Category: HISTORY

     I doubt I will ever experience anything as central to my observation of  man’s struggle for personal liberty close to the wonder I felt watching the events of 1989 to 1991.  The heroes that wrestled totalitarianism to the ground were so brave and numerous, so intelligent and strategic as to create awe.  Walesa in Poland, Havel in Czechoslovakia, Pope John Paul II, and so many others had  worked tirelessly to create the inescapable pressures and circumstances that made the move of all Eastern Europe to freedom, and even more miraculously, in predominantly non-violent fashion.  Every month seemed to bring an amazing story of triumph to bear, as sclerotic, bully like authoritarian governments were forced to admit their systemic failure and accede to the wishes of the people to be free of their oppression.  The irrepressible wave eventually caught up to collosus of totalitarianism, the Soviet Union, and its collapse in 1991, and unsteady evolution into a new world, is still being felt today.

     This weekend is the twentieth anniversary of the highpoint of the August Revolution, in which the people of Russia fought off an attempt of the old guard to put the liberty genie back into the bottle.  Occurring in late summer, it was nevertheless the Russian version of the current Arab Spring, with bravery shown by countless common citizens, ruthlessness by entrenched autocrats, savvy leadership from unexpected bureaucrats, and uncertainty in the clarity of the outcome.  The Russian people twenty years later are still finding their way through the historical strains of the death of one version of history and the birth of another alternate universe.

     By 1991, the strains created by Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempted ‘reform’ of communism were reaching intolerable levels.  Gorbachev’s two 1980’s reform processes, Glasnost (Opening) and Perestroika (Restructuring), designed to improve the transparency of government action and provide some market style reforms, had  inadvertantly exposed the structural rot that had permeated the top down communist system and led to open revolt by the oppressed population for not reform, but renewal.  Unwilling to fully deconstruct the only system he knew and the one that had brought him to power, but recognizing the inherent failure of the system to evolve, Gorbachev, still supreme leader of the government and party, found himself nearly paralyzed between the progressive will of the country to join the freedom process birthed in eastern Europe and the conservative Soviet hierarchy that saw the seventy year empire of Soviet communist dominance at perilous risk.  The pressure keg finally blew open on August 1991 when the Soviet Vice President, Defense Minister, and KGB chief attempted a coup d’etat, house arresting President Gorbachev and threatening his life. The tipping point was the expected signing of a New Union Treaty on August 20 that would effectively turn the Soviet Union into a federation of independent states with a common president, foreign policy, and military.  This breaching of Soviet sovereignty was too much for the old guard and after confining Gorbachev they moved to secure the base of the presumed largest state of the new federation, that of Russia itself.  Their focus was the Russian parliament, which had become an unwanted counter balance to the Kremlin, and the recently elected bureaucrat of the Russian federation, Boris Yeltsin.  Yeltsin, a long standing communist apparatchik had been lately mouthing ominous sounds of independence, and the threat to the Supreme Soviet institutional dominance was clear.  The coup leaders rapidly closed newspapers and silenced political activity, moving troops and tanks to the White House, the parliament building that housed Russian Federation leaders and Yeltsin himself, surrounding it and threatening its destruction if Yeltsin did not accede to arrest.

     This was a different Russia then the coup leaders had expected to find.  Rather than cowed by the intimidation of tanks, tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets around the White House and surrounded the tanks, daring them to attempt violent action.  As if undergoing an evangelic conversion, Yeltsin the bureaucrat suddenly became Yeltsin the freedom revolutionary, and in a pivotal moment, took to the steps of the White House with a bullhorn,  rallying the massed people to defend their parliament and their new found freedoms.  Yeltsin proved to be much more the modern politician than anyone had any right to expect, sagely predicting both the public’s response to his call, and the effect of his call for Russian patriotism to the troops.  The reaction was truly revolutionary.  The troops refused orders to take over the building and the people swept up in the furor rallied them to their side.  The seventy year history of ruthless, ironfisted Soviet dominance of the Russian people crumpled overnight, and by August 21, 1991, the three day coup collapsed.  Gorbachev was released and assumed a Soviet presidency that had no residual power base, as neither soviet nor russian governments wanted any residual connection to him.  Yeltsin through grasping his historical moment became the true leader of a Russian Federation, and with the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 25, 1991 and Gorbachev’s resignation, the leader of Russia itself.

