Americanism Redux
April 30, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
Let’s get as many people as we possibly can to agree on this one thing. When we do, we’ll have a consensus.
Consensus is a wonderful word, a loaded word, an enduring word.
Today, 250 years ago, consensus is a word many people seek but few people grasp.
* * * * * * *
(the professor’s campus)
The arguments are heated outside Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. Spewing fire is a Scottish immigrant, James Cannon, a 35-year old math professor at the College of Philadelphia. He’s been working tirelessly all week to whip up support for radical change in elections and voting in the community. Cannon looks around him at the popularity of “Common Sense” written by fellow immigrant Thomas Paine and sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the world—to overthrow the belief in rule by kings and queens and power exerted by the so-called social superiors of everyday people. An election is coming soon for Pennsylvania’s Assembly where it stands a good chance that radically inclined office-holders could make the changes Cannon seeks.
Cannon reads another writing this week, entitled “Address to the Free and Independent Electors of Philadelphia.” The writer states flatly: “Every man who pays his shot and bears his lot is naturally and constitutionally an elector in a city…every citizen who has armed and associated to defend the Commonwealth is and should be an elector.” And don’t fall for the old canard, the writer warns, about immigrants not being this or immigrants not doing that—we’re all voters.
That’s a consensus Cannon can warmly embrace.
* * * * * * *
(his first magazine)
It’s New York City and nothing else.
That’s the view of Continental Army Commanding General George Washington. To him, New York City and the Hudson River valley to its north “is now become the grand magazine of America” and “the securing this post, and Hudson’s River, is to us also of so great importance that I cannot advise sending any more troops from hence.” In his head, he envisions a baseline military strength in greater New York City of at least 10,000 soldiers. He’d prefer many more.
Washington has been in the area for less than a month. In that time, he’s inspected structures, visited encampments, conducted meetings, and stood on the shores to see the extensive routes of water transport. Coupled with his knowledge that the British military evacuated Boston and headed out to sea, Washington has reached an inner consensus—this is truly the next seat of war, a bigger Boston. He locks his understanding into place through the use of a word he knows well from his time in Williamsburg, Virginia, which has a weapons depot of distinct shape and size called a “magazine”. He compresses thousands upon thousands of acres of space—with its populations, communities, and array of natural features—into the simple term for a bullet-shaped brickhouse, America and the Union’s “grand magazine”.
Washington distills, crystallizes, and convicts into a core-sized outlook that will not be shaken and not be altered. It’s an inner consensus for a single mind.
* * * * * * *
(Pres Hancock)
A year ago, John Hancock saw himself as an emerging commander of the thousands of armed men surrounding the Redcoats in Boston. Those were the pre-Continental Army days after bloodshed in Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road.
Things went a different way for Hancock. He never got to wear that military uniform. Instead, he’s kept his familiar garb of the finest suits and the best clothes. That’s his uniform as Preside/nt of the Continental Congress. But things being the way they can be, however, he’s actually deeply involved in shaping military decisions and wartime strategy on the Philadelphia end of correspondence with Commanding General George Washington and other high-ranking Continental Army officers.
Today, he’s continuing to uphold the consensus in the Continental Congress and elsewhere that Canada remains a vital part of the Union’s military efforts. Despite disastrous losses at Quebec and devastating effects of disease in almost every Union military encampment in the north, Hancock is as convinced as he ever was in the wisdom of gaining Canadian acceptance of a status as the latest rebellious colony. He won’t let go.
Hancock has written to several people this week about the importance of Canada, the sustained resolve of the Continental Congress to send military resources there, and the obvious, natural, and organic connection between the Union and its hoped-for 14th colony.
Hancock’s insistence about Canada is a single consensus sitting inside a bigger consensus: that the loss of such an objective might undermine or weaken confidence in a higher and broader goal. That’s why he hangs on.
