American exceptionalism: economics, finance, political economy, and economic laws lall ramrattan - D
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To my wife, Noreena, my kids, Devi, Shanti and Rajan, Hari, and Rani and Jonathan, and my grandchildren, Brian, Sabrina, Aditi, and Abhishek. I will love them forever.
—L.R.
B”H
Dedicated to the memory of my sister, Esther, for bringing me to these shores; to the memory of my father, Henoch, for his wisdom and my mother, Sara, for giving birth to me—twice; and my grandparents, who died on Kiddush Hashem, Abraham Mordchai and Feigel Rosensaft, and Itzhak Meir and Chava Szenberg, to my children, Marc and Naomi, and Avi and Tova; to my grandchildren, Chaim and Elki Herzog, Moshe and Batya Shain, Nachum and Devorah Wolmark, Chanoch, Ephraim, Ayala, Menachem Yehuda, and Yaakov Nosson, and to my great-grandchildren, Chanoch, Faigala, Moshe, Chaya Avigail, and Chaim Baruch. And to my wife, Miriam; and to the righteous German-Austrian officer who took my immediate family to a hiding place one by one from the Braun concentration camp just days before the last transport to Auschwitz, where most of my family perished, and to Tomasz Mirowski for providing my family a hiding place after our escape from the camp.
—M.S.
Foreword
As the second decade of the twenty-first century concludes, the issue of American Exceptionalism is again forefront on the minds of scholars around the world. Some argue that the United States is retreating from its long-held position as the bastion of democracy and liberty by pointing out its ongoing reinforcement of stringent immigration policies, its newly erected protectionist trade barriers, its erosions of personal voting rights, and its disengagement from international treaties and organizations. Others argue that American Exceptionalism never existed—that it is a myth, and that the United States, although unique in many ways, is not destined to be the eternal standard bearer of personal and economic freedom. While the future remains unknowable, this volume persuasively and successfully builds the case for American Exceptionalism—that the political systems, the civic and social institutions, and the economic philosophies and policies of the United States have irrevocably changed the world for the better in immeasurable ways.
Michael Szenberg and Lall Ramrattan are especially suited to tell this story—two American economists with distinctly different immigrant backgrounds who see America and its history through a lens not readily available to the native born. Their arguments are inherently rooted in the economic way of thinking but their approach encompasses the beneficial aspects of sociological thought and political theory. Within these pages the reader will encounter economic modeling, history, philosophy,
psychology, religion, and biography. An eclectic array of thinkers, philosophies, and world views—some familiar and some more obscure—are used to describe how and why American Exceptionalism came to be and why it is important to understand.
This volume will prove useful to all of those trying to comprehend where America stands in the world today and, therefore, where the future will likely take us. I invite you to explore Szenberg and Ramrattan’s view of American Exceptionalism.
Editor-in-Chief, The American Economist
Professor of Economics, Pittsburg State University
Emeritus Professor of Economics
Mississippi State University
Paul W. Grimes
Preface and Acknowledgments
American Exceptionalism has been historically referred to as the belief that the United States differs qualitatively from other nations because of its distinctive economic, political, and religious institutions. As Michael witnessed the atrocities committed by the Nazi and communist dictatorial regimes in Poland, he saw this firsthand. When he was in his first year of high school, a communist official held an assembly and asked for students’ opinions on certain policies. One student offered an opposing opinion— and subsequently disappeared, along with his family. A similar story happened to Michael’s sister when she went to visit a friend one afternoon in the Polish mining town of Sosnowiec. As she walked into the building, the super stopped her and told her that the friend’s family had never lived there. She was confused, having visited the friend in the building and even spoken with the super frequently before, and opened her mouth to respond. The super responded forcefully this time, telling her to go home and not to return. This is the cruel face of authoritarian power. Thus, the origins of American Exceptionalism stem from the idea that the United States is different from other countries in that it has a specific world mission to spread liberty and democracy. America’s pursuit of truth allows constitutionally many differing and opposing views to be heard.
In the process of preparing this book on Exceptionalism, we have accumulated numerous debts and it is our pleasure to acknowledge the
Preface and Acknowledgments
individuals and institutions that have made this volume possible. First we would like to thank Elizabeth Graber, a truly gifted editor whose personal interest in this project was encouraging to us, and Dr. Danna Messer for reviewing the manuscript and offering valuable comments. Progress from draft manuscript to final version was aided by Stephanie Miodus, our very talented assistant who currently attends Temple University pursuing a PhD in School Psychology.
We are deeply indebted to the Editor-in-Chief of The American Economist Paul W. Grimes for penning the foreword to this book and being a primary source of inspiration, encouragement, and support over the years.
Thanks also to our important champion and mentor, Dr. Victor R. Fuchs, past president of the American Economic Association—a shining example of excellence, without whom our lives would have been less fulfilling—and to Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.
I owe an awesome debt of gratitude to Alan Zimmerman and Iuliana Ismailescu, for their goodness of heart, enduring support, positive attitude, gracious good cheer, and deep friendship. They have an electricity around them and a sense of commitment. In the same category, I would like to include Renee Blinder, Elena Goldman, Laura Nowak, Miriam Tsymuk, Carmen Urma, Sergiu Viorel Urma, and Joshua Zilberberg who are all dear friends. They are a constant source of affection. I also want to recognize Elki and Chaim Herzog; Batya and Moshe Shain; Chanoch and Ephraim Kunin; Devorah and Nachum Wolmark; Ayala Szenberg and Menachem Yehuda Feifer; and Yaakov Nosson Szenberg. They work with diligence, character, good humor, exactitude, and patience. They have all lightened many a task. Their assistance was incalculable and I am grateful to them.
As I stroll down memory lane with my rusty wheels turning, my heart warms with gratitude toward Ester Budek Robbins, Lisa Ferraro, Laura Garcia, Anna Geller, Yelena Glants, Iva Joseph, Janet Lieben-Ulman, Jennifer Loftus, Sadia Nabi, Larisa Parkhomovsky, Andrea Pascarelli, Ira Robbins, Sandra Shpilberg, Marina Slavina, Justyna Tuniewicz, Janet Ulman, and Aleena Wee—my past talented and devoted graduate research assistants who have helped directly and indirectly in more ways than I can list. They all lead successful, productive lives. Their input lives on in these pages.
Preface and Acknowledgments
In addition, a number of former students, who are part of my extended family, deserve thanks for their invaluable input and assistance—Tamar Gomez, Lorene Hiris, Richard LaRocca, Luba Sagui, Tehila Tamaiev, Cathyann Tully, and Sonja Wiedenmann.
Once again, thanks to my wife, Miriam, and to Naomi, my daughter, an ophthalmologist, and to my son, Avi, a lawyer, and their spouses, Marc and Tova, as well.
Special thanks to Touro’s Vice Presidents Stanley Boylan, Robert Goldschmidt, Rabbi Moshe D. Krupka, and David Raab, and Deans Henry M. Abramson, Barry Bressler, Sandra Brock, Avery Horowitz, Moshe Sokol, Marian Stoltz-Loike, and Dr. Melech Press, Chairman of the Psychology Department—for their ongoing support and commitment to scholarly endeavors and helping me navigate Touro’s waters. And to Dr. Mark Hasten, the chairman of Touro College’s Board of Trustees and Board of Overseers, for his friendship and support.
My deepest gratitude goes to Dr. Alan Kadish, president of Touro College and University System, for his extraordinary leadership, dedication to excellence, kindness, cheerfulness, and inspiration. He is the backbone of the organization, holding the wheel and steering Touro’s ship in the right direction.