     The fairy tale story of common people manning the Ramparts of freedom and achieving victory for liberty and human rights was the daily drama of those years of 1989 through 1991, stretching from eastern Europe through Russia and even China in a spectacular storyline.  Its earthquake tremors are felt today through the Arab Spring cataclysms that began in Tunisia and are still broiling in Libya and Syria today.  Like all unfolding great historical sagas, the Russian chapter is yet to be fully told.  Yeltsin attempted a crash course in capitalism and democratization in Russia leaving only a few winners and untold losers that resulted in a partial authoritarian retrenchment in the form of Vladimir Putin and the loss of many of the hard fought individual freedoms of the revolution.  The Russian experiment has additionally been saddled with a contracting native Russian population and a devastatingly violent imbroglio with Chechen separatists that took the period of self determination too literally for the residual Russian federation to tolerate. The loss of briefly held freedoms such as opposition parties and newspapers, equal economic opportunity, and tolerance for dissent has left a stain on the accomplishments of that fateful few days in Moscow twenty years ago.

      It is up to the people of Russia themselves to determine if it all was worth it, and to desire a future that celebrates the individual over the state.  A great people locked in history’s embrace will perhaps some day realize the ultimate triumph.

     The power of words to move the intransigent, the timid, the pessimistic, and the doubting never reached a higher plane than in the second sentence of a declaration of a people to a king put forth on July 4th, 1776.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

      A revolution had already been underway for the better part of a year when  the leaders of thirteen colonies assembled in a Continental Congress in  Philadelphia to try to determine whether a common consensus could be achieved regarding the American colonies’ relations with Great Britain.  There was no natural consensus.  The New England colonies already under attack by British forces were radical in their intentions to sever all ties and declare nationhood. They were led by firebrands from Boston under the astute leadership of John Adams. The middle colonies of Delaware, Maryland, New York, and the all important Pennsylvania were against draconian steps and saw the actions of the British Parliament to be separate from their loyalty to the King.  The southern colonies varied from watchful waiting from South Carolina to aggressive individual declarations by colonies such as Virginia and North Carolina.  The size and scope of the colonies initially created barriers to a natural confederation and a single voice.

     The number of men prepared to step onto the world stage at this congress however was unparalleled in history. Natural leaders such as Washington and Lee, brilliant minds such as Adams and Jefferson, and sage figures such as Franklin, Livingston, Mason and  Morris.  The recognition of the unique historical nature of the questions they were asking themselves, and the need for unambiguous conclusions dominated every debate.  They impressively could see the enormous potential of a republic lead by common men on the unique stage of the American continent, to put in to practice what philosophers from Greece, Rome, and more recently from the Age of Enlightenment had dreamt about.  These were learned, successful, self made men who additionally recognized that taking on the greatest military power on earth was frought with great danger and personal risk.  As Benjamin Franklin so aptly put to the Congress,  ” Gentlemen, we must hang together, or certainly we shall all hang separately.”

