------------------------ To: 0100101 From: $TRAIGHT TO VIDEO We arrived at unsub's residence too late. Elements of FBI-SAD had been present at scene. No trace of Pliny File. Recommendation for action necessary to proceed. Ciao, STV ------------------------ To: STV From: 0100101 Be 100% sure Pliny File is not present, then expire fire insurance on house and burn it. Also, do not use '$' in sender line of your message. It causes a runtime error in compiling. ------------------------ To: 0100101 From: $TRAIGHT TO VIDEO What '$'? Ciao, STV ------------------------ PART TWO: Colonialism and Revolution Kindred myth puts the Brujah clan at the fore of the American Revolution. This is, as far as can be told, a complete fabrication that falls apart with even the most cursory examination. In addition, it is totally insufficient to understanding the factors behind the Revolution. First, it is necessary to understand the nature of American colonization and why the Revolution was almost inevitable. Colonization in North America was undertaken for primarily economic reasons. The wealth of the continent was almost literally incredible. Few could believe it until they saw firsthand the money to be made. But soon Europe was awash in schemes to profit from colonization. So few of these schemes, numerically speaking, were backed by Kindred, that they are a totally insignificant minority. The only exception lies in the struggle for political power in the English Parliament and the Ventrue-Toreador conflict which contributed indirectly to the French-Indian War. The struggle over Parliament continues to this day as English vampires wage their conflicts mostly in the House of Commons. (The House of Lords has long been sole property of Ventrue who do not want to risk their influence there against each other, but who are more than happy to use the Commons as a battleground.) The Ventrue-Toreador conflict mirrored the English-French conflict and encouraged conditions that made the French-Indian War come about, but cannot be said to have caused it nearly as much as the powerful desire of simple financial gain. This must be remembered throughout this analysis. By the Declaration of Independence, there were 10 vampires in all of North America, excepting, possibly, a few nomadic Sabbat Gangrel who may or may not have traveled in the West at that time. Those 10 vampires were distributed, north to south, as follows: a Brujah in Massachusetts, a pair of Ventrue in New York, a Brujah in Rhode Island, a Malkavian in Maryland, a Ventrue and a Toreador in Virginia, a Toreador in Georgia and two nomadic Gangrel. These vampires were the only Kindred with hands-on influence over the colonies, and they often complained of their impotence compared to their brethren back in Europe. Why were there not more? Why did they run into such difficulties? England occupied an area less than one-one hundredth of the American colonies following the French-Indian war, and had a population approximately twice the size. There were, as far as we can tell, about four times the Kindred in England at the time. Kindred control was geared for European affairs - as such, Kindred in the New World tried to control colonial governors. Such efforts were generally unsuccessful, as they owed their positions to commissions from the Crown, commissions handed out by a complicated patronage system rife with corruption and largely controlled by English Kindred. Colonial legislatures were equally difficult to influence for a different reason - since the territory they had jurisdiction over was so large, they did not meet often, and all but the most direct Kindred influence was too subtle, lost in the bustle and hurry to get things done in the appointed time. This left the Kindred of colonial America almost devoid of political influence. Economically speaking, they fared somewhat better, though not in the traditional sense. Through relatively small networks of harbormasters and traders, they could exert some control over the price of imported goods, and with a certain amount of pleasant surprise, they found that their control over exports gave them a degree of _European_ influence as the exports from the colonies became more important there. But even this had limited effect: since imports, for the most part, did not have much effect on the day-to-day life of most colonists, domestic prices turned out to be almost completely beyond their reach. However, beyond politics and economics, there was a third component of control: the church. Here the Kindred faced their most dismal failure. Used to the formal hierarchies of European religion, they found egalitarian sects like the Puritans and evangelical sects like the Protestant Baptists difficult to reliably control. Efforts to persecute them and stamp them out backfired, resulting in communities so afflicted to pull together in particular geographic location. Eventually, the lack of political control became the downfall of any efforts to control the church, when several colonial legislatures passed statutes of religious freedom, Virginia's being the most famous, penned by Thomas Jefferson. The social structure of colonial America was, in essence, too easy to control. The upper crust of American colonists was so small, so new, and so eager for sophistication and fame, that almost without thinking, the Kindred of the colonies controlled it. Unfortunately for them, for precisely the same reasons, the upper crust had little effect on much of the rest of the colonies. It is, however, something to remember: it will come up again later in American history. Brujah who crow about the American Revolution as being their greatest achievement are merely blowing smoke. Until the Boston Massacre, which was not caused by a charismatic leader of any kind, but, instead, by an icy street, the vast majority of American colonists who had rebellious sentiments regarded their resistance to the Stamp act and the vicious tariffs of Townshend as their right as servants of the Crown _and British subjects_. It was not an explosive realization led by independent free-thinkers: in fact, pro-British propogandists outnumbered the Revolutionary pamphleteers almost two-to-one. There were in fact only two Brujah in the colonies during the Revolution, and both of them went into hiding for the duration of the fighting and had no political impact that is in any way detectable. If the Brujah really want to claim responsibility for the Revolution, it would be more plausible for them to claim to have used their contacts in Parliament to oppose Pitt and the conciliationists and to force the war upon the colonies by oppressing them! But somehow I think they would deny this. During the war itself, the Kindred, for the most part, maneuvered, wisely, to get themselves into areas under British occupation as soon as possible. From there, they could retain their social influence without falling prey to the volatile military or political situation. In cities without a strong British presence, mobs often lynched people suspected of being Loyalists and burned their homes: this danger was of course lessened in British-held cities. There were rumors that the ever-present Lupine had joined with Native Americans allied with Washington, but this