Americanism Redux
July 23, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
Vessel and wake.
A vessel moves through the surface of the water. The water parts, and then returns. A wake forms behind the vessel from the rolling out and then rolling back of the water. It’s a natural thing.
The factors matter. A large vessel traveling at a higher speed through a narrow passage will create a wake with genuine disruptive and destructive power. Material from the banks and shore will be loosened and pulled into the water. Other material below the water’s surface will be stirred up and reset. Top and bottom, the water reacts.
Next time you see a vessel moving through the water, look for the wake. Look also for the wake in your own life, your own River.
You might as well start now, today, July 23, 250 years ago. Welcome to Americanism Redux.
* * * * * * *
The dairy cow’s utter was filled with milk.
A young woman nicknamed “Bonnie Kate” walked through the tall grass toward the cow, bucket in hand for the milking. Bonnie Kate stopped for a moment and stared into the woods along one edge of the field. The people inside the Watauga fort had told her to stay alert. Ideally, she would have stayed in the fort that was less than a hundred yards away. But no, here she is, next to the cow, along with a few other women and a few other cows. Life’s seldom ideal and the milking has to be done.
The cow swooshes its tail to drive off the flies, and a high-pitched yell comes from the woods. Bonnie Kate turns her head toward the sound.
* * * * * * *
(TD)
Tristram Dalton, a merchant in Newburyport, Massachusetts (modern Maine), sees the Declaration of Independence as the vessel that changes all of life. “We are no longer to be amused by delusive prospects,” says Dalton, “The die is cast. All is at stake. The way is made plain…the God of justice is Omnipotent…we have put on the harness, and I trust it will not be put off until we see our land a land of security and freedom—the wonder of the other hemisphere.”
The vessel pushing through the water is the “late full Declaration”, leaving a wake of a nation serving as “the asylum of all who pant of deliverance from bondage.”
* * * * * * *
(his vessel)
John Fisk walks the docks of Watertown in Massachusetts. He’s heard about a first reading of the Declaration to townspeople and then a second reading to those who had stayed away from fear of the current outbreak of smallpox. Fisk looks at his vessel, the Tyrannicide, anchored nearby, and sees workmen repairing the mast, hull, and deck. Sponsored by the new Massachusetts government, his vessel lately had a three-hour battle with British naval forces. Fisk’s victory came with the spoils—eight carriage guns and twelve spiral guns seized for the Union—but also with a cost. The Tyrannicide needs a week or so of rehab, the sailors could stand time off, and then Fisk and his crew will be back at sea, hunting suitable enemy prey, though this time as a State-owned vessel in an independent Union He went to sea as part of the empire, but he’s back to the shore of a nation.
Fisk knows well the analogy of a large ship leaving a large wake.
* * * * * * *
(Rush the new “Senator”)
“The Declaration of Independence has produced a new era in this part of America,” according to Benjamin Rush, a ship-making-wake statement if ever one was made.
Rush knows the wake he’s seeing. He’s a new member of Pennsylvania’s delegation in the Continental Congress, on the job for less than a month. “I find there is a great deal of difference between sporting a sentiment in a letter, or over a glass of wine upon politics, and discharging properly the duty of a Senator. I find myself unequal to every part of my new situation, except where plain integrity is required.”
“My former letters…are full of predictions; and what is still more uncommon, some of them have proved true. I shall go on, and add, that I think the Declaration of Independence will produce union and new exertions in England in the same ratio that they have done in this country. The present (military) campaign, I believe, is only designed to train us for the duties of next summer.”
Vessel, wake, and the things churned up.
* * * * * * *
(Morris)
A Pennsylvania colleague of Rush’s, Robert Morris, disagrees vehemently with the newly elected “Senator”. Morris states, “I have uniformly Voted against and opposed the declaration of Independence because in my poor opinion it was an improper time and will neither promote the interest or redound to the honor of America, for it has caused division when we wanted Union, and will be ascribed to very different principle than those, which ought to give rise to such an Important measure.”
Morris has been the recipient of letters from London that have been carried to America by the two formal leaders of the coming enemy invasion, British General William Howe and his brother Admiral Richard Howe. Morris’s fellow anti-Declaration comrade, John Dickinson, also received a letter.
