Posted on 09/03/2007 5:18:38 PM PDT by armymarinedad
After watching a commercial using several celebrities promoting the organization Save Ellis Island I goggled save Ellis Island. Second from the top is a website sponsored by Arrow named We Are Ellis Island followed by the statement “Save This Great National Monument. Help Preserve America’s Birthplace” America’s Birthplace? With all due respect America was here when Ellis Island was built!
Refereeing to the immigration processing facility as the Birthplace of our Country is a huge slap in the face to all of the work, blood, and effort that was put forth during the true birth of our Nation. Forgetting the first two hundred seventy years of our Nation’s history also conveniently dismisses our Christian roots starting with the arrival of the Mayflower.
Coming from a family who debated in the House of Burgess about the birth of our Nation and followed that debate with loss of life, I take great umbrage with dismissing our true roots. Maybe the mindset of dismissing the first century of our Nation is why so many Americans take our constitution so lightly. Forgetting how America was born and then almost split asunder by a Civil War causes one to forget just what so many talk about when we speak of the “American Dream”. What Arrow is promoting is giving taking advantage of a birth and calling it their own.
Ellis Island is an important part of our History but let’s not forget our entire two hundred seventy year history prior to Ellis Island. Our forefathers gave a lot in order for immigrants to blend into American society. We were born for Religious Freedom, to allow our citizens to become successful with hard work, and give us all the right to life, and liberty. Arriving in a ship to a Nation already forged is an honor not a birthright. You are here due to hospitality of a Nation of people who had a dream and made it a reality.
The poverty wasn’t real, the Navy firing on the population, the Chinese people, very little real to it the historians say.
What historians have you been reading? Read Charles Dickens "American Notes," Herbert Asbury "The Gangs of New York" (which the movie was based on, sort of) and Ivors Bernstein "New York City Draft Riots of 1863."
The only inaccuracy in the film was the Chinese population--Chinese at that time were almost entirely on the West Coast.
The opening scene is a huge gang rumble that did take place in 1858.
Yes, they had to bring in troops from Gettysburg to stop the rioting in New York, even if it meant shooting down civilians on the street--which was done.
“”Yes, they had to bring in troops from Gettysburg to stop the rioting in New York, even if it meant shooting down civilians on the street—which was done.”””
I never mentioned that at all.
You said the poverty wasn’t real, as if to suggest there were no poor people in New York in the 1850’s.
Natioal Geographic:
“They were doing what they could do for their families to live respectably,” Yamin says. “They had ornaments on their mantels and pictures on their walls and teapots and teacups, and they were eating very well.”
Even here meat was often on the table three times a day, animal remains and historical accounts show.
“In the Scorsese movie you have these scenes in a basement where there are skulls in the corners and people are draped in rags,” Yamin says. “We didn’t see anything to suggest that people were living like that. There were certainly no skulls rolling around in people’s rooms.” And few pewter cups, for that matter.
Watching the movie, Yamin says, “the thing I really noticed was those pewter mugs everyone was drinking out of. Well, they stopped drinking out of those in the 18th century.”
Yamin recalls showing movie researchers, who visited her team to research period furnishings, the little glass tumblers Five Pointers drank from. Laughing, she says, “In other words, they didn’t learn anything from us.”
Historian Anbinder agrees with Yamin’s appraisal of Five Pointers: “Most of them had real, legal jobs.” Many were shoemakers, tailors, masons, grocers, cigarmakers, liquor dealers, and laborers.
Scorsese based his movie on Herbert Asbury’s 1927 book The Gangs of New York. But the names of the legendary Five Points gangs—the Bowery Boys (see photo), the Dead Rabbits, the Plug Uglies, the Short Tails, the Slaughter Houses, the Swamp Angels—may be among the few things that Asbury, who did little original research, got right, according to historians.
The perception of Five Points as an unrelievedly dangerous place is exaggerated, Anbinder says. “I looked at the statistics, and other than public drunkenness and prostitution, there was no more crime in Five Points than in any other part of the city.”
“The book The Gangs of New York says there was one tenement where there was a murder a day. At the period of time he was writing about, there was barely a murder a month in all of New York City,” Anbinder says.
Writing in the Al Capone era, Asbury interpreted the Five Points gangs as the precursors of 1920s organized-crime mobs, Anbinder says. Scorsese, the director of Mafia classics such as Goodfellas and Mean Streets, seizes on this idea in Gangs. “That’s one of the big problems with the movie,” Anbinder says.
In fact, gangs like the Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys were political clubs that met at nights and on weekends to promote their candidates. “They would fight at the polls and sometimes beat up their opponents, but not just for fun or plunder,” Anbinder says.
So why fight? Nearly every scuffle was designed to help a gang’s chosen candidate into public office. Once there, the candidate would reciprocate, bestowing good, steady-paying patronage jobs and municipal funds on his constituency.
Anbinder also faults the movie for its emphasis on Catholic-Protestant conflict. Most fighting was among gangs of Irish-Catholic Five Pointers. And it was rarely as bloody or deadly as in the movie. “Rioters did not go about with swords and broadaxes. Every once in a while one person would have one, but never whole mobs armed like that.”
“The accession of these places to US rule does not wipe out their history.”
Go back even further and their history will be of some Native American tribe that inhabited the area. No one said anything wiped out their history. You keep changing the argument.
“
St. Augustine was a Spanish settlement, but it is no longer a Spanish town.
