Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Know What Leadership Really Means!
Since my last two essays were very pessimistic about our future, I promise to be a bit more optimistic today! This doesn’t mean that the problems I had mentioned will go away any time soon. It’s just that I wish to see a glimmer of hope in all the mess.
A month ago I went on vacation for a couple of weeks driving south of the Mason-Dixon Line and seeing that famed southern hospitality for myself! I fulfilled one of my wishes and drove around Virginia visiting historic and scenic sights. We later drove to Atlanta, Georgia where the crape myrtle trees were in full bloom and saw some more sights there.
The first famous place we saw was Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home. The park was only a fraction of the size of Washington’s original estate, but one could still see the beautiful vistas and gardens that the famed general would have seen when he woke up. Looking at the buildings and grounds, one can easily say that the guy was rich! He also knew how to spend his money!
Wandering through Washington’s house, one saw the home of a country squire who just happened to be a famous general and war hero, and who also just happened to be the nation’s first president. The fact that Washington himself designed much of the house and the gardens impressed me. Then again, he did all this when he had more time after retiring from public life!
Next, we visited Colonial Williamsburg, a place that Washington and the other Founding Fathers from Virginia would have been familiar since it was their colonial capital. Located near Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Williamsburg preserved many of the colonial era’s buildings and made the ultimate theme park.
According to the guidebook, the time was frozen at 1774. America was still a British colony, but the stirrings of revolution filled the air. Many of the homes were not the size of Washington’s Mount Vernon, but that feeling of the English country squire pervaded here as well.
Impressive also was the fact that many a patriot had their first stirrings of public life in those streets! For those who may not know – or remember – these would be George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe – all four of whom would become president. Others in this impressive group include Patrick Henry, George Mason and George Wythe – the latter would be the lawyer who had brilliant apprentices in Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and John Marshall – one of the greatest Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
After a stint in Georgia, we then drove out to Charlottesville and saw the other great Presidential home – Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. Of all the places we visited, this was the most impressive! Like Washington at Mount Vernon, Jefferson designed and built Monticello according to his specifications. Unlike Washington, however, Jefferson put much of his own personality and brilliance into his home.
Even though Monticello was also a plantation with the feel of an English country manor, once one enters the house, one sees a different world. Jefferson put in many a mechanism from double-hinged French doors where both doors open simultaneously with one push to clocks that tell the day of the week as well as the time of day. He also had a contraption in his study that would write a copy of a letter just as he was writing it. (Remember that this was not just before Xerox copy machines, but it was even before typewriters with carbon paper! Triplicates anyone?)
Jefferson was also a spacesaver – something that impressed my wife a lot! For one thing, he placed his bed in between two rooms – his study and his parlor. His guest rooms also had the beds in alcoves within the walls giving the guest more room for sitting and moving. However, the most impressive part that I saw was the passageway that went underneath the house.
Hidden away from guests was a long passageway that went underneath the entire length of the home as well as extending on either side under a walkway deck. This area was where the real activity happened. Whenever Jefferson entertained guests, he would have the house servants bring whatever was needed from the passageway up to the home using pulleys and dumbwaiters. I saw an example of one where a wine bottle was going up the side of a fireplace mantle to be served in the dining room.
It seems that Jefferson didn’t want servants flitting around the main house. He preferred that their work was hidden away in the underground cellar. Which brings me to my main point – one of the main reasons why places like Mount Vernon, Williamsburg and Monticello worked was because of slavery. Without slaves, these places would have shut down years ago – or at least had their activity seriously curtailed.
As I walked through Mount Vernon and Monticello, I could see the minds of Washington and Jefferson. This was where they lived. Their ideas and their work were seen all around. However, I also saw the work of slave labor.
For a long time, all of these places used to ignore that aspect of the story of these stately homes. Now, the guides are more upfront about this aspect of the lives of these great men. (Yes! They are great men even though they weren’t perfect!) The guides would voluntarily explain the roles that the slaves played at these plantations.
In one of the ironies of history, the man who wrote that all men are created equal didn’t really follow that principle in action. It’s true that these great men owned slaves, and that the U.S. had slavery for a long time in its history. This was how it was when this country began. Yet, this isn’t where we are now.