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 External and internal mappings of categories in American Exceptionalism 7
Fig. 2.2 Political, moral-psychological, and institutional models 8
Fig. 2.3 Three branches ratings 1974 to current 37
Fig. 2.4 Periodgram 38
Fig. 3.1 Critical Path to early English settlement of North America 51
Fig. 3.2 Alexander Hamilton’s economic system as Treasury Secretary, 9/11/1789. (Sources: Sylla and Cowen 2018 and Rothbard 2002) 75
Fig. 3.3 Henry C. Carey versus classical economic development model. (Sources: Derived from several sources. Morrison (1986)) 83
Fig. 3.4 Carey’s reproducible values model 85
Fig. 3.5 Walker line 86
Fig. 4.1 Markov two states diagram. (Sources: Privault 2013; Klenke 2008; Brzezniak and Zastawniak 2000) 213
Fig. 4.2 Tree diagram of martingale process: total outcome, Omega, filtration, and probability. (Sources: Heyde 1972; Karlin and Taylor 1975; Doob 1942, 1971)
218
Fig. 4.3 Heat flow diagram for solution to Black-Sholes model 225
Fig. 4.4 Lucas asset pricing tree diagram. (Note: Down Nodes are shaded)
237
Fig. 4.5 Stochastic process with two distributions. (Source: Samuelson 1972, Volume 3, pp. 784, 787)
Fig. 5.1 Foundation of law. (Sources: [FH]: Hayek, Fredrich A., The Constitution of Liberty, A Gateway Edition, Chicago, Ill., 1972. [LH]: LeBuffe, Francis P., and James V. Hayes, The American Philosophy of Law. Crusader Press, Inc., New York, 1947. [MM]: Mercuro, Nicholas and Steven G. Mederma, Economics and the Law, Second Edition, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2006, pp. 18–19. [NM]: Mercuro, Nicholas, The Jurisprudential Niche Occupied by Law and Economics, The Journal of Jurisprudence, 2009, pp. 61–109. [RP]: Posner, Richard, The Economics of Justice, Harvard University Press, Mass., 1998. Marxian Legal Relation and Forms of State are taken from the Material Conditions of Life, and not from the Human Mind. Economic Structure put them on as clothe. (Lenin, V.I., p. 410), Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Volume 1: 1893–1895, Moscow Publishers, p. 138. [Digital Reprints, 2008 www.marx2mao.com])
Fig. 5.2 Aristotle view of virtue
For Aristotle, virtue is essentially a middle ground between two extremes
The extremes are vices (NE—Bk.2. Chap. 9.), shown in the figure as moving away from the mean on the run axis It is not faculties, good or bad; praise or blame (NE 2.4) Each virtue produces a good, which attain the extreme good on the rise axis
Fig. 5.3 Correlation of some of Aristotle’s views on law. (Sources: AD refers to Aristotle Dictionary (1963). Edited by Thomas Kiernan. NY: Philosophical Library. BC refers to Cardoso, Benjamin N. (1921). The Nature of the Judicial Process. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. CF refers to Carl Friedrich (1963). NE refers to Aristotle (1906). The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by F. H. Peters. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, LTD.)
252
267
Top and Bottom sides measure educational function of law; Left and Right sides measure maintenance of peace function of law; the main diagonal shows arbitrating controversies (CF, p. 24). Upper and Lower triangles show that both Positive and Common laws have these functions as their end or final cause
The pointed arrows around the box indicate that the whole operation leads to DJ and CJ. On the one hand, CJ is like an arithmetic proportion in the sense that the law treats everyone as a unit—everyone is equal before law, and judgment is usually regarding gains and losses. For example, a judge is concerned with the damage done, treating the individuals as equal. The redress is in terms of gains to the injured and losses to the injurer (Aristotle, NE, p. 149)
On the other hand, DJ is like a geometric proportionality where a reward depends on effort. Aristotle treats DJ in terms of justice = fairness. The latter is a mean between too much and too little shares that the individual is worth or merits, which is measured in terms of free birth in democracies, wealth in oligarchies, and personal merit in Aristocracies (NE, pp. 145–146). Aristotle gave this geometric proportion as an example: a / b = c / d (p. 147)
Fig. 5.4 Plato and Aristotle views of virtue and the law
Fig. 5.5 Classification of religious and civil laws in terms of beliefs and science
One opinion is that what one believes in one can come to know (science). If degrees of belief can turned into probability between λλ λ = [] = () +−() 01 1 . then wecan write PB S.
If λ = 0, then Science prevails, and if λ = 1 then beliefs prevail
Source for the motivation of the diagram: Russell, Strauss
Religious and Civil laws are antagonistic and seek reconciliation. Plato’s philosopher king is based on such a solution. The Enlightenment period seeks to purge revelation from the laws, moving toward political atheism
Fig. 5.6 The separation of powers
282
285
305
351
Table 3.2
Table 3.5
Table 4.1
Table
Table 4.3
Table 4.5
Table 5.2
List of Tables
1 Introduction
An attempt to define the term American Exceptionalism revealed a family of meanings: “Exceptionalism may refer to the idea that there is (a) something different about America or (b) something special about America. ‘Different’ is the predominant meaning embraced by descriptive social science … ‘Special’ means different in a certain way … the possession of a certain quality or … the embrace of a task or mission” (Ceaser 2012, pp. 6–7).
Different and special characteristics allow us to analyze American Exceptionalism in absolute and relative terms. In the former, we can focus on structural aspects, looking at the merits of America as a new nation founded on a Revolution, and the nation with the most modern democracy (Samuelson 1977, Volume 4, p. 572). In the latter, we can focus on performance and conduct aspects of America in regard to national interest, at home and abroad.
The idea of American Exceptionalism can be traced back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835) (Tocqueville 1963 [1835], Volumes 1–2). Tocqueville, after a nine-month exploration of American society, noted elements that distinguished it from other societies, including individualism, a focus on idea over form, the separation of
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church and state, people coming together by interest and not ideas, and freedom. He wrote that Americans “have a philosophical method common to the whole people” (Tocqueville 1963 [1835], Volume 2, p. 3). They have a “taste for physical gratifications,” desire “the shortest cut to happiness,” and “equality of conditions” (Ibid., pp. 136–138).
From a historic perspective, a popular interpretation of Tocqueville’s view is that “the United States, the lone successful democracy of his time, differed from all the European nations in lacking a feudal past and in being more socially egalitarian, more meritocratic, more individualistic, more rights-oriented, and more religious” (Lipset 2000, p. 32). Others have viewed US democracy from a procedural viewpoint—practices and institutions, deliberative—preferences, and substantive—necessary and sufficient viewpoints (Dahl et al. 2003, p. ix).
American Exceptionalism is forever in conflict with individualism, democratic despotism, and materialism (Schleifer 2012, p. 152). These conflicts are often viewed through the Jeffersonian trinity formula: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Resolution of conflicts is sought through the morals of the people and proper “checks and balances.” Some hold that Montesquieu’s (L’esprit Des Lois 1958) idea of “separation of power” is dominant, which postulates restraints to the abuse of power through the legislative, executive, and judiciary bodies, and not necessarily through natural rights or the threat of revolt. Today we tend to see exceptionalism as a dynamic concept that is continuously being challenged by the courses of economics, politics, wars, race relations, history, and culture.
We shall examine exceptionalism as it relates to democracy. The popular definition of democracy attributable to President Abraham Lincoln is that, “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The historian John Lucas claims that democracy is also characterized by “rule of the majority,” which can degenerate into nationalism or populism. The argument is that “Majority rule is tempered by the legal assurance of the rights of minorities, and of individual men and women. And when this temperance is weak, or unenforced, or unpopular, then democracy is nothing more (or else) than populism. More precisely: then it is nationalist populism” (Lucas 2005, p. 5). Tocqueville also expressed some reservation on American democracy when he wrote that, “I am far from thinking that we ought to follow the example of the American democracy and copy the mean that it has employed to attain this end; for
I am well aware of the influence which the nature of a country and its political antecedents exercise upon its political constitution; and I should regard it as a great misfortune for mankind if liberty were to exist all over the world under the same features” (Tocqueville 1963 [1835], Volume 1, pp. 329–330).
The idea of the “American dream,” meaning that individual initiatives can lead to material prosperity, had long been a metaphor for American Exceptionalism. This idea might be associated with religious influences and symbols. As a recent analyst puts it, “the colonization of New England was essentially a religious undertaking to establish a ‘City on the Hill,’ a ‘new Jerusalem’” (Tiryakian 1993, p. 46). More generally, the idea of America’s exceptionalism implies that the country is a symbol, a beacon to follow. Some have evoked the military power of the nation as the characteristic which makes America exceptional. While the strong military has been lauded for many large wars, the notion of an exceptional military may also be related to American involvement in many smaller, more controversial ones.
In the same vein, the terms “Americana” and “American Creed” surrogate for American Exceptionalism. Americana is used to refer to our icons: the Statue of Liberty, Harley Davidson motorcycles, or ideals such as “what is good for GM is good for the country.” We recall that the great free trade presidents, Ronald Reagan and G. W. Bush, protected Harley Davidson by tariffs and the American steel industry by temporary tariffs, respectively. President Barack Obama protected GM by restructuring it through bankruptcy. In some instances, the term “liberty” is explained as a core of the American Creed that is American political faith based on history and tradition (Congressional Record, 65th Congress, 2nd Session, April 13, 1918).
