Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [29]
The sharing of this canoe went on for a few weeks. Silas’s neighbors pitched in on his farm so he wouldn’t fall behind, and most continued to contribute to his efforts to save the Indians. But none would join him in his trips across the lake.
Most of the Chippewa recovered, and for years they would never forget the generosity of Silas Moore. When his son, Martin, was of school age, instead of sending him to the Elba school (which was farther away), Silas sent him to the Indian school that the county had established near his house. In later years, he insisted that Martin and his other four children all go to high school in Lapeer. Martin would go on to college and then return to open a general store in Elba. He would hold many elected positions in the community—clerk, treasurer, supervisor—but it was said that none were more important to him than the post of “overseer of the poor.” He would tell the story about the Indians and his father, Silas, to his daughter, Bess, and she would tell her daughter, my mother.
And my mother would tell me.
Pietà
I WAS LOST.
I had paused for perhaps too long to inspect the statues in the hallways and the Rotunda, bronzed and marbled renditions of an odd assortment of great and not-so-great Americans: Will Rogers, Daniel Webster, George Washington, Robert La Follette, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Brigham Young, Andrew Jackson.
And then there was the statue of Zachariah Chandler. Not well-known outside the state of Michigan (and not well-known there, either), he was a four-term United States senator representing the Great Lakes state in the mid-nineteenth century. Historians who feel a kinship with the Confederacy credit him with starting the Civil War. On February 11, 1861, two months before the rebels fired on Fort Sumter, Chandler gave an inflammatory speech on the Senate floor where he threw down the gauntlet and called for some “bloodletting,” to purge the nation of its proslavery sentiments. In other words, once we kill a few of these slave owners, they’ll get the message that slavery is over. The South took this as an unofficial declaration of war and they continued to prepare for the bloodletting they would initiate.
Chandler is also credited with being a founder of the Republican Party. On July 6, 1854, he led the first effort in the nation to form a statewide antislavery party. He called upon all abolitionists to meet him under a giant oak tree in Jackson, Michigan—and six short years later they saw the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, win the White House.
By the age of eleven I was fascinated with history and politics. For this, along with those too-early reading lessons, I blamed my mother. Her father (my grandfather) was a leader of the Republican Party in our town of Davison during the early half of the twentieth century. Being an immigrant from Canada, Dr. William J. Wall brought with him a Canadian common sense and a keen interest in the “goings-on” of government. He also believed that books and music were necessary companions in the pursuit of happiness.
Born and raised on a farm between Sarnia and London, Ontario, “Will” was one of eleven children. Reaching adulthood, he obtained his own small farm next to his brother Chris’s farm, and together they tilled the soil by day and played the Irish fiddle by night. The Wall brothers and their fiddles became much in demand for the local dances and shindigs. Even during their midday break from farming, they would get together and play their fiddles.
Within time, Will, who was well regarded by those in the village, was asked if he would teach at the one-room schoolhouse during the winter months. He accepted the offer and soon grew to like teaching so much that he ceded his farm to his brother.
After a few years of teaching, Will decided he wanted to be a doctor. The nearest medical