Americanism Redux
July 9, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
Nothing freezes in the summer.
Except time.
Well, we think time freezes in the summer—and also the spring, fall, and winter. That’s our habit as our memory freezes a moment or scene in place. Once there, frozen, the slice of time is stuck. Cold.
But time doesn’t freeze. Ever. And the life that happens in time doesn’t freeze either. Ever.
You know it right now, and, Declaration in hand, so do they…
…today, July 9, 250 years ago. Welcome to Americanism Redux.
* * * * * * *
(The Bowling Green)
Tonight, July 9, Joab Daget, does his best to stand at attention with his Massachusetts unit. Hold your place, don’t fidget, keep still, look ahead. A 22-year old carpenter who’s been working on wagon wheels and barracks walls, he’s anything but a soldier. Back in his tent, you’ll find a diary he’s been keeping which hints of a non-soldier status; most daily entries are a few words’ long about “nothing remarkable today”, an odd phrase for the frenzy that’s marked New York City for the past several weeks. Daget uses his gun—and his quill pen—far less than the saw, plane, hammer, and nails of his craft. Give him lumber and he’s at home.
Still, tonight, Daget maintains his posture while an officer reads aloud a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Minutes are passing. He hears “…our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor…” as the final phrase of the final sentence. It’s a clause that’s been true for him since both 1776, and his stint as a Continental Army carpenter, began.
Then, as the spoken written word falls away, Daget hears another sound, coming from all around him on the City Commons: “huzza!!huzza!!huzza!!” The sound wave of the collective yell rolls and rolls among the rows and rows of standing men. The throats are voting, and the night air fills with actions and decisions and deeply-held beliefs.
More minutes pass and people—some wearing civilian clothes, some wearing uniforms—continue yelling while a gathering of men and women forms on Broad Street. They start to march down Broad Street to the Bowling Green. Soon, their march quickens to a rush and a living shape moves along the flattened stones. Swarming into a circle, they scale a tall fence and surround a two-ton iron statue of George III on horseback. Torch light dances across faces and raised arms, then on the iron figure, and now on ropes flying through the air. A yelling of hunger becomes the crowd’s power and strength, drawing the hemp ropes to a whining tautness of a hangman’s work. Over the iron man-and-horse topple, down they go, and a wild roar rockets upward on the light. The hacking begins in the dirt with a severed iron head, a sliced iron tail, and shattered iron parts. In the sea of sound and motion a carpenter called Daget is no longer at attention.
* * * * * * *
(Nassau Hall)
At Nassau Hall, a large group forms on the campus of the College of New Jersey in Princeton. Units of soldiers stand in rows, their muskets primed, charged, and ready to fire. The people there include residents, faculty, soldiers, administrators, ministers, and students. The crowd hears the same closing words: “…our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor…” As the parchment paper is lowered in the speaker’s hands, an order is given and the three units fire their muskets in recognition of the moment. A tangible sense of excitement pulses through the crowd, which might for their order now be called an audience. Large fires burn near them, the orange light adding to the atmosphere of fervent emotions and shared passion as people talk excitedly about the narrated document.
Among them are two Juniors—Walter Armstrong Jr and Samuel McConkey Jr. They are enrolled at the College and count themselves as strong supporters of American independence. The prospects of the two students revolve around what’s next—to fight or not to fight. What they don’t know and can’t know is the further future: McConkey the Jr will see his family’s ferry on the Delaware River play a key role in transporting George Washington and his soldiers over the icy waters to attack Trenton, while Armstrong the Jr will, in seven years, play a key role in a plan to arrest Congress and install a military-directed government.
* * * * * * *
(Philadelphia)
Ray Greene is 11-years old and today, July 9, he’s enjoying time out of the classroom. In fact, he’s thinking about going home to see his parents back in Warwick, Rhode Island. It’s been a long summer already with his head stuck in any of a dozen ancient, dusty, and stiff-papered books like Lily’s (Latin) Grammar, Erasmus’s Colloquies, and Corderius’s Colloquies. Tough work hour in and hour out, Ray manages to excel at the logic and rhetoric he’s learning. Still, even just thinking the titles ignites his desire to see his family and take a break from the Latin School at the corner of 4th and Arch Streets, in Philadelphia, the prep program for the College of Philadelphia.
