Americanism Redux
February 5, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
You don’t need to look very high. I’d say about four, five, or six feet ought to do.
That’s the height of most individual people.
And don’t look very deep.
Simply find the ground or floor beneath their feet.
But what you’ll really want to do, though, is to know the relationships each person has—with who, with what, with where. The status of those relationships means almost everything.
Yeah, put your eyes there. Because that’s what they’re doing, today, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
If your eyes are looking at an elderly, gray-haired woman on horseback in Wethersfield, Connecticut, you’ll be seeing Mary Porter. She’s about four months into her widowhood, her husband Ezekiel having died last fall. In the midst of the furor of the war, the Union, and the colonial-imperial catastrophe, 68-year old Mary is known in Wethersfield as an accomplished medical advisor as well as horsewoman. She gained her medical knowledge and skills from her husband, a trained physician, and has what amounts to her own medical clientele. Those relationships with patients give Mary a firm focus as she works through her grief. Besides her patients, Mary continues working closely with her brother-in-law to manage the closing of Ezekiel’s estate. Between her doctor-patient and co-executor relationships, Mary holds steady through the volatility and combustibility of this early February and the war, the Union, and the imperial-colonial implosion. Her relationships are like lights blinking in the frozen air.
* * * * * * *
George Washington and William Howe’s relationship is one of titles, roles, and the occasional letter. Washington is overall military commander of the Continental Army, including that large portion surrounding Boston. William Howe is overall military commander of the British Army, predominantly that which is bottled up inside Boston. Every once in a while, a letter passes between them, usually about the treatment of civilians, property, and prisoners.
This week, it’s not clear if it was a mistake or some sort of enemy b-s.
Howe has written to Washington to inform him that he now knows the “Rebel” general has been writing secretly to James Lovell, a colonist currently being held by the British inside Boston. Howe asserts that he was just about to release Lovell to return to his family outside Boston when he learned of the secret correspondence. That’s a violation of acceptable behavior and an illegal act, sneers the Redcoat commander. So—Lovell will stay where he is, confined inside Boston, a prisoner—and it’s all because the Rebel leader, Howe concludes, doesn’t know the rules.
Genuine mistake or total b-s? It’s their relationship, but you can decide.
* * * * * * *
At about the same time that Howe scowls at Washington, a different pair of opposing commanders are in New York City. They’re Charles Lee, one of Washington’s core team of generals, who’s in New York City to help organize defenses for an expected British attack some undefined time later this year. Opposite of Lee is Henry Clinton, a Redcoat general who is a colleague of Howe’s and, it’s said, is in the city to visit a friend. Lee is contemptuous of the appearance of Clinton’s friendly visit. The British general has malevolent motives, states his American counterpart, perhaps making early preparations for the predicted attack. Unknown to Lee, Clinton is simply stopping-over. Another destination is in his future.
Their relationship is thin to the point of sheer, of like authority in coincidental space. The same wind that blows them apart can, with dramatic speed, blow them back together again.
* * * * * * *
250 years ago, William Rogers basks in the approval of the New York Committee of Safety that has just learned both Charles Lee and Henry Clinton are in New York City. Rogers is a daring, risk-taking ship captain. Having gotten a vessel to command, he’s shown aggressiveness and audacity in harassing British vessels and British supporters across Long Island Sound. Members of the Committee of Safety have noticed his work, and now they’ve agreed he’s a perfect choice for promotion, a command upgrade of a recently seized British ship, the “Blue Mountain Valley”. Rogers hears the knock-knock of opportunity: demonstrate a track record of continued success and the Committee of Safety could add two or three more ships and form a private and New York-controlled naval fleet in the Sound, with Rogers at its head.
The committee members and the ship captain are in a relationship of actions, deeds, and results. It will stay that way unless the relationship shifts into a wider orbit.
* * * * * * *
In an orbit, a relationship spins, revolves, and tracks along a bending path. It’s going somewhere, either in repulsion away or attraction toward. That’s the issue for the loyalties and allegiances people are showing toward one side or the other.
A relationship orbit in Connecticut: the Reverend Matthew Graves has fled from place to place. His crime is saying, from the pulpit, that Jesus preached his kingdom was not of this world and that his weapons were spiritual, not carnal. His detractors and pursuers interpret these words to mean that he advocates American disarmament and passivity in the face of British power. The reverend hopes George Washington can protect him.
