OK, you asked for it.
Every cliche and accusation you have reiterated so far is perfectly in line with the moral and intellectual inheritance to be gained from the culture which produced Mather, Beecher, Emerson, the Kennedys, Frank, Romney and the Bush family for that matter.
Since we’re talking “intellectual inheritance to be gained from the culture which produced Mather, Beecher, Emerson….” maybe we can reflect again upon how intellectually bereft your Mississippi education has caused to you become, assuming of course that you have any to speak of in the first place. If those are the only names you found that you were capable of associating with New England your education manifests a level of impoverishment unseen in few others I have ever had the pleasure of conversing with over the >12 years I have been posting here.
If you’re going to go all the way back to Mather c.1692, I’ll go back even further to names that your ignorant Mississippi education has apparently overlooked. As I said we New Englanders are a hearty bunch and we name among our prominent personalities the following:
William Bradford, author of the Mayflower Compact, as well as the surviving band of Pilgrims whose celebration of Thanksgiving became the uniquely American observance that it has remained for what is soon to be almost 400 years.
Then there’s Roger Williams, founder of what became the great State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, a first among religious and politically independent leaders of his day. The “Independent Man” sits atop the state capitol today.
You dumped on Mather - a prominent religious leader of his day, as representative of personalities from New England for whom Americans in your view should harbor deep disdain. One cannot deny the part played by early American religious institutions in coalescing a philosophy of freedom which underpinned what became the American Revolution. Before the American Revolution there arose a number of religious revivalists, noteworthy among them, Jonathan Edwards, whose seminal sermon delivered in Enfield, CT in 1741, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” inspired many of those who would participate in the Revolution to come.
The cradle of the American Revolution and in fact the site of the very first “Tea Party,” which gives both the inspiration and impetus to today’s Tea Party Movement took place in Boston, MA. Patriots by the name of Paul Revere, William Dawes, whose deeds were immortalized in the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Portland, ME), are names most sufficiently educated persons know though you evidently have failed to recall, (assuming you ever knew them at all). And not to be missed also are the multiple Patriots who met the British at the “rude Bridge” – as poet RW Emerson so eloquently referred to it in his “Concord Hymn.” Oh, that’s right, you have a problem with Emerson, don’t you.
Well here’s just a few more names from New England, who, due to your lack luster education, you are likely not going to recognize, but who effectively launched the intellectual and cultural inheritance of America at a time when your people in the backwater swamps of Mississippi were still speaking French or Spanish. Of course without these statesmen we wouldn’t have had the country to begin with:
SIGNERS of the Declaration of Independence from New England
Connecticut
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
Massachusetts
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Rhode Island
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
If the most memorable Mississippi figure you’ve got is some queer boy like Trent Lott, and some RINO like Thad Cochran, well, even though Haley Barbour is a good man, not a one of them would be worthy of lacing the shoes of the New Englanders I just named.
Now the difference between Cotton Mather and you is that he was remorseful over what had transpired under his leadership in Salem, MA. This led to a soul-cleansing catharsis in the wake of the “trials.” A "House of Seven Gables" was made famous by another Salem, MA resident, and author Nathaniel Hawthorne, Among other noteworthy New England writers and authors are named Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, John Audubon, Henry David Thoreau The list goes on….
By contrast, can you even name one prominent statesman, citizen, or author of any significance to the founding of American who hails from Mississippi -- whose talents could even hold a candle to any one of those names above?
New England has produced a total of 7 of the 44 US Presidents who have ever served. Can you tell us all how many US Presidents Mississippi has produced? (Answer =0).
Since you’re from Mississippi, I understand how you’d have a problem with an abolitionist like Harriett Ward Beecher (Litchfield, CT), author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” and probably Mark Twain (Redding, and Hartford, CT) too. The Underground Railroad probably cut into your fore bearer’s profit margins.
So without so much as contributing to the Revolution or the defense of the US in the War 1812 for that matter, Mississippi becomes a state in 1817 and within the space of 45 years chose to take up arms against the country it voted to join to protect its slavery-driven economy.
Trees will bear their appropriate fruit, after all.
And where Mississippi is concerned I’d have to agree with you – the trees do bear a rather unpleasant “fruit” down around where you are….
We shall see which crop is gathered up and burned in the long run.
It was called “Mississippi Burning” for a reason.
When it comes to burning things you guys sure know how to have a party.
And to think y'all still have that redneck rebel flag embedded in your state flag to his day.
You have shown how demonstrably little you know about geography and the foundational and historical heritage of this nation.