Meanwhile to the discomfort of Morris, Dickinson, and others, Joseph Hawley, a Massachusetts delegate, calls for a Union-wide “declaration of high treason” that establishes a standard definition of treason. Perhaps people who receive strange letters from England will provoke suspicion under any new definition of the action.
* * * * * * *
The yells of the men mix with the screams of the woman.
Bonnie Kate screams at the sight of 300 Cherokee Native warriors sprinting toward her from the woods. Led by Old Abram, an older leader of the village Chilhowee, these Natives are part of a broadly coordinated attack conceived by Tsiyu Gansini, known as Dragging Canoe. Old Abram doesn’t know that Bonnie Kate and the women with her had been forewarned by a woman, Nanyehi, from the Cherokee village. Later named Nancy Ward, Nanyehi believed it was the only way to save the Cherokees from total destruction by the Watauga settlers and other white residents.
Her life hanging in the balance, Bonnie Kate begins a desperate race to outrun the Native attackers. The small fort of Watauga (in modern Tennessee) is ahead.
* * * * * * *
(Whipple)
Hundreds of miles east of Bonnie Kate’s life-or-death sprint to the Watauga fort, William Whipple in Philadelphia writes to his friend John Langdon, one New Hampshire man to another.
He chides his friend for seeking marriage to a woman twenty years younger than he. After some good-natured teasing, Whipple adds, “I hope you won’t think by this hint that I have any objection to the connection. So far from it, you may be assured, my dear sir, that whatever contributes to your happiness will be an addition to mine.”
Whipple goes on to say “the Declaration of Independence has done wonders.” He further explains “our late successes at the southward (defeating a British invasion of Charleston, South Carolina) are almost a balance for our misfortunes in Canada, considered Continentally…I hope the bravery of the Carolinians will inspire the Yankees with new courage, and not let it be said that they have transferred the whole of that virtue to our southern brethren.”
Whipple notes that he’s “in pain for the frontier settlements in our Colony (of New Hampshire); not that I think there is any immediate danger, but I know that the people must be alarmed.”
It will be many days before those settlements learn of the Declaration of Independence. When the vessel arrives, the wake will follow.
* * * * * * *
(grateful that it didn’t happen)
A lengthy meeting has occurred between British Colonel James Patterson and American General George Washington in New York City. The immediate issue is the ongoing dispute over how official British communications are addressed to Washington, omitting as they do any reference to him except by the titles “Mr” or “Esquire” rather than “General”. Washington and Patterson engage in a polite but chilly dialogue about the decorum of titling. They proceed further icy exchanges about formal interactions, the power of pardoning versus the power of negotiation, and Washington’s statement that unlike his British counterparts, General Howe and Admiral Howe, he has no authority to decide on key issues; he defers to power wielded by the Continental Congress.
The meeting ends with Patterson thanking Washington for not having the British colonel’s eyes blinded by a covering in his travels to the meeting, while Washington offers refreshments to Patterson. The Redcoat declines.
Three days later, by today, 250 years ago, the Continental Congress votes to give each military general in charge of a large department (Washington, Horatio Gates, and Charles Lee) the power to negotiate prisoner exchanges with British military leaders.
A piece of power floats in the water that converges behind the moving vessel.
* * * * * * *
(near the bodies of mystery)
Francis Salvador is along the flowing waters of the Great Pee Dee River, at Dewitt’s Corner, in the interior of South Carolina. He has talked with people, been with people, acted with people and now he assesses the situation as it seems to him. Salvador judges that chaos exists with daily reports of violence among Natives, residents allied with England, residents allied with the Union, and a hard-to-determine amount of undirected banditry. Whatever control and upper-handedness by one side that’s true today might not be true tomorrow.
Further north, along the Potomac River in Virginia, British naval vessels have moved upriver, scattered pro-Union militia who attempted to stop them, and set fire to a handful of homes and farms. These same British vessels then weighed anchor and sailed downriver after signs of a larger pro-Union militia force appearing from the woods and firing on the departing invaders. Left behind, mysteriously and without explanation, a man finds “three white men and four negroes…dead on the shore, two of the whites sewed up in hammocks and shot through the breast; they had fine Holland shirts, and are supposed to be of some distinction; and had a gold-laced hat…with a bullet-hole through both sides of the crown.” The boundary between organized war and random violence may become difficult to draw.
