Americanism Redux
February 12, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
One person says, “I’m right now, in the present.” The other person says, “I’m looking ahead, toward the future.”
Today, this two-person dialogue is about different sides of the same thing.
A person is in the war-happening, the war of right now.
And a person is in the war-worsening, the war yet to come.
Today and this past week, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
Normally, the river that former Continental Congress delegate Richard Caswell sees is the Neuse River near his home in New Bern, North Carolina. But today it’s another river that he’s looking for, the Trent. That’s the flowing water he and his 800 “Minute Men” will have to cross as they march southwest of New Bern, heading inland. They’ve got orders to attack the rising pro-imperial forces seeking control of North Carolina, defeat of a colonial Union, and re-planting the colony firmly in George III’s British Empire. These Loyalists, rumored to be in the thousands, are somewhere in the North Carolina interior.
Up to now, approaching the chilly waters of the Trent, the only gunshots Caswell has taken is in training his new unit and hunting birds and animals. But this isn’t training and he’s not seeking game. Every step newly-appointed “Colonel” Caswell takes get him closer to crossing the Trent and deeper into his mission. Hour-by-hour his home falls further away where, next week, his wife Sarah and their seven children will celebrate their eight child’s, baby Susannah’s, one-year birthday. For now, this moment, the family numbers ten.
* * * * * * *
George Washington and two men are crossing, too. No, it’s not a river, though one, the Charles, is nearby. Rather for them, the crossing is frozen ground, frozen elevated ground, which feel like frozen ice mountains in the cutting wind of a fierce New England winter. In actuality, the trio walk over the small hills outside Boston and the enemy British Redcoats that Washington’s Continental Army has bottled up. Commanding General George Washington, chief engineer Richard Gridley, and artillery Colonel Henry Knox are quietly inspecting the ground for where Knox’s 60-tons of artillery should be placed for maximum impact when the cannonading of the British begins.
Exposed in this winter rawness, your eyes start to tear up, your nose starts to run, and your cheekbones feel brittle.
Within the three-man group, there’s a lot of pointing, head-nodding, soft words back and forth.
Washington has been waiting a long time for this opportunity. It’s the moment to change from musket-ball semi-circle containment to orange-flamed cannon-shot siege. He wants all the details sorted out and everything just right. This is the chance we’ve waited for—if this is bungled, there’s nothing left.
* * * * * * *
Yeah, truly, there really is nothing left.
George Washington has written a trio of letters—what’s with the three’s?—to John Hancock that dumps out the pile of excrement that describes reality. And it stinks enough to make your eyes water, your nose run, and your face to withdraw inside itself. In one of the letters, Washington confesses: the situation verges on hopeless with next-to-zero unit cohesion, next-to-none genuine preparedness, and next-to-nothing chances of the cause surviving without deep and drastic changes in approach. In the other letters, he explains a sharp dispute over pay among officers and the mind-numbing difficulty of finding money and weaponry to meet the army’s needs. The message from the Continental Army Commander to the Continental Congress President is as clear as the winter is cold: we’re falling apart.
A fourth Washington letter reveals more truth. This time, though, it’s to his private staff, a close aide, Joseph Reed. Washington shares what is essentially a confession: he’s been purposely hiding the full accounting of how bad things are from his soldiers and his core team of subordinate generals. It’s anti-transparency, he says to Reed. And oh, I need more “pen-men”, trust-worthy, educated, loyal, and dependable staff who can help with the flood-tide of correspondence demanded from Washington.
Know anyone?
* * * * * * *
Despite the cold, ice, and frost outside Boston, Reverend Abiel Leonard feels an inner warmth. It’s that blend of emotion and thought when you gain approval for a job well-done. Having stayed consistent in his duty and going above-and-beyond in trying to prevent soldiers from leaving to return home, Leonard now earns a new rank as a Continental Army chaplain, serving the spiritual needs of the Artillery Regiment and the 20th Connecticut Continental Infantry. Well done, Army Chaplain Leonard. But we have to ask: does he know how bad things are? Well, maybe not on a grand scale, but he’s seen enough in his dealings with soldiers who walked away. Chaplain Leonard is under no illusions about the state of things from his vantage point.
