Americanism Redux
August 13, Your Today, 250 years ago, in 1776
A massive challenge is coming and, by today, we ought to be about 80-90% ready to deal with it.
We’re not. Nowhere near it.
In reality, maybe we’re 50%. Worse, the gap is growing between where we ought to be and where we actually are. At this rate, give it another week and we’ll probably slip further to 40% or lower. It’s anybody’s guess. And all the while, that massive challenge gets closer and closer by the hour.
It’s not supposed to be this way. We’re looking at a bad moon rising.
Welcome to Americanism Redux, 250 years ago today.
* * * * * * *
At the top of the masts, a forest of red-and-white flags wave in the warm breeze. On one such flag is a red cross stretched top to bottom and side to side on the flowing cloth. These are the designations of countless British ships stand at anchor in the waters near New York City and Staten Island, with the red-crossed flag belonging to the commanding vessel.
Below the flags, on the decks and in the holds as well as scattered in a few encampments on land, 32,000 British and German soldiers eat, sleep, and wait. They’re waiting for orders to take up positions in the great invasion and assault set to begin any day.
Led by the Howe brothers—William the General and Richard the Admiral—and now joined by military commanders Henry Clinton and Peter Parker and their joint British force just returned from the failed attack on Charleston, South Carolina, this massive expression of British armed power is about to smash onto mainland New York City and Long Island. Who knows from there: one intent might be to drive north, seize control of the Hudson River and split the Union into two—separating New England from everyone else to the south and west, a stake through the heart of the most significant commercial and port community in eastern North America.
On the ship masts, British flags wave toward the north, as if taunting their enemy.
* * * * * * *
Continental Army General George Washington tells a friend in private: “I did not care to make too full a declaration of the Weak State of this Army—to you Sir, I can have no reserve in doing of it”; he explains that he has one untrained soldier for every three professional soldiers on the enemy ships. He’s pleading for militia to fill the gap. To Continental Congress President John Hancock he is blunt: “Our posts too are much divided having Waters between many of them and some distant from Others Fifteen Miles. These circumstances sufficiently distressing of themselves, are much aggravated by the Sickness (smallpox) that prevails through the Army—Every day, more or less are taken down…These things are Melancholy, but they are nevertheless true—I hope for better.”
Hope for the better? On the water, the flags wave in laughter.
* * * * * * *
Robin isn’t laughing, though he can see the water of Long Island Sound from his vantage point at Rye, New York. He’s under orders from his enslaver, Augustus Van Cortlandt, to wait for a reply from John Jay at his home in Rye. Van Cortlandt is on the run after being targeted for arrest as a British sympathizer. His name showed up on a list scribbled down by Abraham Skinner, an avid Union supporter who convinced Continental Army and New York officials that he knew who was loyal to the Union and who was loyal to the King. Van Cortlandt has no intention of trying to accommodate Skinner or any other Union supporter. Nevertheless, he’s hidden New York City’s municipal records for safekeeping; he prizes order and stability no matter who’s in charge. He wants to contact his cousin John Jay and ensure that the whereabouts of the records are known and that Cortlandt can connect with British forces after they’ve landed and gone inland.
Knowing his own future could change hour to hour, Robin nervously waits for Jay to open his door.
* * * * * * *
(the work they’ll do in eleven years)
30-year old John Jay may or may not hear the banging on his front door. He’s purposely isolated in his Rye home, rooted at a desk. Quill pens, papers, and books are around him. Feverishly, he writes, crosses out, writes some more, crosses out a little more. He’s working on a draft constitution for New York to exist as a state in the American Union and not a colony in the British Empire. He’ll present his document to a committee, they’ll hand it off to the New York Convention where delegates will chew the papers until they accept and adopt a final form. A colleague of Jay’s has blasted him for “playing truant”—the argument being that the constitution won’t matter if the coming battle for New York (and broader war) is lost. Jay is steadfast: self-governance and law are what the blood and death are all about. Lose them and you lose the reason to fight. Jay writes on.
Also in New York is a stranger to Jay, 21-year old Alexander Hamilton, an officer in charge of a New York-organized artillery unit. Hamilton wants New York’s civilian authorities to name a new subordinate commander to help with the thousand-and-one duties needed to shore up the city’s defenses. He’s also been pushing for pay increases similar to the earnings of men in equivalent units of the Continental Army. Mentally bright to the point of intellectual brilliance, Hamilton spends sixteen-hour days in the middle of New York, both city and state, trying to get funds, power, and anything else from the Continental Congress, Continental Army, and neighboring states. Hamilton drives on.
