Americanism Redux
June 25, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in
We’re in the spaces today.
A nation, state, or community.
A building, house, or room.
Or maybe the space is in your head or heart or, for some, soul.
Wherever it is and however you define it, you’re in a space and, today, you make of it what you can and will.
Your call.
Welcome to today, June 25, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
It’s been a couple of days in this room, huddled around this table.
Several quill feathers are scattered across the surface. A few of them have had their nibs—the hollow, reed-like portion below the feather—cut, whittled, and re-sharpened down to nothing. Also on the table are short bottles that hold a black substance, iron-gall ink. Get your nose close enough and you’ll get a whiff of vinegar from the ink. Another container, a small box held and gripped in one hand for careful shaking, is there too. Inside it is dry sand, some of which is in dusty patches on the wooden floor. The sand dries the ink after the writer scratches words into sentences on the parchment paper.
Within arm’s reach of the table are five men, some wigged and some not wigged, some seated and some standing or pacing. They’ve been in this room for much of the past three days. Yeah, regardless of scented powders and soaps, it’s getting a little, uh, gamey. You don’t notice if every space you’re in smells the same way.
But if you’re not from here and this space is new to you, trust me, you’ll notice.
* * * * * * *
In the room, the talk back and forth across the table has been generally good. Positive words, respectful tones, suggestions or criticisms offered in a helpful spirit. One thing that blots out any smell is the urgency—it fills the air, sits at the table, and feeds the words and sentences showing up on the sheets of papers.
The writing is from one of the five men, which you can tell by the color of part of his right hand. Black or gray-stained, where his hand brushes by what’s he’s just written before the sand dries up the iron-gall ink that mixes with the sweat on his skin. The right hand of Thomas Jefferson is a clear give-away as to his role as chief writer of the draft announcement of the Union’s separation and independence.
Wait, here comes a sound: a slight hiss with an equally slight tearing. That’s what you hear each time the man with the ink-stained right hand makes a straight line across the thick, stiff page. The length doesn’t matter, short or long, whenever he directs the quill in a short or long straight line you’ll hear the sound. Again, in a reality a bit like the odor, if you’re used to it, you likely don’t hear it. But if you’re not used to it, you’ll get the feeling every time it happens. If we count them up, the sound has occurred almost fifty times.
* * * * * * *
Among the five men, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin have offered the most changes. Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston are also active. Jefferson has made his own changes, too.
The changes have two broad clusters. One is by Adams to Jefferson privately, ahead of the group meetings. The other is by the group, around the table, in the room.
The First Cluster—outside the group by Adams to Jefferson, Franklin to Jefferson, or Jefferson’s realization alone—are substantially fewer in number, not quite a dozen. They tighten wording and word choice (“tyrants alone” becomes “tyrants only”, “fellow subjects” becomes “fellow-citizens”, and “right of representation” becomes “the right of representation in the legislature”).
Another short First-Cluster change is minor to everyone else but reveals something important about the writer. Jefferson writes “everlasting Adieu” as the phrase signaling the departure of Americans from the British population. Okay, maybe, but instead let’s find a phrase less …elitist?, high-toned?, show-off-y? self-preening? Done: “eternal separation” is the accepted substitution.
The other compelling First-Cluster change is equally minor in number of words, though with far-reaching effects well outside the writer. Jefferson scribbles “sacred & undeniable” to frame his list of natural rights. His phrasing has a religious, theological, and spiritual feel to it. But the preference and the replacement is this: “self-evident.” Sacred becomes self, and undeniable becomes evident. Splash a dash between them as a bonding agent and the change is complete. The line drops the heavens and adds the courtroom.
Second-Cluster stuff—made in the room among the group—is more extensive, a reflection of the committee as a reality in this space.
They tend to see the documents in paragraphs as well as single sentences. Changes within the paragraphs are viewed as changes to an existing portion of a body. This is especially true with the opening and closing pieces of the overall document. The group acts to shift the introductory tone from one of measured organic growth into maturity to one of greater strength and power, a kind of busting-out with vigor and sawing-off by force.
