History lessons

Colonial Williamsburg is the largest U.S. history museum in the world, one that consists of 301 acres of land, 89 original buildings (plus many re-creations), more than 20 historic trades and a number of historic people who roam the streets and with whom visitors can interact. I spent time watching a trio of brief trials in the courthouse, watched a reenactment of the incident that spurred the burgesses to wrest control of their government from the royal governor and watched with fascination as master craftsmen and their apprentices plied their trades using period-authentic tools and techniques.

What really captured my attention, though, were the various “nation builders”: full-time actors who have studied a real historic person and who then speak and act as that person. Thus, I was able to interact not only with Thomas Jefferson and Martha Washington, but also with an enslaved person who had been a spy for the Marquis De Lafayette and a widowed woman who ran one of the larger taverns in town.

The court trials taught me a lot about what having a state religion (in Virginia, the Church of England, prior to the revolution) really meant. Back then, regardless of their beliefs, all people were not only required to attend their local Anglican church at least once every five weeks, they also had to tithe to that church. Government at that time didn’t provide for the poor, so the tithes were used for charitable purposes of that sort in addition to paying the rector’s (rather lavish) salary and paying for the upkeep of the church itself. Even a Baptist, say, still needed to tithe to the Anglican church. As for being a Catholic, well, that was a serious offense. Catholicism was illegal in Virginia prior to the revolution; the king, Charles III, termed the pope a “foreign prince” and thus anyone who was loyal to the pope over the king was considered to be a traitor.

I was riveted by the actor playing James Armistead Lafayette, who, during the Revolutionary War, spied on the British at the behest of the Maj. Gen. Marquis De Lafayette. Although he risked his life many times in service of our country and provided intelligence that may have been instrumental in our winning the Battle of Yorktown, once the war ended, the Virginia Legislature opted not to grant him his freedom due to a silly technicality. Slaves who had been issued firearms and served in the war qualified for emancipation but, as a spy, he couldn’t risk carrying one. It took five years and a personal letter from his friend the Marquis before Lafayette’s freedom was granted.

I’d assumed that once Lafayette was freed, he would have been able to free his wife and children with relative ease. But a 1782 Virginia law enabling slaveholders to manumit their slaves at will contained some frustrating technicalities. In particular, if the person being freed was either under the age of 21 (if male) or 18 (if female) or over the age of 45 — which described his entire immediate family — the slaveholder had to show proof of funds sufficient to support that newly freed slave for the remainder of their lives. The idea was to prevent freed slaves from becoming a burden on society. But in Lafayette’s case, it meant that he had to work for several years just to free his wife and had to wait until his children were over the respective age limits before they, too, could be freed.

Lastly, Thomas Jefferson, in answer to a question regarding the separation of church and state — one of the key parts of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — thundered, with great passion, that every case where a government was entwined with religion resulted in “chaos, violence and bloodshed.” He certainly convinced me — although to be fair, even though I’ve been a churchgoer for nearly all of my life, I had already been of that mindset.

A great man once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Learning from our Founding Fathers’ experiences before and during the American Revolution seems prudent, especially as we consider how to cope with the uncertainty we’ll apparently be experiencing over the next four years.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.