On the promise of the United States of America on Inauguration Day
This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
-DJT
One hundred years ago today, Sylvia, my grandmother, arrived in these United States. On arrival she swore to respect our laws. She was married ten years later and became a citizen four years after that.
History from a safe distance is interesting to read about but how painful to actually live through. Sylvia escaped world shattering events in the small village Kupel, Russia.Things were bad and her family knew were only going to get worse. Jews had been welcomed in this once Polish territory Jewish residents were seen by some rulers as a catalyst for economic development. Jews were deemed unwelcome when that land fell under Russian rule. So Sylvia emigrated from a village in present day Ukraine (at that time, Soviet Russia) to New York City.
As a citizen she swore to uphold the principles of the U.S. Constitution and preserve the good order and happiness of the United States. She lived twenty years in America. She died giving birth to a stillborn child on New Years Eve 1941 in New York City. I never met her.
At the same time the entire population of Kupel were murdered by the Nazis on September 21, 1942. Her death was tragic but how much more tragic if she had never made a perilous journey but died by a Nazi death squad.
America was settled and shaped by highly motivated Europeans.
Here are some less well known examples of voluntary immigrants who are outlined in Commons' Races and immigrants in America, written at Ellis Island at around the time of Sylvia's arrival, starting with the Scotch-Irish. These protestant settlers dispossessed the Irish in Ireland. They established a free and self reliant society built on Irish backs and bones. Protected by English guns and firm in their property rights and religious freedom.
That is, until they were not.
After more than a century of settlement Scotch Irish were surprised to find their Presbyterian religion proscribed, their self-rule terminated, and their leases extinguished. There was no Scotland for this new race to return, and so they sailed west to settle the New World.
Another surprising source of new Americans, Austria had made a grand bargain with the Hungarian lords. In exchange for loyalty to the Emperor, the Slavic lands would be ruled by Hungarians. Hungarian misrule drove Slovenes, Croats and many others to the green pastures of the North America.
As mentioned above, Jews were subjected to frequent state and popular violence across eastern Europe. They were perceived to unfairly compete with local populations in all manner of business and were felt to blame for the injustice of the modernising world. Thus Russia. Thus Austria.
The stifling tyranny of the old world drove the vigorous to freedom.
Let us not waste their sacrifices by thinking this nation is a joke.
Put ourselves back in time and appreciate that America was not just the framers and the founders, but the believers and the doers.
Many of those doers from elsewhere were raising their families to be American families.
Their children are today's Americans. All of us owe our forebears the respect to uphold the principles of the U.S. Constitution.
Even if things get worse. That responsibility remains.
Immigrants from 300 years ago were certainly different from immigrants 100 years ago. Today's immigrants are different too. But all are largely driven by the desire to be free. The desire to be an American.
Notes:
Commons, John R. 1915. Races and immigrants in America. New York: Macmillan Co.
Livermore, G. ,1862. An historical research respecting the opinions of the founders of the republic on Negroes as slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers. Boston: Printed by J. Wilson and son.
Yad Vashem: Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority. n.d. https://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/index.asp?cid=751
Ancestry.com (Firm), MyFamily.com, Inc, and ProQuest (Firm). 2005. Ancestry. http://www.ancestrylibrary.com/.
On the Scotch Irish: one could argue that Slavery was a dying institution at the beginning of the American experiment. Its brutality and costs were slowly suffocating the institution in it's original homeland, Virginia. The Scotch Irish breathed new life into the institution of slavery, aggressively expanding into the new southern states. That is not to blame them for the institution but to recognize that there are occasionally groups who collectively have a similiarly outsized impact on history.
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