Americanism Redux
April 24, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
Beneath darkest waters, two giant plates—tectonic plates—lay alongside each other. A seam separates and joins them. Time passes.
For a reason known only to them, one of the plates begins to move. Along the dividing and connecting seam, but especially at one point, the other plate reacts and retaliates. Far away from our ability to envision, a mutual pressure and collaborative strain changes into violent movement.
From that point of frictitious violence, waves ripple outward, as cause produces effect. What is closest is hit first and hardest, next closest is second, then third, then fourth, and on in succession. The rings expand from epicenter.
In the seven days ending April 24, 250 years ago, the waves and the rings fan outward.
* * * * * * *
(a rendering of Cato Smith)
April 24 and Cato is a young black man, enslaved in the town of Lincoln, Massachusetts. Someone seated with a paper on a desk in front of him asks Cato for his last name. He doesn’t really have a last name; Cato chooses his enslaver’s. Smith. Call me Cato Smith. “Cato Smith” is written down on the paper. He’s now a member of Captain William Smith’s company in the Massachusetts Army.
Cato had raced out to join the unit after learning about what happened five days ago in the fighting and armed clashes of Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road.
Cato Smith has his musket, bag of bullets, and box of cartridges. He’s got some food and a bed roll. He’s in a quickly made camp within sight of Boston Town. He can see the Redcoats if he looks through a spyglass into the town. He’s listening for whenever he hears the voice of the Smith he knows, the same Smith who’s the commanding officer elected by the men of this unit. Yes, elected. Cato belongs to a group that votes to put a person in power so long as that person complies with the group’s expectations.
Has freedom been promised? Has opportunity been offered? Is a pride on the line?
All across these hills and meadows are soldiers just like Cato, white or black or mixed race or some other race or ethnicity. Units, too, just like his.
Waiting for something. Like maybe another clash with bloodshed.
The wave that began outside Boston is still rippling out.
* * * * * * *
(Hancock)
April 24 and John Hancock writes to Joseph Warren. You don’t get more opposite of Cato than John Hancock, who is white, wealthy, well-connected, long active in colonial rights, and on the “most-wanted” list of every Redcoat and British imperial official around. He was supposed to be arrested in the Redcoat mission that ignited last week’s explosions at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road.
In his letter to friend, fellow colonial rebel, and Boston politician Dr. Joseph Warren, Hancock admits that he feels like he “travels as a deserter which I will not submit to.” Hancock is still on the run for the sake of protection. He wants to be back with the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly, the rebels’ revolutionary governing group established in defiance of British orders and prohibition.
Hancock states that it is essential to get as much information collected, verified, and produced as quickly as possible about the recent clashes. It’s crucial to tell the protestors’ story, to share the account with everyone, to wield the document to continue growing support for the cause.
Hancock also urges Warren to plan a direct attack on Redcoat-held Boston. Colonial units must be pushed ahead to attack and drive out the Redcoats. Hancock knows the clash would destroy valuable property that he owns. He doesn’t care.
Decide now. Act now. Move now. The moment is here and decision, action, and movement can turn opportunity into victory.
Hancock closes the letter to Warren with questions. How is the spirit of the Provincial Assembly? Who is there? Who is president?
Now, now, now. The wave is now.
* * * * * * *
(Gage)
April 24 and like Cato Smith and John Hancock, British General Thomas Gage is riding the wave from the shock of days ago. Gage is the overall British political and military authority in Massachusetts, which for him has diminished spatially down to Boston and the musket and artillery firing-distances from the town.
Gage has completed as rapidly as he can a written account of events at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road. He emphasizes the resourcefulness of his officers and soldiers on the assignment to capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams and destroy or disperse war-related supplies accumulated by protestors. He also highlights the control and restraint used by his men. Intriguingly, he only refers to the protestors in one of two ways—they are either “the people” or “country people.” They move in nameless clusters or shadowy bunches. They are violent, mean-spirited, of bad intent and evil consequence. They fire from behind covered places and secret spots.
This is who we’re dealing with as the wave rolls on.
* * * * * * *
(where he entertained them)
April 24 and at Mount Vernon plantation on the Potomac River, George Washington waves goodbye to his brother and three other people whom he’s just entertaining, which has lasted for the bulk of the day. “I continued at home,” writes Washington in his diary after they left.
Waves of shock are on their way.
* * * * * * *
(Lee’s Stratford Hall)
April 24 and also in Virginia and also along the Potomac River is Richard Henry Lee, a fellow colonial protestor of Washington’s.
Lee writes to a neighbor: “God put us into the hands of better men and better times, which surely will be the case if we provide ourselves with Arms and Ammunition, learn the discipline, behave like men, and stick Close, religiously close, to the Association.”
One word there jumps out, and it’s not the Almighty. It’s the “Association.” Lee has placed all his hopes and expectations on the ability of the economic boycott to again achieve a restoration of colonial rights, just as he remembers it doing ten years ago with the Stamp Act’s repeal.
The Association. The Association. God help us stay united in the Association.
The wave is coming to test the Association.
Also
(Miss Margaret)
Margaret Stevenson is almost in tears. She’s in London finishing a letter to her cherished and now-removed friend, Benjamin Franklin. He’s gone back to America.
She writes to him about how much she misses him and is waiting for him to return, which he said he would do. “Oh my dear Sir I shall rejoice at that happy day,” she says to him. In the meantime, she refers to ten people they both know, some on the west side of the Atlantic and some on the east side of the Atlantic. Her letter to Franklin sends out the threads to keep each relationship bound together, across time and space. Each chance to communicate is the rare moment to nurture friendship, caring, and warmth.
She also notes that she has just met two “sad Americans.” They are Sampson and Sarah Blowers, a married couple. The husband had tried to defend in court the British Redcoats who, five years ago, fired on and killed a handful of Bostonian residents, including a young black man, Crispus Attucks, who might have known Cato in those long-ago days. The Blowers have lost their spark, their enthusiasm for life, as the imperial-colonial crisis has rumbled and heaved toward destruction.
I’ll put them in your old bed, Dr. Franklin, writes Margaret to her dearly missed friend.
For You Now
(Shock waves)
The bruise is now an open gash, with blood drying on the torn shirt. No one knows if the wound will stop bleeding or if the stab, slice, and twist has cut across something vital.
Both sides have rushed to document and distribute their story of the event. These documentations are now mini-plate frictions of their own. Their effect is yet to be seen.
But something else has become true.
The vast amount of energy for what happens next is now concentrated in a very few places. People are deciding and acting completely on the basis of factors they know or think they know, they control or think they control. They’re not waiting for the next ship from the eastern side of the Atlantic. They’re not waiting for the next scheduled meeting of the Congress in Philadelphia. They’re no longer going to hold out hope for a grand intervention.
They are doing things right now, right here. They see a problem and they see a solution. The way up to now is ended. The new way forward has begun.
New grinding will commence at the seams of the great plates.
Suggestion
A question for you to consider: have you felt a ripple this week?
(one of the world’s dangerous rivers)
