Americanism Redux
June 20, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
We are a family.
A hard and difficult time has struck us.
Crying, hurting, thinking, praying.
We do them as a family—a family of Adams—in a moment we’ve never known before.
* * * * * * *
(Abigail)
Abigail Adams, wife of 39-year old John and mother of 8-year old Johnny Q, watched the fire consume the wooden structures of Charles Town, next to Boston. She and the boy—the Adams’s oldest child—saw flames eat, roar, and burn their way through the village.
It was a few days ago, in a battle on the hills of Boston, the Redcoats had set fire to Charles Town as a way of driving out colonists who were firing on them from the small settlement. The colonials’ gunfire from Charles Town had added to the bloody cost of British infantry trying to march uphill and seize a temporary four-sided barricade erected by the colonists on Breed’s Hill.
At first, the mouths of Abigail and Johnny hung open, in shock at what they were seeing. Besides the smoke and flames, they heard the boom of cannon and the pop-pop-pop of muskets firing. They saw men killing each other, men milling about in confusion, men running or falling or laying motionless. Abigail and Johnny’s shock turned to disbelief at these sights and sounds in front of them.
Johnny Q looked up at his mother as tears ran down her face.
Then, one sound in particular exploded their world:
“Dr Warren is dead in the barricade.”
Shot, stabbed, and bled out, Dr. Joseph Warren has died in the barricade that was finally stormed by the Redcoats.
* * * * * * *
(Johnny)
Abigail’s crying turned to wailing, and Johnny began to cry. “He had been our family physician and surgeon,” Johnny remembered later in life, “and had saved my fore finger from amputation under a very bad fracture.”
Abigail was inconsolable, holding her son tightly in her arms, her face and neck soaked from tears, her dress damp from sweat. She drives ideas and thoughts into the emotions overwhelming her. Warren “has distinguished himself in every engagement, by his courage and fortitude, by animating the Soldiers and leading them by his own example…I wish I could contradict the report of the Doctor’s Death, but tis a lamentable Truth, and the tears of multitudes pay tribute to his memory,” she wrote to her husband, John.
Still grasping at reason to counter feelings, Abigail recalled a poem that honors the death of “the Brave who sink to rest.”
She disappeared back into grief. Johnny and Abigail left the scene and sought protection with her in-laws family.
(Warren’s death)
* * * * * * *
(Abigail’s comfort)
The only comfort Abigail finds is in her spirituality as a Christian. She quotes from the Book of Ecclesiastes and also reminds herself and her husband that “God is a refuge for us…Almighty God cover the heads of our Country men, and be a shield to our dear Friends.”
She fears that another battle could begin at any hour and knows that vegetables on the family farm she’s straining to grow are drying up in a drought.
* * * * * * *
(John)
John Adams, Abigail’s husband, is in Philadelphia as a member of the Massachusetts delegation in the Second Continental Congress. He’s ignorant of events in Boston and the trauma of his family.
He’s frustrated at not obtaining “from our Province, any regular and particular Intelligence since I left it.” He’s also somewhat irked at how “long since I heard from you…[Abigail]…and fears “you have been kept in continual Alarms.”
John is excited about the newly appointed General George Washington in charge of a newly created Continental Army. To add to his enthusiasm, he’s optimistic about a “continental Fast…[where] Millions will be upon their Knees at once before their great Creator, imploring his Forgiveness and Blessing, his Smiles on American Councils and Arms.”
John imagines Johnny Q and his three siblings giving him a goodnight kiss.
It won’t be until another five days has passed before the news of Boston’s battle reaches John Adams in Philadelphia.
* * * * * * *
Hundreds of families in New England share these times with the Adamses. Someone has been in the fight and now is surviving, wounded, or dead.
* * * * * * *
In Boston, Massachusetts, at the Battle of Bunker Hill (fought on Breed’s Hill) on June 17, 3000 Redcoats clashed with 2400 colonists. 450 colonists were killed, wounded, or captured, while the British lost 1,054 men. The percentages of casualties and fatalities amount to one of the bloodiest and most violent battles in American history.
Also
(a model Resolution)
Today, 250 years ago, Captain James Cook and his crew on board the HMS Resolution continue sailing north through the Atlantic Ocean, bound for Portsmouth, England after a three-year oceanic circumnavigation of Earth.
Cook’s mission has been a combination of discovery, national interest, and human curiosity.
For You Now
Okay. Step back and see what’s in front of us.
All-out war, purposeful and intentional, that’s what’s in front of us. Make no mistake.
The Americans decided to fortify a hill, knowing an attack will be forthcoming. The British obliged, launching assault after assault and cannonading nearby homes and buildings. Blood spilled and flowed everywhere. Wood caught fire, stone shattered, bricks broke apart. People and animals strained, screamed, suffered.
War affects a family.
A woman, mother and wife and daughter rolled into one, witnessed with her oldest child. She and he are traumatized by the scene and by the news of the combat death of a close family friend. They know he died somewhere in the scene they saw. They retreated to shelter provided by extended family.
There is a general certainty that another battle will and must occur some day very soon. It will be near. Worse, safety at the shelter is fleeting. The place may be the site of an attack, a kidnapping, a torching. No one knows.
These moments begin burrowing into the minds of mother and son. The moments seek a spot to attach and hold in memory. They may grow, they may harden, they may mis-shape. For their own reasons, though, they succeed as memories—mother and son will never forget.
Meanwhile, the man who is father, husband, and son rolled into one hasn’t the slightest notion of the battle. He does, however, have a full understanding of the environment where battle could happen. When the news—and that’s what the event will be to him, news—arrives seven days later, he’ll begin to think, talk, act, and decide. All of those things will likely expand and deepen the world of war.
And family after family after family will have their version of this experience.
So, reader, I want you to know this: we’ve seen union before nation and NOW we’re seeing war before independence.
Say it again—war before independence.
I’ve been wondering lately about a thought experiment.
What if the American Revolutionary War was a document? A document, let’s say, like the Declaration of Independence?
We’d read it, know its sources, study it, separate it into smaller pieces for richer understanding, trace it directly to subsequent actions and events, and on and on. It would be printable, sharable, screen-shotable, quotable. That’s what you do with important documents.
What if that was the same way we could probe the importance of the war’s co-existence and co-occurence with independence?
My guess is we would have a further understanding of the Declaration of Independence and American Founding.
Suggestion
Take a moment to ask yourself this question: what’s your clearest sense of the Revolutionary War? and what is its basis?
(Your River)