But today something else is in Ray’s head. He can’t stop hearing a beautiful noise, the shouts, yells, and clapping of yesterday and last night. That was the crowd’s reaction to hearing, outside Pennsylvania State House, the first public reading of the contents of the Declaration of Independence. The mood shifted after a group of people entered the State House and, a couple of minutes later, emerged holding aloft the “king’s coat of arms”. They carried them down the steps and into the street. The noise intensified as large fire was started. The noise became a roar as men hurled the symbols of royalty and monarchy, divine right and imperial rule, into the flames.
Ray can picture it in his head less than a day later. The image will go with him if the adult woman he lives with gives him permission to visit his Warwick family. Ray needs to ask the woman he’s staying with a short distance from the Latin School. She’s Jane Mecom, sister of Benjamin Franklin who helped start the College and also an editor, advocate, and “yes” voter of the Declaration read to the crowd.
* * * * * * *
(Boston)
A third Jr is Jonathan Mason, Jr of Boston. He’s a law student nearing the end of his education and entry into a law practice. He’s worried that the current war has shut down the traditional avenues of opportunity and advancement in law and lawyering. His worry extends to his self-awareness—Mason Jr admits that he’s not a soldier by nature and can’t see himself adapting into one in this war. While excited about American independence and the Declaration he’s heard read aloud, Mason Jr fears his own road to independence is swiftly coming to an end.
* * * * * * *
(painted a few weeks earlier)
Twice in the last day General George Washington has expressed his understanding of the Declaration of Independence.
First, Washington issued a “General Order” to the soldiers in New York City, which included the carpenters. He stated that the Declaration would be read aloud to them. Just as importantly, he offered what he saw as the chief connection of the document to their duty—that independence depends on them, and their military service now traces back to their particular new State (instead of colony) with its power to reward and advance them.
Second, Washington sent a letter to the Massachusetts governor and legislature. In it he shares a copy of the Declaration as well as his own handful of words summarizing the document—”the claims of the American Colonies to the rights of Humanity and declared them Free and Independent States.” Then he devoted the bulk of his letter to the coming week’s immediate needs of war. Judging by the amount of words and level of detail, Washington sees both parts of the letter as crucial and connected.
* * * * * * *
(nothing to feed him)
For Washington, the war is an unlimited reality. Every star, every cloud, every sunbeam and moon shadow has war in it. War is the icy, black universe and independence is one body within the infinity.
Washington see this: Continental commanders in northern New York detest each other and have split into two sides, each favoring a chosen general; Union forts along the northern Hudson River are undermanned and undersupplied, vulnerable to enemy attack; Union forts along the southern Hudson River in New York City are scarcely any better and much more subject to treason and sabotage; militia volunteers everywhere are going home to prepare for harvests and have little intention of coming back; the “Flying Camp” concept so vital to Pennsylvania and New Jersey’s defense has gotten no material support; the populace of northern New Jersey seems eager to accept British assistance; Natives in the west have embraced the British cause, while Natives in the east have failed to be properly recruited; Continental Army recruitment is almost as meager; smallpox, a killer disease that terrorizes whole communities, is again rampant and again fueling old arguments over inoculation; members of Congress have started blaming each other for a lack of military progress, opine that if this summer can be survived, victory is ours, and whine about favored officers being overlooked for promotion.
And when an offer is made of sending cavalry units to Washington in New York City, he declines politely and says there’s nothing to feed the horses.
Can we feed them spare copies of the Declaration?
* * * * * * *
(of a power all their own)
John Adams, who like Benjamin Franklin is an editor, advocate, and “yes” vote for the Declaration, has practically written his right arm off. Letter after letter pours out of his private room on Second Street in Philadelphia. They are pieces of himself, of mind and heart and soul, formed around an astounding array of topics and issues. Ideas and insights gather around him, both rooted in and disdainful of the circumstances of the moment.
He writes to wonder if new judges in Boston are being respected or disrespected by people in courts and the sign the answer portends.
He writes about fifteen years ago when he thinks the current revolution actually began and that the greatest marvel is how quickly things have changed.
He writes about the fears he has of the people’s newly-won power and whether existing vices will diminish and fresh virtues will blossom. Or not.
He writes about the Declaration passing over a river and destroying the bridge.
He writes about addressing specific issues of the war.
He writes about the ways to teach a child to read, to help a growing reader gain a mastery of knowledge.
The parts of himself in these letters equate to the crowds that have collected in streets, illuminated by firelight, and marched to hear the word of a future. Except that nothing is wrecked, nothing left in ashes or pieces. The entirety of this person is a foundation for independence.
