5 historic trails link multiple sites in the region, and 3 scenic trails are park units. Here’s a quick summary in case you are interested in exploring the trails in the region.
In Maryland, the trail runs from the Chesapeake Bay along the north side of the Potomac past Thomas Stone, Piscataway, and Fort Washington, loops all the way around DC, runs past Clara Barton, joins the C&O Canal towpath, passes Antietam and runs out to the farthest west corner of the state.
This privately managed affiliate site is one of the best revolutionary war sites in the Carolinas. On over 100 acres of battlefield and early townsite, they have reconstructed Cornwallis’ HQ, one of the redoubt forts (above), a historic tavern, and many other buildings that bring life to history. While separately managed, there’s also a visitor center next door that explains the whole course of the war in the Carolinas, which I will cover in a separate post next month.
Camden was on the Kings Road from Charleston across the low country into the back country. Here it joined with Native American trading routes and the Great Wagon Road from the northeast to Georgia. The British were determined to manage their colonies inland, and not just occupy coastal cities. They also wanted to control trade, tax the rich, hire Native Americans to fight for them, and raise militias of loyalists. Cornwallis fortified Camden as his supply hub.
General Gates, of Saratoga fame, was tasked with attacking Cornwallis. The Battle of Camden in August 1780 was a disaster for the Patriots. Gates put inexperienced troops on his left, who were wholly unprepared to meet the best British troops Cornwallis put on his right, as usual. The French General Baron de Kalb fought to his death at Camden. Gates withdrew to North Carolina. He was later replaced by Nathaniel Greene.
Many of the losses were due to diseases like dysentery, and there’s a detailed exhibit in Cornwallis’ HQ, where a docent answered my various questions. Captured prisoners from British victories in the area were often initially held in Camden and then marched to Charleston where they were imprisoned on ships in dangerously unsanitary conditions.
In 1781, Nathaniel Greene, having recruited Catawba warriors and run a cross country guerrilla campaign disrupting the British, returned to Hobkirk’s Hill near Cambden in April for a rematch. While the British won the day, they decided they could no longer defend Cambden and retreated to Charleston. Cornwallis had already moved north on his way to establish a new base at Yorktown.
This affiliate site memorializes a key Revolutionary War battle in Georgia in mid February 1779. The British had been moving freely through Georgia with some 600 loyal colonial forces, until 350 Patriots came across them west of Augusta at Kettle Creek. The smaller force of Georgians and South Carolinians had the element of surprise and attacked, under the command of Andrew Pickens. The British quickly climbed a hill and sought cover, but their leader was shot and mortally wounded. Fearing they were being surrounded, the British retreated back across the creek in some disorder and most escaped. This battle was a significant defeat for the British who lost 3 times as many men, including their Colonel Boyd. The markers above are cenotaphs, placed about 60 years ago, in memory of American veterans of the battle who are buried elsewhere. There are several hiking loops in the woods to give you a sense of the hilly, difficult terrain, with crosses marking actual graves.
[Good news! I will philosophize less often for the rest of the year. So when I miss a Thursday post, you will have more time to think and act on your own.]
Moral thinking, unlike philosophy, demands action. Figuring out the right thing to do and why, has no purpose if nothing is actually done. While in some cases doing nothing is the best course, moral thinkers benefit from a bias to act. Our focus on solving a moral issue builds a moral case which most frequently contains a moral imperative that compels people to effect change.
Sometimes it is too late to prevent a tragedy, but moral thinking then demands that we learn from what happened, that we speak for the dead and that we act both to prevent any recurrence and to hold those responsible to account. In 1889, the Johnstown Flood killed 2,208 people. For their own convenience, a small group of extremely wealthy industrialists modified a private dam unsafely, without paying to reinstall pressure relief valves & pipes or reconfigure spillways. Due to weak liability laws on negligence, none of the members were ever held accountable. But liability laws were changed after the tragedy, due to public pressure, and they are now more strict. We all benefit when we learn from our mistakes.
There is a new, dangerously foolish and ignorant policy now being applied to our national parks, that asks citizens to report any national park unit that provides information that is “negative about either past or living Americans”. Apparently, those in power view the purpose of national park units to be solely positive propaganda outlets designed to boost patriotic fervor.
If you go to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, you will learn about two Americans, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who committed a heinous act of domestic terror. Must the affiliate park unit now cease saying anything negative about them? Should the 168 bombing victims—including 19 children—memorialized there now be forgotten, because leadership in DC will no longer allow the story of the bombing to be told fully? Must future students lose the opportunity to learn about this tragedy and the anti-Semitic, white supremacist ideology behind it?
