Americanism Redux
April 17, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
One person’s week. Your week.
How has it gone for you? Like you had expected?
Here’s how it went 250 years ago, in the week leading up to today, 250 years ago.
Remember, a leader, such as yourself, is a person with one or more followers.
A leader’s week.
* * * * * * *
(the family’s house)
Six days ago, the 11th.
The household on Clarke’s Square is usually a bit wild. Five teenager-adolescents, a toddler, and a baby. They’re a blended set of sons and daughters, a bunch with nonstop energy. A young mother struggles to keep up, and a mother-in-law never hesitates to judge and advise.
It’s all her husband can do to hang on.
With thin brown hair and dark eyes, he’s forty years old and three years into his second marriage. His first wife died in child birth. His new, second, and considerably younger wife seems to have adjusted as well as expected. He inscribed her wedding ring himself: “Live Contented.”
A couple of unusual things about his background.
He got in a fist-fight with his dad over which church he’d attend. After the brawl, he reluctantly attended his father’s more traditional church.
He changed the spelling of his name. As a second-generation French immigrant, he’d spelled it the originally way as “Rivoire.” He went with a more English version as “Revere.”
Born a Boston North-Ender, folks in the neighborhood called him by his Christian name, Paul.
Paul Revere.
* * * * * * *
(keeping watch)
Five days ago, the 12th.
The informal organization that Paul Revere helped to launch and to lead is hard at work on this day. They are the “Mechanics Committee” with 35 members and they’ve existed since last fall. They have one purpose with two parts: keep 24-hour surveillance on all British military forces in Boston; and provide all collected information to leaders of the colonial-rights movement in and around Boston. Boiled down, they find information about British Redcoats and feed it to colonial rights leaders.
Revere is instrumental in organizing the Mechanics Committee because of his months-long involvement in the colonial-rights protests against British imperial government. He’s a gifted artist and craftsman who has produced silver-based artifacts and etched drawings that promote the colonial-rights cause. He’s also a natural horseman who has proven time and again his reliability and physical endurance in transmitting messages and news over long distances.
But he’d got it wrong a few days back. He’d ridden to Concord with “intel” that an invasive British military expedition was about to commence. Revere and the Mechanics are still feeling the sting of carrying fake news.
Nevertheless, Revere and the Mechanics maintain their two-pairs-of-watchers-at-a-time method in Boston. Four men, stationed in two pairs, are always following, watching, listening, and interviewing people located nearest British units and soldiers.
* * * * * * *
(what he’s holding)
Four days ago, the 13th.
Revere has graceful, nimble hands. He’s adept at drawing, shaping, sketching, taking an image in his head and putting it onto a material like metal or paper. He’s also a quick study; he notices. Indeed, he’s noticing today that families are moving out of Boston with their belongings in carts and wagons. A mood is alive—a collective sense that British Redcoats are about to drive inland in an assigned mission has frightened people into relocating further west in the colony until things have clarified or settled down.
And so Revere sees horses and oxen conveying people out of harm’s way.
* * * * * * *
(Nautilus)
Three days ago, the 14th.
Revere’s group monitors activity on the Boston docks. A ship arrives from England, the HMS Nautilus. It’s a military vessel under authorization to enter the harbor that’s been closed to all local activity since last fall (part of the Coercive Acts’ punishment of Boston and Massachusetts).
Revere and his Mechanics report that an officer walks across the wharf with papers in a bundle. They already know what’s in the papers: British imperial official the Earl of Dartmouth is ordering full military action by Gage. Astoundingly, Revere’s group first learned this news twelve days ago when another faster vessel arrived with unofficial reports of such a decision by Dartmouth.
For Revere and the Mechanics, the arrival of Nautilus and the bundle of official imperial orders does one very important thing—it confirms last week’s inaccurate warning ridden inland by Revere was rock-hard accurate in a key aspect.
The British are (will be) coming.
* * * * * * *
(a Grenadier officer)
Two days ago, the 15th.
Toward evening, Revere gets information from the two-pair team of Mechanics on duty that night in Boston. They’ve picked up intel that British specialty troops—the light infantry and the grenadiers, two types of units that are trained in faster movements and shock tactics—have gotten approval to miss scheduled duty for ordinary British infantry. In other words, time-off, as ordered by British military commander General Thomas Gage. But the real meaning is this: British light infantry and grenadiers are being transferred to the planned inland military strike force.
