Trapdoor Johns

Before Atlanta, GA. 1864

This is how patriarchy became the cult of domesticity… in drag.  Trapdoor John says, it’s a trap.  If you deny it- it proves you are in denial.  If you admit it, it proves you are guilty as charged.  The trap does not lie behind the door.  The trap IS the door.  In stands solid while they affix the rope. Expressions of solidarity are usually not welcome outside the group… inside the group it usually boils down to pecking order. Samuel and Jeremiah were both acutely aware of this… as well as how belief systems can swallow our individual identity:  ie. identity politics.   US Civil War was more about capitalism than it was racism.  Drawing the line on property rights is like map lines on the earth.  Largely imaginary. 

One could just as easily blame religion.  It is multifactorial.  That’s today’s word for “complicated.”  Monoculture. Instead of belonging to the land (serfs)… you belong to the landlords (slaves).  Slave property in 1860 represented more liquid capital in the south than all of northern industry combined.  As such, it was leveraged of course.  When the land was exhausted… one could move the labor (and machines) to a new land to exploit.  Subject to papal authority- of course. He jumps up and says, “Hans, I alvays knowed dot you vas a vool. You make too pig a booh; vy, you said booh loud enuff to scare der ole horse. Hans, go pring out der ole horse.

Der tam Repel vill be here pefore Mackferson gits pack from der dinner time.  Then he smacked his big lips, rolled his eyes around, and with a deep breath exclaimed, “A-h-h! Dat whisky feels des pow’ful good dis cole mawnin’!” I looked at the darkey in bitterness of heart, and couldn’t help thinking that it was all-fired mean, when a poor little sick soldier was not allowed to buy a drink of whisky, while a great big buck nigger roustabout had it handed out to him with cheerfulness and alacrity. And there were the officers, in the warm, lighted cabin, seated at a table, with nigger waiters to serve them, feasting on that splendid fare! Why, it was the very incarnation of bodily comfort and enjoyment!

I came across that dead Yankee two days afterwards, and he was as naked as the day he came into the world, and was as black as a negro, and was as big as a skinned horse. He had mortified. I recollect of saying, “Ugh, ugh,” and of my hat being lifted off my head, by my hair, which stood up like the quills of the fretful porcupine.

He scared me worse when dead than when living.