alliance, if it existed at all, was short-lived: apparently the Lupines were not accustomed to fighting battles of retreat, the sort Washington knew he had to spend the entire war fighting. (Further, Native Americans were on both sides of the conflict, as many stood by their allies the British from the French-Indian war. It seems plausible that if Lupine were on one side, they were also on the other. Again, no supernatural influence over the outcome of the war can be found.) The Toreador in the South warned the other Kindred in 1773 that political leanings in that area was towards a loose confederation of states, which would perpetuate their difficulties in controlling the political arena. The Toreador proposed that they exert their influence towards a government with a strong central executive, but the other Kindred demurred. As the Malkavian offered, it seemed likely that the confederation would fail eventually anyway, as all other such agreements had; all that would really be necessary was to be ready when the time came. Some people have speculated that George III was under the influence of Malkavian-induced madness during the war. This is patently untrue. His poryphria (diagnosed posthumously) did not fully surface until the 1790s. He had a long history of attempting to expand the executive power of the Crown through appointing political allies to key positions, regardless of qualification: this proved disastrous in both the Exchequer and the War Department. Further, even at the outset of his reign, the British Navy and Army was in a dismal state, the poorest and worst-maintained that it had been in many years. He was not necessarily exceptionally crazy during the war, but he had poor judgment, and displayed it throughout his life. Probably the most interesting possibility of supernatural influence on the war was the treason of General Benedict Arnold, hero of the Battle of Saratoga, and master of the northern campaign. Many historians have been befuddled by his attempt to pass along the plans of battle for the defense of West Point. It is possible that he may have been blackmailed by one of the Loyalist Ventrue of New York. His wife was apparently a guest of one of the Ventrue for a short while, and there are some minor indications that she may not have been an entirely voluntary guest. Regardless of whether Arnold was blackmailed by the Ventrue, his treason came too little, too late. France was already preparing to sign a treaty with the Americans, and Britain knew full well she was. West Point's defense was doomed even without the plans of battle, and every American general worth his salt knew it. If Arnold was forced into treason, it was as if it were at the petulant and petty whim of a spoiled child who knew nothing of the war beyond the walls of his New York playroom. There are two other speculations that deserve mention: George Washington was a member of the Masons, a secret society that had been useful to a number of Kindred across the centuries in it's various guises and incarnations. Was he put in place by a far-thinking European Kindred during the French-Indian war? The answer is "Probably not." American Masonry owed little to it's European counterparts, an in any case, Washington held little status in that society until the war began. The second speculation: Was Thomas Jefferson a member of the Arcanum? Surprisingly enough, the answer is a firm "Maybe." He certainly had contacts with a number of European Arcanists. His incisive mind would have served him well in the scholarly atmosphere of that group. Being on the frontier of the unknown would have made any Arcanist thrive, and there are the continuing references to the 'secret hall' under Monticello in letters of his contemporaries. However, it is very unlikely that he participated directly in any Arcanum activities. He was an extremely busy man. When the Articles of Confederation failed and the Constitutional Convention began, the Kindred of America had their servants there. Their letters tell a fascinating story not of the secret influences behind the writing of the American Constitution, but of the complete lack thereof. They saw the Congress as a perfect way for local control to be parlayed into national influence, and the lack of codification of the Executive (the preliminary title that would become the 'President') powers would make it possible for at least one of their masters to wield supreme control over the affairs of the new nation. (All the servants, of course, were confident that their own master would be the one to control the President.) However, they also warned that while the structure of the new government would be amenable to control, the people occupying that structure, at least at first, would not be. They unanimously (and apparently separately) wrote that Washington was far too high-profile to be safely controlled from within the confines of the Masquerade, but preliminary indications were that when he was elected President, he planned to establish a Cabinet, some of whom should be more malleable. The most alarming thing to the servants present at the Constitutional Convention was George Mason's protest. Mason, a neighbor of Washington, refused to sign the new Constitution because it did not contain a Bill of Rights. There was much sympathy for Mason's desire, and the observers reported to their Kindred masters that this Bill of Rights represented a threat to potential control of the nascent judicial system. (Until the Revolution, judges were appointed by England: after it, Kindred rejoiced in their new-found control over the magistracy.) To their credit, the Kindred of America waited patiently for the government to take shape, and did their best to understand how it was going to work and where it was going before trying to influence it. But by the end of Adams' administration, they were ready. They began with national parties, a relatively recent innovation. By controlling these parties on the local level, they were able to influence policy at the national level. This influence was more far-seeing than even they anticipated. The next step was to control a good portion of federal offices, most of which were filled by direct application to the President or one of his Secretaries at this time. This hands-on approach was best for the still relatively population-slim country...and for the Kindred whose abilities of Presence and Dominate could help ease almost any candidate into almost any position. America had been born. Expansion was soon to follow. The Kindred of America had, in a very practical sense, broken away from their traditional European masters (although some of them still pay them lip service to this day). The first Kindred Embraced in the New World was a Malkavian, who lived in the city that would become known as Washington, DC. Some say this was all-too-appropriate. ---------------- Deke: I'm putting together the package soon. How much of this stuff do you think is true? Jim ---------------- Jim: The truth is negotiable. Some of it is obviously wrong. Is "Protestant Baptist" supposed to mean the Great Awakening? The Baptists were a result of that, not a cause. And what's this 'Malkavian' stuff? Another sect, like the Ventrue and the Voodoo Masters? Deke ----------------