By design, Revere immediately transmits the intel to Joseph Warren, Thomas Young, William Cooper, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other colonial-rights protest leaders.
Barely hours later, it’s become common information on the cobblestone streets.
* * * * * * *
(North Church)
One day ago, the 16th.
Revere rides.
He gallops on horseback to Lexington and informs John Hancock and Samuel Adams that, yes, it’s going to happen and yes, they’ll be the targets for seizure and imprisonment. It’s a replay of last week’s false report. Neither man bats an eye in disbelief. The time is nigh—prepare to meet thy God.
Revere re-rides back to Boston for an emergency meeting with the Mechanics. He’s breathing hard but looking fast, scanning from one face to another in briefing the group of his latest ride to Lexington. Revere and the Mechanics quickly devise oral maps for use if Gage orders the roads blocked when the Redcoat strike-force starts its mission.
The Mechanics’ meeting continues. How will we know when the British are actually on the move? They agree that the dual pairs of watchmen will deploy codes of light—”if the British went out by Water,” Revere remembered later, “we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; and if by Land, one, as a Signal; for we were apprehensive it would be difficult to Cross the Charles River, or git over Boston neck.” Once received, riders will race west, north, and south along the secret routes. The first people to hear the riders’ shouted alarms will call for emergency military responders and militia already set on high-alert.
At this point of the meeting our language would be: “got it? we good?”
Revere adjourns the meeting.
* * * * * * *
(gravestone of his first wife)
After an exhausting day and night, Revere wakes up on April 17, today, 250 years ago.
Revere has known a lot of death in his life. He’s the only surviving member of his family; eleven other siblings have died. His father died unexpectedly and suddenly. Many of his own children have died. His first wife lost her life in childbirth. He’s hoping the baby birthed by his second wife will somehow reach adolescence, though the chances don’t seem good when you look at Revere’s own experiences.
But it’s a new day today, and he’s out of the house to check in with the two pairs of Mechanics who were on surveillance duty last night and into dawn. Any update?
Lots of movement in Redcoat quarters and camps. Lots of motion with those specialty units of light infantry and grenadiers. Lots of activity on British vessels anchored off the docks and wharves.
Revere knows it’s simply a question of when:
when the code shines from the church steeple,
when the horses are untied and spurred onto the secret roads,
when the first shouts emanate from the saddles.
* * * * * * *
When.
Also
(a flour war starts)
Spring in France is the season for the wheat harvest. By mid-April 1775, however, a “flour war” has emerged. Bad weather for growing and the sharp shift from a mercantilist to a more market-oriented economy have produced shortages of bread in dozens of villages and towns across every region of France. What little supply exists has skyrocketed in price.
Today, 250 years ago, several women in a Burgundy village are mulling a plan to destroy a local grist mill and the home of a political official; they are among the farmers, peasants, and the poorest laboring classes struggling with a lack of food. The royal court of King Louis XVI will have to determine whether or not to take severe measures to quell the uprisings and social unrest.
For You Now
Some of you know that I constantly urge you to forget that you know what happens. I’ve found that the leadership lessons of the past often are strongest when you try to learn like people lived in the past—not knowing how the story ends.
Well, I’m about to violate that precept of mine.
Let’s totally recognize what actually happened next. Let’s openly know what we know in how the story ends.
We know that the American Revolutionary War began with the clashes on Lexington Green, Concord Bridge, and Old Concord or Bay Road on April 19, 1775. We know the war lasts for eight years, ending with the Treaty of Paris signed in September 1783. We know that the American nation is alive, if not entirely well, for having won the war. All that, we certainly know.
Which means something else, too.
Peace departs. Like a dove flying off the fence post, the condition of peace bids goodbye. It will no longer define daily life in the colonies after this week’s Redux entry. The arrival of fighting, organized bloodshed, and war-making ends a climate of peace that has prevailed despite disorder, tensions, and occasional violent flare-ups.
The reality of American Union began to exist during this period when war was absent. The earliest moments of birth and breathing by the American Union occurred in the setting of peace and quasi-peace. It is in this period that American leaders emerged. It is in this period that challenges and problems appeared and were handled well, handled badly, or handled not at all. It is in this period that the American Union laid down the first elements of collective identity and shared character.
We know that after today, the next night will be the last night when the church steeple is dark and the lantern’s fire is unlit.
Suggestion
A question for you to consider: how does going to war and accepting intentional violence affect a people?
(Your River)
