Category Archives: Culture

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz LOADED: A Disarming History of the 2nd Amendment

LOADED: A DISARMING HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT (City Lights Publishing) – is a provocative, timely, and deeply researched history of gun culture, and how it reflects race and power in the United States. Although LOADED is highly topical as we broadcast because of the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, production of this show actually began last November, 2017. And in case you feel overloaded with coverage of the aftermath of this latest massacre, Professor Dunbar-Ortiz’s history of gun culture and the second amendment is very different from the approach taken by the mainstream media or academia. For one thing, it is rooted in her 50+ years of activism. In the 1960s and 1970s, she was active in the anti-Vietnam War Movement and radical left movements, and worked closely with the SDS, the Weather Underground, and the African National Congress. She was also very active in the women’s rights movement, and from 1968–1970 was a leading figure in the radical feminist group, Cell 16. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades, and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. In 1974, she began teaching in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University – Hayward, and she helped found their Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies, where she is now Professor Emerita.

She has published many books and articles, including Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 . Blood on the Border is about what she saw during the Nicaraguan Contra war against the Sandinistas in the 1980s. Her 2014 book, AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, radically reframes Eurocentric history.

Her 1977 book, The Great Sioux Nation, was the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, held at the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva.

We are also thankful to the ever magnificent Roy Zimmerman for permission to include his “SING ALONG SECOND AMENDMENT SONG” after our interview with Professor Dunbar-Ortiz. You can hear more of his pointed, pithy civic lessons here: http://www.royzimmerman.com/

or see him perform the Sing Along 2nd Amendment song here:

The Killing in Killing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gqwzvtUsec

What would Montana’s greatest statesman do? https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/guest_columnists/guest-column-what-would-montanas-greatest-statesman-do/article_9db8f3c4-d8e0-5812-931c-f1f16455486d.html

The anatomy of mass shootings: a legacy of failure https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/10/us-mass-shootings-history

Why the real defenders of the second amendment oppose the NRA https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/17/second-amendment-nra-corey-brettschneider

The Lessons of a School Shooting–in 1853 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/24/first-us-school-shooting-gun-debate-217704

The Teacher who Taught His Students to Challenge the NRA on the Day They Lost 17 of Their Own https://splinternews.com/the-teacher-who-taught-his-students-to-challenge-the-nr-1823355017

The NRA Wasn’t Always A Front For Gun Makers https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-young-nra-history_us_5a907fbee4b03b55731c2169

Linda Gordon THE SECOND COMING OF THE KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s & the American Tradition

Linda Gordon is Florence Kelley professor of history and Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Her early books focused on the historical roots of social policy issues, particularly as they concern gender and family issues. Her first book, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: The History of Birth Control in America, published in 1976 and reissued in 1990, remains the definitive history of birth-control politics in the US. It was completely revised and re-published as The Moral Property of Women in 2002. More recently, she has explored other ways of presenting history to a broad audience, publishing the microhistory The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction and the biography Dorothea Lange: A Life beyond Limits, both of which won the Bancroft Prize. She is one of only three historians to have ever won this award twice.After being disbanded in 1870 following the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was officially re-formed in 1915 by founder William J. Simmons, and saw a huge rise in popularity in its early years. Pictured, an eerie sight as hundreds of members gather adorned with hoodsFocused on an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, prohibitionist and anti-Semitic agenda, the new Klan took much of its early influence from popular 1915 film, the Birth of a Nation, which glorified the first version of the Klan. In this image, the streets of Washington are filled with 25,000 KKK members during a march in August 1925.Despite attempting to portray themselves as a respectable establishment who ‘upheld law and order,’ the Klan’s activities were often coupled with widespread violence.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) shared a common interest in promoting and defending alcohol prohibition, women’s suffrage, Protestantism, and the protection of domesticity. They also both shared hostility toward immigrants. For this reason, the two groups cooperated with each other and shared many members and leaders.

A whole family can be seen taking part in a racist parade including three young children wearing KKK robes .