* * * * * * *
70-year old Samuel Simpson, Irish-born and a homeowner at Third Street and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, has his own warm, inner feeling, too. He’s a skilled shoemaker and leather craftsman, and for the time being, the spokesman of the “Committee of Privates” in Philadelphia. His newly-formed group is calling for public knowledge of the virtue and high character for future Continental officers; it should be a requirement for the positions, they maintain. Simpson and his group also request first consideration of their services for any public purpose related to the current struggle and war. In other words, public monies should buy our local services first and any out-of-towner services after.
In Simpson’s view, he’s too old to fight but not too old to produce for the fight, and enjoy benefits along the way.
* * * * * * *
Can he make bows and arrows?
That’s a question raised by the implications of an idea just down the street from Simpson. It’s the combination of suggestion-visualization-experimentation by one of Pennsylvania’s delegates sitting in the Continental Congress, Dr. Benjamin Franklin. The age-mate of Simpson, the 70-year old Franklin has urged the use of bows and arrows to Major General Charles Lee of the Continental Army. Lee is in New York City, advising local Union supporters on how best to prepare defenses against an enemy assault some unknown time this year. Franklin’s idea addresses the low availability of guns, gunpowder, and ammunition. It also hits a chord of culture—highlighting a feature of life in the New World (Native American warfare) that has taken on legendary, mythical, identity, and definitional status in the colonial mind. That Franklin sends the idea to Lee, who is increasingly seen as open to creative approaches to war, is also no small point.
* * * * * * *
Across from Franklin’s desk in the Pennsylvania State House’s meeting room was a delegate recently returned from Massachusetts, John Adams. Adams is back at the Continental Congress after a short period back home. Among his first actions upon return was a formal resignation as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts court. Adams resigned so as to remove a potential criticism of him for holding two offices at once, one as a judge and one as a selected delegate.
More than that, though, Adams wrote yesterday to his wife, Abigail, or Portia as she’s often known to him in their private correspondence. He writes that southern leaders are nervous and afraid at the prospect of the war worsening. He predicts: “We shall remain…untill late in the Spring, When some critical Event will take Place, perhaps sooner. But the Arbiter of Events, the Sovereign of the World only knows, which Way the Torrent will be turned. Judging by Experience, by Probabilities, and by all Appearances…it will roll on to Dominion and Glory, tho the Circumstances and Consequences may be bloody. In such great Changes and Commotions, Individuals are but Atoms. It is scarcely worth while to consider what the Consequences will be to Us. What will be the Effects upon present and future Millions, and Millions of Millions, is a Question very interesting to Benevolence natural and Christian. God grant they may and I firmly believe they will be happy.”
* * * * * * *
When not writing such letters to Abigail/Portia, John Adams is busy working on a hybrid political commentary, analysis, and blueprint. He’s been asked by the delegates of North Carolina to offer his guidance as to the kind of NEW government they should seek to erect permanently, at least in intent, rather than temporarily or as a stopgap. To answer them, Adams now thinks hour after hour over his readings of “Harrington, Sydney, Hobbes, Nedham, and Lock(e)” as well as his innate attraction to “a plan as nearly resembling the government under which we were born and have lived” and the society upon which it rested.
Setting aside his present position in a war setting, Adams leans back in his chair and envisions the lessons he’s learned from deep reading of past works. Not unlike Washington on those cold, gray hills, Adams searches for alignment of past and present, that place where an explosion should be aimed.
* * * * * * *
Joseph Hewes sits not far from Adams’s desk in the meeting room of the Pennsylvania State House. A North Carolina delegate, Hewes is one of those who asked for Adams’s guidance. He’s also in his own state of self-reflection.
“All accounts from England seem to agree that we shall have a dreadfull storm bursting on our heads thro’ all America is the Spring,” he writes to a friend. “We must not shrink from it; we ought not to show any symptoms of fear; the nearer it approaches and the greater the sound, the more fortitude and calm, steady firmness we ought to possess. If we mean to defend our liberties, our dearest rights and privileges against the power of Britian to the last extremity, we ought to bring ourselves to such a temper of mind as to stand unmoved at the bursting of an Earthquake. Altho the storm thickens, I feel myself quite composed. I have furnished myself with a good musket and Bayonet, and when I can no longer be useful in Council, I hope I shall be willing to take the field.”
If it comes to that, Hewes will find fellow North Carolinian Richard Caswell already there.
* * * * * * *
You don’t need an earthquake to see war happening now in so many places.