New Orleans was a French settlement, but it’s no longer a French city.
Ditto Santa Fe.
“But that isn’t the anniversary of the first continuously inhabited European settlement in America, or the first settlement of European ancestors of today’s American population.”
You pulled St. Augustine out of a hat. St. Augustine had nothing to do with the settlers and descendants who established governments in Virginia which eventually evolved into the USA, and had nothing to do with Ellis Island, and was not in one of the thirteen original colonies.
But if you think St. Augustine is America’s birthplace, then have your own celebration of ___the birthday of America. The rest of the country observed the 400th anniversary a few months back.
America as a nation has two birthplaces - Lexington on the battlefield, and Philadelphia in government.
Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, St. Augustine, Santa Fe, New Orleans, etc. are simply places of settlement.
Once again you shift the discussion.
Say what you want, but the recent 400th anniversary of Jamestown was generally considered a celebration of America’s birthplace.
Now you have multiple birthplaces, one for military, one for government. What other birthplaces do you recognize?
Here’s another opinion on the subject. Note we are a part of the USA and a not a part of Mexico the Caribbean traditions, or any other Spanish tradition.
“The settlement of St. Augustine in 1565 followed on the heels of an ambitious exploration campaign by the Spanish, as De Leon, Balboa and Magellan discovered and claimed vast territories in the Western Hemisphere for the Spanish Crown. At Spain’s zenith under Phillip II, the Spanish made claims to the better part of the New World.
But the vision for “New Spain” never materialized in North America.
While we have the Spanish to thank for the introduction of horses, mules and a unique architectural style, Spain’s settlement at St. Augustine – while predating Jamestown’s by 42 years – had no direct impact in shaping America’s great heritage of liberty under God that would later be championed at Jamestown and Plymouth.
In fact, had Phillip II’s Navy not fallen to the English in 1588, and had England not taken a more active role in colonization – thanks to men of vision such as Richard Hakluyt – America might well have become another Third World country.
It is also important to note that St. Augustine began with the massacre of French Huguenots in Florida (and the Huguenot colony of Ft. Caroline predated the Spanish settlement) and the very annihilation of the Reformation legacy later introduced to North America at Jamestown and incorporated into our nation’s founding documents.
Our Founding Fathers drew from the legacy of Jamestown, not St. Augustine. It was Jamestown, not St. Augustine, that brought the formulative Reformation doctrines of liberty under the law of God and of representative government to the American people. In short, St. Augustine’s legacy directly opposes the great heritage Americans have come to treasure.”
Seems you forgot to credit the Huguenot colony. Thank God we’re not part of the Spanish heritage in America:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55856
Here’s another opinion on the subject. Note we are a part of the USA and a not a part of Mexico the Caribbean traditions, or any other Spanish tradition.
“The settlement of St. Augustine in 1565 followed on the heels of an ambitious exploration campaign by the Spanish, as De Leon, Balboa and Magellan discovered and claimed vast territories in the Western Hemisphere for the Spanish Crown. At Spain’s zenith under Phillip II, the Spanish made claims to the better part of the New World.
But the vision for “New Spain” never materialized in North America.
While we have the Spanish to thank for the introduction of horses, mules and a unique architectural style, Spain’s settlement at St. Augustine – while predating Jamestown’s by 42 years – had no direct impact in shaping America’s great heritage of liberty under God that would later be championed at Jamestown and Plymouth.
In fact, had Phillip II’s Navy not fallen to the English in 1588, and had England not taken a more active role in colonization – thanks to men of vision such as Richard Hakluyt – America might well have become another Third World country.
It is also important to note that St. Augustine began with the massacre of French Huguenots in Florida (and the Huguenot colony of Ft. Caroline predated the Spanish settlement) and the very annihilation of the Reformation legacy later introduced to North America at Jamestown and incorporated into our nation’s founding documents.
Our Founding Fathers drew from the legacy of Jamestown, not St. Augustine. It was Jamestown, not St. Augustine, that brought the formulative Reformation doctrines of liberty under the law of God and of representative government to the American people. In short, St. Augustine’s legacy directly opposes the great heritage Americans have come to treasure.”
Seems you forgot to credit the Huguenot colony. Thank God we’re not part of the Spanish heritage in America:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55856
From the sounds of your comments, I take it you've never been to see our national monuments in either Lexington or Philadelphia.
Despite Holland's notoriety as a haven for religious freedom, the Dutch colony on Manhattan Island founded in the 1620s established a feudal system (called a "patroon" system) that is outside the American tradition of law and liberty under God.
Yes the Dutch fuedal system was soooo very different than the Virginia slave system of liberty under God (for some).
the formulative Reformation doctrines of liberty under the law of God and of representative government to the American people
The Reformation was all about the Divine Right of Kings, not representative government. That's why Sam Adams could state in 1776: "Our Fore-fathers threw off the yoke of popery in religion; for you is reserved the honor of levelling the popery of politics."
Where Jamestown gave us our first Protestant church, conversions and baptisms
The Spanish and Portuguese had already converted millions and batized millions more in this hemisphere, including many thousands in North America by the time Virginia Dare was baptized and Pocohantas was converted. Apparently they don't count as "first" because they weren't Protestants. This makes the whole notion of firsts in this article very questionable, since apparently to be first, you must be an English Protestant.
The historical ignorance in that article is astounding.
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