According to Gunnar Myrdal, the creed includes how “the American thinks, talks, and acts under the influence of high national and Christian precepts” (Myrdal 1962, p. lxxi). We will have occasion to visit how he pits this against “the valuations on specific planes of individual and group living, where [there are] personal and local interests, economic, social, and sexual jealousies; considerations of community prestige and conformity; group prejudice against particular persons or types of people” (Ibid., p. lxxi).
Lucas also perceived that American Exceptionalism can be invoked by the Right and Left viewpoints, as in Republican and Democrat, respectively (Lucas 2005, pp. 17–18). We saw the Republican presentation manifested by President Reagan in the 1980s as the New Right, which
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reasserted a Judeo-Christian religious view as central to American Exceptionalism. This New Right view was articulated by influential congressmen, such as Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich, who perceived degeneration in moral value of the New Left, which was characterized by increased welfare, hippie culture, and easier access to pornography.
Bibliography
Ceaser, J.W. 2012. The Origins and Character of American Exceptionalism. American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institution, and Culture 1: 6–7. Cheney, D., and L. Cheney. 2015. Exceptionalism: Why the World Needs a Powerful America. New York: Threshold Editions.
Dahl, Robert A., Ian Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Cheibub. 2003. The Democracy Source Book. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gingrich, N. 2011. A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing.
Lerner, Max. 1987. America as a Civilization. New York: Henry Holt.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1996. American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. New York: W.W. Norton.
Lipset, S.M. 2000. Still the Exceptional Nation? The Wilson Quarterly 24 (1): 31–45.
Lucas, J. 2005. Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Madsen, Deborah L. 1998. American Exceptionalism. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Myrdal, G. 1962. An American Dilemma. New York: Harper and Row.
Samuelson, P.A. 1977. The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson, ed. Hiroaki Nagatani and Kate Crowley, vol. 4. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Schleifer, J.T. 2012. The Chicago Companion to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stone, O., and P. Kuznick. 2013. The Untold History of the United States. New York: Gallery Books.
Tiryakian, E.A. 1993. American Religious Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 527 (May): 40–54.
Tocqueville, A.D. 1963 [1835]. Democracy in America, vol. 1–2. New York: Alfred A. Konpf.
2
American Exceptionalism: Quantitative and Qualitative
Introduction
This chapter presents categorical, functional, and empirical arguments in order to appraise American Exceptionalism. We find these kinds of appraisals lacking in the literature, especially in areas such as politics, economics, history, and law where it is more prevalent. First, we employ category theory to show how the structures of the arguments are related. Next, we specified functional relationships where possible to specify a model based on political, moral, psychological, and institutional foundations. Then six modal possibilities emerge for further analysis, relating to physical, national, tyranny, religion, constitution, and economics. The focus then shifted to measurements, which enable empirical analyses of the three branches of government. Generally, while there is no shortage of criticism of American Exceptionalism, we are led to agree with Tocqueville that Americans are able to overcome their errors.
In this chapter we will also highlight some of the progressive and degenerating aspects of American Exceptionalism. If the state of the American Revolution and associated democratic principles were exceptional in the founding days, then how do they continue in succeeding
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moments of American history down to the modern day? On the theoretical side we will focus on developing a model of Exceptionalism, culling from the broad literature on the subject. On the empirical side, we produce some long-term series to indicate the performance of Exceptionalism, using Gallup polls and historical databases to show low and high trends of American performance. Basically, our investigation uses the qualitative vision or model of Tocqueville for the evaluation of Exceptionalism. His thoughts are separated into socio-economic and institutional considerations in his first volume, which is mainly about America. His second volume published approximately five years later was mainly about democracy (Lucas 2005, p. 3). The purpose of the first part of this chapter is to elucidate these categories formally. The second part of this chapter will present empirical analysis in the literature and present some new analysis on America’s democratic institutions.
Part I: Formal Analyses of American Exceptionalism
American Exceptionalism has been discussed in terms of democracy, equality of conditions, liberty, freedom, law, constitution, justice, and happiness. The roles these ideas play in making the United States a better nation have been constantly appraised and debated. Formally, we can categorize the sub-points of the debate in order to help in appraising it. Following Tocqueville and the general literature, a categorical framework for assessing American Exceptionalism can be laid out in a diagram. Figure 2.1 shows that three major categories of thoughts have to be correlated externally: Equality of Conditions, States of Society, and Democracy. We suggest also some elements that have to be correlated internally in the categories. In the end, one needs to bring out the idea that equality of conditions leads to a state of society that makes an exceptional democracy. The categories are arranged so that the map shows an identity between Equality of Conditions and Democracy (MacLane and Birkoff 1979, p. 495).
1. For Tocqueville, the external map (solid lines) between “Equality of Conditions” and “Democracy” is an identity
2. Internal maps (broken lines) characterize1. Liberty vs. Freedom; 2. Rights vs. Wealth, Education, and Work.
3. Tension between Belief and Liberty.
4. “Equality of Conditions” maps to the “State of Society,” which in turn maps to “Democracy.”
Democracy
Wealth, Edu, Work Mores Promote the Welfare of the Majority
Individualism with and w/out limits
Fig. 2.1 External and internal mappings of categories in American Exceptionalism
The categories and terms in Fig. 2.1 have varied meanings. In the economic sense, belief relates to the belief in the market mechanism. Freedom implies that production, consumption, and exchange are limited only by free will. Law pervades in contracts and common will. Equality relates to the exchange of endowment based on some equivalent measure. Society may be bracketed by individual rights and historical relations; the assertion of one tends to limit the boundary of the other. Liberty constrains one’s actions to the extent that they hurt others.
In order to bring out the categorical relationships for American Exceptionalism, we have to hark back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s ideas, adjoined by commentaries of others. Such an examination would conjure up the rights of man and the citizen that are inalienable and natural, relating to equality, liberty, security, and property. It would also have to include relationships between nations and between individuals, and the extent of reciprocity and equality between them. The achievement of a model can only be fragmentary at this time because we are dealing with
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qualitative ideas, and because of the validation or rejection of his model points to isolated facts such as wars, empire building, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, military strength, and so on. We state this model in functional form for further discussion.
Model
The variables in Fig. 2.1 can be grouped in three categories for analysis. In each of the categories, the dependent variables are laid out recursively. While democracy and equality are not functional, we can treat them as interdependent, for an identity is two ways of viewing the same thing. The dependent relationships are listed below in Fig. 2.2.
Each of the equations and its specification of the model in Fig. 2.2 will now be subjected to further analyses. The discussion is based on political economy, but where possible, we shall bring economic discussions into the picture.
Fig. 2.2 Political, moral-psychological, and institutional models
Assumptions of the Model
The assumptions of the model can be laid out in four categories. The Political Category includes civic affairs, cities or local government, and statecraft. The Moral Category incorporates ideas of how matters of the heart come to dominate matters of the brain and religious beliefs. The Psychological Category includes ideas of compassion, restlessness, and selfinterest. Last but not least, the Institutional Category deals with constitution, laws, and social contract.
Description of the Model
Political Category
At the center of the model, we must look at forces that affect democracy and equality. From reading the literature, one gets the idea that these two are identities rather than equalities. So, we start out with the following identical relationship.
We focus first on the nature of the identity between democracy and equality. Tocqueville wrote that “The Laws of American democracy are frequently defective or incomplete” (Tocqueville 1963 [1835], Volume 1, p. 237). The intention of the law is to “promote the welfare of the greatest possible number,” opposing the laws of aristocracy that “concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the minority” (Ibid., p. 238). Tocqueville held that Americans are able to repair faults they have committed (Ibid., p. 238). The problem lies on the empirical side where weaknesses “can be proved by obvious facts,” but facts of healthy influence are “hidden” and, therefore, not obvious. By facts he meant such things as military superiority as well (Stone and Kuznick 2013, p. xvi).
This identity appears out of American determination to find a good society. Whether we look for monotonically increasing achievement, or in the field of conflict and resolution, we are guided by the mythical saying
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of John Winthrop in 1630 aboard the Arbella that America will act as a beacon for the world, which was captured by the icon of a “city upon a hill” (Stone and Kuznick 2013, p. xiv). A modern economic take on democracy is that “Dogmatic absolutes being thus ruled out, democratic society is left in a position of pragmatically attempting to choose among partial evils so as to preserve as much as possible of human liberties and freedom” (Samuelson 1972, Volume 3, p. 634). Samuelson considered criteria such as economic versus political freedom by placing several countries in a diagram with economic freedom on the x-axis. Samuelson found that to place one country relative to another in such a diagram would “need serious empirical study, not strong a priori utterances of causal travelers’ anecdotes” (Ibid., p. 637).