On “December 7th, 1941–a date that shall live in infamy—”, 2,403 Americans were killed in a sneak attack on Oahu by the Imperial Japanese Navy. 21 US ships were sunk or damaged in the devastating battle at Pearl Harbor. Are we no longer allowed to remember that critical loss? Is it verboten to study the mistakes made in lining up 8 battleships in a small harbor on the eve of war? If you go to Hawaii and visit the USS Arizona are we no longer permitted to recognize the sacrifice of the 900+ crew members still entombed on the ship underwater? Are they now to be considered “suckers” and “losers”?
On July 17th, 1944, 320 people were killed in a munitions accident at Port Chicago in California. Rather than learn from their mistakes, the US Navy protected the white officers in charge and imprisoned the African American workers. Less than 4 months later, almost 1,000 were killed in an extremely similar accident at a US Navy base in New Guinea. More people die when the lessons of history are ignored.
The US Army lost twice at Manassas during the Civil War, and the first loss could only be described as grossly incompetent. Are the park rangers no longer permitted to criticize the poor military tactics of the Union Army leaders there?
For that matter, are they still allowed to discuss the cause of the Civil War, slavery? Perhaps all the Civil War battlefields and military cemeteries should be paved over and signs put up saying, “nothing bad involving Americans ever happened here”? If current leadership insists that there were “fine people on both sides”, perhaps the Civil War should be renamed the Civil Conversation?
And are Civil Rights and race riot memorials to close? What about the history of equal education? If no Americans ever did anything negative, what was Brown v. Board about? Why did Eisenhower have to send in the 101st Airborne to integrate Little Rock Central High? Why did so many people walk from Selma to Montgomery? Why were four little girls bombed at a church in Birmingham? Who was MLK? The refusal to make any moral judgement against any Americans, past or present, means that we must accept murderers, terrorists, insurrectionists, and racists and not criticize them, even if they are the most evil of criminals. Must the KKK’s violent history be respected, while massacres of Native Americans must be erased?
What greater affront to moral thinking can there be than to deliberately erase our history?
Authoritarian Kings once demanded that they be portrayed in the most flattering light. Then King Charles I of England was executed by a Parliamentarian revolutionary named Oliver Cromwell. A famous portrait artist had drawn a flattering portrait of Cromwell, before inviting him to sit for a more complete portrait. Cromwell saw the other picture and famously demanded that the artist paint him as he really was, “warts and all”.
Whitewashed history is a lie, which is designed to mislead us. Real events must be studied as accurately as possible in order to inform us. Every generation must go back to history to gather the lessons they need to inform their moral thinking for the decisions that must be made tomorrow.
Before the 4th of July tomorrow, let me point out a few highlights from the 23 national park sites in our nation’s capital. Although this was my first region completed, I’ve returned several times for reopened exhibits and other sites. There’s lots to see and do in this compact city.
Best historic site: the Frederick Douglass home has much to teach us about the 19th century Civil Rights leader. (The recently refurbished Belmont-Paul house is also well worthwhile).
Best park: Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens is beautiful, especially from lotus & lilies blooming in summer, with birds and reptiles and more to see all year.
Best presidential memorial: the Lincoln Memorial, with French’s statue inside, overlooking the reflecting pool outside.
Best tour: the White House. Contact your Congressperson and get a ticket.
Best view: top of Washington Monument. I know it’s a pain to get tickets, that it’s cramped and the windows are small. But Washington hired L’Enfant to design the city & mall, and from here it all makes sense.
Best war memorial: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial takes you beneath the green grass to grieve.
This is a new national monument on the 18th century Carlisle Army Barracks in Pennsylvania, which also hosts the Army War College and the Army Heritage and Education Center. The base is currently open to visitors on weekdays, but there are no park site visitor services yet.
“All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”
Richard Pratt, founder & superintendent
From 1879 to 1918, towards the end of its War on Native America, the US Army established a boarding school here, a re-education camp far from native reservations. There are only a few Native American graves left on base, as many were repatriated by law after 1990, but otherwise, not much remains of the school that once set the standard for ‘assimilation’. Around 8,000 children from 150 tribes were taken from their parents and shipped off to this school—as happened at other schools across the country—for the expressed purpose of ending their culture. Considered a step forward from massacres, forcing natives to become white was the primary goal from day one. While today, many such students might gain PhDs in Native American studies in recognition of the value of their cultural contributions to our civilization, prejudice meant there was practically only one way for these students to excel: on the field.
Unlike college admissions or job hiring, there is no effective way to cheat by race in sports like track & field. Once allowed to compete, the results are judged fairly, regardless of color. The field above is still known as ‘Indian Field’, but officially it is named after Frank MT Pleasant Jr, a student—and member of the Tuscarora Nation—here for 12 years around 1900, known for his prowess in football and track. In 1908, he placed 6th in two events at the Olympics in London. He earned his degree in 1910 at the neighboring Dickinson College, the first native to do so. He served honorably in WWI and later played semi-pro football. While he and other athletes like baseball hall of famer ‘Chief’ Bender are remembered here, they’re all overshadowed by another classmate.
