When I returned from North Dakota two years ago, I brought back a number of photos that the lovely wife’s mother had. They date from fifty or more years ago. I’ll be posting them to preserve them, and to point out how far we’ve come.

Shoe and leather repair shop
A. A. Stockstad, Milnor, N.D. 1934

Sign from wall of shop

Durkopp sewing machine in shop
(donated to the county museum in Foreman, N.D. some years ago)

The shoe shop was operated by the lovely wife’s great grandfather, grandfather and father. She has warm memories of playing in the shop while her father worked.

Via Done With Mirrors

Edmund Burke

In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your Colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English Colonies probably than in any other people of the earth, and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their minds and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.

Sometimes, it’s good to remember that people other than Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi once spoke about America.

My brother, who studies these things, points me to an ancestor who served in the Civil War. Of note, everyone had been sent home just before the Battle of Gettysburg. Their enlistments were up. and, all their losses were due to disease. That’s the way it was during the Civil War.

Edward H. Simmons was a private in Company G.

Update: Bloody hell! He made it three months and three days before he was sent home sick. He managed to live until 1889, and died of chronic bronchitis.

22nd Regiment, New Jersey Infantry

Organized at Trenton, N. J., and mustered in September 22, 1862. Left Skate for Washington, D. C., September 29, 1862. Attached to Abercrombie’s Provisional Brigade, Casey’s Division, Defences of Washington, to December, 1862. Patrick’s Command, Provost Guard, Army of the Potomac, to January, 1863. 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, 1st Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, to June, 1863.

SERVICE.-Duty in the Defences of Washington till November, 1862. Moved to Aquia Creek, Va., and duty there guarding railroad till January, 1863. Moved to Belle Plains and joined Army of the Potomac January 10, 1863. “Mud March” January 20-24. Duty at Belle Plains till April 27. Chancellorsville Campaign April 27-May 6. Operations at Pollock’s Mill Creek April 29-May 2. Battle of Chancellorsville May 2-5. Ordered home for muster out June, reaching Trenton June 22. Mustered out June 22, 1863.

Regiment lost during service 1 Officer and 40 Enlisted men by disease. Total 41.

National Park Service

skippy linked my Days of Yore page [THANKS!] and his post produced a nice comment from one of his frequent commenters. I’m going to post it, and my reply, becuase I think it’s a good discussion to ponder.

Thank you skippy for linking to these–it doesn’t go through Chuck’s usual heavy-on-bandwidth flag waving. Or thank you Chuck for omitting that!

We shouldn’t fall under the dark spell of the reactionaries who think they own history along with everything else, and will pretend that those were the good old days, and they were good because they follwed the quack theories they now claim are “traditional.” In the good old days there were a lot of leftists and radicals around; they took over some of these western and prairie states under the banner of the People’s Party; they supported the Workingman’s Party, Free-Soil, various labor movements including the radical Knights of Labor and the downright revolutionary Wobblies. It took WWI and the jailing of Eugene Debs and other very popular leader under various questionable war powers pretexts to stop the growth of the Socialist Party (and it wasn’t just city workers supporting it either.)

Naturally I know nothing of the politics of Chuck’s lovely wife’s ancestors a century ago. Just saying, because this _was_ America, the nation whose freedom people fought for, there _was_ a lot of freedom, more freedom of thought among many people than is shown today. Immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia were often distinguised by a progressive tradition which corresponded in the latter case to the general progress of their homeland, and in the former to the politics of people who lost out in struggles with the reactionary monarchists and came to America for a second chance at liberalism.

They were interesting people in those days, and they had interesting ideas too; some of the most interesting being those that did not find their way into policy! Karl Rove likes to hark back to the policies and programs in place under the Republicans controlled by boss Mark Hanna a hundred years ago, but this corporate machine was as hated and feared by diverse masses across the nation (in both major and all the minor parties) as Rove is today. Then as now, they ruled without too much regard to popular support, which they claimed, and did not hesitate to wave the flag in dubious causes, to override their opposition.

Mark Foxwell (the old Mark)

My reply:

Nice commentary, Mark, but I think you’re coloring the history a little too much. Norwegians and Germans weren’t fleeing tyranny so much as they were looking for opportunity that was, even then, failing in their European homelands. These were farmers, looking to farm. The anarchists and Reds ended up in the cities.

The folks were staunch Lutherans and Catholics. The photos show what they were proud of, their farms their families, and their livestock. This was a time when you could starve to death in America, or end up in a very real poorhouse.

I suspect that most of their politics was spent on ensuring they got the best price for their crops and that the costs of shipping goods to them were as low as possible. Oddly, no one I spoke to had ever heard of the Grange.

This was a time when everyone worked, and was expected to work. The radicalism that existed for these folks was the notion that a fair price ought to be paid for their crops and the costs of buying from the Sears catalogue ought to be as low as possible. They were at the tail end of a very long supply and demand chain controlled by the railroads. That was their politics.

These folks were very conservative churchgoers, low church style Lutherans and Catholics from the most hardcore Catholic areas of Germany. Their radicalism would today seem rather tame, even backward. The roots of modern liberalism may be found, in part, here but these people would not recognize modern liberalism as a social philosophy they could support. Their core beliefs revolved around the virtues of hard work and obligation. Obligation to family, and to neighbors.

Michele and others are very concerned that the divide between left and right in America will lead to another Summer of 68 this summer. I disagree.

Blogs reflect very little of American political life, or American life in general. One of the greatest errors that we bloggers can make is to believe that we are anything but a small, tiny minority of Americans. The other error being that everyone believe the way we do because all the bloggers we read agree with us.

Michele relates two acts of vandalism. We need to be careful that we don’t inflate that to two thousand acts by assuming that a small set of data is an accurate measure of the entire set.

The summer of 1968 has grown in myth and lore over the last 40 years. Everyone was there. Everyone protested. Everyone got high and naked and beaten by the police.

Not so.

The protests were widespread, but hardly nationwide. The vast majority of communities experienced no protests at all. Many of the protests consisted of the same people, over and over, place to place. Most young people did not protest. Most protests were peaceful.

Society was different then. Social changes contributed to the impact of the protests in ways that are not in existence now. Protests have been declining in numbers and in participation in the last year, not increasing as in 1968. There are no great social issues moving the masses. Freeing Mumia or Fair Trade Coffee just don’t cut it as issues. Most Americans aren’t going to rally to the cause of the oppressed Palestinians. There is only one issue, the War on Terror and the Liberation of Iraq.

Our military is all volunteer. Most of the returning soldiers bring home good stories of success and gratitude in Iraq. The general populace is not up in arms about this War. The images of the Day, September 11, are far too fresh in our minds. And most Americans see Saddam’s thugs as just another bunch of terrorists, no different than bin Laden’s.

The potential is there for violence at either party’s convention or during the election. One is not indicative of the other, however. Violence, if it comes, won’t be related to blogging, nor to the civility of discourse in blogging. Most of the rock throwers will never have heard of blogs. And you won’t see 100,000 people protesting at either convention. Other than a few thousand loons, no one gives a rat’s ass about being naked and getting high and beaten by the police at a political convention.

Blogs are the modern equivalent of the soapbox in the park. Anyone can get up and start talking. If you have something that people want to hear, you’ll draw a crowd. You’ll also get hecklers. It’s the price of the soapbox. Standing there, in the park called the Internet, you’ll draw a crowd. Some will heckle. Some might even throw eggs or rotten cabbages. Fist fights might break out, and feelings get hurt. It’s the price of freedom in the park.