Living on the Edge of Catastrophe—Part 1

America is polarized as never in my lifetime. The split between red and blue expresses ancient worldviews, but differences are amplified by social media and news media, and pushed to extremes by a sense on the part of both sides that we are living on the edge of catastrophe.

On the left, dread of catastrophe increased dramatically on January 6, 2021, when rioters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the election of President Joe Biden. It had never occurred to us that our entire system of government was at risk—that democracy in America could be overthrown and we could wake up living in a North American Hungary or Nicaragua. You think liberals are shrill? That’s why.

On the right, fear of a different kind of catastrophe holds sway. Throughout my lifetime conservatives have been telling of the fall of the Roman Empire as a warning against decadence. Now, the pace of social change has led to social panic that gay marriage, gender fluidity, immigration, drugs, crime and the decline of Christianity are making America a place of unrecognizable moral chaos. To many on the right, we are in the last days, with a final, slender opportunity to rescue the country we love.

A third form of catastrophe, climate change, increases anxiety on all sides. The stakes are vast, the territory unknown, and we begin to feel the effects in our daily lives. It’s unsettling, and our fears leak out and spread.

I never have been a catastrophist, and I don’t believe most Americans are. We have been a nation of optimists and patriots, trusting that no matter what the challenge things will work out for the best because America has deep strengths that preserve it from disaster. When Popie and I lived in Kenya, we observed the fragility of the political order there and in most of Africa. A president feared traveling abroad because a coup might happen while he was out of the country. Elections could be and were stolen. We looked on this with sadness, but it never occurred to us that such things could happen in America.

I still don’t believe, in my gut, that they could. I just can’t believe that we could throw away our democracy or lapse into moral chaos. I’m an optimist. I’m a patriot. I expect that common sense will rule the day.

A book I just finished, however, The Children of Pride, has given me pause. It’s a massive collection of letters from within a Georgia slaveholding family from 1855 to 1868—the years just before, during and after the Civil War. The father of the family, Charles Colcock Jones, is a Presbyterian pastor who has dedicated his life to preaching the gospel to slaves. He and his wife Mary are well educated, thoughtful, temperate and loving. Their two sons, Charles and Joseph, attended Princeton University. Charles went on to study law at Yale, practiced law in Savannah and was elected mayor of the city in 1860. Joseph studied medicine in Philadelphia and became a well-regarded doctor and medical researcher. Mary, the daughter, married a Presbyterian pastor.

It would be hard to read these letters and not like the Jones family. They obviously love each other, and they care about the people in their community (including their house servants, whom they frequently mention). They write well and intelligently. It’s true that their wealth—they own three plantations in coastal Georgia—and their ownership of well over 100 slaves are hard to swallow. But reading their letters, you tend to forget that. Their lives are interesting. Babies are born, people fall in love and marry, people die—little children particularly—and fear of disease is a constant. A hurricane, vividly described, ravages their land. Planting and harvest are followed with intense interest. The Joneses write often of the beauty of the landscape.

They are not a particularly political family, and in the years 1855-1860 their letters rarely mention the national crisis over slavery. They know what is going on, and there is no doubt that they are staunch Southerners, deeply distressed by abolitionist ideas, but you look in vain for any signs of real fear or agitation. I found it fascinating and unnerving, because I noted the dates on the letters and—knowing what was coming–could feel the storm clouds gathering. The Joneses apparently did not. They were living their enviable, enjoyable, mostly-peaceable life, unconcerned that their entire way of life was about to be obliterated. Even in 1860, when firebrand Southerners were spoiling for a fight, and secession was on the table, they couldn’t believe that it would come to much. Like me today, they thought surely common sense would prevail.

Here’s Reverend Jones, writing his son Charles in January, 1860: “Our political sky is very cloudy! Have you read the Vice-President’s speech lately delivered at Frankfort, Kentucky? My hope is the He who has so often and so mercifully preserved our country will again show us favor, unworthy as we are, and deliver us from impending evils and grant us peace. He is able to still the tumult of the people.” (p. 556) Then he goes on to send greetings to Charles’ wife Ruth and a kiss to their baby.

And here is Charles, writing back in October, just before Lincoln’s election: “Should Lincoln be elected, the action of a single state, such as South Carolina or Alabama, may precipitate us into all the terrors of intestine war. I sincerely trust that a kind Providence, that has so long and so specially watched over the increasing glories of our common country, may so influence the kinds of fanatical men and dispose of coming events as to avert so direful a calamity.” (p. 621) He goes on to mention that his wife and child are coming home on Monday. Otherwise, not much is worth noting. “We have but little of interest with us.”

His father writes back a few days later: “I do not apprehend any very serious disturbance in the event of Lincoln’s election and a withdrawal of one or more Southern states, which will eventuate in the withdrawal of all. On what ground can the free states found a military crusade upon the South? Who are the violators of the Constitution? Will the conservatives in the free states make no opposition? If the attempt is made to subjugate the South, what prospect will there be of success? And what benefit will accrue to all the substantial interests of the free states? The business world will think very little benefit. Under all the circumstances attending a withdrawal there would be no casus belli. Is not the right of self-government on the part of the people the cornerstone of the republic? Have not fifteen states a right to govern themselves and withdraw from a compact or constitution disregarded by the other states to their injury and (it may be) their ruin? But may God avert such a separation, for the consequences may in future be disastrous to both sections. Union if possible—but with it we must have life, liberty, and equality!” (p. 625)

Today’s reader cannot help noting that the pastor’s “life, liberty and equality” involve denying liberty and equality to more than one hundred men, women and children whom he purports to own. He is not stupid, and he is not ignorant, but he cannot see what is in front of him.

So the war came, and if the Jones family did not welcome it, they seemed to greet it with a kind of shrug. By mid-November the pastor’s wife, Mary, writes to son Charles: “It is a new era in our country’s history, and I trust the wise and patriotic leaders of the people will soon devise some united course of action throughout the Southern states. I cannot see a shadow of reason for civil war in the event of a Southern confederacy; but even that, if it must come, would be preferable to submission to Black Republicanism, involving as it would all that is horrible, degrading, and ruinous. ‘Forbearance has ceased to be a virtue;’ and I believe we could meet with no evils out of the Union that would compare to those we will finally suffer if we continue in it for we can no longer doubt that the settled policy of the North is to crush the South.” (p. 628)

The war would utterly destroy her way of life. The Joneses lost none of their immediate family members to the fighting (both sons were enlisted as Confederate soldiers) but Sherman’s army swept through their farms and took nearly all their moveable property. The Southern plantation, dependent on slave labor, became impossible, and the Joneses could not find buyers for their thousands of acres of land at any price. The three children would eventually thrive (Charles, ironically, in New York City), because they could call on professional skills; but plantation life was dead. Not until the coming of Jim Crow would a mutant, crippled version of it resurrect.

What stays with me in this part of the story is the blithe unawareness. The Jones family, for all their sense and education, could not see that they lived on the edge of catastrophe. Could they have done anything to prevent it? Perhaps not if they acted alone, but if a large slice of Southern gentility had spoken strongly against Southern radicalism, the outcome might have been different.

The same may be true for us, in our time. We live on the edge of catastrophe, and yet I find it very hard to believe in the threat. Maybe these settled instincts are right. Maybe common sense will prevail. The Joneses remind me, however, that that is hardly guaranteed. It really could all go smash.