How then might one evaluate exceptionalism under democracy? According to Martin Shubik, “democratic models tend to be based on a view that not merely stresses individual motivation but also implicitly or explicitly assumes limitations on individual capabilities” (Shubik 1984, p. 669). For instance, we run into models that use limited rationality, search for a perfect, rule-free, instructional-free rational cooperation. These models are looking for single or pluralistic equilibrium solutions based on psychological, social, political, or other factors.
The libertarian economist, Friedrich Hayek, supports an original meaning of democracy, which he described as “a particular kind of decision-making procedure.” He ranked Tocqueville’s liberal view with a “programme, known as ‘guarantism’ … essentially a doctrine of constitutional limitations of government … To this tradition, largely deriving from Britain, also belonged the perhaps most important French liberal thinker, Alexis de Tocqueville” (Hayek 1978, p. 176).
That procedure acts “as a convention which enables any majority to rid itself of a government it does not like” (Ibid., p. 152). Hayek holds that modern changes dispensed with constructional safeguards, which ensured that elected representatives come to represent the majority. This he called “unlimited democracy … if the peculiar institutions of the unlimited democracy we have today should ultimately prove a failure, this need not mean that democracy itself was a mistake, but only that we tried it in the wrong way” (Ibid., p. 153).
In order to get behind the dynamics of democracy, one needs to study the forces behind its driver, namely, equality. We should be clear upfront that inequality rather than equality is made the founding stone of a capitalist democracy. We can then identify three broad categories of forces that define the trend in equality.
Equality Nature, Events, Religion = () e (2.1a)
Yale’s law professor Robert Post argued that if democracy means only good government, then the argument is not about democracy but on the equality that the good government portends: “If democracy means merely good and desirable government, we need not discuss democracy at all but only the forms of equality that ought to characterize a modern state” (Post 2006, p. 24). He proceeded to pin equality to a definition of democracy that excludes popular sovereignty and majoritarianism because those are descriptive terms which “refer to particular decision-making procedures,” whereas democracy is a “normative” term (Ibid, p. 25). He prefers to say democracy is about self-government which is about “the authorship of decisions, not about the making of decisions” (Ibid., p. 26). This approach requires a link between collective self-government and individual self-government. The First Amendment provides that link. It allows citizens to freely “participate in the formation of public opinion,” which allows the individual to “experience the state as in some way responsive to their own values and ideas” (Ibid., p. 27).
Robert Post’s idea of democracy implies an equality that is of the agency form. The point is that “Democracy requires that persons be treated equally insofar as they are autonomous participants in the process of selfgovernment. This form of equality is foundational to democracy because it follows from the very definition of democracy. Democracy requires an equality of democratic agency” (Ibid., p. 28). This is equality in form and function. An example of equality in form is equality in voting; another is equality in public discourse (Ibid., p. 29).
Equality of agency has to meet up with equality of distributive justice and fairness. Inconsistency between them tends to arise in scenarios of hate and racial speeches. This may need to be balanced by some “logic of
L . Ramrattan and M. Szenberg
democratic legitimacy” or “substantive claims for equality” (Ibid., p. 31). Economists and political scientists such as John Rawl and Amartya Sen have been groping for such prerequisites that would make the individual autonomous.
Tocqueville said that “nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people” (Tocqueville 1963 [1835], Volume 1, p. 3). He perceived the height of equality in America at that time as an “extreme limit,” which has created a democracy that European nations are striving to attain.
Providence = () n (2.1b)
Nature makes the equality of condition providential fact. It is “a providential fact … it is universal, it is lasting. It constantly eludes all human interference” (Ibid., p. 6). It arises from the force of history: “In running over the pages of our history, we shall scarcely find a single great event of the last seven hundred years that has not promoted equality of condition” (Ibid., p. 5). One implication here is that this condition cannot be thwarted by business, government, or labor. What history has made permanent cannot be falsified by profit and loss calculations.
Colonialism, Revolution = () e (2.1c)
The events around the founding of American Exceptionalism range from the exploration of America, its habitation, and colonialism. The Amerindians were left out, freeing the slaves met with conflicting interest among members of Continental Congress, and Britain rejected Congress’s offer to make them an independent body. The revolution then became necessary.
Religion , Freedom = ()eL (2.1d)
This expression feeds into equality: “liberty is not the chief and constant object of their (nation’s) desires; equality is their idol” (Tocqueville 1963 [1835], Volume 1, p. 53). Also, we find that the spirit of religion
Nature
EventExploration,Habitation,
is fused with the spirit of liberty in America, a mixture of sectarianism with innovativeness (Ibid., p. 43). Tocqueville sided with civil or federal liberty, a “kind of liberty wherewith Christ had made us free” and not natural liberty that we share in common with “beasts and other creatures” (Ibid., pp. 42–42). These two spirits are equal partners in a democracy: “Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to the faculties of man … Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and triumphs” (Ibid., p. 44).
In an attempt to generalize, American “ancestors gave them the love of equality and of freedom; but God himself gave them the means of remaining equal and free by placing them on a boundless continent” (Ibid., p. 291). The “Creator’s hand” has put into motion the “course of nature and the constancy tendency of events” (Ibid, p. 7). Equality had a religious basis as it prevailed in “Christian countries” (Ibid., p. 6).
The kind of Christianity Tocqueville had in mind was one that had “shaken off the authority of the Pope, acknowledged no other religious supremacy … a democratic and republican religion.” He continued that “from the beginning, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved” (Ibid., p. 300). We find that religion checks vices “while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust” (Ibid., p. 305).
Americans correlate liberty with Christianity: “it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other” (Ibid., p. 306). Indirectly, religion has considerable influence on Americans in “the art of being free” (Ibid., p. 302). Tocqueville makes the general statement that “American clergy in general, without even excepting those who do not admit religious liberty, are all in favor of civil freedom” (Ibid., p. 304). Tocqueville argued that while “religion does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it” (Ibid., p. 305). He remarked that religion is the first of America’s political institutions (Ibid., p. 305).
Religion becomes exception in several aspects. The first aspect to be lauded is the separation of church and state (Tocqueville 1963, V. 1, p. 308). This separation is embedded in the constitution. Two sources of the constitution are mentioned in this regard, namely:
L . Ramrattan and M. Szenberg
Article VI: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
As Ted Jelen put it, “Article VI essentially decouples the demands of religious discipleship (to make anachronistic use of a Christian concept) from the obligations of democratic citizenship” (Jelen 2007, p. 27). It posits a neutral position of government with regard to religion. Citizenship is separated from religious tradition. Although many governments may in fact like to maintain their autonomy, the First Amendment of the American Constitution prohibits the establishment of a Church by jurisprudence. Observers often distinguish between the “establishment clause” and the “free exercise clause” in this First Amendment. The former prohibits government from offering material support or endorsing a particular religion (Ibid., p. 27). On the other hand, “The Free Exercise Clause may protect the religious prerogatives of adherents of unconventional religious traditions from the power of popular majorities and ensures that Americans will have diverse religious alternatives from which to choose (or to which to react)” (Ibid., p. 31).
The net result of the constitutional provision for religion may have proliferated the current pluralists’ stance on religion in the country. American Exceptionalism, according to Tocqueville, pivoted on the Protestant. He considered condemnation of Catholicism as an impediment to democracy to be a mistake, stating, “the Catholic religion has erroneously been regarded as the natural enemy of democracy” (Tocqueville 1963 [1835], Volume 1, p. 300). On the contrary, he found Catholics to be “the most favorable to equality of conditions among men” (Ibid., p. 300). Following the Protestant and Catholics in sustaining democracy were the Jews. We read that “it is in America that Jews have increasingly found full societal and cultural participation and acceptance, symbolized by widespread acceptance in recent years of the term ‘JudeoChristian’” (Tiryakian 1993, p. 52).
Following the triad of Puritan-Catholic-Jewish contribution to American Exceptionalism, pluralism made America a host for other religions—Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and so on. Some have argued that
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XII
DUCK-HUNTING
S promised Big Sue plenty of wild ducks for her quilting dinner if she’d persuade Uncle Bill to row him.
“Plenty o’ guns is yonder in de Big House. Cun April is got de key.”
“I’ll git you a gun, Breeze,” Big Sue offered, and before the day was out Breeze went into the Big House with April, through the same side door out of which April and Big Sue came that first morning.