The drum corps of the Dallas Women’s KKK poses in front of Union Station around 1930. The Dallas Klan No. 66 at one time was the largest KKK chapter in the nation. (Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress and
the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)

Amidst the backdrop of a post-war recession across America, the Klan proved hugely popular during the period, not just in its membership but in its support from every day Americans, too.

They also wielded significant political power, moving their offices to Washington D.C. in the mid-1920s and reportedly playing a big role in the election of several Congressman and Senators across the country. However toward the end of the decade the Klan’s influence began to wane substantially. One of the group’s leading members, the Grand Wizard, was convicted of murder in a trial which revealed many at the top of the organization as womanizers and alcoholics, shattering their image as the upholders of law and order.

“…The civic leaders posing with Powell and Gifford in the photograph, from left to right, are: H.P. Coffin of the National Safety Council; Captain of Police John T. Moore; Chief of Police L.V. Jenkins; District Attorney W.H. Evans; U.S. District Attorney Lester W. Humphreys; T.M. Hurlburt, a sheriff; special agent of the U.S. Department of Justice Russell Bryon; Mayor George L. Baker; and P.S. Malcolm, the sovereign inspector general in Oregon for the Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge.

This photograph makes clear how comfortable KKK leaders were in the public spotlight in the early 1920s—despite their supposed anonymity—and how indulged they were by many civic governments, at least for a short time. That night Powell announced, “There are some cases, of course, in which we will have to take everything in our hands. Some crimes are not punishable under existing laws, but the criminals should be punished.” He did not elaborate, but the implication was clear: the KKK felt entitled to act outside the law. In a room full of enforcers of the law, Powell and Gifford spoke freely without fear of prosecution.

Klan membership in Oregon grew starting in 1921, with chapters springing up throughout the state. Its brief popularity stemmed, in part, from a general racism against minorities (particularly Chinese and Japanese), anti-Catholicism, and a belief in the enforcement of social morality. Gifford successfully lobbied for anti-Catholic legislation in Oregon during his term as Grand Dragon. The political effectiveness of KKK chapters was due in large part to the relationships its leaders formed with the state’s policy makers, law enforcers, and fraternal organizations…”

from KKK meets with Portland leaders, 1921 https://oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/kkk-meets-with-portland-leaders-1921/#.Wl_rN0tG2jg

Stephen Kinzer – The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, & the Birth of American Empire

“In a ravenous 55 day spasm during the summer of 1898, the United States asserted control over 5 far-flung lands with a total of 11 million inhabitants: Guam, Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Never in history has a nation leaped so suddenly overseas empire.” Doing so was by no means a matter of political consensus. In fact at several steps on the way, a single individual or vote determined events, leading to the deaths of thousands. The questions that arose then, continue to arise to this day.
“How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. For more than a century we have debated with ourselves. We can’t even agree on the question. Put one way: Should we defend our freedom, or turn inward and ignore growing threats? Put differently: Should we charge violently into faraway lands, or allow others to work out their own destinies?” And how did a country which had been founded through rebellion against a distant sovereign, which had once been a colony itself, and had pledged itself, above all, to the ideal of self-government, turn to taking colonies of its own – and most certainly NOT with the consent of the governed? These are some of the questions, our guest today, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Stephen Kinzer, addresses in his latest book, THE TRUE FLAG: THEODORE ROOSEVELT, MARK TWAIN, AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN EMPIRE. This is not merely an exercise in ivory tower history, because the United States – and, in fact, the world – is still paying today for the arguments, decisions and methods made by those debating these questions in the era of Theodore Roosevelt. Central America, the Middle East, The far east, terrorism, immigration, indigenous efforts for democracy – all these conflicts – and more – can find origins in a very short period of time at the turn of the 19th & the 20th centuries.