Two decades after Thomas Jefferson died, a group of women (and some men) came together at Seneca Falls, New York and added to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence by stating that “all men and women are created equal.” It was the beginning of the women’s rights movement. These women weren’t out to overturn Jefferson’s words. They were just expanding upon them.
A couple of decades after that, in the midst of a civil war, Jefferson’s words would be used again by another president when he stated that the war would either expand the term “all men are created equal” or diminish them. As it turned out, the definition was expanded to include all of us – although the fulfillment of this would wait another century.
At this time, a descendant of slaves would speak in front of a statue of that same Civil War president - and within eyesight of Jefferson’s own statue in Washington, D.C. – echoing Jefferson’s words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” When I went to Atlanta, I visited this man’s home – now a national historic site – and just drank up the irony of it all.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted from America’s founding document in 1963, it mattered little to him that Jefferson was a slave-owner. What mattered were Jefferson’s words and the ideals that were behind them. This is what inspired Dr. King. It also inspired the women at Seneca Falls in 1848 – Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And, it inspired the president who held Jefferson’s words more dearly than anyone.
In another speech, Abraham Lincoln would again quote from the Declaration. This time the final words that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” echoed over a battlefield where many men had just perished to defend what they believed to be Jefferson’s ideals – both North and South. Again, as it turned out, the “Northern” definition – Lincoln’s definition – won out.
When we study the past, we shouldn’t always dwell on the foibles and weaknesses of great men. It’s easy to find such weaknesses. What we need to see is what made such men great. Men like Washington and Jefferson had plenty of weaknesses. Maybe their greatest sin was that they owned slaves and used them to build their grand estates. Yet, they also gave us ideals, and a country that was built on those ideals.
It’s very true that the United States started as a slave-owning society – including the North. It’s also true that, after the U.S. Civil War, the promise of equality went largely unfulfilled. Yet, many people didn’t give up hope. They looked back at the ideals that founded this country and they built on them.
At a time like the present where many of us are questioning whether the United States has abandoned those ideals, we should take a while and look back at where we started and where we are now and realize that we came very far with those ideals. This ought to give us hope that, someday, we will grow some more with those same ideals. Maybe we can salvage something good out of the disaster in our midst.
A month ago I went on vacation for a couple of weeks driving south of the Mason-Dixon Line and seeing that famed southern hospitality for myself! I fulfilled one of my wishes and drove around Virginia visiting historic and scenic sights. We later drove to Atlanta, Georgia where the crape myrtle trees were in full bloom and saw some more sights there.
The first famous place we saw was Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home. The park was only a fraction of the size of Washington’s original estate, but one could still see the beautiful vistas and gardens that the famed general would have seen when he woke up. Looking at the buildings and grounds, one can easily say that the guy was rich! He also knew how to spend his money!
Wandering through Washington’s house, one saw the home of a country squire who just happened to be a famous general and war hero, and who also just happened to be the nation’s first president. The fact that Washington himself designed much of the house and the gardens impressed me. Then again, he did all this when he had more time after retiring from public life!
Next, we visited Colonial Williamsburg, a place that Washington and the other Founding Fathers from Virginia would have been familiar since it was their colonial capital. Located near Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Williamsburg preserved many of the colonial era’s buildings and made the ultimate theme park.
According to the guidebook, the time was frozen at 1774. America was still a British colony, but the stirrings of revolution filled the air. Many of the homes were not the size of Washington’s Mount Vernon, but that feeling of the English country squire pervaded here as well.
Impressive also was the fact that many a patriot had their first stirrings of public life in those streets! For those who may not know – or remember – these would be George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe – all four of whom would become president. Others in this impressive group include Patrick Henry, George Mason and George Wythe – the latter would be the lawyer who had brilliant apprentices in Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and John Marshall – one of the greatest Chief Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
After a stint in Georgia, we then drove out to Charlottesville and saw the other great Presidential home – Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. Of all the places we visited, this was the most impressive! Like Washington at Mount Vernon, Jefferson designed and built Monticello according to his specifications. Unlike Washington, however, Jefferson put much of his own personality and brilliance into his home.
