Americanism Redux
July 24, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
It’s a great, big, vast thing and it takes up a massive part of your life. And other people’s lives, too. So much so, in fact, that when you meet with folks you always have something new or “latest” to talk about regarding that great, big, vast thing.
Anything come to mind?
It absolutely does for people on July 24…
…250 years ago.
The great, big, vast thing is war, war-making, war-waging.
No formal start, no formal declaration. It’s simply the truth of what everything is at this moment 250 years ago.
Great, big, vast thing taking up, consuming, absorbing so much of your life.
* * * * * * *
(Prospect and Citadel)
It’s an amazing ceremony on a rise of ground that increasingly has a new name, “the Citadel”, created by all the armed conflict that has raged in the area.
In peaceful days, it was Prospect Hill, overlooking Boston.
A few days past, 250 years ago, hundreds of armed men from Connecticut stood more or less at attention at Prospect/Citadel. They heard read aloud the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms”, written by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. At the end of the reading, someone shouted “Three Cheers!!” You and the men around you yelled three times in unison—hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
As the cheers died out, you saw someone carrying a special flag. Everyone stared at it. Waving in the wind, the flag’s front side read “Qui Transtulit Sustinet”, meaning, “God, who transplanted us hither, will support us.” On the back side the words were “An Appeal To Heaven”, a re-quote of the motto of Massachusetts and a phrase taken from the 17th century English philosopher John Locke’s writings.
For the very first time, this flag is waving atop the hill, today, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
A soldier, Samuel Cooper of Chatham, Connecticut, saw the scene after writing a letter to his family.
“The Dangers we are to encounter I know not but it Shall never be Said to my Children your father was a Coward, let the event be what it will.”
The Connecticut flag waves for him.
* * * * * * *
(origin)
A new mood is rising on the outskirts of Boston. Beneath the Connecticut flag, armed men are standing a little bit straighter and showing a little more confidence.
They’re hearing reports of several raids conducted by their brethren. The raids were done in whaleboats, part of the stock of nearly three hundred of these light, nimble, and go-anywhere crafts that are secreted away in creeks, streams, coves, and inlets on Boston’s coastline. The targets are lighthouses, barns with crops and animals, bins and stockpiles of harvested produce. According to one witness, “These little Skirmishes seem trifling, but they serve to innure our Men and Harden them to Danger.”
* * * * * * *
(John Thomas)
John Thomas of Massachusetts agrees with that view, but it may not matter. A veteran military officer from the French and Indian War, Thomas is outraged by the recently appointments to the command rank of “General” in the new Continental Army. He’s ready to quit and people who know the men predict that if he does, every officer under his authority will quit as well.
Thomas is highly respected.
And today, 250 years ago, not far from Prospect/Citadel, a letter arrives at Thomas’s tent.
The last line: “For the sake of your bleeding country, your devoted service, your charter rights, and by the memory of those brave men who have already fallen in this great cause, I conjure you to banish from your mind every suggestion of anger and disappointment.”
In other words, please don’t quit.
Thomas has a decision to make.
* * * * * * *
(Samuel Washington, the brother, who learned about the unarrived riflemen)
The author of the letter to Thomas, George Washington, keeps a daily lookout for the arrival of a much-awaited group—the riflemen of Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Not here yet. In a later era, it would be like a commander waiting for a contingent of drones and their operators.
Washington is also expecting another thing. He thinks about the great, big, vast thing now engulfing him—the making of war—and he concludes that one way or another, something fundamental will change in this situation in thirty days’ time. Four weeks, he believes, and the British will likely leave Boston, perhaps setting up a moment where the entire conflict will pivot toward peace and a peaceful resolution.
For now, though, he’s finished waiting for the next round of explicit directives from Philadelphia. He’s driving forward on his own and creating an overarching organizational framework that “forms the Army into three Grand Divisions.” Washington recognizes that his decision is without a clear order by the “General Continental Congress” in Philadelphia, which, by the way, created the Army and made him its commander.
* * * * * * *
(depiction of the 1643 precedent–note the earlier style of facial hair)
So where’s the center of the great, big, vast thing overwhelming your life today, 250 years ago? Maybe you’ve already seen it in looking at the environs of Boston. Or maybe you’re about to see it now, in Philadelphia, at the Pennsylvania State House that produces orders and messages sent to Washington’s tent and fifty other destinations.
The Second Continental Congress has finalized its recommendations to the colonies to organize their militias. Delegates also agreed to urge the individual colonies to create “Committees of Safety” to be in charge of overseeing the militia and other war-related entities and activities in their respective colonies. These directives occur as a formal day of fasting and prayer was also observed in the thirteen colonies at the behest of the delegates in Philadelphia.