The side passage led into a wide front hall and a queer feeling of intrusion seized Breeze as he went past rooms where pictures of white people looked at him from the walls. Brass andirons and fenders gleamed out from big fireplaces. Unlit candles left the high ceilinged rooms in a dim uncertain light. Dark shadows hid under the heavy furniture, until April pressed a button and a chandelier hung from the ceiling became hundreds of dazzling icicles, dripping with light.
April took Breeze to a room where a rack held guns of all sizes and shapes, each one polished, well oiled, ready for work. April handed Breeze one after the other to try, making him put them up to his shoulder as if he aimed at something. When one was found to fit, April cautioned him, “When you shoot, fo’git you’ gun. Fasten you’ eyes on de t’ing you want to hit, den pull de trigger. Try em now, son! Don’ squint up you’ eyes! Keep all two wide open. Shootin’ ain’ hard work! It’s for pleasure! You can’ hit nothin’ if you frown.”
Breeze was glad to get out of the silent house with its book-lined walls and rug hidden floors. He took the gun home, but he could scarcely go to sleep for happy excitement over the prospect of going hunting.
Uncle Bill sat waiting in the stern of a small narrow boat, but he got to his feet when he saw Big Sue. While he held the boat steady for Breeze and Sherry to get in, he kept an eye on Big Sue as he warned her please not to touch Breeze, and he kept saying to Breeze:
“Mind, son. Don’ put you’ hand on Miss Big Sue. When a man is gwine a-huntin’, it’ll ruin his luck to let a lady touch him. Be careful!”
He wanted Breeze to sit alone in the bow of the boat, but Sherry considered and then said, no, Breeze must sit beside him on the narrow board seat in the boat’s middle. Uncle Bill shook his head and muttered in disapproval, but Sherry wouldn’t give in.
“No, Uncle Bill, Breeze wouldn’t be safe settin’ in front o’ me dis morning. My gun feels too ready to shoot. I can’ trust em. It’s so quick on de trigger it might miss and aim at his head or his back instead o’ at a duck.”
“Wha’ dat is got you so nervish, Sherry?”
“When my mind runs on some people, I wants to shoot right den!”
“Dat is sinful, son. Awful sinful! I hates to hear you talk so!”
To Breeze, the boat seemed very narrow and the seat scarcely able to hold two. He knew he couldn’t swim if he fell out, but he said nothing, and soon Uncle Bill swung them out into the middle of the deep clear stream.
Instead of being brown-black like the river, this arm of that stream was filled with the blue of the sky. But its dark depths looked bottomless and dangerous, and Breeze sat mute, with his eyes staring down in it until Sherry nudged him and made him look up.
“You got to learn how to swim, son, den you won’ be scared o’ water! You get dis straight in you’ head now too; when a man starts out huntin’, e mustn’t never let no ’oman put her hand on him. If e do, his luck is gone. Uncle Bill is even scared for my right hand to touch you, for you ain’ no more’n a li’l’ gal. But I’ll risk it. My luck kin stand a lot. It don’ fail me.”
Breeze listened and answered, “Yes suh,” but he did not altogether understand, and Sherry’s eyes glanced over the water’s surface.
“Lawd! Looka de creek, how blue e is dis mornin’! Winter or summer, e stays blue. Dat is what gives de plantation de name, Blue Brook. Cun Big Sue ain’ told you dat yet?”
Behind them Uncle Bill hissed, “Sh-sh,” and Sherry leaned to whisper, “We mustn’ talk. De ducks’ll hear an’ we won’t git a shot. Is you know how to load you’ gun?”
In his excitement Breeze had forgotten, but Sherry took it and showed him again how to slip two neat yellow, brass-trimmed shells into place in the clean steel barrels, how to make the gun “safe” and “ready.” Then he took up his own gun and with quick slidings and clickings slipped half a dozen shells into its snug chamber. Breeze noticed that Sherry had purple shells and wondered what the different colors meant, but before he could ask, a sharp “sh-sh” from Uncle Bill hissed behind them again.
“Go easy,” Sherry’s big mouth buzzed back in a whisper. To Breeze he mumbled, “Git you’ gun ready, son.”
The tide must have been going with them for they flowed along without a sound. Breeze saw no ducks until suddenly dark wings flashed everywhere in front of them. The gun in Sherry’s hands fired, again and again. It was all quickly over. Echoes banged back and forth at one another, then died, and everything was still. On the water in front of them three limp bundles of feathers were floating, not caring at all where they went.
Uncle Bill’s laughter cackled out. “Sherry, you can’ be beated! Son, you’s a shot-man, fo’ true! Yes, Jedus! You don’ never miss!”
He shot the boat forward and Sherry leaned far out to pick up the lifeless bodies of the ducks he had killed. How strong he was! And as much at home in this cramped-up boat as on the ground.
“Poor creeters!” he pitied, holding the gay-colored bill of one of them between his fingers. “Ain’ e a beauty!”
“I hope you ain’ gettin’ chicken-hearted,” Uncle Bill twitted, and Sherry grinned back.
“Maybe I is, Uncle.” Sherry’s big fingers gently ruffled the feathers on the duck’s breast to show them to Breeze. They were beautiful, indeed. The trim head had a high crest of purple and green and black feathers. White lines were above and below the poor deathdulled eyes. The throat and warm breast, colored soft tan like a chinquapin, and spotted with white, were bloodstained across the fine black markings. The bill was bright pink; the feet and legs, bright orange. Sherry said they were safe to be loud-colored, for they were hidden under water most of the time.
The drake’s mates were less gay. The brown and gray and white feathers on their trim bodies were quiet as shadows on the water.
All three of them were quite dead, and Sherry tossed them back to Uncle Bill who put them far back under the seat, saying as he did so:
“We better hide ’em fo’ true. Dey’s all summer ducks. It’s five hundred dollars to kill one! Five hundred!”
“Shucks!” Sherry answered, reloading his gun. “Dem white folks way off yonder to Columbia sho’ do make some fool laws!”
“If de game warden was to slip up on you right now you’d wish you had kept ’em, dough. Where’d you git de money to pay?”
“Oh, I know I’d go straight to de gang as a martin to his gourd,” Sherry answered cheerfully. “But I trust to my luck to don’ git caught.”
All three of them laughed, and Uncle Bill thrust the boat silently on. Once Sherry pointed to a hollow high up on the body of a leaning cypress. The tree’s feathery top rose far above the mesh of interlaced vines and branches on the bank of the stream. As likely as not a summer duck made her nest in that hollow. They choose knot-
holes or hollows, sometimes forty feet high, sometimes near the water. Queer fowls. Hard to fool.
As they rounded a bend on the stream a faint splash sounded in front. Sherry listened with pent breath. “Ducks, enty, Uncle?” he whispered.
“Great Gawd, Sherry! Wha’ dat ail you’ years?”
Almost at once they swung into sight of April in a boat much like their own. He had a load of sacks and packages and its back was piled high with oysters in the shell. His trousers were inside his laced-up boots and a silver watch-chain dangled from a side pocket.
Uncle Bill hailed him, “Good mawnin’, son! How come you so dressed up? I don’ like dem boots. You’s a good swimmer fo’ true, but boots kin drown a fish. A watch kin fool you too. I wouldn’t trust to no watch. Not me!”
“I rather drown dan let oyster shells cut my feets all up. Plain shoes don’ hinder ’em. But how you like dese fish?” He held up a string of long, smooth, snaky-looking creatures. They could have passed for short fat snakes.
“Great Gawd, de eels! You sho’ had luck wid you dis mawnin’.”
“Luck stay wid me!” April bragged, but Sherry laughed.
“You must be mean Bad Luck, enty? If I’d catch a’ eel, I’d call it Bad Luck!”
“How come so?”
“I can’ stand to look at a’ eel, much less eat one. Not me!”
“When did you git so pa’ticular, Sherry? You must be kissed you’ elbow an’ turned to a lady, enty?” April sneered coolly.
“No matter how long you cook a’ eel, it’ll turn raw soon’s it gits cold.”
“Who’d let a eel git cold? Not me, I know,” April returned hotly. “Eels ain’ nothin’ but he catfish. How come you love catfish so good an’ scorns eels?”
“Sho’ dey is!” Uncle Bill affirmed promptly “Dey’s de men catfish. Sho’! Anybody’ll tell you dat.” April shoved his boat forward.