* * * * * * *
(modern Mansfield, wedding site)
John Adams has never met Mary Slate, though she lives in Mansfield, Connecticut, next door to his Massachusetts. To know her would please him—he’d hear what Mary is doing right now, 250 years ago, and he’d take heart from it.
Mary is on the verge of her wedding in Mansfield. Her new husband will be Luke Flint. Mary and Luke are doing everything they can to make this a truly American Independence wedding—they’re stitching the wedding dress and suitcoat, they’re pouring candles, they’re distilling alcohol and pressing grapes for wine, they’re patching chairs, they’re cooking food. You name it and they’re making it, from scratch and by hand. Yessir, no fanciness here, no unnecessary splurging. Just plain ol’ American Independence in a wedding of the times.
* * * * * * *
(Maybury Hill)
A Quaker minister, Providence Worth is waiting for her son, Joseph, to come home. He’ll be visiting with her soon at the family home called Maybury Hill, not far from the College of New Jersey campus. Providence will talk with him, learn about the Declaration he supported with his vote as one of the North Carolina delegates in the Continental Congress, Joseph Hewes. He’ll be on the verge of exhaustion and breakdown when his mother sees him. Providence Worth will want to know all her son can tell her about the document.
* * * * * * *
(the readable copy of July 9)
The final form of the Declaration took shape about a week ago. Over July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th the delegates at Pennsylvania State House did conclusive edits—which Jefferson called “mutilations”—to the document.
The most striking was the total removal of 168 words on enslavement and the king’s responsibility for the practice, especially its trade and trafficking, in the colonies. South Carolina and Georgia’s delegates led the charge to delete, supported by some northern delegates whose communities have worked in the buying and selling of black people.
There were other important alterations. Another cut clause referred to the British people. Delegates softened or removed passages that lashed out at anyone other than George III or Parliament. Part of the Lee Resolution—which was one of the linkages to Paine’s Common Sense—was dropped directly into the document. God newly appeared twice in the final version, once as “Supreme Judge” and once as “divine Providence.” And the realm of irregular warfare was brushed onto the document by slotting enslaved black insurrectionists and “merciless Indian savages” under British-led strategies.
Few people bother long in textual debates over this erasure or that insertion. They’ll focus on the document as an outcome and the getting-on with the business at hand.
Also
(heading to the island)
William Bingham is six days into his voyage from Philadelphia south to the French island of Martinique in the Caribbean Sea. Once there, his task will be to deceive people into thinking he’s a merchant while all the time he is actually acting secretly to boost French aid to the American cause.
At the same time, French imperial officials in Paris debate the extent to which conflict between Spain and Portugal in South America will affect current relations among the European powers.
In Oxford, England, former Massachusetts colonial officials Thomas Hutchinson and Peter Oliver receive honorary doctorates as symbolic reward for their efforts to maintain the British Empire in North America.
For You Now
We freeze the Declaration into place. It happens every year at the same time, some years being more naturally significant than others, which means an even deeper freeze than normal. It lies motionless behind the glass-like surface that separates it from the living air, from the people and the pathogens.
We do it for most of the items in our individual and collective memories. They’re framed and stored artifacts. When they take on anniversary status and therefore its grinding repetition, there’s a danger the artifact becomes counterfact. What we think of as a service of remembering can veer into a disservice of fossilization.
That’s not bad, by itself. You know they’re there. They serve to remind in every instance we remember to look.
But the last time I was in the National Archives and saw the Declaration, my biggest impression was how faded the ink was.
I’m not arguing to overhaul human memory. I’m only saying that in addition to memory and its instinctive behaviors, patterns, and evolutions, it’s a great idea to take time to root out the actual story of life that made the memory. Some pieces of that story can be recovered. They can be reconstructed so as to enrich, enliven, and enhance what you know or think you know. In so doing, your memory won’t go away. It will gain from expansion, gain from growth, gain from a new depth and motion.
The Declaration was written, edited, adopted, printed, copied, read aloud…and then something happened next. Perhaps a shout, a burning, a smashing, or writing, ordering, a moment with a son, a moment with a betrothed. It was a key change in mid-year followed by other changes at other levels. The river flowed ahead, with one piece of paper bobbing in the fast-moving waters.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: what’s the cost of what you’ve frozen, and what’s the gain of thawing it?
For more about my River construct:
