic faith of our fathers, which faith built the foundations of our country.
At bottom, the issue is as old as the Garden of Eden: God or man?
This explains much.
In previous posts, I’ve alluded to Project Venona, the US Army Signal Corps’ successful attempt to decode the innumerable daily messages between the Soviet Union and its missions in the United States. This project was declassified in 1995.
However, it is important to remember that the decoding was successfully done in the 30s. And proceeded throughout the Second World War and beyond.
Most significantly, this success was kept secret from the US State Department, the rest of the Armed Forces, including the Army itself, and the White House — both Roosevelt and Truman.
It is outrageous but true that the few men who were involved also knew that if they reported on their success, such would have been made known to the Soviet Communists within hours. Men such as Harry Dexter White, the number two man of the US Treasury and Lauchlin Currie, the president’s personal assistant, were actively spying for the Communists and against the interests of our friends and neighbors.
This was going on before, during, and after the cataclysmic Second World War. Including during the catastrophic fall of China to Mao’s Communists.
The Venona files tell us that there was no area of American life that those committed to the atheistic Communist ideology did not penetrate. In other words, not just the military.
How was this possible? Regrettably, it was possible because thousands of prominent American citizens believed in the possibility of man becoming god. A metaphysical impossibility.
That belief impelled them to betray their friends and neighbors without a second thought.
Their success was evident not only in government and academia, but in all spheres of life, including religion and entertainment.
This success eventually led us to the absurdities of New York City high society entertaining and sitting at the feet of radicals and murderers and to government policies that rewarded the destruction of the family while penalizing thrift and enterprise.
By the time I was in my twenties, to speak of the dangers of atheistic theories was to invite ridicule and contempt. To question the received, mainstream opinion that Senator McCarthy knew nothing about which he spoke was to be expelled from polite company.
And now, we have people wearing T Shirts mocking the assassination of Mr. Charlie Kirk and actually “acting out” the dastardly event in mockery and laughter. Their anger is not so much against a person — although it certainly is that — as it is against God Himself. Therefore anyone who might point us to a return to the Lord is worthy of death.
I believe that, once you scratch a bit below the surface, our country is still a conservative, traditional land. When speaking to others, I am encouraged by the common faith that undergirds us still — though much emaciated, for sure.
But the divide is also there. It may not be 50-50, but it is significant.
This ought to drive us to:
First, prayer. Prayer for our homes and for our neighbors and communities. Principally, that the Lord would be gracious to us and give us a Spirit of reformation and a return to the historic faith.
And, second, a determination to be unafraid to defend our faith and our love for our heritage. And to do so in a kind, compassionate manner, knowing when we are being listened to and when it’s time to stop casting our pearls before swine and move on.
Cold War surveillance post
Allusion to The Ghosts on The Roof by Whittaker Chambers