In Connecticut, Christopher Leffingwell curses the coastal ice flows preventing him from shipping much-needed cannon shot and artillery shells to Washington’s army. There are arguments aplenty in New London about where forts should be built and how ships should be designed. Gordon Saltonstall fills page after page of a long letter in describing the mess.
In New York, John Murray grapples with daily problems in operating a shipping company in partnership with two other men. They trade extensively along the Hudson River, Delaware River, Long Island Sound, and New England coast and also with the British Isles. Murray wants to have formal clearances from the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, an authorization he believes gives his company the best chances at moving goods to and from markets. Still, he can’t be sure how far such approval will carry him in a situation worsening by the day.
In Virginia, the smoke smolders at Norfolk where pro-colonial troops have burned out the last buildings to render the port useless to British occupation. Nevertheless, a contingent of Redcoats landed from a British naval vessel anchored offshore; they carried off five massive loads of tobacco, while a group of enslaved black men imprisoned in Northampton County broke free from jail and made their way to the British ship. Reports of flames in nearby Portsmouth are now arriving. The southern Chesapeake Bay is a wild, chaos-only zone.
In North Carolina, Rowan County is scene to people coming and going before the Committee of Safety to sign and recite an oath of allegiance to “American Liberty.” Arguments break out about small details not being followed in the oath-taking. Two units of militia are ordered out to go house to house in Wilmington and force each resident to choose whether or not to take the oath. Those who refuse will be compelled to surrender their guns. Not surprisingly, numerous lawsuits fill the dockets.
In Georgia, the British imperial governor Sir James Wright has sneaked from his home and boarded a British ship, the Scarborough, in the Savannah River. He’s starting negotiations today with the colony’s pro-Union government. Wright thinks he might be able to assemble a Loyalist force on the mainland and retake control of the colony.
In South Carolina, William Henry Drayton accepts from Christopher Gadsden a flag with a yellow field behind a snake inscribed with the words “Don’t Tread On Me.” It’s a design Gadsden had made four months earlier with the intent it would be flown in the new Continental Navy. Members of the South Carolina Provincial Congress, sitting in Charleston, tap desks with their hands or the floor with their canes to show their approval of Gadsden’s flag.
* * * * * * *
It’s today of 250 years ago and the happening, the worsening, and the war that spans both.
Also
In western India, Nana Phadnavis marks his thirty-fourth birthday. Following tradition, it is a ceremony where the celebrant gives away food and gifts to the poor. It’s a welcome break from the constant pressures involved in hammering out an agreement between himself (and his Maratha followers) and John Upton of the British military and East India Company. At issue is British support for a rival to the position of Peshwa and British access to strategic regions like Salsette and sources of revenue. A war has sparked on and off for the past year and these negotiations are attempts to renew stability.
* * * * * * *
(Jemima and one of the children)
In England, Jemima Tulikens Cornwallis laments the departure of her husband, Charles Cornwallis. He’s the commanding officer of the “Immortals”, or the 33rd Regiment of Foot in the British Army. He’s also a rising star in the upper echelons of the British military hierarchy. Though Cornwallis opposes war and sympathizes with the American Union, he’s now been gone two days with hundreds of Redcoats bound for America and a major push to smash the American rebellion. Jemima watches over their two small children in the absence of her devoted husband and their devoted father, the Redcoat General.
For You Now
War-happening and war-worsening are really two ways of saying war “present” and war “future”. The former is immediate and all around you. The latter is not here yet, but can be linked to prediction, expectation, and change with the use of such words as “will” or “could” or “may”.
Open your window and see the happening of where we are. Open your window and envision the next stage widening and extending from where we are.
We see two people (Richard Caswell and Joseph Hewes) from the same place (North Carolina) who sit on different ends of war-happening and war-worsening. We see the same person (George Washington) pouring out his problems in letters about war-happening while he’s making an inspection walk over frozen hills that speak to war-worsening. We see the same person (John Adams) scanning a future far beyond war-worsening from a position fixed and locked in war-happening.
You’re an American who, I’ll wager, wonders quite a bit about happening and worsening. You’re a leader who, I’ll wonder, looks at the quivering line between them and carefully reaches out to feel if it’s real or not. I’ll assure you of this: that line is absolutely real, indeed, much more real than you can possibly imagine. And so too is the reality that one day the line will run between happening and bettering instead of happening and worsening. We’ll get there, but only if you keep reaching for the line.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider this: as a citizen and a leader, what am I doing in happening that I’ll want to carry ahead?
(Your River)
