Born Blind

P. 53:

“Madam, and gentlemen, what I am trying so fervently to express is that we have always had differences among us, and always will. It is our nature. But what has distinguished our country in its first eighty years has been the general subordination of those differences to the rule of law, however it may manifest itself – in the federal Constitution and laws, in our state’s constitution and laws, through the local constable or the federal marshal, in the chancery court or the Supreme Court of our state, and finally, of course, as President Buchanan expressed last month and Misses Polk has reminded us today, in the federal courts and by the Supreme Court of our country. This brings me to the heart of the matter.” He stood in the middle of the room and gestured with each of his hands.

“Because of the conflict over the slavery issue and how to resolve it, we hear from one side that the right to secede is inherent in the federal Constitution and expressly preserved in state constitutions. From the other side we hear as emphatically that the Union is perpetual and overrides any interest of the member states. What are we to do with this standoff? Simply declare war and let the matter be decided on the battlefield? Is that how a nation of laws resolves the differences among its members and citizens? No! Clearly that would be the opposite of the rule of law. To this point in our history, or at least since Marbury v. Madison, we have accepted that the federal Supreme Court is the arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution, and this includes the interaction of that document with the constitution of each member state. If we reject this principle now we are no longer and perhaps never have been a nation of laws, not since the Marbury decision, not since our forefathers petitioned for recognition as the state of Tennessee - recognition by the federal Congress, you understand; not when the Constitution was ratified by every other state that has been so recognized, and not even when the Constitution was written in Philadelphia in 1787. We will have made it all a lie.” As if this word went beyond decorum, he quickly retreated, “or, if not a lie, then a blindness, an inability to see these events as they truly were, inherently flawed, and that they were flawed perhaps from the moment of the first shot at the Lexington bridge in 1774, or from the subsequent declaration of independence in Philadelphia in ‘76.”

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Page 77-78:

Now as he looked at the bright morning sky, Zech thought of the beginning where God said “let there be light,” and how the book said He had made the sun and the moon and the stars, and divided the night from the day. Zech had grown up loving the night because he could rest from the hard work of the day, but also because he could sit on a bench outside his shed and pretend that he was Abraham and that God was talking to him.

“And he brought him forth abroad, and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, so shall thy seed be.’” All these years later, God had given Zech his own star. He was thankful, but now could not think only about the boy. He understood that Mister Jeremiah had meant to reward his faithful service and to do it on a special day, but the effect had truly been to crowd the baby out of his mind. As he and Liza had prepared for the baby’s arrival, he was not concerned about its or his or Liza’s future. He knew that the Scotts would take care of them, and he had no concern that they would ever sell the baby away from them. There was nothing to be done but continue to serve his master and mistress just as he had done every day since he had arrived on the farm.

Now, suddenly, he had his own decisions to make about how to handle his future, and his family’s. What should he do? He didn’t even know how to decide, much less what to decide. Should he make the decision himself or consult Liza? He had to tell her the news and ask her opinion, but what if they disagreed? First, he had to make up his own mind. Did he want unfettered freedom with an uncertain future? Or did he want a promise of his own land, even if it would be delayed by legal complications and perhaps never come true? And what if it came true and was then taken away? He was reminded once more of the Bible stories and God’s promises to Abraham, including the promise to give him land. “And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger….”

Zech knew that Abraham was a stranger in the land of Canaan where God had called him to settle, but wasn’t he just as much a stranger in Tennessee?

Jackson Riddle

And put here either by the hand of God or the devil, but not by his own decision? Surely this offer of land from Mister Jeremiah was as directly from God as if the Almighty Himself had appeared to Zech, just as he had to Abraham, and the promise of it was not just to him, but also to his son. That decided it for Zech. He had to get the land for his son. Surely, by the time his baby boy grew to be a man, the law would be settled, and he would be allowed to control it as his own. Zech felt himself get light-headed and weak in his knees, he thought from standing and looking at the sky, but truthfully, he knew it was due to the dizzying vision of his newborn son becoming a free man with land to farm. He felt himself drop backward onto one of the stumps by the fire, fortunately landing squarely so as not to keel over into the coals. When balanced, he felt the urge to drop further, to his knees this time, and offer thanksgiving to the God who had made the sky and the stars, and him and Liza, and now their baby. Such a God, Zechariah saw for the first time in his life, could also make them free.