In addition, today, July 24, the Second Continental Congress is digesting a sweeping proposal by Benjamin Franklin for an “Articles of Confederation” that he circulated to delegates yesterday. Broken down into twelve separate sections, Franklin’s “Article” closely follow the spirit of an effort in 1643 to launch a “Confederation of New England” in a war-like atmosphere 132 years ago. This new and updated version for “the Union thereby established” is meant by Franklin to be withdrawn if reports prove true that Britain may negotiate an evacuation of Boston and reimbursement of the colonies for damages. If not, Franklin writes in his draft plan, “this Confederation is to be perpetual.”
* * * * * * *
Philadelphia is a lot more than the inside of Pennsylvania State House.
Remember that “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms” that was read on Prospect/Citadel Hill outside Boston? Well, word on the street in Philadelphia is that hundreds of copies of “the Declaration”, as they’re calling it, will be made for distribution in Europe.
Moreover, “Colonel” John Hancock, the Preside-ent of the Second Continental Congress was overheard telling someone that he’s confident the British will soon evacuate Boston and pay for the damage and destruction they’ve caused.
A young man named Aaron Burr was seen leaving Philadelphia with a friend of his. They’re heading toward Washington’s encampments outside Boston. They want to join his army—or wait, the “Continental” Army, a good name for the armed force created by the Second Continental Congress.
Finally, more people on the streets and in the taverns outside of Pennsylvania State House are speaking favorably of Benjamin Franklin. He was suspected as being overly sympathetic toward the British Empire and, more cynically, British imperial appointments than suited some people. But with his day-old draft of “Articles of Confederation”, it seems Philadelphians are now accepting him as a true-blue colonial rights supporters.
* * * * * * *
(St. Philip’s Church, site of the Second Convention)
In Richmond, Virginia, George Mason has been spending every day this last week working feverishly. Starting at 7am and ending at 5pm, he’s part of a group at the Second Virginia Convention drawing up plans and details for the colony’s militia and defenses. Mason’s efforts are well ahead of the recommendations finalized in Philadelphia this week by the Second Continental Congress.
Mason knows the burden he’s carrying. He and his committee are creating or adapting everything about the Virginia militia and armed defenses. Every war-themed detail is the tip of a deeper philosophical principle—Mason is neck-deep in making decisions on using power, sharing power, and sourcing power. It’s divided here, separated there, check-and-balanced here and there, and all tied, stitched, and threaded, somehow, into a capability of victory through armed force.
Will it work? Who knows. Maybe they’ll need a back-of-the-flag statement with a quote from Locke: an appeal to heaven.
* * * * * * *
The great, big, vast thing today, 250 years ago, is the weight and width of a condition of war. It’s the topic everyone will know something about, the topic everyone will either want to discuss or want to avoid discussing.
Also
(the Empress)
Catherine II, Empress of Russia, is giving serious thought to saying yes to a formal request from the British ambassador to Russia, Sir Robert Gunning.
Only days ago, George III, King of England, sent a written communication to Catherine II to supply 20,000 infantry and 1,000 Cossack cavalry to him for use against the troublesome colonies in America.
She has recently succeeded in putting down a rebellion of her own. She’s in the mood to help another European monarch maintain control over a people, a set of subjects.
Time for dinner. The final decision on Catherine’s response to George III is still to come.
For You Now
This thing is so great, big, and vast that it can’t be avoided. The state of life in their life a quarter-millennium ago is that a condition of war is upon them. They’re far beyond avoidance. They’re deciding, choosing, and acting. They’re sorting through expectations and effects, consequences and adjustments. The great, big, and vast thing is still there, though with individual sparks flashing within it.
Start with George Washington, general, and Samuel Cooper, ensign.
Outside Boston, Washington goes it alone with overall organization of a new entity, having not received guidelines from Philadelphia. A contributor toward that entity—the government of Connecticut—has sent a flag with symbols and wording designed to inspire and encapsulate their cause as they uniquely see it. An individual man, Cooper, belonging to the contributor and to the entity alike, assesses himself and reaches out to his family with his self-assessment.
Separately, various thoughts and analyses aimed at the British in Boston collect at a remarkably similar end—that the Redcoats will evacuate. Beneath the shared view is a jumble. Every New Englander in a successful whaleboat operation conducted along the coast gains confidence as he camps outside Boston. Every delegate in Philadelphia who reads Franklin’s proposed “Articles” judges if it’s really a plan or a step toward not needing the plan; Hancock, with his prediction of evacuation, seems to be in the latter group. And every copy of “The Declaration” that’s produced for overseas consumption argues to its Old World audience that the Americans are ready to fight.
Finally, you have Mason in Richmond. Each time he writes a period to end a sentence or a semi-colon to separate a sentence, it’s the equivalent of yet another stark pronouncement of some principle or truth that may be later reinterpreted or reconstrued, misinterpreted or misconstrued. He’s right—the burden can crush a person.
There’s no avoiding it when life has done an oxymoron by narrowing into a great, big, vast thing. The River plunges ahead and in the tumult, you’ll make a choice you’ll need to live with.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: is there any connection in your mind between the letter that Samuel Cooper writes and the letter John Thomas receives?