     By mid- June 1776, efforts at conciliatory diplomacy with Great Britain were met with stiff rejection and dire threats from the King and Parliament, and it became apparent to all that a declared statement for history as to the rationale for a complete independence be defined.  It was left to a Committee of Five, formed of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman to draft a declaration.  The actual writing fell to Jefferson, the editing to the others and a draft was available to the congress to debate on June 28th, 1776. The original draft was dramatically sculpted with 25% of the prose removed, including  anti-slavery text accusing the King of “creating” the calamity of slavery removed.  Jefferson was unhappy with the haphazard attack on his carefully crafted words, but the document’s incredible force was preserved in its first two immortal sentences.  The first declaring the natural law entailed in the reasonable conclusion of the need for a complete independence and severance of ties:

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

      An extended list of grievences then set the foundation for the final paragraph that  stated the intention of thirteen disparate colonies to act as one a form a unique entity,  a unified country of free men self ruled:

  We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

     On July 2nd, the individual colonies were called to roll, and each finally declared its intentions – the initial no votes of South Carolina and Pennsylvania were reversed, Delaware converted its vote from abstention to in favor, andNew York abstained.  With 12 votes yeah and one abstention the declaration of independence was passed, and publicly presented on July4th, 1776.

     History was forever changed by the group of men who formulated and signed the Declaration of Independence.  The elements of the declaration became the foundation of freedom movements the world over, from the French revolution to the revolutions of South America, to the modern inflections in the movements in eastern Europe and the Arab Spring.  The strength lies in those words, All Men are Created Equal, and the recognition that the men who expressed it had no way of knowing if they would ever see its fruition.  It mattered enough to them, and ultimately to us, that regardless of trial or tribulation, the words speak an eternal truth.  Happy Birthday, America.

 

     It is just after three o’clock in the afternoon on July 3rd, 1863 just outside of the hamlet of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  You are a member of the the 71st Pennsylvania and note for the first time in over an hour that you can hear yourself think.  You have been burrowed like a badger into the ground just behind a low stone fence at the upper crest of an open field, protecting your eardrums and praying for your life as an onslaught of iron shot and killer shrapnel flew over your head, and exploded with deafening blasts behind you. You raise your head guardedly and stare through the smoke across an open field to a row of trees known as Seminary Ridge, and think you see the glint of a thousand sun splashed diamonds.  It is deadly quiet, and strangely beautiful, in the searing heat. The beauty is ephemeral as the reality sets in and the diamonds coalesce out of the trees into the mid-day light.  You realise the hell you have just lived through holds another painful interlude for you.  Your little corner of the fence is about to be the focal point of a nation’s apocalyptic schism,  in which one image of nationhood will sustain, and one will fail.  You are about to be target of Pickett’s Charge.

     On the other side of the open field just within the cover of the trees of Seminary Ridge, you are a member of the proud army of Virginia.  In woolen garments in a humidity swollen day near 90 degrees you have sweated in the brutal heat in motionless air for over two hours waiting for your time to cross the open field ahead.  You are the forward sword of a direct Virginia line from Lee to Longstreet to Pickett to Armistead to you, the heart of the confederate nation, the home of the great founders like Washington , Madison, and Jefferson, the homeland  stage of the great battles of the civil conflict, Virginia. You look across that open field and in the momentary quiet contemplate how anyone could think one could cross that open field and survive. But you are in the Army of Northern Virginia, and pride and honor come before death.  If they say you go…you go.  You are about to be the living apex of Pickett’s charge.

     The mid afternoon sun blazed across the open field on that day in 1863 as the soldier actors on a horrific stage played a heroic part in the climax of the epic three day struggle known as the battle of Gettysburg.  General Robert E. Lee, commander of the confederate forces had been in continuous attack mode as was his personality, on the Union Army’s right  flank through the town of Gettysburg and against Cemetery Hill, and on its left flank through the Peach Orchard and Little Round Top over the past two days. Now the force of the blow would come to the center,split the Union army, and end the conflict that had already taken so many lives.  General  Lee knew he had to live in a perfect world, as the Union forces had advantages in numbers of forces, armaments, economic power,  and victimhood on its side.  He had against such overwhelming considerations, his brave, loyal ,well trained army of winners.  Beyond the open field lay the stone fence; beyond the stone fence lay Washington DC and the end of the war.  In a perfect world, the flank attack by General Early’s forces on the Union right violently fulminating all morning was to distract and weaken the Union middle.  The stunning artillery barrage of Colonel Alexander’s over one hundred fifty cannon proceeding the charge for two hours of ceaseless explosion was to pummel the Union middle, and coordinated with the Pickett onslaught from the front, General Jeb Stuart’s cavalry was to fragment the backbone of the Union from behind with  a simultaneous attack from the rear.  In a perfect world, the 12000 troops of Longstreet’s army would cross the field, find a shattered and demoralized Union middle and crush now and for all time the Union army capacity and morale, and end the war.  In a perfect world, General Lee could see it all, and believed it could be.

