Newsletter #01.1 – [click images for links] – 07/17/2023

Edward Coles’ Natal Universe

Edward Coles was born into a slave holding family, but don’t hold that against him. He was born on a Friday, 10 days before Christmas and 10 years after the U.S. Continental Congress endorsed Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Edward’s flag still bore 13 stars and stripes but had yet to be called the Betsy Ross Flag… a misnomer, according to one current source.¹

Though Edward’s nation was a decade old, its federal capital was a moveable feast. So on January 24, when Edward was 4 years old, President Washington “issued a proclamation directing that a survey of a ten mile square, within… the District of Columbia, be made and Major Andrew Ellicott was designated to…”² do it. However Ellicott could not hire anyone with enough experience in astronomy to assist with the survey for 3 or more months and time was of the essence.

Benjamin Banneker, was a landowning, freeborn son of free, African-American parents. By Banneker’s 60^th year, 1791, he enjoyed reputations as farmer, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and writer³ and Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson advised Ellicott to employ him. This is confirmed by Jefferson’s August 30, 1791 letter to the Marquis de Condorcet….

“I am happy to be able to inform you that we have now in the United States a negro, the son of a black man born in Africa, and of a black woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable Mathematician. I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new federal city on the Patowmac,⁴ and in the intervals of his leisure, while on that work, he made an Almanac for the next year, which he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I inclose to you… He is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the want of talents observed in them is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends.”⁵

Nevertheless this educated, “All men are created equal” founding “father,” who’d claimed to “be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence so multiplied…” only released Sally’s children, children he “fathered,” from their degradation. The others, including his dead wife’s half-sister, Sally, were kept degraded beyond his death. Only then did his “legitimate” daughter allow her by-blood Aunt Sally to leave Monticello, I hope with more than the clothes on her back. But with Jefferson’s enormous debts and descending creditors, who knows?

Yet the hagiographies of Jefferson, Washington and the rest of the founding slavers… (learn why red dots cover the faces by clicking the image)… these founders’ hagiographies have obscured the stories of those men who either freed their own slaves, never owned any humans and/or were or became Founding Abolitionists. Or maybe it was the Dixiecrats, a.k.a. Southern Democrats, of my own lifetime’s history, who obscured all emancipators’ stories except Abraham

Lincoln’s before jumping the broom into the Republican Party at the Pied Piper of 20 Mule Team Borax’s⁶ irresistible Presidential campaign call, “Let’s make America great again.”⁷

Of the 56 signers, only 47 are shown in John Trumbull’s 1818 oil painting “Declaration of Independence,” partially shown above. And only 13 of those 47 did not own slaves. I said “only” 13, but that number seems a continual part of our nation’s story, 13 original States and 13 stripes on all flags but one. The 15 Stars and 15 Stripes flew when Edward Coles left The College of William and Mary at his dying father’s call and when my play, “Edward Coles: From Boy To Man” begins. The image at left is of the very flag (before restoration), that inspired Francis Scott Key’s “Star Spangled Banner,” during the War of 1812. It continued flying over Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore, while Edward Coles was secretary for the slave holder, President James Madison.

So what was Edward Coles’ path, after growing up with slaves at his beck and call, that kept him immune to the thoughts of his times and of his parents? And what kept him from financial ruin, as too many men who followed their manumitting consciences were ruined, when their neighbors and associates refused to do business with the likes of them? If your inquiring mind needs or simply wants to know, mark July 24, 7:30pm on your calendar and copy Merely Writers’ Zoom link, https://gmc-edu.zoom.us/j/89505952565?pwd=c1ZOWGtuTGU4Q092cDJ3akEreUJjQT09

Meeting ID: 895 0595 2565, Passcode: 123456.

And if you’re not on my emailing list, click the image, below and sign up… today… before you forget.

And happy belated National Flag Day! It was last Wednesday, June 14 as it has been since that Act of Congress on August 3, 1949 made June 14, 1950 our first National Flag Day.⁸ Next year, 2024. will be its 74^th celebration, so get ready! And happy upcoming 4th of July! And if you read this, today, happy first day of summer

1.    “Betsy Ross Likely Didn’t Sew the First U.S. Fl5ag,” History, July 1, 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/betsy-ross-likely-didnt-sew-the-first-us-flag.

2.   Bedini, A. “Benjamin Banneker and the Survey of the District of Columbia, 1791,” n.d. https://boundarystones.org/articles/rchs_1969.pdf.

3.    “Benjamin Banneker | Letter to Jefferson, Clock, Almanac, & Facts | Britannica.” Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Banneker.

4.    Old Spelling.

5.    “Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to Condorcet, 30 August 1791.” University of Virginia Press. Accessed May 24, 2023. http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-22-02-0092.

5.    .Boraxo Commercials With Ronald Reagan Part 2 of 2, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRqRmjbseqk.

6.    “List of U.S. Presidential Campaign Slogans.” In Wikipedia, May 25, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_U.S._presidential_campaign_slogans&oldid=1157023282.

7.    Military.com. “Flag Day.” Accessed June 17, 2023. https://www.military.com/flag-day.

8.    Schwarz, Philip J., ed. Gabriel’s Conspiracy: A Documentary History. Carter G. Woodson Institute Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/deathliberty/gabriel/index.htm.