South of both men is 25-year old James Madison. Like Jay, he’s at home, in his case, at the estate called Montpelier in Virginia. Also like Jay, Madison is a constitution-drafter, though he finished helping with Virginia’s new state constitution back during the start of summer. Madison’s contribution was a shock: he successfully advocated to expand religious toleration into religious freedom as an individual’s right. Now, though, Madison is back at Montpelier with tobacco and corn that will soon be harvested, with an estate population that includes almost one hundred enslaved people, with the sparkling energy he’d felt in belonging to an assembled group of men grappling with the ideas, policies, and political structures of self-government.
To Jay’s writing and Hamilton’s driving, Madison adds his planning. One decade and one year ahead, these three will work together.
* * * * * * *
(the killing beast)
The smallpox that is destroying Washington’s army without a shot fired has spread up and down the Atlantic coast. In Massachusetts, a friend of John Adams’s, James Warren, writes to the Massachusetts delegate with hopes that Adams has avoided the affliction. Warren explains that most of Adams’s family is “through the small Pox. This distemper has been generally more severe than usual, and Attended with one Circumstance Unusual, and very disagreeable—the failure of Inoculation in many instances, and the Uncertainty of it in many Others, by which means many take it in the Natural way.”
Another Massachusetts resident is Sarah Hodgkins, whose husband is with the Continental Army in New York City. Sarah is tending the family’s three children. Joe Jr, the youngest at seventeen months, is on the verge of death from illness. If it’s smallpox or not Sarah isn’t saying in her letters to Joe Sr. She knows that smallpox is rampant both in New England and New York. Perhaps her decision is that the best thing is avoid getting specific in her letters to Joe Sr. If he learns smallpox is in their home, he might panic at being two hundred miles away.
A cough erupts in Joe Jr. His body’s defenses weaken still more. Helpless, Sarah watches with the two older children while in New York City Joe Sr worries about his distant family.
* * * * * * *
(like the kits used by the doctor-brothers)
A family from Bridgeton, New Jersey is also split apart. They’re the Elmers, Jonathan and Ebenezer, both doctors, a rarity regardless of where you are.
Dr. Jonathan E has lately been the keynote speaker at Bridgeton’s celebration of the Declaration of Independence. His speech is the capstone to an event that includes the public reading of the Declaration, the new state constitution of New Jersey, and a newly enacted treason law. It’s the first time that a community anywhere in the Union has received a trio of these new documents. Jonathan invoked the lessons of “Greece, Rome, Carthage, and Great Britain” as examples of internal “tyranny and usurpation” overwhelming liberty. He advocated moderation and temperate behavior and urged listeners to reflect on the conduct vital for self-government.
Meanwhile, at German Flats in western New York, Dr. Ebenezer E, Jonathan’s brother, had heard the Declaration read aloud because the father of another officer had included the document with a letter from home. Ebenezer is currently treating numerous soldiers sick from smallpox and other ailments. He attends church services faithfully and laments profanity and dueling among officers and soldiers. And significantly, Ebenezer witnesses extensive negotiations with Native leaders of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an early example of the Union’s diplomacy and foreign relations. Though few see it that way, Ebenezer is an exception with his keen insights and appreciation of Native culture amassed over the past two weeks. He rejoices over the conclusion of a neutrality treaty between the Union and a Native confederation. It’s a diplomatic achievement in the midst of the Continental Congress’s trio of fundamental documents for independence (done), confederation (not done), and foreign alliances (also not done) set in motion by Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and American separation.
These two Elmer brothers, three hundred miles apart, see fresh Union structures gasping for air and struggling to stand.
* * * * * * *
(the frustrated general)
Adjacent to Jonathan Elmer and the Declaration of Independence he helped unveil in Bridgeton, New Jersey is one of the Pennsylvania delegates who’d refused to sign the document. He’s John Dickinson. A month ago, he resigned from the Continental Congress in quiet protest over independence. Gallantly, he insisted on serving as a general of Pennsylvania militia and has led his brigade east to New Jersey to meet the threat of a looming British invasion. But now Dickinson is upset because the militia are increasingly in “disorder” from desertion, insubordination, and lawlessness. He’s urging the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety to punish militia volunteers who return to the state illegally.
Dickinson can’t understand their conduct in the face of the enemy threat.
* * * * * * *
(William Williams)
A Connecticut delegate to the Continental Congress, William Williams, wasn’t part of the Declaration’s development or debate, having arrived to Philadelphia after early July. But just several days ago, in secret along with other delegates, he penned his name among the fifty signers. By today, however, he’s discouraged. Secretiveness becomes sadness.
“We make slow Progress in them (the draft Articles of Confederation) as every Inch of Ground is disputed, and very jarring Claims and Interests are to be adjusted among us, and then all to be agreed by the several Legislators,” warns Williams, “so that between both, I almost Despair of seeing it accomplished.” He also observes that southern and northern delegates show a divide between them.
Williams seeks courage and resolve. “What will be the event of Things God only knows,” asserts Williams, “If we were to view only the rage and Strength of our Enemies, our Divisions and the wickedness of the People, We might well despair, but they are wicked also, their cause is certainly most unjust. The Judge of all the Earth will do right. He had done great Things for Us. He will not yet forsake Us I believe, tho most of Us have forsaken him, but I trust many many thousands, have not bowed the Knee to Baal.”
