Americanism Redux
Look at that wall. Closely. See the cracks? Every wall has them.
Most of the time, the cracks in the wall can be repaired, patched, painted over. Looks like new. Not a big deal.
Every once in a while, the cracks in a wall mean much more. A serious problem, a deep flaw and weakness, signal of a coming collapse.
The trick is to know the difference between cracking and collapsing, between partial repairs and total rebuilding and reconstruction.
Today, 250 years ago, the difference is clear. Check the cracks.
August 21, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
(he’s writing his dad)
Two people who support British imperial rule will tell you all about falling walls.
Earl Percy, an English nobleman, is in Boston, colonel of the 5th Infantry of Foot in the British Army, a unit darkly bloodied at Lexington and Concord and again at Bunker/Breed’s Hill. Months ago, Percy was a sympathizer of the colonial rights protests. Now, not at all. A few days ago he sent a packet to his father back in England. In the packet he included some local eastern Massachusetts newspapers. On the newspapers he highlighted public essays written by colonial-rights leaders. In the cover letter to his father Earl Percy says, essentially: look, Dad, there’s no mistake they want independence, pure and simple. I despise them.
Meanwhile, in Charleston, South Carolina, another English nobleman expresses himself. He is Lord William Campbell, the colony’s royal governor for the past two months. Earlier this week he started his remarks to the colony’s legislature this way: “The powers of Government are wrested out of my hands. I can neither protect, nor punish…”
Ever wonder what a hopeless attempt at wall-repair looks like? The same man will show you in his next line:
“…therefore with the Advice of His Majesty’s Council I apply to You and desire that in this dreadful emergency, You will aid me with all the assistance in Your power in enforcing the Laws, and protecting His Majesty’s Servants.”
Walls are crumbling down in South Carolina and Massachusetts.
* * * * * * *
(Samuel Johnston)
Two efforts at building new walls are underway 250 years ago this week.
In North Carolina, just one colony north of Campbell in South Carolina is a kind of new version of “governor”—he’s Samuel Johnston but no, he’s not a royally-appointed executive. Johnston is two days into his newly elected role as “Preside-ent” (that’s my word) of North Carolina’s Third Provincial Congress meeting now in Hillsborough. The Third Provincial Congress is taking over control of the colony in the name of colonial rights…and in the removal of imperial authority.
A native of Chowan County, a respected lawyer, an experienced office-holder, and an enslaver, Johnston nods his thanks to the delegates and starts the day’s business. Read carefully this next item about wall-building: Johnston and the group are beginning the process of adapting the colony’s six existing judicial districts into the basis for six new military districts, each one of which will consist of four to eight counties. That will be your new frame for your new colonial-rights government in North Carolina. And a sidenote—as it happens, twelve years into the future, Johnston and two colleagues will develop the new revolutionary concept of judicial review.
These are new walls indeed.
Meanwhile, in another version of wall-building, Paul Revere rolls out his design of new paper money for Massachusetts. It’s the product of his latest new contract with the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. That body—again, tied to the colonial-rights cause—had decided the colony needed a new design of money to reflect new beginnings.
Pick up Revere’s new two-shilling note on the street and here’s what you’ll see: one side has a man holding a sword and a copy of Magna Carta, the other side a Latin phrase that translates as “By arms he seeks peace with freedom”. Revere’s public message is as subtle as a slap on the face. Our new ways will be a return to our original ways.
(freshly made for your pocket)
In the distance behind you, the Redcoats remain penned up inside Boston with George Washington and the Continental Army surrounding them. You nod at the currency’s meaning, place the note in your purse or wallet, and go on with your day. But what you’re really carrying with you is Revere’s sketch of a new wall.
* * * * * * *
(older and younger)
As far as walls go, George Washington feels the walls pressing in on him more than he feels anything else. His feeling may be showing in some of his communication this week. Stresses make the cracks.
He’s written the latest letter in the back-and-forth exchange with British General Thomas Gage, commander of the surrounded British forces in Boston. Washington and Gage are still going at it over the treatment of captives, prisoners, and civilians stuck in Boston. Washington’s tone and word choice in his latest letter to Gage reveals a change in outlook from notable adversary to despised enemy. He writes to Gage with fierce accusations of abuse, cruelty, and a conscious disdain for humane attitudes and dispositions. Washington’s communication to Gage points toward a divide beyond us versus them. A potential exists for human versus alien.
Perhaps Washington’s mood has a perverse source this week. He’s written to his brother about his opinion of officers and soldiers from Massachusetts. Simply put, he despises them almost as much as he does Gage. They’re “dirty”, “nasty”, and as far as he can tell, utterly indifferent to duty, which may mean they’re indifferent to the cause, in his view.
Finally, those closing-in-walls bring another form of pressure on Washington. He’s having to start consideration of his wife Martha’s safety in their home on the Potomac River. He realizes she is terrified, fearful of kidnapping or worse. Hundreds of miles away from Mount Vernon, he’s wondering about the best ways to protect her as his opinions of Gage sink into hell and his outlook on his own soldiers breaks into pieces.
* * * * * * *
(you can guess which one he is)
A hundred miles south of Mount Vernon a great shaking has begun. Cracks splinter across Virginia’s walls, and a shaft of daylight streaks through the gaps.
Patrick Henry is on his feet at the Third Virginia Convention in Richmond, doing what he does best—speaking. With arms waving, voice rising and falling in pitch, and dramatic turns of his head, Henry reads aloud to the delegates his resolution on “dissenting clergymen”. The resolution proposes to allow Virginia’s soldiers to hear the preaching of religious ministers who are NOT part of the colony’s established and official Anglican church. In other words, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist ministers can preach to colony’s military units. If enacted, the soldiers will be free to decide on a religious choice.