“Well, I’m glad you don’ want ’em, Sherry! It would be too bad if you did. But I tell you, when Big Sue gits dem seasoned up right in a pot dey would make you pure bite you’ fingers just to smell ’em.”
Sherry said no more, and April’s boat glided on. A bend in the stream closed its gate behind it, shutting him and his boatload of food out of sight.
Uncle Bill took a chew of tobacco. “April’s de luckiest man I ever seen,” he ventured, but Sherry said nothing at all.
Through breaks in the trees Breeze caught glimpses of drab, level, water-covered spaces. Old rice-fields. Deserted. Marsh-grown. They lacked the color and the look of life that filled the thick-tangled growth of trees and thorny-looking vines and bushes encircling them.
“Sherry,” Uncle Bill rested his paddle, “you don’ hold nothin’ against April, does you?”
Sherry’s answer was slow coming, “Not nothin’ much, suh.”
Uncle Bill began paddling again, and Sherry put down his gun and stretched, then said that since April and his boat had scared all the ducks out of this creek, they’d better go across the river into some of the creeks around Silver Island where lots of ducks raise and there’d be a chance to get some good shooting.
Sherry’s good humor was gone. He sat dumb, his forehead all knotted up in a frown. The eels or April or something had crossed him. Breeze was glad to hear him ask, “Who named Silver Island, Uncle? You reckon any money’s buried on it?”
Uncle Bill didn’t know. It was named long ago, when each bit of land here was given a name. These marshes were all fields in the old days. Rice was planted everywhere then. He pointed to old rotting pieces of wood that held the tide back until it gurgled as it strained to get over them.
“See de old flood-gates? De old trunks? Dey used to let de water in and out. Dey used to know dere business to!” He sighed. “But dey
time is out. De old days is gone. De tide does like it pleases now.”
On an old piece of wood, brown with rot and soaked by the floodtide, yet standing guard beside an opening on the bank, several small black tortoises sprawled out flat, sunning themselves. As the boat got nearer they all slid into the water for safety.
It amused Uncle Bill mightily. He chuckled and called out that they needn’t hide from him.
“You like cooters, Uncle?” Sherry asked him with a laugh.
“No, suh!” the old man said shortly, “Not to-day, anyhow. De sky’s too clear.” He cast his black beady eyes up and scanned the blue overhead. “I don’ see no sign of thunder nowhere, an’ if a cooter bites you e won’t never let go till it thunders.”
Sherry laughed. “You know, don’t you, Uncle?” Then he told how once when Uncle Bill was a boy a cooter caught his toe and held on to it for a whole day and night.
“Fo’ days, son!” Uncle Bill corrected.
“Was it four, fo’ true, Uncle?” Sherry asked doubtfully.
“Yes, suh! An e’d ’a’ been holdin’ on till now if it didn’t thunder,” Uncle Bill spoke solemnly.
“What did you do all dem four days, Uncle?” Sherry asked.
“I watched de clouds an’ prayed for de thunder to roll, son.”
When Breeze hoped one would never bite him, Uncle Bill grunted. “You right to hope so, son. I hope so too. A cooter is a contrary creeter.”
“De people used to say Uncle Isaac was crippled by a cooter. E makes like e’s plagued wid rheumatism, but I have hear tell e ain’ got no big toe on one foot. Did you know dat, Sherry?”
“How come so?” Breeze inquired.
“Well, now, I tell you, dis might not be so. But I used to hear de people say it was. Old man Isaac is a heap older’n me an’ all dis happened before I was born. But my mammy used to laugh ’bout
em. Plenty o’ times when e’d come hoppin’ up to de house a-talkin’ ’bout how it must be gwine rain soon by de misery in his knee was so bad, my mammy use to say his big toe wasn’t buried straight an’ dat was what hurt Uncle Isaac. T’ings have to be buried right or dey can’ rest at all.”
“Whe’ was de cooter?” Breeze asked.
“De cooter was in de corn-field, son.”
“An’ whe’ was Uncle Isaac?”
“E was in de corn-field too, choppin’ grass.”
“Did de cooter bite his toe off?”
“No, you wait now an’ le’ me tell em my way.”
“When Uncle Isaac was young e used to run round a lot at night instead o’ being’ home ’sleep, like he had business to be. E used to catch a nap in de daytime whilst he was hoein’. Plenty o’ people can stand straight up in de field an’ lean on dey hoe an’ sleep good. I never could, but a lot o’ people can. Well, Uncle Isaac was gwine long hoein’ a spell, den dozin’ a spell. One time when e opened his eyes to look e thought e seen a cooter’s head right side his foot. E chopped down hard to cut em off. But it wasn’t no cooter head dat time. It been his own big toe! Dat’s how come e’s hoppin’ to dis day. An’ a-lyin’ ’bout em too.”
“Po’ ol’ man!” Sherry laughed along with his pitying. “I don’ blame em fo’ lyin’ ’bout dat. I’d be shame’ to tell de truth. Dey say if you tell a lie an’ stick to it, dat’s good as de truth anyhow.”
“I dunno,” Uncle Bill answered doubtfully, “I reckon sin is easier to stand dan shame.”
A blue dragon-fly flitted along close to the water.
“Does you know his business?” Sherry asked Breeze. But the fly was catching gnats and mosquitoes right then and anybody could see what its business was. Breeze laughed at Sherry’s question.
“You’s wrong,” Sherry laughed back. “You’s talkin’ ’bout his victuals, not his business. Dat’s a snake doctor. A sick snake is around here
somewhere now You watch out. We’ll see him. Den we’ll kill him and hang him up on a limb to make it rain. It’s powerful dry dis fall.”
“If you hang a dead snake on a limb, dat couldn’ make it rain?”
Sherry’s laugh was so merry that Breeze grinned at his own ignorance.
“Great Gawd, boy! You didn’t know dat! Sho’, it will! In less’n three days too. Won’t it, Uncle?”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill answered stoutly, but he added there was no use to bother with the snake, for it was going to rain in less than three days, anyhow. “The new moon hung in a ring last night and only one star was inside it. That means it will rain after one day. If they’d find the snake and kill him he couldn’t die until the sun went down. Neither can a frog nor a cooter, nor a wasp. Lots of things can’t die if the sun shines.”
Breeze felt he was learning a lot, and he listened so attentively that Uncle Bill went on talking.
“Most people have to wait until night to die, and even when night comes, dey can’t die until de tide turns.”
“How can dey tell if dey’s sick in the bed?” Breeze asked, and Uncle Bill explained that the people themselves didn’t know. The life that stays inside them, that knows.
“It knows mighty nigh everything,” the old man declared, “and when de time comes for it to go, it goes, an’ leaves a man dead as a wedge.” This statement left Breeze wondering, but Uncle Bill went on telling how the rice-fields were full of all kinds of snakes, some of them poisonous, and some not. But the snake he feared most, more than even a rattlesnake or a moccasin, was a coach-whip.
“If a coach-whip catches you, he will wrap his body round you an’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you to death wid his tail. Lawd, boy, when a coach-whip blows dat whistle in de end of his tail, put you’ foot in you’ hand an’ run!”
“Yes, suh!” Sherry agreed, “I too ’fraid of coach-whips myself. I never did see one do it, but a coach-whip can outrun a man any day. If you
get to outrunnin’ him, e will grab his tail in his mouth and roll after you like a hoop to catch you. An’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you. Enty, Uncle?”
“Sho’?” Uncle Bill was astonished at his asking. “Sho it’s so! I’ve seen a coach-whip do it plenty o’ times.”
He spat far out into the stream when he had said it, then held one oar still in the water to wheel the boat to one side, as he asked:
“Did you ever catch one of dose pretty little garter snakes an’ see him break hisself all up into little joints? Dey go back all togedder again when dey gits ready.”
Sherry never had.
“Well did you ever burn a blacksnake an’ make him show you his feet. You must be have done dat, Sherry?”
“No, suh,” Sherry answered solemnly. “I ain’ done em not yet, but I’ve seen plenty o’ people what has done em.” And after a thoughtful silence he added:
“Deys one t’ing I do know, Uncle. If a snake bites you and you don’t die, all you’ hair will drop out every time dat snake sheds its skin. Dat’s so, ’cause my own done it about ten years until Uncle Isaac told me to put a boxwood poultice on my hand ebery night las’ spring. An’ dat cured me.”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill agreed. “Boxwood’s good for most eberyt’ing what ails you.”
“Poultices made out of boxwood will make you’ hair grow and cure tooth-ache or either rheumatism. Boxwood tea’ll cure de itch or de spring fever, too.”
“I heard so,” Sherry approved. “Boxwood roots is good for foot troubles too.”
“Yes, suh. It’s a good medicine. Sho’! De white people knowed it and dats how come dey fetched it across de water wid em. All de flowers gardens on dis whole Neck is full o’ boxwood. Some’s grows high an’
some low Some ain’ no taller dan my finger, an’ it’s old as de Big House, too.”
“Lawd, how times is changed! Changed before yunnuh was born. Looks like all de good old days is done gone.”
“We done well enough till de boll-evils come, enty, Uncle?”
“But de boll-evils is come. Dey ruint de whole crop year befo’ last.”
“De crop was good last year after we pizened ’em.”
“But I tell you, I sho’ don’ believe in pizenin’ ’em. No, suh! Gawd sent dem here an’ we better leave dem lone. If I was you, I wouldn’t run no pizen machine. At night too, when de cotton is wet wid dew, a pizen dust’ll stick to you’ feets. When I look out o’ my door at night and see dat pizen dust a-floatin’ over de cotton-fields in dem big white cluds, an’ dat machine a-singin’ like a locust, a-creepin’ up and down de rows, th’owin’ out pizen I git too scared to look. No wonder de mens hates to take part in it. Dem pizened blossoms is done killed all de bees on de place, an’ a lot o’ de turkeys and de guineas died from eatin’ de pizened evils. Better let weeds grow in de fields, I say. We kin do widout money till we git some crop to take de place o’ cotton. Cotton’s time is out. I ’member when dey had to give up plantin’ indigo, and people said we was ruined. But cotton done just as good. Now cotton is failed, and we ought to wait till we git some kind o’ crop to take its place.” Uncle Bill heaved a mighty sigh as he said it. “April is too brazen. E would buck Gawd A’mighty. Don’t you try to be like em, Sherry. No. If April keeps on, e will land in Hell, sho’ as e was born.”
“You t’ink de place’ll ever be sold, Uncle?” Sherry asked him presently.
“No, son. Not long as de li’l’ young Cap’n is livin’! E was born wid two li’l’ teeth, and when dem two li’l’ teeth got ripe an’ fell out, my Katy took ’em an’ went to de graveyard an’ buried ’em in a clear place right longside his gran’pa.
“No matter whe’ da li’l’ boy goes or how long e stays gone from here, dis place’ll hold to him. Dem li’l’ two teeth’ll make him come back to
die an’ be buried right here. You’ll see. It’s so. Just like I’m tellin’ you. It’ll be dat way. Katy was a wise-minded ’oman.”
The boat moved steadily forward all the time, for Uncle Bill’s arms didn’t slacken the oar’s paddling once.
As Breeze listened thoughtfully to all that was said, his eyes wandered unseeing over the beauty that lay thick around him, for he was trying to understand some of the things he had heard.
The rice-fields blurred by yellow sunshine were tinged with ripeness and flecked with brilliant color. Purple shadows were cast by crimson branches, scarlet berries sparkled on slender vines and adorning gray thorny branches. The bright water, gay with reflections, ran sober edges under blue cypress.
The tide of the year, more deliberate but as constant as the tide from the sea, was almost full, almost at its height. It would soon pause, mature and complete, its striving over, for a little rest; and start ebbing.
A great owl, roused by the boat’s passing, spread out wide wings and flew from the shadowy darkness of a dense moss-hung tree. Marsh-hens, that couldn’t be seen, cackled out shrill strident notes from the marsh-grown, water-covered mud flats. Solemn blue-andwhite herons stood motionless at the water’s edge, gravely watching the boat. High overhead, thin lines of ducks sliced across the sky with swift slashing wings. When the boat rounded a bend where the creek met the river, Uncle Bill began a careful, precise paddling with his one long oar, and with settled, even strokes thrust the boat forward into the wide dark stream.
“For Gawd’s sake, be careful, Uncle! Don’ go too fast against dis current. I’d sho’ hate to be turned over dis morning. Dat water looks mighty cold.”
Sherry gave a shiver and laugh as he said it, but Uncle Bill’s reply was full of reproach. Why would Sherry think of such a thing as turning over? He was inviting trouble.
The boat had run silently for some little time, close to the river’s bank, when Uncle Bill broke into a sputter of words. Breeze turned to
look at him. His eyes, two bright black berries in the dull black surface of his skin, were fixed on something away ahead. Breeze tried to see it too. He searched the distance ahead. But nothing showed except miles of wide river swelled out beyond its banks into the flat old rice-fields. Palmetto trees showed now and then among the willows and cypresses. Low-lying marshy islands, fringed with vine-covered scrubby bushes, were cut into patterns by narrow creeks.
Sherry was watching the distance too. “Wha’ kind is dey, Uncle?” he murmured.
“Bull-neck, son,” Uncle Bill answered promptly.
“I wish my eyes was trained to see good like your’n. I wonder why dey ain’!”
“I dunno, son. I dunno. I reckon dey ain’ had to look hard as mine,” and he chuckled with pleasure at the compliment Sherry paid him.
Uncle’s calm black face filled with a warm friendly smile. Uncle’s bright eyes, keen and cold, flitted swiftly from Sherry’s face to Breeze’s, then beyond them to the ducks he saw in the distance. Breeze began to see more in Uncle Bill’s black features than he did at first. They were more than wrinkled flesh that time had creased and withered, for not only shrewdness, but wisdom and pity shone in the clear-seeing eyes; and the old mouth, where so many teeth were missing, tightened its lips in a way that meant more than caution and prudence.
Breeze gazed at every bit of the surface ahead, starting with the water where sunshine dazzled close beside the boat and ending where the hazy sky dropped down to join the earth, but he couldn’t see any ducks.
“Looka right yonder!” Uncle Bill pointed to direct his eyes and he made out two tiny black specks side by side on the water.
“You must shoot dose two,” Sherry said. “It ain’t against de law to kill bull-necks, and maybe dey’ll stay on de water until we get in gunshot.”
“You better shoot ’em, Cun Sherry I can’t hit ’em.” Breeze hesitated although his heart was beating fit to burst with excitement at the thought of shooting a gun.
“No, dem’s you’ ducks. You must kill ’em,” Sherry insisted. “If you do like I tell you, you can’ miss em. I don’ mind breakin’ de law, so I’ll hit de summer ducks and you kill de lawful ones.”
“I’m scared I’ll miss ’em.” Breeze’s voice quivered so shakily Sherry laughed.
“No you won’t. I’ll tell you how to do,” he said gently.
Uncle Bill headed the boat straight for the two small dots which were swimming toward it, and soon Breeze could see the gray of their feathers and the bright orange color of their bills. They seemed not to know their danger even when Uncle Bill stopped paddling and Sherry whispered to Breeze.
“Cock your gun now and hold em close up to you’ shoulder. Look straight at de duck you want to kill and pull de front trigger.”
Breeze did just as Sherry told him, but the drake he aimed at sat quite motionless on the water, as if he had not even heard the gun’s explosion.
“Fine, son!” Sherry exclaimed. “He didn’ know wha’ hit him. Now, shoot de hen duck. Hold you’ gun up close to you’ shoulder, den look straight at em an’ pull de back trigger.”
Breeze’s fingers were trembling but he shot again, and the hen duck made wild splutterings on the water.
“Po’ creeter! You hit em, but you got to shoot em again. Put us up a li’l’ closer, Uncle. Load you’ gun, Breeze.”
Breeze’s tense fingers shook as he unbreached his gun and replaced the two empty, smoking shells with heavy new ones. As the boat swung near to the wounded duck that swam round and round its dead mate, Sherry spoke to him sharply.
“Hurry up! Shoot em again!”
How could he do it? The poor wounded fowl was fluttering in agony now.
“Quit you’ triflin’, boy!” Sherry ordered sternly “Put em out o’ dat misery.”
Breeze’s fingers tightened on the trigger and the gray-feathered body quivered into bloody shreds as the swift lead from his gun tore through it. Breeze felt wretched. Killing that duck gave him no pleasure.
Uncle Bill paddled up close to the two dead bodies and Sherry picked them up out of the water.
“Dey’s plump!” he commented as his fingers examined the breasts to see.
“We has all de ducks we can eat now, but dis boy ought to shoot one flyin’ befo’ we go home.”
“Den we’ll go on,” Uncle agreed.
They crossed the river and entered a creek much like the first one. It branched right and left, becoming narrower all the time. Uncle Bill began a stealthy creeping around the wooded bends. Sometimes ducks were there, sometimes not. Breeze shot wildly each time one rose. Sherry declared he killed two of those that fell. He may have, he didn’t know. Sherry may have just said so to encourage him.