* * * * * * *
(the Highlands)
Situated between the elusive 14th colony and the “Grand Magazine”, Thomas Palmer is one of the leaders of the construction work at one site along the Hudson River, known locally as the Highlands. The work which began a month ago under the place-name of Popolopen has recently been changed to “Fort Montgomery”. The name-change is okay with Palmer as it symbolically honors and celebrates the courage, duty, and sacrifice made by the General Richard Montgomery, killed in action during the assault on Quebec late last year. As a memory and image, Montgomery is one of the most recognizable military figures of the Continental Army in the young Union. Palmer works on a living, breathing, contributing, and hopefully enduring expression of the slain soldier.
The work here at Fort Montgomery by Palmer and his laborers is, fundamentally, the making of a Union military community. They’ve erected a storehouse, a two-story soldiers’ barrack, a separate quarters for the officers, a bakehouse, a guardhouse, an extensive toilet facility, a commissary, an arms storage unit called a “magazine”, an artillery battery, and fortified walls surrounding the entire sprawling complex. In addition, stacks of sawed lumber are everywhere, the next phase of construction. All of it operates on money—to pay the workers, for materials—and not enough money has yet arrived to Montgomery. Disease is plentiful at Montgomery, though, as is the man-by-man and day-by-day decision to desert the post. Morale and mood rise and fall in the same day, sometimes in the same hour. Under such strain, Palmer notes the presence of an invisible consensus at Montgomery: the better leader a commander is, the more responsive the men are. Palmer believes that even with all these challenges, if he can get the money, he can finish the job. If not, well, maybe everybody can crouch behind those lumber stacks if the enemy shows up.
A consensus needs commitment, and commitment takes action. Palmer can build with the best of them.
* * * * * * *
(President Franklin D. Roosevelt, not far from the mining area)
Not far from Fort Montgomery, on the other (eastern) side of the Hudson River, is the Little Nine Partners land grant. John McDonald has been there at the request of the New York Provincial Assembly. Members of the Assembly are trying to reach a consensus if any of the acreage in the Little Nine Partners contains iron or lead for mining. If so, it could be a highly important strategic resource if war continues between the Union and Britain.
McDonald has gone on-site at Little Nine Partners to inspect the ground. Unlike Thomas Palmer and his new-building project, McDonald explores old, abandoned structures in run-down mines from long ago. McDonald’s attention is on the mineral resources that prompted the mines in the first place. And yes, McDonald concludes, the minerals of iron ore and lead are still here, still accessible to those who want them bad enough to do the heavy work of clawing them up and hauling them out. It’ll take money to make the thing go.
McDonald’s done what he can. Asked to inspect, he inspects. Asked to report, he reports. From here on, a different kind of building must be done by the Assembly members themselves—of consensus, perhaps fueled by the necessity of war, involving the bargaining and deal-making that can distort one’s view of the horizon.
* * * * * * *
(they don’t want seven of these)
Samuel Holden Parsons and six Continental Army officers from Connecticut and New Hampshire are upset that they’re not earning the same monthly pay as other officers they know. They’re taking action as a group of seven. They’ve written and edited a statement of their position, explaining their service up to now and their intentions in the future. Together they chose vocabulary, sentence structure, and the positioning of sentences in paragraphs. The resulting document is not threatening or even a warning; it’s an informing of what course of action, a collective resignation, they might take if the situation remains unchanged. They’re appealing to those whom they think can right the wrongs.
Sharing a plight they see as unjust, the seven officers are quick to build consensus.
* * * * * * *
(he’s got a suggestion)
Consensus is not unanimity. There are those who choose to stay outside it or won’t be permitted inside it.
That’s the reality of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people today inside the Union. Two of them illustrate this truth.
One is Dr. John Connolly. He’s been in a Philadelphia prison for going on four months. His crime was active support of Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s deposed imperial governor. Included among the charges was involvement in organizing armed forces to fight on behalf of Dunmore and the British Empire. Both Connolly and his wife are incarcerated with little knowledge of where and how their ordeal will end.
The other is Robert Eden, one-time governor of Maryland. He’s still free and walking the streets of Annapolis, but subject to jail and punishment at any instant, be it by official orders or mob rule. An investigation of Eden is underway in the Maryland Assembly, in the colony’s Committee of Safety, in and the Baltimore Committee of Observation. Eden walks as silently as he can.