A relationship orbit in New Jersey: Trevor Newland is watching friends and allies steadily leaving the pro-colonial side and fears their decisions will brand him with American disloyalty. So, he’s pulling every trick out of the hat he can think of, including this last, massive rabbit—reaching out to Benjamin Franklin and pleading for him to facilitate some sort of military officer’s rank in the Continental Army or some pro-colonial military structure. Newland also thinks that an exhaustive amount of unsolicited military advice will convince Franklin—the same man who brought Thomas Paine to the colonies—to help him.
A relationship orbit in Georgia: the Swiss immigrant and Presbyterian minister John Zubly has gone from revered delegate to the First Provincial Congress and Second Continental Congress, to semi-supportive of colonial rights, and now to full-on skeptic of anti-British policies in Georgia. Among the latest decisions to upset him is the organization of Georgia’s first Continental Army regiment, including the offer of 100 acres of “bounty land” to incoming privates who survive the conflict. He’s rumored to be in contact with former British governors and he’s on the verge of fleeing Georgia out of fear for his life.
A relationship orbit in Virginia: Charles Yates inspects each letter he receives with great care. He’s looking for signs that the seal has been broken, which, if so, tells him the contents have been secretly read and surveilled. It’s an outrage and more—when it happens, the chances go up that the contents will be misinterpreted and perhaps mistaken for treasonous, anti-American activity. It happened already for him when he wrote to a correspondent and described a recent hanging of an enslaved man accused of stealing sheep. The secret reader believed Yates was writing in a code or cipher, a suspicion not fully dispelled.
A relationship orbit in Pennsylvania: Continental Congress delegates from New York and New Jersey are discussing how to divide, isolate, and disempower those who support British rule in northern New York. Thomas McKean is among those who see the potential to force some into accepting neutrality and vows of passivity, while driving others into formal prisoners-of-war status and confinement. This is a strikingly experimental strategy as northern New York has been a south/north and north/south military invasion route for a century. It is loyalty policy as military resource.
The final factor in defining loyalty and disloyalty will be the relationships that unfold on the ground, person-to-person.
* * * * * * *
Relationships reflect the pain of Unioning inside the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Rumors fly in the meeting room at Pennsylvania State House, including the possibility of England seeking to partition the colonies and, as delegate Francis Lee phrases it, “a very critical time is approaching. It is expected that the (British) Administration will make some advances toward an accommodation.” Lee fears such offers will outmatch a fragile set of relationships formed around stiff resistance to England. Robert Morris, another delegate, expects to lose much of his large business network as a result of embracing resistance. For him, though, the issue boiled down to one’s relationship to either justice or power, with the former as American and the latter as British. You became one or the other when you chose the relationship.
* * * * * * *
250 years ago, one of the environments in which these relationship choices occurred and, after made, were displayed was in the daily sessions of the Second Continental Congress. Delegate John Adams sat in his chair this week and recorded five hours of debate. The topic was the single most important issue of the week in the eyes, minds, hearts, and souls of the delegates: trade—trade as the Union’s tie from resident to colony, from colony to colony, and from colonies together to both Britain specifically and the rest of the world.
Six speakers dominated the time. As leaders interacting with each other, they were respectful. They were also forceful in driving their points into the discussion. Speaking of points, they stayed on-point, raising the stakes of disdain and disapproval for others who ventured haphazardly into the discussion. Out of the six, one (George Wythe) relied on a command of Latin and the example of what his colony had already enacted in trade. Another (James Wilson) used his gift of slicing arguments into sections, depicting two opposing poles and a mid-point between. A third (Benjamin Harrison) preferred to cite himself in examples. A fourth (Roger Sherman) was concise, plain-speaking, and succinct. The notetaker, John Adams, demonstrated remarkable self-control in confining himself to writing when in fact he is given to acerbic, sarcastic, and cutting statements.
As to outcomes of the five hours, they moved to a resolution to “encourage our fleet”, presumably a necessity for all trade beyond the colonies. Adjourned.
Regarding relationships, the scene 250 years ago in that room enabled talking, speaking, the criss-cross verbal exchanging of people weaving a knowledge of each other.
* * * * * * *
Which could quickly unravel or snap apart, for a few days later, the environment veered in a different direction. The moment involved a report on Charles Lee, New York’s Committee of Safety, and 1200 volunteer soldiers from Connecticut.