The sense of slicing, cutting, and tearing away is made still sharper by the group in the Second-Cluster. The group grabs Jefferson’s “the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness” and thrusts it into the fire. Out comes this, sizzling and glowing: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Among the many grievances Jefferson has written, the group slashes out a word here, smacks on a word there. In the rather lengthy grievance-statement about enslavement, they make sure to insert that “every legislative attempt” is known to have been used to end the trade and trafficking of enslaved people. That’s the new emphasis. In so doing, however, they erase a reference to the “MEN” (Jefferson’s choice of capitalization, and his euphemism for people collectively) who are traded and trafficked. Interestingly, the group retains his insertion of “CHRISTIAN” in labeling the king who protected the practice and his italicized “infidel” in underscoring that the king’s conduct was contemptible to other presumably evil rulers.
It’s the only other all-caps word in the body of the document.
* * * * * * *
John Adams, one of the committee members, is happy (giddy, even) at the thought of the document. For him, independence’s written declaration is a gift to be presented by next week to the entire Continental Congress for debate and—breathe deeply, John—a vote.
From head to toe, the short and stocky Adams has one clear belief today, 250 year ago: independence will solve everything and make everything better. Do we lack public spirit? Independence will provide it. Do we lack cooperation and collaboration? Independence will fix that. Do we gripe at each other and criticize each other too much? Independence will make it stop. Do people overseas hesitate to help us? Independence will turn their “not right now” to an “absolutely yes!” And on and on.
Just a few more things and then the ribbons and bows go on the box. We’ll sweep the floor, wash the ink from our hands, and throw away the worn-down quills.
* * * * * * *
In Philadelphia, Robert Morris is a few blocks away from the room with the sandy floor and five men around a table. Morris is at the Pennsylvania State House and concludes that a major point of interest for him in stuck somewhere between the first and second floor.
The main floor’s meeting room is where Morris and other delegates of the Continental Congress (including the five men writing the draft announcement of independence) meet in daily session.
As one of Pennsylvania’s delegates, Morris awaits the work of the five-man committee. He’s still skeptical of separation and independence as the next steps. Nevertheless, he’s entirely convinced of the Union’s need for more armed power, and one of the best ideas from the recent meeting between the Continental Congress and General George Washington a few weeks ago was the “flying camp” that would be organized as a fast-moving military force, with several thousand semi-elite soldiers adept at rapid marches, immediate combat, and adept in Native-style warfare.
But Morris can’t get anyone in the Continental Congress to act on executing the idea. They want to punt to Pennsylvania’s government, which meets upstairs at the Pennsylvania State House. But they won’t commit either. And so the whole idea—an excellent, vital, and actionable idea in the view of Morris and many other leaders—sits stuck in the stairway, with no one claiming ownership, responsibility, or accountability.
Not going up. Not going down. Just left in limbo in the space between. Will the word “independence” shake it loose and get it moving either up or down the staircase? Adams would shout yes. Morris would suspect no.
* * * * * * *
(see the white space in the center)
There’s not much space in the New York City jail cell. For now, it’s his home. For how much longer, it’s hard to say.
Gilbert Forbes glances out the window of his cell. He sees across the Common where another jail facility stands. Perhaps its spaces are filling up with people Forbes said were his co-conspirators.
Forbes has been in jail for several hours now. He was caught recruiting local men in New York to serve in the British Army, or in units of Loyalists that would be aligned with the British Army. Forbes has been receiving secret payments from British officials. He’d gotten creative in his assignment. Instead of organizing a new Loyalist unit and leaving it at that, he’d helped conceive a plot to kill the man he’s seeing as the center of the Union.
General George Washington.
Washington’s murder has been the latest focus of Forbes’s work. Kill the general and the whole thing collapses, according to the man sitting in a jail cell, all of it, the Continental Congress, whatever documents and declarations it produces, the groups and the meetings that feed into it, all of it—dust to dust. Forbes thinks this, and almost certainly so do many other Loyalists in New York City.
The twist is that the belief is other Loyalists can murder other offices when the time comes, when the Redcoats land. The few hundred people Forbes has recruited—the number is slippery—can be positioned to “decapitate” (as later generations will say it) the rebellious regime.
In his head in this space of a jail cell, Forbes sees it clearly.
* * * * * * *
(a potential murder weapon?)
