Americanism Redux
July 3, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
On a hot day, the sun burns bright and the trees make shadows.
In both, the light and the dark, you can see things.
Happy fireworks.
* * * * * * *
(under the elm)
Standing in the shade of an elm tree, a tall man is speaking. A great white horse waits nearby, held by an aide.
The tall man in the shade is General George Washington, new commander of the new Continental Army. It’s his first full day on the job and on the scene, with the new military hierarchy that is only days old. It is the first organization of its kind for the people who comprise the British colonies.
The scene has an air of purposeful formality. Reading from a sheet of paper, Washington delivers a speech that the Second Continental Congress had prepared. Next, he reads from the Bible, sharing a portion from the Book of Psalms. Then, he and other “very important people” watch as soldiers marched by in their units, “in review”, as they call it. That concludes the show.
One soldier remarked on its “grandeur”, while another dismissed it as nothing special.
Following the show, Washington mounts his great white Arabian horse and rides the line of earthworks forming a half-circle around the town of Boston. He looks carefully at the men there, the weapons and supplies. He also gazes out at the British, estimating distance and numbers of enemy soldiers. He hears a rumor about a potential British strike somewhere along the half-circle of earthworks. The passage of minutes and quarter-hours prove the rumor false but it drives the point home to Washington that at any instant, the Redcoats could crash into the Continental units, smash the half-circle to pieces, and invade the countryside. He has a thousand tasks ahead of him to prevent this disaster.
By late afternoon, clouds gather and sheets of rain begin pouring down. The storm appears to be stationary over eastern Massachusetts, soaking everything for hours.
* * * * * * *
(the smell)
Maybe the rain will wash away the smell that Samuel Mathers can’t get out of his mind.
Ever smell bad smoke and ashes? Not the campfire kind or the fireplace kind. No, the bad smoke-and-ash smell comes from a home that just burned down, a barn and livestock lost in the flames, some part of your life that was there before and is gone now.
In the case of Samuel Mather today, 250 years ago, it’s his books or, more accurately, his library. And it was impressive to anyone who saw it back before warfare covered the hill adjacent to Boston. It’s called Breed’s or Bunker’s or some damn thing—how about bloody hill? That works well enough.
A couple of weeks ago when Mather heard the first blasts of cannon and artillery, heard the fifes and drums of soldiers on the march, heard the pop-pop-pop of musket fire on the hill next to Boston, he ran as fast as he could to his home. He frantically packed his library, found a horse and wagon, and as men in Redcoats and colonial civilian garb were dying on the hillside, Mather whipped the horse and hauled his books to safety…
…in Charles Town, next to Boston, the same village that the Redcoats soon set on fire in order to drive out pesky colonial sharpshooters. Yep, the place of safety became the site of burning.
That was the last of Mather’s library. The flames devoured it. In minutes, pages of words and wisdom from the generations were gone forever. Only family graves were left.
Even now, as he walks where the books once were, Mather’s shoes pick up dark smudges and an acrid smell fills his nostrils.
Not far from where Mather is walking after the heavy rains, British Redcoats have filled the town of Boston. Beyond them, in a meandering half-circle on the heights outside town, the tents of the new Continental Army can be seen. Somewhere out there is the elm tree that shaded the tall man on a white horse.
* * * * * * *
Whether in sunlight or shadow, the practical strains of life are starting to grind down members of the Second Continental Congress. Today, 250 years ago, John Langdon of New Hampshire is the only delegate from his colony now still in attendance at Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. He’s unnerved by it; how can I decide on issues that need decision, wonders Langdon, how can I assert New Hampshire’s opinion? Feeling isolated, Langdon sees more worst-case scenarios than anything else.
Besides Langdon, Silas Deane, a delegate from Connecticut, is feeling mentally scattered and unfocused. He’s been away from his family too long—nearly four months by his reckoning—and without them it’s hard to keep his energy going. Deane knows that important topics are arriving every day to the Pennsylvania State House. But he can’t stop missing his loved ones.
* * * * * * *
(Parkman)
Ebenezer Parkman, pastor at the Congregational Church in Westborough, Massachusetts, has the opposite problem from Deane’s. No, Parkman’s work is at his church and not in the Second Continental Congress. Much more than that, though, Parkman is home all too much where he’s seeing all too many awful things. His son John is deathly ill; visitors rotate shifts at his bedside to keep watch over him. His daughter Hannah is also struggling with serious illness and appears to be worse by the hour. Parkman’s family is in pain.