“…a violent debate arose,” a witness said, “on one side as to the propriety of an armed force from one province (colony), entering another without permission of securing that province, the loss of which would cut off all communication between the Northern and Southern Colonies and which if effected would ruin America….”
They calmed everyone by re-weaving and re-stitching the relationships—a three-person committee is on its way to New York to meet with Lee and several city leaders.
* * * * * * *
Two places share one problem and look to relationships to help address them. Gun materials need to be produced, now, and in large amounts.
Henry Laurens is president of the Provincial Congress in South Carolina. He’s frantic about the plea for ammunition on both sides of his colony. Georgia needs it. North Carolina needs it. Laurens can help one colony but not two. And despite all efforts to kick-start production, almost no progress has been made. Unless the relationships can somehow generate the materials internally, the only choice will be to go “abroad” and secure these strategic necessities. In other words: trade, which is the issue bedeviling the Continental Congress.
In Virginia, however, Fielding Lewis can tell a positive story. He’s the CEO of the start-up company, Fredericksburg Gun Manufactory. While they’re not up to speed in making guns, they are succeeding in repairing old guns. He has one skilled gunsmith who is training others in a crash-course to increase production. Lewis is optimistic they’ll be cranking out 35 gunlocks and 10 muskets a day by late March. He even has plans to produce a rifle that shoots a four-ounce ball capable, Lewis believes, of threatening British vessels on narrow rivers.
* * * * * * *
With who, with what, with where—relationships with any and all sort themselves out as the first week of February draws to a close 250 years ago.
Also
George Germain, King George III’s chief official in charge of the war, writes to William Howe in Boston. He tells Howe that the winter in England has been awful, the worst in years. The weather has delayed the transport of large numbers of British troops to America. Howe can expect them by late March. Germain finishes his letter by acknowledging that Howe cannot negotiate with the “Rebels” directly but that perhaps can use “your own Discretion” to make informal arrangements with them about prisoners and so forth.
Delayed help and constant discretion. That’s what you have.
* * * * * * *
Yesterday, Tadeusz Kosciuszko celebrated his 30th birthday. He’s in Paris, following an extended period of acting as a tutor to a Lithuanian magnate’s children. He is an energetic, brilliant, and thoughtful military officer. He’s been hearing much about the British imperial-colonial dispute. The publicity of American resilience against British forces, done in the name of liberty and human rights, captivates his spirit and intellect. Restless and on edge, every day in Paris Kosciuszko wants to talk about the American conflict.
* * * * * * *
Two impressive structures remain under construction but near completion in the imperial city in China, Beijing. The Qing emperor—Qianlong—has sponsored the building of a spectacular studio and two-acre imperial garden. One of the richest men in the eastern hemisphere, Qianlong looks forward to using the space for writing poetry and conducting meditation. He conceptualized the garden after extensive visits to similar landscapes in the Yangtze River valley. The garden is part of a 27-building project first undertaken six years ago, which further reflects European influences in style and design. Another construction site is the Changyin Pavilion, the largest opera stage in the city. The structure is in its fourth year of construction and will be used as the site of major festivals throughout the year in Beijing. The pair of buildings expresses the endurance of the emperor’s 41-year reign.
For You Now
A person has a relationship to a place, a thing, or another person or people. That relationship includes a connection to an end-point and a reciprocal flow across the connection. An assumption of distance, be it lesser or greater, is also present. And like nearly everything else in reality, an expectation of change in the relationship further exists. Nothing about the relationship is static, fixed, or continuous to the extent of unchanging.
The week ending on February 5, 250 years ago, is a time of relationships across the colonies. To know that life is to see how relationships act and behave. Every person in our collective story deals with a relationship to some person, place, or thing. Whether growing or fading, the relationships defines much of their living.
We should note as well that again we see an understanding of life’s annual patterns. More than once in the story we see reference to late March, which fits in the zone between winter and spring. The people in our story grapple with relationships as they anticipate the arrival of spring. When spring appears, when they enter the zone between seasons, an effect is in store. That’s their belief and instinct.
You stand today similar to them. You are in relationship to a vast range of people, places, and things. Your sense of control reflects the amount of pressure on those relationships. You feel the push of pressure brought to bear from the outside, while you apply pressure, in your own right, on the inside. And the outer and inner have a relationship, too, in the eternal cycle that follows you forward.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider this: what is the fundamental relationship in forming a Union, in Unioning?
(Your River)
