I took my daughters to Colonial Williamsburg last month for a pseudo-school trip. The last time I was actually at Williamsburg was in 1989, the same year Kim and I got married. Much was exactly as I remembered it. It is fun to walk the grounds and see how life was lived in the 1700s. However, they have made a significant change to the place.
If you’ve been there, you know the general idea is that “this is Virginia in the middle 1700s.” You walk down one main street, seeing homes, taverns and buildings as they once were. Historians have worked over the years to properly restore the buildings, and the foundation that oversees the place is constantly tweaking and adding things. With the buildings, there are re-enactors who take on various roles of the citizens of the period. Many are real craftspeople who deal with things like weaving, blacksmithing and the like.
The time period is set before conflict emerged between the colonists and the mother country. Everyone happily says “God Save the King” and the British flag flies proudly. The change of Williamsburg is that at some point in recent years, they started putting on a series of vignettes of acting that reflect the city during the tumultuous time of 1763-1781—from the French and Indian War through the victory at Yorktown (only a few miles away from Williamsburg). During this two hour “living play,” the city’s actors reflect the period as it is during that time. The mood changes. Some people play Loyalists, but on the main, the spirit is one of revolution.
As I believe that we, as a country, are currently in the same exact sort of time period, with our collective society rushing headlong into conflict, as if it was were 1773 all over again, I was very interested to see the acting of this time. There was a very stirring reading of the Declaration of Independence. Another vignette was when an address by General Benedict Arnold after he led British troops into the town in the months before Yorktown. But the most impacting scene was the one dealing with tar and feathers.
Many Americans like to maintain the myth that the Revolution was all good, thus all the actors of the rebellion on “our side” being good.” In contrast, we like the mythology that the Civil War was only about slavery and thus the Southerners and the Civil War itself was all bad, thus the actors of rebellion (not on “our side”) are all bad.
In the vignette, we got to see a scene where a group of men drug a citizen out of a local tavern. These men were “soldiers” representing the colony, and “Sons of Liberty.” The “crime” of the man was free speech. He had shared his opinion that the “sons of liberty” were traitors to the country and that he hoped the government would come arrest them. For this “crime,” he was drug into the street and put through the mockery of a trial.
Though he loudly protested that they had no right to do this, they of course had the guns, and that “might makes right” fact made all the difference. Clearly he was guilty; he had said negative words about the rebellion, but try as he might to demand adherence to the right of free speech promised by the 1689 Bill of Rights, these other men were determined to punish him.
They were going to make an example out of him. Now, while this was going on, a huge crowd of us paying visitors were watching. Note, during the rest of the other vignettes, we all applauded at all the appropriate times, especially during the “Rah-rah” times of pro-America concepts being expressed. And, here, initially, the crowd was cheering the “soldiers,” but as the event went on, a hush began to really fall on the crowd.
For myself, while watching, all I could think about was how Japanese-Americans must have felt when they were similarly treated in early 1942. I realized that this vignette would have been exactly the same had the soldiers been wearing hoods and the “guilty” citizen had been a black man. Yet, for some reason, we honor these vigilantes because they represent our victorious revolution, while we vilify the other vigilantes. I was glad that the other people, probably most of them knowing no more of our history than my students, were suddenly filling the chill and the dread in the air.
After a few minutes, the soldiers concluded the trial and determined that the man must beg their forgiveness or face worse punishment. He declined, in which case, the leader decided that the only choice was “Tar and feathering.” As they drug the man towards a pole in which to tie him up, the actor really sold it. He started screaming and begging for help. I came very close to running into the crowd to confront the soldiers, but had to keep reminding myself that this was only a play.
It was terrifying.
In the end, they allowed him to choose open humiliation through begging forgiveness (I suppose the Foundation knew that it couldn’t really tar and feather an employee). The man was weeping and basically crawled back to the tavern. The soldiers loudly proclaimed their victory and walked off stage.
There was no clapping. Silence was around the group. Finally someone tried to start clapping to acknowledge the work of the actors, but in general, the response was weak. It was as if everyone had finally seen the terror of torture.
If I am right and we indeed are a few short years from the opening shots of our own great crisis that leads to citizen against citizen, we had better get ready. You had better understand what your words may cost you, and then decide if you are ready to pay that cost. More, we should determine now to defend the idea of each person having the right to free speech. You may not like “hate speech,” but you should defend someone’s right to say it.
As a country, we seem to have lost the ability to disagree with each other in a respectful way. That spirit of animosity and belligerence (don’t believe me–go read blog posts as liberal or conservative websites) will only get worse if we do move into a great crisis on par with the American Revolution. Once we move to that place, the chance to hopefully protect our natural rights will be gone. Today is the time, if there ever was a moment, when we each need to become more certain than ever to protect the liberties and rights of all people, even those with whom you disagree.