The water behind the vessels rotates into ever smaller circles that eventually disappear into a dark current.
* * * * * * *
(arm in arm)
Bonnie Kate showed amazing speed in her race to the walls of the fort. As the yelling closed in behind her, she jumped the last two strides and reached for the top of the wall. She managed to get one of her hands over the rough timber, its raw edges cutting into her arm. Astoundingly, with arrows and gunfire filling the air, Bonnie Kate felt a strong hand grab hold of her outstretched arm. A powerful pull lifted her up and over the fort’s wall and into safety. Four years later, she will marry the man with the strong grip, John Sevier.
Bonnie Kate and three other women who were with her all made it back to the small fort at Watauga, having benefited from the forewarning made by Nanyehi. Old Abram’s attack continued.
Four years earlier, after reaching agreement with the Cherokee on land ownership and well before the Declaration of Independence, the handful of people who founded this mountain settlement along the Watauga River had written a document they called the Watauga Compact. The signatories linked the privilege of elected government to the responsibility for protection and justice.
* * * * * * *
The impact of the wake depends on the size of the vessel and the body of water, along with the rate of speed. But whether it’s large or small, everything moving on the surface causes a dis-placement and a re-placement of the water itself.
Also
(Cook)
A vessel is in at rest for a few days in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It’s the HMS Resolution, captained by James Cook, on his third voyage. He, his crew, and the ship are at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, anchored at the port of Santa Cruz, just off the northwest coast of Africa.
Cook’s crew gathers new supplies at the port, including fresh water, livestock, pumpkins, and more. A store of wine is laid in as well.
Cook will meet with Jean-Charles de Borda to adjust his course and test new instruments.
The public purpose of the journey is to return the native, Omai, to his home island in the southern Pacific. The private purpose of the journey—filled with public implications for Great Power strategy—is to identify a northwest passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
They’ve left wakes ever since departing England. Not a hour or a minute or a second goes by that they don’t make one. It’s just that, in the middle of an ocean, only they can see them.
For You Now
A wake is a reaction.
The question is what the unfolding produces. It may be limited. It may be much more. Your best action as a leader begins with knowing that a wake will happen once the vessel—a change, it seems to me—moves through.
We’ve already mentioned that factors can affect a wake. The Declaration of Independence leaves a wake. The Watauga Compact leaves a wake. Different scales apply.
But we haven’t talked about one factor in particular. Your proximity to the vessel, to the Change, will play a key role here. If you’re five feet away, the chances grow that you’ll feel effects regardless of the scale. Some will be bigger and last longer, but the feel will be there just the same. If you’re a hundred yards away, the scale will be central to your experience of the wake.
Stay with me a bit more.
I talk about time moving only one direction, ahead, like the water in a river. That’s the foundation from which I’ve built my River construct. In that sense, you likely think of yourself as a vessel, a canoe, on the river of time. That’s great. Keep doing that. See here for my explanation: READ HERE
But what if we think of your life as the river itself, and not only the canoe that’s moving inexorably down river. What if you’re The River?
Well, in that case, things go a different way with our wake entry above. A vessel—like the Declaration of Independence, to take an example—can enter your River and cause all sorts of changes. It’s certainly occurred this way in the course of Americanism Redux. The Declaration of Independence altered American River, just like the Union had earlier, and the Tea Act before that. You’ve likely got your own handful of large-scale events that enter Your River and have a similar effect on its shape and course. The wake created by the vessel affects things.
Think back over this entry and you’ll see examples of the vessel and wake. It’s clearly visible with our stories about Whipple, Hawley, Morris, Rush, and Dalton. Washington and Fisk, too. But what about Bonnie Kate? She’s sprinting and lunging without any knowledge at all of the Declaration of Independence. The same goes for Old Abraham. And Captain James Cook. No, they’re unaware, though you don’t have to think long before you realize that when they do learn of it, their experiences will take on an altered shape.
There will be wakes with such force in your personal life, precisely as there are in our national life. You’ll want to look for the scale and your proximity. These are good starts.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: what’s a wake for you?
(Your River)