* * * * * * *
(arguing)
Among the daily clashes in the Continental Congress, a sudden spurt of officer promotions are voted on and announced. Each state’s delegation argues in favor of its candidates and, fueled by grievances, selects some of other states to disparage. An investigation into charges of misconduct of Union naval commander Esek Hopkins, Washington’s counterpart, has become entangled with these factious disputes. The web thickens and stickens when the ongoing brawl over who’s to blame for defeats in Canada joins the mix.
None of this, of course, lowers the British flags waving above the sea waters off southern New York.
* * * * * * *
You won’t see a British naval flag for miles and miles in the Carolina interior. All you’ll see and hear today, 250 years ago is smoke, ashes, and muffled cries.
It’s the latest stage of the past few weeks. Loyalist against Unionist, Cherokee Native against Unionist, lawbreakers against law-and-order, lovers of violence against whomever is close by, blazing away like a wildfire roughly a hundred and sometimes two hundred miles from the seacoast.
The attempted British assault on Charleston, South Carolina is over and done. What’s left are brief, bloody, and vicious encounters across the woods, swamps, and meadows of the inland of South Carolina. It’s attack and reprisal, violence and retaliation. Rules and restrictions go to as far as what a fighter can do in the moment; beyond that, not much is off-limits. The fire blazes where it wants, apart from the marching lines and cadenced firing of regular combat. The people of inland North Carolina are gearing up for the burning to move there.
These are cultures at war. The cause trails after, running through floating embers to catch up.
Also
(Queen)
Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa works with her co-ruler and son, Joseph II. Unlike him, she prefers a cautious, slower approach to the reforms they both think are needed for the Hapsburg Empire of central and southern Europe.
Today, 250 years ago, 59-year old Maria Theresa seeks to abolish torture in the legal code, though again in a more moderate pace than Joseph demands. She is also examining how various ministers and officials inside the monarchy can be more professionalized and competent aside from whatever connections have gained their positions for them. Above all in the moment, she wants to overhaul the governance of a key Adriatic port, Fiume, and bring it more firmly under royal control in Croatia. Maria Theresa wants to stay within the pace of change among European monarchies, but not get overly aggressive in her efforts to do so. The last thing she wants is that Fiume becomes her Boston.
* * * * * * *
(Germain)
King George III’s primary Cabinet officer for the American war is George Germain. Today, Germain has two forms of the Declaration of Independence on his desk. One is from British General William Howe and the other is from British naval officer Molyneux Shuldham. Together, they’re indisputable proof that in America the anti-colonial movement has now become a pro-independence cause. What less indisputable is the definition of a British imperial victory. Is it the capture of the Declaration’s authoring body, the Continental Congress? If so, who signed it? Or is it the capture of the rebel so-called general Washington? His army? Or some number of rebellious colonies? If so, which ones? The answers aren’t as easy as reading the documents.
* * * * * * *
(Jane)
Jane Strachey is in London writing to her husband, Henry. He’s with the Howe brothers just off the shore of southern New York. His assignment as a British imperial official is to encourage rebels in the colonies to cease resistance and return to their status as British subjects. Jane describes herself as “shuddering” at the thought of what her husband might be going through. When she learns that the rebels in America are now seeking total separation and independence her shudders will turn to convulsions; the danger to Henry will have grown ten-fold. For the moment, though, Jane is unaware of the two Declaration documents on George Germain’s desk elsewhere in London. Her current ignorance is scarcely the stuff of bliss, while the next awareness will surely be the stuff of torture.
For You Now
So what do you do when you expected to be almost fully prepared for the coming big, bad thing but in fact you’re far less than that?
I think you do the best with what you have.
It may not mean victory is the result, likely it probably won’t, unless there’s a miracle. Instead, you get through the bad and try coming out the other side in the best realistic shape you can be…because there’s another struggle ahead after that. It’s THAT next struggle that you’ll want to tackle successfully. The big, bad thing hitting you now may win in the short run. The longer run, however, can still be yours to seek, and claim, as a victory.
I see William Williams heading that way. He’s upset at what’s going on around him in the Pennsylvania State House. Yet he has faith twice-placed—first, in the higher spirit that defines him and, second, in the cause for which he and “many many others” are fully engaged. And now that I think of it, perhaps a third exists: he’s not going anywhere; he’s staying put and working at the countless disputes that keep popping up.
Okay, our preparation and readiness is disappointingly lower than I’d expected. Got it. But we’ll fight it out and we’ll give our best and then see where we are for the next struggle coming later. Maybe that thing that wants to defeat us isn’t as clever and untouchable as we assume it is.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: can you find your inner William Williams?
(Your River)