A hundred walls crack and crumble. Every once in a great while, a wall cracks and reveals a sun beam. Over several years of future, the beam may shine in greater splendor.
* * * * * * *
(Preston’s place)
The walls around Charles Preston are about to be tested.
Preston in an officer in the British Army. Today, he’s in charge of a small wooden outpost called Fort Saint Jean on the west bank of the Richelieu River flowing north into Canada. The British-held fort is surrounded by a ditch seven feet deep and filled cut tree limbs sharpened and tied into menacing bristles of spears, like great porcupines waiting in their holes. Beyond are acres of stumps, the remains of trees felled by axmen for the sole purpose of denying attackers any cover or protection as they march toward Preston’s fort. The hope is that Preston’s force will be able to kill them more effectively in firing from behind the fort’s walls.
Preston knows that, any hour now, he’ll see a colonial force come out of the woods and begin either an attack or a siege of Fort Saint Jean. He’s hoping that the walls hold up and, perhaps most importantly of all, that Native warriors will decide to counterattack the colonists from the thick forest of birch, pine, and spruce trees. He can’t be entirely sure.
Meanwhile—our third use of the term in today’s entry—the effects and reverberations of two very significant diplomatic conferences will play out for Preston and thousands of other people in this northern region.
Along the St. Lawrence River, in Montreal, more than 1000 Natives from the northern portions of the Haudenosaunee alliance (Six Nations) have met with British officials and Canadian residents, led by British General Guy Carleton. For days they discussed promises, bargains, pledges, and deals that would influence Native warriors to align with George III and the British Army against colonial-rights supporters.
Along the Hudson River, in Albany, several hundred Natives from the southern portions of the Haudenosaunee alliance (Six Nations) have met with colonial officials and New York resident, led by colonial General Philip Schuyler. For days they have discussed promises, bargains, pledges, and deals that would influence Native warriors to align with the Continental Congress, the Continental Army, and various colonies in the Union against George III and the British Army.
Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) is a key leader in the Native alliance. For him and the hundreds of Natives who pay close attention to his advice, the most important outcome is a statement he attributes to Carleton in Montreal: the British will compensate Natives for losses incurred in a future clash. Not everyone, Carleton among them, will later agree.
For now, though, the walls of Fort Saint Jean appear defendable and dependable behind the stump-filled open fields and the encircling trench filled with sharpened tree limbs sticking upward.
From the woods, Continental Army General Richard Montgomery and his force of colonial-rights soldiers, see the outline of something wooden and jagged, resembling the needles of a great porcupine asleep in a ditch.
* * * * * * *
The creation of a form of government is like the building of a structure, be it a fort or something else. Walls are made and put into place. Over time, cracks start to show. You have to know if the cracks can be repaired or if it’s time to tear down and build anew, all over again.
Also
(the Tohonos’ view)
Natives along the river call themselves the Tohono O’odham. The river, labeled a century ago as “Santa Cruz” by Father Eusebio Kino, has been central to Tohono life, allowing them to add farming to an existence that would otherwise consist only of foraging and a little hunting. It’s a harsh environment here.
Somewhat like what happened at Albany and Montreal, the Tohono have heard about promises and pledges. In the case of the Tohono, however, 250 years ago today they also heard a Spanish priest named Francisco Garzes and two Spanish military officers talk about God, spiritual salvation, and the opening of “presidio of San Agustin del Tucson”, a structure much more impressive than Fort Saint Jean on the other side of North America. The Tohono heard nothing about a dispute, nothing about Redcoats and colonial rights, nothing about choosing sides.
They only heard about the man wearing a black robe, some food and tools that were available, the labor they would need to provide, and the obedience they would need to show here, at the northernmost outpost of the Spanish Empire in America.
* * * * * * *
(put a pessimistic look on his face)
Beyond the North American continent, beyond the Atlantic Ocean separating it from Europe, beyond the coastal English port at which they arrived, Richard Penn and Richard Lee have made their way London and, today, are meeting with the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the American Colonies in the imperial government of George III and the prime ministry of Lord North.
Penn and Lee carry with them a document dubbed “the Olive Branch Petition”, the carefully worded paper produced by the Second Continental Congress back in July. It’s an effort by the delegates in Philadelphia to repair the wall of Anglo-colonial life.
Dartmouth’s face show pessimism. Paper can’t work miracles.
For You Now
We have a bit of a condition, don’t we. One group of people in 2025 look at American events and see the wall breaking apart and falling down. One group of people in 2025 look at American events and see a wall being saved and reconstructed. We may not know the exact statistical proportions—they shift from issue to issue and moment to moment—but we do know the two stark views exist simultaneously. Note how I didn’t phrase it: I didn’t say they “coexist.” There’s not much “co-” going on.
My point in today’s entry is to give you some examples from 250 years ago of cracks, splits, holes, and chasms and at the same time offer illustrations of reinstallations, rebuilds, and restoration. In each instance, use them to measure out the presence or absence of the Rhyme with today.
Maybe my best service to you is to remind you of the very real and vibrant contrasting view at any and every given moment. For every person 250 years ago who looked at Revere’s two-shilling note and thought “heaven!”, there was another person who saw the same thing and thought “hell!”.
Each person had a living, breathing counterpart.
I’ll leave you with this: and from all of it, part and counterpart, person and counterperson, point and counterpoint, the life of the world started to change in ways we continue to relish, savor, and count on.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: what do you see in the wall?
(two rivers converging–Your River)