Stephen Kinzer has covered more than 50 countries on 5 continents. From 1983 to 1989 He was the New York Times bureau chief in Nicaragua, where he covered war and upheaval in Central America. He wrote 2 books about that region, BITTER FRUIT: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE AMERICAN COUP IN GUATEMALA (co-written with Stephen Schlesinger), and BLOOD OF BROTHERS: LIFE AND WAR IN NICARAGUA. He was the New York Times bureau chief in Bonn, & then Berlin, Germany from 1990 -96, where he covered the emergence of post-Communist Europe, including the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Then, he opened their bureau in Istanbul, Turkey, where he covered that country and the new nations of Central Asia & the Caucasus. HIS BOOK, CRESCENT AND STAR: TURKEY BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, was born of that experience. After several trips to Iran, he wrote ALL THE SHAH’S MEN: AN AMERICAN COUP AND THE ROOTS OF MIDDLE EAST TERROR and RESET: IRAN, TURKEY AND AMERICA’S FUTURE. His latest book is THE TRUE FLAG: THEODORE ROOSEVELT, MARK TWAIN, AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN EMPIRE, published last year by Henry Holt. The paperback edition is coming out in two weeks from St. Martin’s/Griffin. It adds to his earlier book, OVERTHROW: AMERICA’S CENTURY OF REGIME CHANGE FROM HAWAII TO IRAQ, which documents 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments, and examines just what is it in the American psyche, that allows – and compels – the world’s first nation to throw off colonial rule and proclaim self government as a self-evident divine right to suppress similar aspirations in lands over seas.

Col. Theodore Roosevelt

Grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. orchestrated the CIA’s “Operation Ajax”, which aimed to overthrow democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, who had been Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951:

A CIA hired mob – who beat all Mossadeq supporters to a pulp….

“This coup did more than simply bring down Mossadegh. It ended democratic rule in Iran and set the country off toward distatoship. Mohammad Reza Shah gave the U. S. a quarter century of dominance in Iran, but his repression ultimately set off an uprising that produced a fanatically anti-American regime.” from Kinzer’s RESET: IRAN, TURKEY & AMERICA’S FUTURE.

Mohammad Reza Shah and family before the Peacock Throne

Henry Giroux: America At War With Itself

In this interview, we welcome back Henry Giroux, public intellectual, prolific writer, cultural critic, scholar and one of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy. He has spent a lifetime asking & analyzing important, hard, even scary questions such as these, which I quote from his essay, Thinking Dangerously: The Role of Higher Education in Authoritarian Times (http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41058-thinking-dangerously-the-role-of-higher-education-in-authoritarian-times):

“What happens to democracy when the president of the United States labels critical media outlets as ‘enemies of the people,’ and disparages the search for truth with the blanket term ‘fake news’? What happens to democracy, when individuals and groups are demonized on the basis of their religion? What happens to a society, when critical thinking becomes an object of contempt? What happens to a social order ruled by an economics of contempt, that blames the poor for their condition, and subjects them to a culture of shaming? What happens to a polity, when it retreats into private silos, and becomes indifferent to the use of language deployed in the service of a panicked rage — language that stokes anger, but ignores issues that matter? What happens to a social order, when it treats millions of undocumented immigrants as disposable, potential terrorists and “criminals”? What happens to a country, when the presiding principles of its society are violence and ignorance?”
We discuss these and other questions, and it may surprise you to learn that Henry Giroux’s analysis, although clear-sighted in the face of the forces of dystopia, leads to an energized, engaged vision of collective agency and action.

Henry Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest. He is the author of more than 65 books, has published more than 400 papers, in addition to hundreds of chapters in the books of others, as well as many essays and articles in such journals as Truthout, Truthdig, and CounterPunch. His works have been translated into numerous languages.
He is particularly interested in what he calls the war on youth, the corporatization of higher education, the politics of neo-liberalism, the assault on civic literacy and the collapse of public memory, public pedagogy, the educative nature of politics, and the rise of various youth movements across the globe.

His latest book is America at War With Itself, published by City Lights Books. His forthcoming book, The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism, is to be published in 2018 by Routledge.

Learn more at https://www.henryagiroux.com/

Dean Baker – Sensible Economics

Dean Baker co-founded The Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. Before that, he worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and was an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD’s Trade Union Advisory Council. He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, and NPR. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), the Huffington Post, TruthOut, and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting.