General George Washington hears a voice in his head. It cuts through all the other stuff that fills first his thoughts and then his actions. Munitions, logistics, fortifications, quality of soldiers, numbers of soldiers, hospitals, horses, and a thousand other topics, seeping in between them is the horrible realization that treason is within an arm’s reach of him.
It’s been discovered that his personal guards are among the men recruited and led by Gilbert Forbes. They’ve been at the heart of the plot to kill Washington. How close were they to acting on their murderous orders? The likeliest window for a specific time and date will occur when the British invasionary units actually land at New York City, which could be in less than a month.
A traitor and an assassin—watching Washington’s every move, knowing his daily routine, saluting him every time they meet.
Those thoughts don’t go to sleep.
* * * * * * *
(Rutledge)
The space of 36-year old John Rutledge is his office in the South Carolina State House at the corner of Broad and Meeting Streets in Charleston. As governor, Rutledge conducts most of his work here. But because of dictatorial-like powers that he’s been given in his role as governor with the new constitution of South Carolina, it’s more accurate to refer to the building by its nickname, “the four corners of law.” Indeed, the dictator-president of this re-newed stand-alone colony sits at the juncture of all authority in South Carolina.
Most hours this week Rutledge has been battling with General Charles Lee, the Continental Army officer sent here to command the Union’s military force against a British invasion expected any moment from the enemy naval force waiting in the harbor. Lee has demanded that Rutledge evacuate a palmetto-tree constructed fort that, for now, blocks the British path inland. Dictator-President Rutledge ignores Lee’s demands and concentrates his attention on the thousand details of finalizing Charleston’s defenses, palmetto trees and all.
Among those laboring to complete the job are some of the fifty people Rutledge enslaves on his plantation. Pompey is one of the enslaved men Rutledge has known for years. He’s building the walls to defend this community while five men re-draft the document to declare independence for the Union. Pompey and Rutledge and the rest of Charleston’s people have no idea of the contents in the announcement.
A direct line joins the space of the governor’s office to the space of the governor’s authority across the colony.
* * * * * * *
A work room. A stairwell. A jail cell. An office. Find your space for today, 250 years ago.
Also
(Lt. Moraga)
Today, he’s stopping, unexpectedly. Where he stops is his group’s current space.
Lieutenant Jose Joaquin Moraga and his 200 soldiers, settlers, and families have stopped today in the Santa Clara valley to wait for one of the soldiers who has become sick.
The group is at Arroyo de San Jose for the time being. 1,000 cattle and horses will be kept in an uneasy state of calm until the soldier is well enough to march. The herd is eating and grinding down to dust the meager grasses normally used by Ohlone Natives in their hunting and farming.
Hopefully, Moraga’s expedition will reach their destination of the San Francisco peninsula soon.
For the foreseeable future, the fort that Moraga plans to build there will be the northernmost point of New Spain and the colonizing Spanish Empire.
For You Now
The space you’re in is never the space you’re JUST in (hat-tip to Jefferson for the all-caps).
Like the five men around the table, you’re involving countless other influences in what you’re doing. From things you’ve done or seen or read to things someone else has shared from what they’ve done or seen or read, you’re working with a myriad of thoughts on the task in front of you.
The bigger the task, the larger the influences.
Not everyone will make the same contribution from their chair at the table. That may be a minor point if everyone has something they can contribute, including a general perspective from sound judgment. The smallest details in such a space can count for a lot.
Like Washington in his tent or on horseback, there’s likely a blazing image that has forced its way into your thoughts, too. That image will be illuminated by contrast—between what you’re trying to do and some one thing that collides with it. For him, it’s the life he’s trying to achieve for a larger cause and the death someone wants to impose on him.
A space can be more than its appearance. What should be a space for movement—the stairwell between two floors—may be the metaphorical site for something that simply can’t or won’t be decided. In similar fashion, an office space can, if its inhabitant is in a particular situation, have a wildly farther reach than one may suppose.
Grand moments do not need grand spaces, and grand spaces do not guarantee grand moments.
You can be the defining point. Just remember to sweep the sand off the floor.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: is independence the answer that John Adams thinks it is? And in the face of a successful Forbes operation, would it survive?
(Your River)