This was a strange world to Breeze. Gray water, unfamiliar trees, long stretches of ripening marsh grass where odd-looking birds made outlandish cries as they passed.
Uncle Bill paddled steadily on with a measured stroke. Past islands lined with ranges of sand-hills where tall pines above the willows stood against the sky. Through channels choked with weeds where white cranes fed. Long streets of water, curving, dustless, houseless, settled only by light and shade and the images of trees and clouds and sun they faithfully reflected.
At a sudden “S-st” from Uncle Bill, Breeze looked at the low wooded hillside and glimpsed a doe, followed by her fawn. They had come
down to the water’s edge to drink. Sheer terror held them rigid for a brief instant and then both were gone.
“Jedus, Sherry,” Uncle Bill chided. “You could ’a’ got all two if you had ’a’ tried!”
“I didn’ want dem,” Sherry answered. “We’s done killed enough for one day. My mammy says if you kill too much o’ t’ings at a time you’ll git so you smell like death. I don’ want to. I kills a while and den I stops.”
Uncle Bill laughed, and the silence was so deep that his voice echoed and reechoed.
Breeze was glad the killing was over, for he’d rather hear the two men talk than to see Sherry kill.
The boat flowed evenly, almost silently, over the water’s smooth surface. Uncle Bill kept it close to the bank to avoid the full sweep of the current in the middle of the stream.
Great dark birds, startled by its passing so close to their homes, flew up out of the water with a loud flopping of wings, but there was little talk for the rest of the way
The water slipped swiftly past them. The small whirling circles made by Uncle Bill’s paddle widened until they reached the bank’s willowy edges where vines and bushes wound tight together, choking and strangling one another as they wrestled for a narrow foothold.
When Uncle Bill paused and cleared his throat Breeze knew he was going to ask Sherry a question.
“How come you don’ like April, here lately?”
“Who say I don’ like em?” Sherry answered.
“I say so.”
Sherry’s white grin was cold. Hard. His answer slow in coming.
“April’s legs is most too long fo’ de foreman of a big plantation like Blue Brook.”
“Wha’ you mean, son?”
“Dey kin tote him too far f’om home sometimes.”
“You mean April kin walk too far atter dark?”
“Yes, suh,” Uncle Bill sighed.
“Gawd is de one made ’em long. April ain’ had nothin’ to do wid dat. Gawd made you’ own not so short, Sherry. Don’ fo’git dat.”
Sherry said no more and Uncle Bill worked faster with his paddling.
The afternoon sun was a great red ball floating among thin smoky clouds. A light haze was creeping out from underneath the trees on the banks of the creeks. The shrill call of a cicada rose, swelled into quick breathless notes, faded away, then was taken up, answered by a mate. Yellow sunshine fell between lacy blue shadows cast by cypress trees. Dark green thickets crouched wet-footed, beside narrow winding paths of tide water.
The marshes were buried. All the sticky miry mud exposed by the morning was hidden. Through old flood-gates the rising water gurgled and bubbled into forsaken rice-fields. Grass, vines, trees, bushes rank, thorny and fetid, crowded and trampled one another, trying to gain a deeper, stronger foothold down in the broken dikes. Breeze gazed around him with long looks. As far as his eyes could see the earth was flooded. Wasted. Unsown. Abandoned.
Uncle Bill sighed. It made him sad to think how the tide had destroyed the work of years. At first it crept timidly in, hardly enough for its shallow trickling to show. But it grew bolder and stronger as it took back the rich land, acre by acre, until it owned them all. All!
The first white men who came here found the whole face of the earth covered with a thick forest growth of cypress and gum and ash, matted, tangled with powerful vines, and held by the tides that rose and fell as they do now, twice every day. Those men bought slaves, Breeze’s and Sherry’s and his own great-grandfathers and mothers, African people fresh from the Guinea Coast. The slaves diked and banked up the land so the forest growth could be removed, then they canaled and ditched and banked it into smaller well-drained tracts which were planted with rice. And rice made the plantation owners rich.
For years the lands were held by children and grandchildren of those first settlers, but nearly every old plantation home has been burned or sold or abandoned. The rich rice-fields are deserted. The old dikes and flood-gates that stood as guardians are broken and rotted. The tide rolls over all as it did before the land was ever cleared. It has taken back its own.
A whistle not far away gave a shrill ugly shriek. “Lawd, de boat is lated to-day! Wha’ time it is, Uncle Bill?”
Uncle cast a quick glance up at the sun. “A li’l’ after four, son.”
Sherry considered. “De boat ain’ but two hours lated. Pretty good, for dat old slow coach, enty?”
“Kin you tell de time, Breeze?”
“I kin tell if it ain’ cloudy, neither rainin’, in de daytime.”
Sherry said there were many other ways to tell; the tide runs true, rain or shine, morning-glories and lots of other flowers open and close by the time. Big Sue’s yard was full of four-o’clocks. They’d be wide open now. Birds change their songs with the turn of the afternoon. “Listen! You can hear a red-bird whistlin’ right now Dis morning he went so——” Sherry pursed his lips and mimicked a bar of bird song.
“Now e says to dis——” And he whistled a few notes that the bird himself echoed. “Dat bird knows it’s past four. A red-bird knows de time every bit as good as Uncle. Grass blades moves wid de day too. Dey leans dis way an’ dat to get de light. A lot o’ t’ings is got mo’ sense dan people, enty, Uncle?”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill declared. “If you watch t’ings close, you’ll git wise. Wise! Take Uncle Isaac; e can’ read readin’ or either writin’ but he knows more’n any school-teacher or either preacher dat ever came to Blue Brook.”
“Wha’ de name o’ de church Uncle Isaac b’longs to?”
Uncle Bill smiled gently “Po’ Uncle! E j’ined de white folks ch’uch yonder at de gate, long time ago. Dat’s named ’Piscopalian. Den e went to town on de boat an’ seen a white folks’ chu’ch named de
Presbeteerin. Uncle mixed de two togedder E calls hese’f a ’Piscoteerin’. Po’ Uncle! If e don’ mind, e’s gwine die in sin yet. You boys mustn’ wait too long to pray. Pray soon. Git religion young. It’s a heap easier den. I waited so long I mighty nigh missed gittin’ it myse’f. But I ruther have religion dan to have all Uncle Isaac’s knowledge. E kin put a ‘hand’ on anybody long as dey’s in dis world. E kin take a ‘spell’ off anybody long as dey’s dis side o’ de grave. But dat ain’ so much after all. Dis life is short. It’s de other side o’ Jordan we got to fix for. Dem sweet fields in Eden, yonder in Canaan’s land. Dat’s de country I’m aimin’ to reach. You boys must try to reach em too.”
“Uncle, you believe any white folks is in Heaben?”
“Gawd knows, son. White folks is mighty smart people. Dey knows a lot o’ tricks we don’ know.”
XIII
THE QUILTING
B day was clean Big Sue got up out of bed and went to the front door to look at the weather. The cool air was soft and still, trees and birds were asleep. The earth itself was resting quietly, for the sun tarried late in his bed. The stars had not yet faded from the clear open sky, but Big Sue was full of excitement. Only a few hours more and she must have everything ready at Maum Hannah’s for the quilting to commence.
Her own big room was almost large enough for a quilting, but it was better to go to Maum Hannah’s. The meeting benches could be brought in from under the house where they stayed, to make seats enough for the company, and Maum Hannah’s quilting poles stood always in the corner waiting for work to do. Plenty of pots sat on her hearth and two big ones out in the yard besides. Most of the plantation quiltings were held at Maum Hannah’s house, the same as the night prayer-meetings.
The raw rations were all ready to cook. Plenty of rice and cornmeal. White flour and coffee and sugar from the store. She’d pot-roast the ducks, and fry the fish, and make the turtle into a stew. She’d roast the potatoes in the ashes. The corn-pone would bake brown and nice in the big oven on the hearth. With some nice fat white-flour biscuit to eat last with the coffee, she would have enough to fill everybody full.
Breeze must get up and hustle! She called him and he tried to raise up his drowsy head, but sleep had it too heavy for his strength to lift. If she’d only let him take one more little nap! But she shook him soundly by the shoulder. To-day was the day for the quilting. He must get up and dress, and get some fat kindling wood to start a fire under both the big pots in Maum Hannah’s yard. He’d have to fetch water