He is the author of several books, including Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer; Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People; The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive; and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

“I have suggested that economists who prescribe policies that turn out badly, or who can’t see multitrillion dollar housing bubbles coming whose collapse sinks the economy, ought to pay a price in terms of their careers. Invariably people think I am joking. When they realize I am serious, they think I am crazy or vindictive.” Dean Baker

Alfred McCoy – IN THE SHADOWS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF US GLOBAL POWER

This edition of Forthright Radio was originally broadcast on October 4, 2017, the 60th anniversary of the launching by the Soviet Union of Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, which triggered the Space Race.

Our guest today, Professor Alfred McCoy, writes of this and much more about the history for global dominance in his latest book, IN THE SHADOWS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF US GLOBAL POWER, just published by Haymarket Books.

Alfred McCoy, who holds the Harrington Chair in History at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, has been shaking up our understanding and beliefs about the role of the United States in the world since 1970, when he co-edited LAOS: WAR AND REVOLUTION .

His research led him to publish THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, in 1972, which led to his testifying before the foreign operations subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee in June of that year about the role of the CIA in the production and distribution of heroin. Among his numerous other books are POLICING AMERICA’S EMPIRE: THE UNITED STATES, THE PHILIPINES AND THE RISE OF THE SURVEILLANCE STATE; A QUESTION OF TORTURE: CIA INTERROGATION, FROM THE COLD WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR. In 2012 Yale University awarded him the Wilbur Cross Medal for work as “one of the world’s leading historians of Southeast Asia and an expert on … international political surveillance.”

In this interview, we discuss the geopolitics of global dominance; the covert netherworld of U.S. government agencies colluding with international drug cartels at the same time the military ineffectively attempts to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan; the rapid rise of China as a dominant force; cyberwarfare; the vulnerability of our and much more.

Nancy MacLean DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS

Our guest is Professor Nancy MacLean. We discuss her latest book, DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS: THE DEEP HISTORY OF THE RADICAL RIGHT’S STEALTH PLAN FOR AMERICA, published by Viking Press. It is a thoroughly researched, to my mind shocking, exposé of the man and the ideas behind the billionaire-funded, relentless campaign to suppress voting, privatize everything from education, prisons, social security and Medicare, eliminate unions, curb democratic majority rule and change the US Constitution in order to make democracy safe for capitalism and plutocracy. Most reporting of the rise of the extreme right focuses on the Koch brothers and their money – but who created the blue print for their decades long, stealth campaign that has been all too successful – at least so far? Our guest, Nancy MacLean, has spent a decade investigating the origins, tactics, strategies and goals, of that campaign, that have brought us to this crisis point in our history.

Nancy MacLean is the William Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. She is the award winning author of BEHIND THE MASK OF CHIVALRY: THE MAKING OF THE SECOND KU KLUX KLAN and FREEDOM IS NOT ENOUGH: THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE. Professor MacLean’s scholarship has received more than a dozen prizes and awards. In 2010, she was elected a fellow of the Society of American Historians.

Mark Bray ANTI-FA: The Anti-Fascist Handbook

White supremacists clash with counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017. (Sipa via AP Images)

The first recording above is from our interview with Mark Bray from 2017. The second recording is from October 19, 2025 after he and his family fled the United States to Spain after receiving credible death threats.

As we reported last week , Rutgers University Professor Mark Bray was attempting to leave the US out of fear for his and his family’s lives after receiving numerous death threats, when their reservations were mysteriously cancelled at the gate to their flight at the Newark International Airport. They are now safely in Spain.

We spoke with Mark Bray in mid September 2017, soon after the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, when his book, Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook was published. We share that interview with you now, but first excerpts from The Democracy Now interview with him from October 15, 2025.

You will notice the difference in pronunciation of the term. Professor Bray and I use the pronunciation ANTI-fa, because it stands for ANTI fascism. An-TI– fa obscures that meaning, and sounds vaguely and perhaps ominously foreign, even un-American. But too many American lives were lost fighting fascism in the 20th century both in World War Two, and in the 1930s, when American anti-fascists organized themselves into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight the anti-Republican, fascist Franco forces, for us to betray their memory and sacrifices now. Those who survived and returned to the US were labeled premature antifascists.

