Parallels

The great fact of individual difference and variability (that is, inequality) is evident from the long record of human experience: hence, the general recognition of the anti-human nature of a world of coerced uniformity. ~ Murray Rothbard

Long ago and far away, a young man from Tennessee met and fell in love with a younger lass. They’d both grown up on farms – the man in Sumner County, Tennessee and the young woman in St. Clair County, southwestern Missouri. Their marriage in Missouri took place as the American Civil War was nearing the end of its first year. Surely the war would soon end.

Late winter to early spring – February, 1862 – a time when farmers were beginning early preparations for the annual planting of crops, watching out windows and daily walking or riding pastures on horseback to find baby calves and foals newly emerged from their mothers and giving off clouds of steam as their warm bodies met the cold spring air. Times of excitement, anticipation. But that year, 1862, was different.

The young bride of 17, Martha Jane Stearns, was the oldest child of her parents’ eight surviving offspring. She had seven teenage-to-toddler siblings including three sisters and four brothers. The oldest brother was a 10-year-old in that year. Like her groom, Martha’s father, Stinson, was a transplant to Missouri who had met his wife, Minerva Jane Reed, in Missouri twenty years earlier.

The young Martha was introduced to Edward Silvanus Ellis, her future husband, when he purchased a farm adjoining her parents’ homestead where, along with farming, her father owned and worked a leather tannery and made harnesses and saddles. Family accounts indicate that the young man and his father-in-law got along peaceably and cooperated in some farming efforts.

But within a short time after their marriage, both her husband and father were fighting in the Civil War. Both were cavalrymen – on opposing sides. Stinson Stearns joined the Missouri State Militia fighting on the Union side, while his new son-in-law enlisted under Generals Sterling Price and, later, John Marmaduke (after the war, the 25^th governor of Missouri) on the side of the Confederacy even though he had no slaves.

Their situation was not uncommon during the American Civil War; brothers often fought against each other. But even during the heaviest of fighting, history records that nighttime would sometimes find the opponents laying down their swords and sharing food, campfires and even music. Hostilities resumed the next day.

In the case of the Stearns and Ellis families of St. Clair County, Missouri, the war’s end in 1865 brought better times. In 1866, both families moved together to Washington County, Arkansas, near Fayetteville, where they purchased farms close by and lived in harmony. In 1872, the Ellises bought a farm on the White River, and it was there that Martha Stearns Ellis died in 1877.

This story from my personal family’s history has been documented in more than one place, including at least one official publication of Washington County, Arkansas. From its pages, a remarkable first principle of humanity waves and yells at me.

It’s the fact that, as the courts of our land have long recognized, “reasonable people may differ” on any given subject. We don’t have to be lockstep and all agree on every aspect of our lives.

Secondly, even if we disagree, we can – no, must – remain respectful of the rights and viewpoints of others where possible. We must agree to abide by the rule of law – the foundational principle upon which our nation was birthed, along with its underpinnings in Judeo-Christian ethics and morality.

I don’t believe it’s beyond the pale of reason for us to draw parallels from this family story to our present national dilemma with the pandemic that gnaws at our underpinnings. May God guide and direct our leaders, giving them wisdom and integrity in the preservation of our freedoms. And may God imprint upon our hearts the patience and wisdom to live in peace.

Carpe diem. Vita brevis!

Copyright April 24, 2020, by Michael E. Stubblefield. All rights reserved.