Outside of his home, Parkman knows that five of his former classmates from years ago have been driven from the churches they pastored. Their crime? They support England, King George III, and imperial power—they’re dubbed “Tories” and judged to be enemies of the people. So, out they go and leave your Bible with us. Parkman agonizes over their fate. He knows them as true friends and trusted men of God. It’s not enough these days.
Reverend Parkman draws his most recent sermon from the Second Chapter of Revelations, Verse Three: “You have persevered and endured hardships for my sake, and have not grown weary.” Fitting.
The bright spot for Ebenezer Parkman today, 250 years ago, is that he’s learned the Second Continental Congress has declared July 20 a day of fasting and prayer. Perhaps, Parkman thinks, some good will come from all this heartbreak and strife.
* * * * * * *
(one man of three people, Dr. Benjamin Kennicott)
Ebenezer Parkman searches for light in God and Scripture and prayer in these troubled times. Others, such as a writer almost a thousand miles away in Charleston, South Carolina, known only as “Antiquarius”, look elsewhere.
Antiquarius is good friends with the Vicar of Culham, the Radcliffe librarian at Oxford in England, and the world’s most recognized scholar of Hebrew all rolled into one person, Dr. Benjamin Kennicott. Living in England, Kennicott had uncovered “two Arabic Manuscripts of ancient Date as it is curious it seems to suit the present times…” Antiquarius’s reprinting of the work will appear in tomorrow’s “South Carolina-Gazette and Country Journal.”
The work refers to “James, son of Wrong”, who challenged the “tribe of George” at the urging of a group of venomous advisers culled from the “Jacobites”. He also acquired vast wealth. After a while, the people turned against him, as did his advisors and protectors. It was then that “Beelzebub” ordered a “hundred evil spirits” to watch James and prevent him from doing more evil things. Still, despite their dislike of him, the people found James to be necessary, a resource useful to them, provided he stayed under close watch and was kept always in “hot water.”
A strange tale told strangely, Antiquarius believed his readers in Charleston would understand Kennicott’s meaning.
* * * * * * *
From a Massachusetts elm tree to a South Carolina riddle, people are living your day in the sun and the shadows.
Also
(the guru)
Today, 250 years ago in France, Antoine Lavoisier, known to his friends and colleagues as a kind of “gunpowder guru”, continues his meticulous testing of the combined elements of the explosive material. He is relentless in his research with no detail too small to notice, no alteration too minor to ignore. He is a scientist of war.
He’s settling in on the following proportions: 75% saltpeter, 12.5% charcoal, and 12.5% sulphur.
Mix them well and you’ll get the best grade of gunpowder on the European continent. A fraction off here or there and you’ll lose the effect you’re seeking. Keep it as he’s learned it.
Lavoisier’s expertise in the design and manufacture of gunpowder makes France a destination for any group who needs to wage war.
For You Now
We’ve got sun and shadows, the first gets you the second. Let’s start with that.
Washington’s first day on the job cannot be measured in importance and meaning. Too big for the tools we have, then or now or ever. On this July 3 it is a massive, sun-level event to be remembered—the first, and only, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army that will prove perhaps the single most essential ingredient in the formula of American independence. Think Lavoisier were precise in the mix? It’s not even close when compared to how minutely things had to be for Washington to be named, accepted, and continued as Commander-in-Chief from 1775 to 1783. Indispensable.
This is the bright glaring, beautiful sunlight of today. But I want to take you into the shadows as well.
The light is gain and the dark is loss.
Washington’s presence under the elm tree comes with enormous loss—he’s agreed to lose his life as he knows it. Maybe that means he’ll be killed. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. He’s losing the life he’s been leading by entering into a role and set of responsibilities he only barely fathoms. And he knows it, he knows the unknowable is all around him.
Samel Mather has lost his library to the British-lit fire. He’s no longer in possession of the books and ideas that helped make his family into New England leaders all the way back to the 1630s. Up in smoke.
Ebenezer Parkman prays he won’t lose the lives of two of his children. He knows his five dear friends have already lost the social relationships so vital to them in their respective churches. Nothing to do now but pray for them on July 20.
Deane and Langdon have lost substantial portions of their personal lives back home in Connecticut and New Hampshire, respectively. No one can truly tell them that their losses will be regained.
And Antiquarius believes a bizarrely coded story will somehow fill the void left by the losses in a Low Country world.
His friend, the Hebrew scholar Dr. Kennicott, might have told him to check out the Old Testament, a few books ahead of the Psalms read by Washington, where a universal story of freedom resides.
Exodus.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: if you could say one thing to George Washington under the elm tree, what would it be?
(Your River, lit by the light)