For those wondering how to respond to these incidents—the number of which grows each day—John Adams of the Continental Congress has a suggestion this week: just pass in your colony a constitution, making you a “state” in the Union, just like South Carolina a few days ago, and then enact whatever laws, processes, and systems you need to handle Loyalists. Problem solved.
For Adams, the point is law and lawfulness. The consensus is the right of people to make both through their chosen representatives.
* * * * * * *
(William Howe)
British General William Howe, Redcoat commander of imperial forces, writes: “…it is become highly necessary that the first exertion of this Army should be directed to the most important purposes, to check the spirit which the evacuation of Boston will naturally raise among the Rebels. In this disposition, it is probably that their leaders, urged by the people, and flushed with an idea of superiority, may be the readier brought to a decisive action, than which nothing is more to be desired, or sought for, by us, as the most effectual means to terminate this expensive war…”
Staring across the salt water to the other side of the chessboard, Howe anticipates the likely consensus among his enemy. Now, as to where…it’s between New York City and Rhode Island. He reaches an inner consensus strikingly similar to Washington’s on nearly the same day: “New York, being the greater object of the two, and the possession of it more extensive in its consequences, as well as more conducive to the credit of his Majesty’s arms, will be my principal aim…”
To New York we go.
* * * * * * *
Consensus is a condition, a state of being, and a center from different directions.
Also
(Spithead)
The air smelled of salt and wood on the ships felt smooth and worn to the touch. Thick ropes absorbed moisture carried by the wind and breeze. Sea birds flew, hovered, and glided back and forth. The days and nights off Spithead, England, on the English Channel, follow the stars.
Inside the ships were perhaps a thousand men. They were, essentially, rented property, hired and placed here at the order of Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel in exchange for money given by British King George III. The men are soldiers, called professional but perhaps best labeled as trained and ruled.
Their destination is America, to put down the rebellion.
* * * * * * *
(the Empress)
On the other side of the Channel is Brussels, site of a decree issued by Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. From this day onward, no assistance to the rebellious colonies in America will be allowed. The Austro-Hungarian throne and empire will operate in full support of British King George III.
The form of that support will take shape as time unfolds. For some, such as lesser rulers in lesser places, like Hesse-Kassel, it may be in the form of men, rentable and sendable to the New World.
* * * * * * *
(part of the Pavilion)
The Pavilion of Literary Profundity in the Forbidden City (Beijing) of the Qing Empire is just about complete. Work on gathering the written materials for the facility is ongoing, though a substantial portion of the 36,000 volumes are in place. It is a storehouse of all knowledge deemed worthy by the Qing Emperor, a vast consensus defined by elimination of items unworthy of the distinction, which happen to coincide with determinations of opposition to imperial power.
When all knowledge is amassed, surely consensus will be easier.
For You Now
How much consensus do we need? How do we get there? How much time do we have to get there? When will we know we’ve reached the point of counterproduction in our search for consensus?
These are questions that define the day and week 250 years ago. The blast pattern of Paine’s Common Sense has injected enormous energy into the moment. What are we waiting for? Why haven’t you acted? These questions explode across communities. One reaction to them is hinted at with John Adams’s impatient wave of the hand—then go ahead and write your version of South Carolina’s state constitution and let’s get going! That’s far from simple and yet if it were only that simple.
The power of inner consensus shines through in this entry. Both Washington and Howe reach the same inner consensus: New York. For all the things that must happen if someone takes Adams’s advice, a million more unknowns await from the consensus found separately in these two leaders. Words on the page are one thing, blood on the streets is another, and consensus can reflect that fact.
Consensus also happens to reveal some of the greatest urgency and drama of connections between then and now. I can easily hear someone asking these same four questions in a breathless tone at this very instant. And I can envision a modern Thomas Palmer repeating the observation from Fort Montgomery about the difference a leader makes.
Let’s pick a start. Consensus begins with consent.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: what word you do equate with consensus? And after choosing, hold for a beat and ask this: what’s in the space between consensus and the word I just chose?
(Your River)