With us for the hour is Mark Bray, whose book, ANITFA: THE ANTI-FASCIST HANDBOOK, published by Melville House Publishing, came out on August 22, 2017 – one week after the incidents in Charlottesville, VA, in which Neo-Nazis, KKK, and other white supremacists, wreaked havoc, including the death of Heather Heyer and the injury of 19 others, when one of them drove his car into a crowd of counter demonstrators at high speed. White nationalist demonstrators use shields as they guard the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP

As has been happening since the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, 2017, media attention has been focusing on a formerly obscure network, Anti-fa, or Anti-fascist Action, and in particular their tactics of property damage, physical violence and what some consider un-American interference with free speech on college campuses. But beyond the sound bites, disturbing photos and videos taken out of any meaningful historical context, just what IS Anti-fa?

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists march in Charlottesville on 11 August. The rally and subsequent death of a counter-protester were decried as real-world consequences of far-right online movements. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Mark Bray is an historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe. He completed his PhD in Modern European and Women’s and Gender History at Rutgers University in 2016, and is currently finishing his manuscript “The Anarchist Inquisition: Terrorism and the Ethics of Modernity in Spain, 1893-1909.” “The Anarchist Inquisition” explores the emergence of groundbreaking human rights campaigns across Europe and the Americas in response to the Spanish state’s brutal repression of dissent in the wake of anarchist bombings and assassinations. He teaches at Dartmouth College, where his recent statements about Anti-fa have generated a good deal of controversy, with Dartmouth’s president denouncing them and more than 100 professors denouncing the denouncing. Mark Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House, 2017) and Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero Books, 2013), as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School (PM Press, 2018).

From left: Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Lisa Sharon Harper, Rev. Carlton Smith, Cornel West, and others (including Seth Wispelwey wearing a white robe and red stole) protesting white supremacy in Charlottesville. CREDIT: Heather Wilson, @aNomadPhotog / Dust & Light Photo

Thanks to Democracy Now! for allowing use of the interview with Cornel West. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/14/cornel_west_rev_toni_blackmon_clergy#transcript

Thanks to Democracy Now! for permission to use their interview with Mark Bray after his safe arrival in Spain: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/15/mark_bray

US designates four European anti-fascist groups as terrorist threats https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/13/us-antifa-terrorist-designation

Death threats and accusations: the professor targeted by the US far right https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/18/death-threats-and-accusations-the-professor-targeted-by-the-us-far-right

US anti-fascism expert blocked from flying to Spain at airport https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/09/anti-fascism-mark-bray-rutgers-university

Rutgers Expert on Antifa Flees to Spain After Death Threats https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/nyregion/rutgers-professor-threats-antifa.html

Bryan Stevenson – The Equal Justice Initiative + Marc Bekoff – The Animals’ Agenda

BRYAN STEVENSON is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and a professor of law at New York University School of Law. He has won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, argued five times before the US Supreme Court , and won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color. He has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant.

He will be delivering the Convocation Speech to the incoming Freshman Class at MSU Bozeman on August 24, 2017.

Great-grandson of slaves, he attended “colored” schools. As a young attorney, he created The Equal Justice Initiative to address the hierarchies of inequality in the criminal justice system. He says, “America is a post-genocide society.” “The great evil of American slavery was not the involuntary servitude and forced labor, the great evil was how we created this ideology of white supremacy.”

Professor MARC BEKOFF

Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has published more than 1000 essays (popular, scientific, and book chapters), 30 books, and has edited three encyclopedias. His latest book is THE ANIMALS’ AGENDA: FREEDOM, COMPASSION AND COEXISTENCE IN THE HUMAN AGE, co-written with Jessica Pierce, and published by Beacon Press (2017). http://www.beacon.org/The-Animals-Agenda-P1250.aspx

This interview was prompted by his recent interview with Brooks Fahy of Predator Defense (predatordefense.org), whose investigative work exposes shocking activity at the US Dept of Agriculture, as well as the complicity of wildlife organizations, such as Defenders of Wildlife and The Humane Society of the US, in the “Administrative Removal”, i.e. killing, of wolves in national forests.