     Out of the trees seen above into the hot mid day sun, 12000 troops paraded out into the open field to decide the destiny of all who believed in the ideal of freedom, as it was conceived by both sides in their own way.

     The perfect world ended with the first step into the sun and reality set in.  The battle will never be described better than in Shelby Foote’s “Stars In Their Courses“.  Like all epics that culminate around a single moment, the somewhat inappropriately named Pickett’s Charge, has the painful romance that belies its horror as always occurs when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.  The 12000 found instead of an incapacitated  Union artillery and decimated infantry, a largely intact and devastatingly coordinated defensive response.  From the left flank came crushing fire from Hay’s Ohio troops collapsing in Pettigrew’s North Carolina  brigades, making it no farther than the fences lining Emmitsburg Road.  The Virginians wheeling to their left across the open 1000 yards of field toward the stone fence, faced first the exploding artillery shells, then the grape shot of Union cannon like a hail storm blistering 20 men at a time, torturing the survivors as they attempted to re-form their lines. As they crossed the field to first the road and then the stone fence, they came into the full force of infantry rifles and their merciless aim.  In the last one hundred yards the march finally became a charge, and briefly in what is known as the “high mark of the confederacy” Armistead’s men managed to scale the wall at the angle and briefly overwhelm the local union troops.  In a melee of fists, bayonets, screams, shots, and curses exhausted men fought for their version of free will and the world hung in the balance.  But only briefly.  Union reinforcements came crashing down on the confederate breech, there were no living southern reinforcements to take advantage, and the breech quickly closed.  The lifelong friends Union General Hancock and Confederate General Armistead were wounded, Armistead mortally.  The door to Washington so briefly open, closed violently on the survivors, and the southern high mark was no more.  Confederate retreat was total and to the taunting, revengeful Union cries of “Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg!”  General Lee seeing the retreat washing around him, rode up to Pickett to marshal his division and prepare for a Union counter attack.  Pickett was said to reply, ” General Lee, I have no division now.”

     If the words were spoken, they told a harrowing truth.  The confederate army of Pickett’s charge sustained over 50% casualties with an estimated 1200 deaths and over 4000 wounded, to the Union’s 1500 estimated casualties.  Longstreet’s army lost all 15 of his regimental commanders, including two Brigadier Generals and six Colonels. The horrendous butcher’s bill of the three day battle was over 50,000 casualties to the participating armies.   The effect on the south of having lost the battle at Gettysburg, coupled the next day with General Grant’s capture of an entire Confederate Army at Vicksburg ended any hope of the Confederate dream of nationhood.   General Lee, who asked for so much more coordination then the technology of the time was capable of giving, recognized what it meant and apologized to the retreating troops, crying out to all who would listen, ” It is all my fault.”

     Across that open field in that simmering day in July in 1863, men trusted their destiny to a loving God, who they hoped would understand their violence and forgive them. They gave willingly their families, their dreams, their far away homes, and their lives for conflicting versions of what it means to be free, and what is required to retain that free will.  It is not for us so distantly removed to judge their reasoning, but instead to stand back in awe, of the compelling force of a man’s need to determine his own free will, and fulfill his destiny on the altar of a principle.  The open field we cross is full of risk and torment, but takes place under the canopy of a forever open sky.