Chesapeake

A ship, like a human being, moves best when it is slightly athwart the wind, when it has to keep its sails tight and attend its course. Ships, like men, do poorly when the wind is directly behind, pushing them sloppily on their way so that no care is required in steering or in the management of sails; the wind seems favorable, for it blows in the direction one is heading, but actually it is destructive because it induces a relaxation in tension and skill. What is needed is a wind slightly opposed to the ship, for then tension can be maintained, and juices can flow and ideas can germinate, for ships, like men, respond to challenge.

From the earliest days of the nation anyone with an intelligence equal to that of sparrows had realized that the peninsula ought logically to be united as one state, but historical accident had decreed that one portion be assigned to Maryland, whose citizens despised the Eastern Shore and considered it a backwater; one portion to the so-called state of Delaware, which never could find any reasonable justification for its existence; and the final portion to Virginia, which allowed its extreme southern fragment of the Eastern Shore to become the most pitiful orphan in America.

Lincoln, who had a personal aversion to blacks and feared they could never be absorbed into a white society, wanted to see them settled somewhere out of the country. He had prudently refrained from liberating those living in important border states like Kentucky and Maryland, whose governments sided with the North; only slaves in states like Alabama and Louisiana were freed.

MOST NATIONS HAVE AT ONE TIME OR OTHER BOTH condoned and practiced slavery. Greece and Rome founded their societies on it. India and Japan handled this state of affairs by creating untouchable classes which continue to this day. Arabia clung to formal slavery longer than most, while black countries like Ethiopia and Burundi were notorious. In the New World each colonial power devised a system precisely suited to its peculiar needs and in conformance with its national customs. The

CATHOLIC: Let me understand what you’re saying, Mrs. Paxmore. You believe that on some day to come, the religious leaders of this world are going to convene and state that what the Bible has condoned since the days of Abraham, that what Jesus Himself approved of and against which He never spoke … You believe that our leaders are going to tell the world, “It is all wrong”? QUAKER: I expect to spend my life, Neighbor Steed, trying to convince my religion that slavery is wrong. CATHOLIC: Aha! Then even your religion doesn’t condemn it? QUAKER: Not now. CATHOLIC

There will never be rebellion here. In Richmond and Williamsburg there has been talk. Jefferson isn’t reliable and Patrick Henry is a born troublemaker of no substance whatever. No, sir, Virginia stands fast with the king.

The criminals at the North make us sell our wheat and cotton to Europe at cheap prices, but will not permit us to buy our manufactures cheaply from England. No, they pass a high tariff, keep out cheap European products and force us to buy from Massachusetts and New York at extremely high prices.

That’s how it gonna be all your life,” Julia Cater told her son, and she was preaching old black wisdom, for through the generations that was how black women enabled their sons to survive so that they could grow into black men. Hiram

QUAKER: Since God maintains direct accessibility with every human life and offers instant and uncomplicated guidance, the intervention of priests and ministers is unnecessary. The intercession of saints is not required. Musical chanting and pretentious prayers fulfill no need. God is not attracted by incense or ostentation or robes or colorful garments or hierarchies. CATHOLIC: You pretty well abolish my church. QUAKER

Chesapeake Bay is like a beautiful woman. There’s no humiliation from which she cannot recover.

But it was strange—generation after generation these quiet women with their demure bearing and fearless intelligence seemed to make the lasting wives. Their husbands appeared to love them as much at seventy as they had at seventeen: I wonder if there’s something to the way they’re brought up? Always speaking their minds and taking part in things?

My principal flowers will be trees. Because when you plant trees, you’re entitled to believe you’ll live forever. So

Simon, we’re destined to win. I know our armies are in retreat everywhere and we’ve no navy. But the great sweep of human desire fights on our side, and we cannot be defeated.” He pointed out the cabin door and said, “Look at him. The new American.” And there stood Captain Turlock, barefooted, grimy from working on his ship, clothed in near rags, but ready to storm his way into Bristol port if asked. “Why did you choose him for your captain?” Franklin asked. “Because he knows … he knows what a ship can do.

The constable said, “Just time enough for the scars to heal, so that I can whip them open again.” He thought of this statement a long time and wondered why people so attached to God should take such positive delight in crucifying a man who had precisely the same love for God, but with a different manner of expressing it. He even understood the punishment, for he had observed that all people allied to a church seek to protect it, but he would never understand the pleasure the Puritans took in the infliction of punishment. The

So they parted, each man engaged in a gamble of staggering dimension: to fail meant ruin and death at the hangman’s trap; to win meant the establishment of a nation founded on new principles whose possibilities were only dimly understood. In the hostile port of Nantes, where no man believed America could survive, Simon Steed had convinced himself of those new principles, and to them he was willing to dedicate his fortune and his life.

About this time the custom arose of referring to the Eastern Shore with capital letters, as if it were a special place; this tribute was never paid the western shore.

But now, as autumn approached with an occasional cold day warning of winter, he began to ponder seriously the matter of establishing contact with whatever tribes inhabited this area. All he knew of them were the legends of his youth: Below us at the end of our river is a larger river, much larger. On the west are the Potomacs, mighty in battle, but on the east there is no one of consequence. If they live on rivers like this, Pentaquod thought, they are of consequence. Then he reflected on what this meant; they were certainly not of any importance to the Susquehannocks, for they had neither trade goods to be envied nor war canoes to fear. No doubt the Potomacs, who had both, had the same low opinion of the easterners. But what did the easterners think of themselves? What did Pentaquod, living gently as an easterner, think of himself? It is so much easier here.

CATHOLIC: No, but as I said before, all places in this world are ordained. Some are kings and they rule. Some are slaves and they serve. Some are women and they enjoy their special role, an honored one which does not include speaking in church. QUAKER

A BASIC TENET OF QUAKERISM WAS THAT IF A MAN or woman tended the divine fire that burned within each human breast, one could establish direct relationship to God without the intercession of priest or rabbi. Songs and shouted prayers were not necessary to attract God’s attention, for He dwelt within and could be summoned by a whisper. Nevertheless

He then proceeded to expound the concept that had become a fixation with him: “Thee must acknowledge that Jesus Christ was himself a Jew. Living in Palestine under the hot sun, he was probably darker than many American Negroes. And his features could not have been the sweetly simple ones of our religious calendars. He was a Jew, and he doubtless looked much as thy tailor or doctor or professor looks today. If Jews have large noses, he had one. If they are swarthy, he was swarthy. If they talk with their hands, he did so too. During much of his life Jesus Christ was a Jewish rabbi, and if we forget this, we forget the nature of Christianity.” At

We have won freedom, he brooded, but if we abuse it, or vote for cheap personal advantage, it won’t be worth having. We are familiar with the abuses of kings, but because what we now attempt is new, we can’t foresee its abuses. They’ll come.