Here's an interesting passage I came upon last night:
"The Republican Party ...has degenerated into a mere spoilsmen's camp. It has centralized political power and wasted hundreds of millions to maintain authority. It has centralized wealth, making a few millionaires and many tramps. It has made our government the creature of great monopolies. ..."
What's noteworthy is that these words were spoken 123 years ago, when a Philadelphia reporter interviewed a man who had joined the Republican Party in its nascent days in the 1850s and found out the man was switching allegiances to the Democrats.
It's a passage found in "In the Shadow of the Civil War," a new book by Nat and Yanna Brandt about an incident prior to the Civil War in which a prominent white Philadelphian went to jail for his role in helping a slave escape to freedom. The plight of Passmore Williamson, the 100 days he spent in jail and his shabby treatment by the justice system of the day became a cause celebre and helped to put a human face to the painful truth of slavery for many people.
It's a story told with passion and precision in the capable hands of the Brandts. I'm sorry I missed their reading at Brooks Memorial Library last week, but I'm glad to have read their book.
In the epilogue, the Brandts make an excellent case for the study of history and the relevance past events have on our own times. Slavery's powerful undercurrents, the Brandts write, still exert their pull today — evident in the ongoing struggles we have over race. "In that sense, slavery survives, omnipresent, the subtext of today's racism," the book concludes.
And Passmore Williamson's comments on the Republican Party have a certain ring to them, too. Don't they?