Americanism Redux
December 11, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
On many days, the best you can do is get an impression.
This kind of impression is a short-term understanding drawn from a quick moment, a fast observation.
That’s often all you’re in a position to do. That’s frequently all you have the opportunity to do.
Today, 250 years ago, people get impressions. How long will the impressions last? Time tells.
* * * * * * *
An impression of looming catastrophe has formed in the minds of some people. They’re in Connecticut and South Carolina and their impressions are about a place in between them.
Virginia.
Connecticut’s delegates at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia write to Jonathan Trumbull, Sr, governor of Connecticut. They warn the governor that “a dangerous Storm is gathering in the South.” Their fears are that Lord Dunmore’s promise of freedom to people in Virginia who have either partial freedom or no freedom at all—Virginia Governor Dunmore’s “Proclamation” issued several days ago—is capable of instant combustion that will burn colonial society to the ground.
Meanwhile, the reaction to Dunmore’s Proclamation by fellow delegate Edward Rutledge of South Carolina is pure outrage. Rutledge declares that if Dunmore’s offer represents the British attitude toward the colonies, the only recourse is to seek independence. Only then, Rutledge growls, will South Carolinians feel safe in their homes, their persons, and what they regard as their possessions.
The impression is that a new kind of killing is approaching the house.
* * * * * * *
There’s a definite impression of blood on the Great Bridge.
The blood stain is from the twelve bullets fired into British Captain Charles Fordyce. Commander of a British unit that charged an entrenched group of Virginians opposed to imperial rule, Fordyce collapsed as blood began to flow from his body. The British charge was supposed to dislodge the Virginians from their protected position along the causeway over the Elizabeth River that meandered toward the Great Dismal Swamp between Virginia and North Carolina. British imperial governor Lord Dunmore had conceived of the plan to attack the Virginian rebels from both the front and rear. The rear attack, which included Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment that wore “Liberty to Slaves” on their uniforms, never occurred. Dunmore’s force of four hundred Redcoats, ex-slaves and ex-indentured servants, and Loyalists are now in retreat toward Norfolk.
One of the soldiers who can show you the bloodstain is William Flora. Flora’s a young man, a young, free, black man, and he’s one of the eight hundred volunteers organized by William Woodford to fight Dunmore. Yesterday, in the battle at Great Bridge, he’d fired repeatedly at a mass of men marching toward him in the morning fog. Today, the day after this last and largest in a series of clashes south of Williamsburg during the last week, Flora’s name and story are quickly spreading farm to farm, village to village.
The governor’s army left Fordyce’s corpse and the blood stain, along with nearly a hundred other dead men, along the bridge and causeway.
They left also the impression of defeat.
* * * * * * *
Eight hundred miles north of the bloodstained Great Bridge a cannon ball flies through the air. Its target is the walled city of Quebec, in Canada. A short distance outside Quebec’s stone walls, the smoke rises up from a cannon, with Continental Army General Richard Montgomery standing nearby.
It’s the first blast by a Continental Army cannon at the British-held city. Both Montgomery and Benedict Arnold, co-commanders of the Continental force, have now commenced a formal siege of Quebec.
The impression is that a new stage has opened in Montgomery and Arnold’s mission to bring Canada into the colonial union, the fourteenth colony to resist British imperial rule.
Inside Quebec with British General Guy Carleton, the impression is that the fight will require a lot more than some cannon balls hurling through the air.
* * * * * * *
(Robert Livingston)
From every impression that Robert Livingston has gained, Canada is a spectacular success for the cause of colonial union.
A few days beyond his 30th birthday and member of a wealthy New York City family, Livingston is elated by reports he hears about the progress of Montgomery and Arnold in Canada, news that trails actual events by about two weeks—and if he’d heard about the cannon shot today, he’d have been as optimistic and enthuastic as ever.
But.
Livingston has also heard about constant arguing and dissension among officers and soldiers in Montgomery and Arnold’s forces. Livingston worries that the special committee established by the Second Continental Congress to conduct oversight of the Canadian project is not up to the challenge of control. He thinks the committee is making the Continental Congress look bad and, to him, the look of things is what matters most in creating and maintaining public legitimacy in the new colonial union. The longer it appears that the Union’s Congress can’t manage these affairs, the weaker the Union’s Congress becomes in reputation and influence.
An impression that stays is an impression that grows.
* * * * * * *
Henry Knox can’t get beyond the impression that’s all around him.
Ice, snow, cold, wet, slick, treacherous, dangerous, ominous.
From Fort George in the Lake George/Champlain region of New York, he’s starting the long trip back east and south—he knows it’s going to be an ordeal. Knox and his group are taking cannon, artillery, and anything else they can strap to a sled or stuff in a wagon to help General George Washington’s siege of Boston. A hard winter is already underway, which makes every step and every turn of the wheel a frigid nightmare.
Will they make it? Well, it’s day one, with 60 tons, and 300 miles to go.
Pick your impression from there.
* * * * * * *
(modern-day Albany)
Impressions abound in Albany, New York, south of Knox’s location.
A large gathering has convened in Albany. Leaders from the Onondaga, Onieda, Mohawk, and Tuscarora Native tribes are meeting with representatives of the Colonial Union. Who supports the British? Who supports the Colonial Union? Who wants nothing to do with either? And why, why, why. Every nod of the head and blink of the eyes is studied for whatever it reveals about the intentions, motivations, and expectations of every person in attendance.
