Lessons from 1837

Guest Post by Freed Radical

The most amazing thing happened over the weekend while the spouse and I were planting sweet potatoes in one of our gardens. I say one of our gardens because we are people of white privilege, and white privileged people obviously have multiple gardens. (But who says I’m white?) Anyway, two hours into the three hours of our planned one hour dirt workout I saw something shiny on the ground. It looked like a dime and I picked it up. The coin is pictured in the lead photo and turns out to be an 1837 capped bust half dime, mostly silver. For those readers who have abandoned racist mathematics, a half dime has a face value of five cents. This coin is 184 years old! Unfortunately, in this condition it is only worth about 60 bucks, but that works out to some 3.9% interest per annum since Martin Van Buren. Not bad compared to todays rates.

My find got me thinking about what the country was like in 1837, so I did some digging. Here is a brief outline.

• The Supreme Court was expanded from seven to nine justices. The court has had numerous adjustments in the number of sitting justices over the history of our country, and the Democrat’s latest gurglings about packing the court are nothing new.

• Texas was recognized as an independent republic. And there is a movement today to again make Texas an independent republic. You go girl.

• Michigan became the 26^th state. Imagine playing a Gretchen Whitmer video for those Michigan pioneers of 1837. Would they believe for a minute that she’s a future governor of their state, what with those destructive lockdown policies? Just her photo would make them support The Republic of Michigan. “We respect the wisdom of our descendants for requiring face coverings for some people.”

• Chicago became incorporated as a city in Illinois, and right away 23 blacks were shot in the projects on the south side. No, wait, I’m getting my history confused. Those figures are from, well, any recent weekend.

• Blacks in Canada were given the right to vote. All two hundred of them. Have you been to Canada and noticed how white it is? I suppose that was the first Canadian virtue signal. White guilt, eh?

• Blacksmith John Deere created a steel plow and founded a company to manufacture it. The terms and conditions for a plow sale specified that Deere maintained ownership of all software components contained therein, heretofore and forthwith, enuring to the benefit of the company, prohibiting service by anyone but a Deere authorized facility, or their designee.

• The Panic of 1837 saw New York City banks fail. That sounds familiar. They were apparently not too big to fail, but also not smart enough to succeed. “President Van Buren blamed the crisis on the easy availability of credit and rampant speculation.” That could not happen again, could it? Check out this good article on the Panic. Take note of the mentions of paper money and how easily and quickly it became debased by the very people who issued it. But we are smarter than they were in 1837, aren’t we?

Truth is, this five cent coin I found in the dirt is worth more today than all the paper money printed in 1837. After 184 years, with probably 150 of those years buried in the dirt, it still holds about $1 in silver melt value. That paper money is today worth zero as a currency.

• Elijah Lovejoy was an Illinois printer and abolitionist, and he was killed by a pro-slavery mob while protecting his press, which had been destroyed several times before. Now wait a minute, I thought that all white people are racist, but this guy was a serial printing abolitionist. He must have been totally consumed with white guilt to allow his press to be destroyed time after time, finally losing his white life not mattering, to a bunch of white people. (Wikipedia has a long article about Lovejoy, but since it’s on Wikipedia I’m not sure if the information is correct.)

We think that slavery’s end in America came with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. However, some northern states had abolished slavery just after the time of the Declaration. By 1837, the importation of slaves had been outlawed for 29 years. England substantially banned slave trade in its empire in 1833.

Most slavery that exists today is perpetrated by Africans and Asians in the areas of forced labor, including child labor, and sex trafficking, including children and even babies, and organ harvesting. Unfortunately, slavery has only been symbolically abolished in the USA, and has undergone a transformation from a literal ball and chain to an economic ball and chain. From our perch in history it certainly appears that the Federal Government was not looking to abolish slavery in 1863, but expand it to all peoples, and get their cut of the action (that’s called socialism). If the southern plantation owners had just mailed in those IRS slave registration forms, and CDC slave vaccination cards, they would still be in business today, probably the beneficiaries of multiple “stimulus” programs. Opportunity missed.

Born in 1837 were Grover Cleveland, J. P. Morgan, Dwight Moody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Alois Hitler, father of Adolf Hitler. Who will be born in 2021 to leave a mark on humanity? Perhaps the person to lead America back to freedom? Or the Antichrist?

What if you could take a time machine back to 1837 and, let’s say, edit the list of births and deaths? Would you? No, you’d probably be stuffing your pockets full of half dimes, and burning piles of paper money to run your steam powered time machine to return to 2021 as a rich person. I would, too. If Hitler’s father had met an early demise there would have been some other evil fool to sucker the German people into genocide. Well, it’s happening here, isn’t it? Nothing special about the Germans (besides good beer).

This exploration, as I suspected while examining that dirty coin, is a study in cycles, and no matter how the packaging changes the heart of man is always the same. Cycles, baby, cycles, whether economics or the Republic of Texas. And while there are cycles, and our hearts do not fundamentally change, often the expressions of our hearts become more distressing with time. Nowhere in my reading on 1837 did I see anything about people being gender confused, mutilating their genitals, choosing their pronouns, dressing up as transvestites and indoctrinating third graders, flying presidents to pedophile islands, or killing their own children in abortion clinics. (Enterprising readers will note that the domain ThingsThatDidNotHappenIn1837.com is available.) Those distressing items are peculiar to our cycle, and sadly are an expression of the hearts of people in our society today.

Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to America in 1831, from France, to study the new republic. He said, “History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” This man lived through the copy, the cycle, we are examining. His accounts are very insightful and I recommend the record of his trip and observations, Democracy in America. He highlighted many of the pitfalls we have dived into headlong in just the last century.

But there are people who deny these cycles and expect things to continue, business as usual. This is called normalcy bias. Every time I hear Dave Ramsey on the radio telling some young person to park their money in a good growth stock fund, I cringe. Is this guy not seeing we are approaching a brick wall? There are “financial advisers” telling my kids to do the same thing, selling them mutual funds from which they earn a commission. I’m screaming, “This ride is about to crash… don’t put your money in stocks!” Then I roll out my under-appreciated shtick featuring the Venezuelan financial adviser.

“Yez, we know things are not looking too good now… Your investments are in the toileta. Your currency is worthless. You have no yobs. There are riots in the streets and you wipe yourself with bolivars. And I know, I know, the constables come in the middle of ze night and take your family members away to dark hell hole preezons where they die horrible deaths. But deez tings, dey go in cycles.”

He’s right, you know. They do go in cycles. But you have a tremendous latitude in participation. Parts of those cycles are deadly. There were food riots in 1837 and there will be food riots again. My last article was about preparing for the terminal throes of America while not being terminal yourself. All that applies today as it did in 1837.

One reference above stated that since America was mainly agricultural in 1837, many people avoided the worst of the downturn, and most of the difficulty was limited to the cities. That’s going to be the case somewhat this time, but only if you disconnect from the system, build community, and learn how to live a free life with modern conveniences optional. Can you do that for me, please?

Don’t get caught by a mob wanting to kill you for advocating freedom, like Elijah Lovejoy. You are smarter than that! Skip that part of the cycle.

And please bury a few 2021 dimes out back in your yard for some white privileged gardener to find in 184 years, and write an article about the impending demise of America 2.0. Cycles, baby, cycles.

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