Even though Monticello was also a plantation with the feel of an English country manor, once one enters the house, one sees a different world. Jefferson put in many a mechanism from double-hinged French doors where both doors open simultaneously with one push to clocks that tell the day of the week as well as the time of day. He also had a contraption in his study that would write a copy of a letter just as he was writing it. (Remember that this was not just before Xerox copy machines, but it was even before typewriters with carbon paper! Triplicates anyone?)
Jefferson was also a spacesaver – something that impressed my wife a lot! For one thing, he placed his bed in between two rooms – his study and his parlor. His guest rooms also had the beds in alcoves within the walls giving the guest more room for sitting and moving. However, the most impressive part that I saw was the passageway that went underneath the house.
Hidden away from guests was a long passageway that went underneath the entire length of the home as well as extending on either side under a walkway deck. This area was where the real activity happened. Whenever Jefferson entertained guests, he would have the house servants bring whatever was needed from the passageway up to the home using pulleys and dumbwaiters. I saw an example of one where a wine bottle was going up the side of a fireplace mantle to be served in the dining room.
It seems that Jefferson didn’t want servants flitting around the main house. He preferred that their work was hidden away in the underground cellar. Which brings me to my main point – one of the main reasons why places like Mount Vernon, Williamsburg and Monticello worked was because of slavery. Without slaves, these places would have shut down years ago – or at least had their activity seriously curtailed.
As I walked through Mount Vernon and Monticello, I could see the minds of Washington and Jefferson. This was where they lived. Their ideas and their work were seen all around. However, I also saw the work of slave labor.
For a long time, all of these places used to ignore that aspect of the story of these stately homes. Now, the guides are more upfront about this aspect of the lives of these great men. (Yes! They are great men even though they weren’t perfect!) The guides would voluntarily explain the roles that the slaves played at these plantations.
In one of the ironies of history, the man who wrote that all men are created equal didn’t really follow that principle in action. It’s true that these great men owned slaves, and that the U.S. had slavery for a long time in its history. This was how it was when this country began. Yet, this isn’t where we are now.
Two decades after Thomas Jefferson died, a group of women (and some men) came together at Seneca Falls, New York and added to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence by stating that “all men and women are created equal.” It was the beginning of the women’s rights movement. These women weren’t out to overturn Jefferson’s words. They were just expanding upon them.
A couple of decades after that, in the midst of a civil war, Jefferson’s words would be used again by another president when he stated that the war would either expand the term “all men are created equal” or diminish them. As it turned out, the definition was expanded to include all of us – although the fulfillment of this would wait another century.
At this time, a descendant of slaves would speak in front of a statue of that same Civil War president - and within eyesight of Jefferson’s own statue in Washington, D.C. – echoing Jefferson’s words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” When I went to Atlanta, I visited this man’s home – now a national historic site – and just drank up the irony of it all.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted from America’s founding document in 1963, it mattered little to him that Jefferson was a slave-owner. What mattered were Jefferson’s words and the ideals that were behind them. This is what inspired Dr. King. It also inspired the women at Seneca Falls in 1848 – Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And, it inspired the president who held Jefferson’s words more dearly than anyone.
In another speech, Abraham Lincoln would again quote from the Declaration. This time the final words that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” echoed over a battlefield where many men had just perished to defend what they believed to be Jefferson’s ideals – both North and South. Again, as it turned out, the “Northern” definition – Lincoln’s definition – won out.
When we study the past, we shouldn’t always dwell on the foibles and weaknesses of great men. It’s easy to find such weaknesses. What we need to see is what made such men great. Men like Washington and Jefferson had plenty of weaknesses. Maybe their greatest sin was that they owned slaves and used them to build their grand estates. Yet, they also gave us ideals, and a country that was built on those ideals.
It’s very true that the United States started as a slave-owning society – including the North. It’s also true that, after the U.S. Civil War, the promise of equality went largely unfulfilled. Yet, many people didn’t give up hope. They looked back at the ideals that founded this country and they built on them.
At a time like the present where many of us are questioning whether the United States has abandoned those ideals, we should take a while and look back at where we started and where we are now and realize that we came very far with those ideals. This ought to give us hope that, someday, we will grow some more with those same ideals. Maybe we can salvage something good out of the disaster in our midst.