Members of the colonial delegation take it as reason for optimism that the Natives have given them Native-sounding names for the duration of the conference.
That’s their impression.
* * * * * * *
The sound of a cannon firing has a clear impression to a new soldier.
Private David Fick and his comrades among the newly arrived New Hampshire militia at Winter Hill, one of the elevations surrounding Boston, might have mistaken the sound for an enemy attack. They’ve since learned that a cannon shot at sunset is the signal for the Continental Army units to turn out, get into formation, and present arms for inspection before starting guard duty. Their officers are also to pay close attention to filling out forms on numbers of fit soldiers and the like. Fick and his buddies get a little more acclimated to these duties.
Among Fick and 10,000 others like him, General George Washington, commander of all the Continental forces surrounding Boston, continues going over, and over, and over the procedures. Get your uniform right. Get your paper work done. Get your equipment in good order. The task-list is endless for creating a new army, or, more precisely, re-creating the army in light of the dwindling away of the first army he was asked to create.
From Washington down to Fick, impressions arrive about the enemy trapped inside Boston. Smallpox is worsening, and wooden houses are being torn down to serve as firewood on cold nights.
* * * * * * *
There’s an impression that both sides do it.
A pair of Colonial Union privateers set sail from Salem, Massachusetts to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. 160 men land at Yarmouth and plunder homes and shops of the residents, some of whom are forced to sign petitions pledging neutrality in the current war. Meanwhile, British Captain James Wallace leads a 4-vessel strike on the farms and homes of Conanicut Island of Rhode Island. Farms and homes are destroyed.
Some impressions are right.
* * * * * * *
(John Dickinson)
An impression exists that the Colonial Union is a “rope of sand”.
John Dickinson, an influential political, civic, and social leader of the colonial opposition to British imperial rule, has traveled to Trenton, New Jersey to speak to the colony’s Assembly. A large number of the Assembly’s members are attempting to send a petition to the British imperial government. They’re reaffirming their loyalty and defiance of colonial protestors. Dickinson believes that if the petition is sent, the impression will be made in England that the colonies are a “rope of sand”—those are his words—and therefore easy to coerce into passive submission. Dickinson urges the Assembly to remember the success of colonial armed power earlier this year.
To Dickinson, even a single example of dissent could leave a dangerously wrong impression.
* * * * * * *
(source of ideas and information)
The impression of dissent is stronger and deeper than ever before in the backwoods of western North Carolina.
Scottish immigrants there are wildly opposed to the Colonial Union. The delegates to the Second Continental Congress believe the only way to overcome their fierce opposition is to speak to the people who educate and inform them—their church pastors and ministers. The delegation asks the Continental Congress to pay for two Christian evangelists to ride into the mountains, meet with the immigrants’ preachers, and convince them of the benefits of the Colonial Union.
Theirs is the only impression that seemingly matters.
* * * * * * *
(the do-er of never-wrong things)
The Second Continental Congress has agreed on the impression delegates want to make to imperial officials. That impression is in their “Report on the Committee of Proclamations”.
“We view him (George III) as the Constitution represents him. That tells us he can do no wrong,” the “Report” reads in part. The Continental Congress draws its authority to say this “from the people of these United Colonies.” Further, the people here reject the idea of “rebellion” as any sort of legal term and as such, there is no basis for punishing people in England who may support the colonial cause. If punishment occurs, the “United Colonies” will retaliate for “in this unhappy and unnatural controversy, in which Britons fight Britons, and the descendants of Britons, let the calamities inevitably incident to a civil war suffice.”
The impression of one for the long run.
Also
(George Johnstone)
The impression in the halls of British government is that the fate of an empire hangs in the balance.
In the House of Commons, George Johnstone is emphatic in his assertion that the colony of Georgia does not deserved to be regarded as “in rebellion”. “Cato and Socrates, in Athens and Rome,” Johnstone announces, “stood alone to oppose venal and corrupt majorities. These celebrated Commonwealths, in their decline, were what Britain is at present—luxury, venality, public prostitution, and a total disloyalty to the interests of their country, prevailed.”
To him, the impression is clear: leave Georgia out of it.
* * * * * * *
(Martin Ernst von Schlieffen)
In Hanau, a town in the German province of Hessen-Kassel, Martin Ernst von Schlieffen is busy negotiating with a British officer. Their topic is the number of local soldiers who can be provided to assist British King George III in quelling the rebellion in America. It’s not a question of if or whether; it’s only a matter of hammering out the details for when and how it happens.
This impression is truth—German mercenaries will be sailing west to America.
For You Now
Impressions are fast. They come and go. How long they stay or how quickly they fade depends on what happens next.
We see in this entry of Redux that impressions are boundless. They can go in any number of directions for any number of reasons. We see, too, that impressions aren’t guarantees of truth or the true. They aren’t automatically false, either.
Impressions are amazing in that they don’t need much fuel to emerge. They can arise from the smallest amount of energy, the tiniest ingredient. Enough impressions can pop up, one after another, to create the illusion of a consistent thread. Not every thread is an illusion, to be sure, but not every impression fits naturally into a thread.
The best thing to do with an impression is to go a little deeper or wait a little longer. The next layer down or the next step ahead will likely show you the worth of an impression.
In a world of upheaval, be mindful of impressions. Make them, and treat them, with care.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: what was the last impression of yours that you found to be erroneous?
(Your River)