In 1907, a Sac & Fox youth was walking by the track above when he stopped to watch the high jumpers. He had been to many different schools growing up, and he had run away from most. This was his second time here; the first cut short by the death of his father. Jim Thorpe walked up to the bar and jumped 5’9”—a school record—in his street clothes. He would excel at virtually every sport he tried: ballroom dancing, baseball, boxing, handball, lacrosse—a native sport—, and tennis. The football coach, ‘Pop’ Warner, didn’t want his school’s track star injured, but Jim asked for a chance to play. He ran through the opposing team back and forth, and then said, “coach, nobody is going to tackle Jim”. And nobody did. Jim set all kinds of college football records, rushing almost 2,000 yards a season, scoring hundreds of points with over 25 touchdowns a year, according to incomplete records.
At the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, Jim Thorpe competed in the two most challenging competitions, the pentathlon and the decathlon, which require mastery of 5 and 10 different events respectively: 100 m, 400 m, long jump, high jump and shot put for the pentathlon and the same five plus the discus, javelin, 110 hurdles, pole vault and 1500 m for the decathlon. Despite someone stealing his shoes before the competition, Thorpe found two mismatched shoes and still won 8 of 15 events outright, winning the gold medal in both combined events. Later, Thorpe would go on to play professional baseball, basketball and football. Considering how well-rounded he was, in my opinion, Jim Thorpe is the greatest athlete in history.
So, if you want to take a lap on the same track where Jim Thorpe began his athletic career, bring a map and your real id and go to the base visitor center between 10 am and 3 pm on a weekday—not a Federal holiday—and get your criminal background check. But consider the cultural cost of Indian schools, the families broken, the languages silenced, the oral histories lost, the natural and medicinal secrets forgotten, and the songs and dances not taught, just so white people would feel more comfortable with Native Americans. Fortunately, the Sac and Fox Nation survives in Oklahoma—they were removed from the Great Lakes region in the 1870s—and many other tribes still thrive today as well.
Some rational thinkers have trouble understanding moral thinking. It’s not that they’re immoral (or ‘against morals’), but purely rational thinking is amoral (literally, ‘without morals’). Often the two ways of thinking align and arrive at the same result, but since they are fundamentally different, they can, do and should diverge on many issues. A corporation must act in the financial interest of its shareholders, and while issuing a press release about a modest charitable act may only indirectly further that interest, the goal remains strictly mercenary: to improve the public image of the company to sell more widgets. It’s foolish to expect a corporation to act against their financial interests, voluntarily.
Frequently, national park units begin with regular folks who are interested in preserving some bit of history or nature for future generations, like some high schoolers and others who decided that the story of their town’s concentration camp should be remembered. These are acts of charity, volunteering time or money to provide a needed public service. Later, eventually, politicians follow the example set by their constituents, but in a great many parks, the origin story comes down to the generosity and foresight of a few, regular people who cared enough to do something good. Often, the work of some of our most moving sites come down to single, individual caretakers, like the Reverend Paul Carter at Harriet Tubman’s or Paul Cole at Kate Mullany’s home. Clear, moral thinking is what drives such devotion to public service.
On the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes visit sites that seem particularly designed to serve the interests of wealthy, neighboring property owners. Eugene O’Neill’s house in California and the Green Springs in Virginia seem to be examples of this false charity. If the reason you support a park next door is primarily the rational self-interest of improving your property values, and you are not interested in encouraging members of the general public to visit the site, then you are thinking rationally and not morally. I can think of examples in every region of the country where folks seem to go out of their way to preserve their historic neighborhoods for their own interests, instead of the general public. Sometimes it’s impossible to park, park roads are left in poor condition to dissuade drivers, signage is poor or even misleading, and fences and gates block walking paths that once were open to all.
I believe that the definition of charity requires that the recipient be “needy”. Unfortunately, the US tax code has a far broader definition for tax-exempt organizations, one with plenty of loopholes.
“The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”
That means that a church that primarily benefits its pastor financially is exempt, for example. An elite private school, offering horseback riding or sailing, need not admit the poor to enjoy being tax free. If the beneficiaries are primarily needy folks, then I believe that our tax policies should not burden those organizations. But when the beneficiaries all own multi-million dollar homes and go out of their way to restrict public access to historic sites or public monuments, then I think they are benefitting from federal designations or public tax dollars unfairly. I love the symphony, opera and ballet, but if the organizer is tax exempt, like Wolf Trap, then I expect them at least to make some tickets available to needy people, like Wolf Trap below does.
If there were requirements that a minimum percentage of the people who benefit from the services offered by tax exempt organizations be low-income, then we would see a dramatic increase in free field trips from schools in poor communities to beautiful and important places in wealthy communities. And I believe that would be an excellent use of tax dollars.
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