There is a separate posting for our full interview with only Professor Bekoff and more specific citations referenced here:

https://forthrightradio.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/marc-bekoff-the-animals-agenda-freedom-compassion-and-coexistence-in-the-human-age/

THE PROFANITY PEAK PACK: SET UP & SOLD OUT

http://www.predatordefense.org/profanity/

EXPOSED: THE USDA’S SECRET WAR ON WILDLIFE

http://www.predatordefense.org/exposed/

Wolves and Cows: Individual and Organizational Conflicts

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201708/wolves-and-cows-individual-and-organizational-conflicts

William Hogeland – THE AUTUMN OF THE BLACK SNAKE: THE CREATION OF THE U.S. ARMY AND THE INVASION THAT OPENED THE WEST

William Hogeland has written about the American Revolution era in three previous books, THE WHISKEY REBELLION, DECLARATION, AND FOUNDING FINANCE. His latest book, THE AUTUMN OF THE BLACK SNAKE: THE CREATION OF THE U.S. ARMY AND THE INVASION THAT OPENED THE WEST, published by Farrar, Strouse, Giroux in 2017, goes in depth into the history surrounding the American Revolution, and particularly a major defeat of the new United States, in fact the greatest defeat effected by North American indigenous peoples in the history of this continent. But few have heard about it, much less the individuals who made it happen. William Hogeland, is determined to remedy this.

First a bit of history: On this date, July 19th, in 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention was convened. It was the first women’s rights convention, eventually leading after more than 7 decades to, among other things, the 19th Amendment granting women’s right to vote in the U.S.

And on July 19th 1692, 8 people were found guilty of witchcraft and hanged in Salem, Mass., including Rev. George Burroughs, the only minister to be executed.

But now, we’ll fast forward a hundred years to “more enlightened times,” when the American Revolution had been won, and the power elites of that era were looking West across the Appalachian Mountains to so-called “vacant lands” for speculation and expansion. With only one problem, that being the people who had been living there for millennia didn’t agree that it was vacant.

A young George Washington explored, surveyed and speculated in lands west of the Appalachians, in the process becoming one of the causes of the Seven Years War – the first global war, causing over a million casualties – and also enhancing his own career and making his fortune.
The tobacco export business required ever more new lands for planting, due to severe, rapid depletion of the soil, hence the lust for more and more new land to plant.

Thomas Jefferson provided an evolving legal theory of Free Holding, dating back to the Anglo Saxon invasion of England, and disavowing the right of kings to grant tenure of lands, which had begun with the Norman Invasion. He believed anyone could take and hold any land without the permission of a sovereign, i.e Direct Ownership, as long as it was “vacant” .

His advice to farmers concerning tobacco’s soil depletion: “Better to move than manure.”

Blue Jacket, a Shawnee leader, rallied his people to resist American Westward expansion.

Unlike Blue Jacket, Little Turtle believed that without British armaments, the Americans could not be decisively defeated. His efforts to procure them were unsuccessful.

Joseph Brant, a member of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy tried to be a diplomat and go-between among the warring factions – American, Indian and British. His efforts only resulted in ever diminishing trust and respect on all sides.

One treaty after another was made and broken by the Americans, although for the most part honored by the Indians. As westward encroachment increased – 10,000 immigrants coming down the Ohio River per month – war was inevitable.

General Arthur St. Clair, who suffered the greatest defeat by Indians in U.S. history, when as many as 1,200 men, women and children – out of 1,500 – were killed, including most of the officers of the U.S. military.

St. Clair’s defeat by the Miami Indians at the Battle of the Wabash River Nov. 4, 1791.

Exact numbers are impossible to determine, but according to David Johnson in Fort Amanda – A Historical Redress (1790-1815):

In a 3 hour battle, of 982 soldiers and 250 civilians, 757 were killed, 413 wounded, 34 unwounded, a Total Casualty Rate of 95%. Placed head to toe, the bodies of those killed at St Clair’s Defeat would measure approximately 4,400 feet.