Americanism Redux

June 26, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775

Standing here today, we’re a week or so in…into the summer, that is. How do things look for the coming season of heat, humidity, and flashing thunderstorms?

Like you, they’re at the front edge of summer, today, 250 years ago.

* * * * * * *

(like Peter)

Peter Brown expected to be in Connecticut. Instead, he’s in the new Continental Army, having stopped outside Boston and found himself in a unit on the day the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought.

For a while, he had a shovel in his hand. Then, he had a musket in his hand. Finally, he had his heart in his hand.

Peter is writing his mother back in Rhode Island and telling her his story of that day. He tells her he’s pretty certain he and his friends were the victims of a real conspiracy—someone purposely tried to have them killed by ordering them to dig earthworks within the range of British naval guns. Those guns blasted them during their digging. He saw several younger men run away.

Peter says to his mother that only God saved him. Only God kept his safe that day. Only God is protecting him now and only God knows what is coming next.

Tell Polly, Patty, and Sally I love them, writes Peter to his mother. Then, he folds the letter for delivery to Rhode Island.

* * * * * * *

(like Road)

Road shares Peter’s sights on God. She’s looking for God in the stars of summer nights.

Road is a 28 year-old black woman on the run in North Carolina. She escaped from enslavement two months ago. She’s armed with a fake pass that attests to her status as a free woman. Road is beautiful. She loves colorful clothes, having left with a striped jacket, a black coat, a red petticoat, and a calico gown, and wears her rich, thick hair up in a large swirling bun.

Her natural beauty and stylish flair may help, or hurt, her chances. She’ll attract looks from men and perhaps can get a favor or advantage or two along the way. Then again, she might draw more attention and notice than she’d like, especially if a male gawker has learned of her escape, her description, the reward of her recapture.

But two months is two months and as each summer night passes, Road’s chances for freedom increase. She knows that if she makes it through the summer, the starry sky blinks brighter indeed.

* * * * * * *

This summer is off to a weird start for horses in Virginia.

Somewhere or other in Virginia, thirteen horses have either wandered away from their owner or turned up unexpectedly on a stranger’s farm.

Missing your horse? Then you can’t travel as you’d like or need to do. Missing your horse? Then you can’t get a wagon or plow pulled on your farm and work goes undone. Missing your horse? Then a considerable investment of your hard-earned money is gone and maybe for good.

Missing your horse? Take a look in Virginia. The odds are decent it’s wandering around there somewhere as the summer heat boils up.

* * * * * * *

(sign of a good season)

Valentine Crawford sees a field of corn and feels good about the start of the summer. At this rate, the stalks and ears bode well for harvest weeks into the future.

But signs of trouble mark the start of summer, too, at the confluence of the Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers.

Crawford worries about canoes and boats on the river. They keep tipping over; down to the river bottom goes supplies, equipment, and any important papers that might be on board. Crawford has been hearing of constant difficulty in keeping the vessels upright.

He’s also hearing about Colonel John Connolly who has been kidnapped by a group of Pennsylvanians. They resent Virginians like Crawford for buying and settling lands near the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers. The news disturbs Crawford because he thinks Connolly is the only one in his settlement who can talk effectively with local Native tribes. The Natives seem uneasy over news of imperial-colonial problems along the Atlantic Coast. Crawford wants to organize a unit of soldiers to protect against Redcoats and against any Redcoat-goaded Natives motivated to destroy the settlement. If Connolly is gone, Crawford fears the task of unit organization is next to impossible.

Get Connolly back. Keep the corn healthy. And the summer will be a good season. That’s the priority-list of Valentine Crawford.

* * * * * * *

(the tavern after the town was named)

Summer has a different start to a handful of people many hours east of Crawford’s location.

Irish immigrant Samuel Gettys owns a tavern and a few rough wooden buildings in a settlement too small to name. Two days ago he hosted a group of more than fifty men at his place. They wore round broad-rimmed hats, sported tan-colored hunting shirts, and carried long-barreled guns called “rifles.” These men used Gettys’s tavern to talk, debate, refresh, and finally, sign their names to form a unit.

They’ll be leaving soon, walking east to Boston to join up with other men of pro-colonial rights’ beliefs fighting against the Redcoats. The men seem to listen closely to the words of Michael Doudel, a member of their group.

Gettys cleans up the tavern today, 250 years ago, as Doudel and 76 men clean up their rifles before heading east. One day in the future one of his sons will purchase land here and a town, a burg, will be named in his family’s honor.

Gettysburg.

* * * * * * *

(site of committees and news)

Still further east in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, the members of the Second Continental Congress finish up the day’s work on today, June 26, a Monday, and prepares to close the first full week of summer.

It’s a busy day for committees. One has formed to finalize a formal communication to Native tribes. One has formed to plan how to increase the manufacturing of salt petre for ammunition. One has formed to draft the statement that newly-appointed and newly-accepted Continental Army commanding general George Washington—dubbed a “Generalissimo” by one delegate—will deliver to the thousands of men surrounding Boston.

It’s a busy day for big news. The delegates hear that the British are actively working to separate North Carolina from the rest of the American Union. The delegates also hear for the first time a stunning report read aloud: a full account of a bloody and vicious battle on a hill overlooking Boston nine days ago. And now these nine days later, a fear circulates in Pennsylvania State House that the colonial men outside Boston must be encamped too near the Redcoats, a ripe target for an enemy counterattack. Will tomorrow’s report bring news of such a disaster?

After listening to the report of the bloody hill, Virginia delegate Thomas Jefferson concludes, “…the war is now heartily entered into, without a prospect of accommodation but through the effectual interposition of arms.”

Jefferson is a word-nut, meaning that he chooses all his words with great care and thoughtfulness.

That word “interposition” is a curious choice by him.

It means the insertion of something between two other things.

How long will the insertion continue? Which ends first, the summer or the interposition?

* * * * * * *

(Peter van brugh Livingston)

Today, 250 years ago, in New York City, Peter van brugh Livingston and George Washington exchange official greetings and statements. Washington is traveling through the city on his way to outer Boston as the new formal commander of the Continental Army. Livingston is president of the New York Provincial Assembly.

Livingston declares the virtues of Washington. He adds a dark warning—remember, General, the dangers of a standing army.

Washington replies that the soldier must remember the completion of his duty is to return to home and civilian life.

* * * * * * *

The summer sun beats down on the slopes of life.

 

Also

(later in life)

25-year old Thomas Spence lives in Newcastle, England. His family belongs to a Presbyterian church. The Spences are poor and struggle to keep food on the table. Summer is always welcome at the Spence’s house for the garden vegetables that might be grown, the free sunlight that illuminates the home, and the warmth that prevents the need for more firewood or coal.

Summer is the source of a few less worries.

Thomas Spence knows how to read, write, and think. And as summer begins he’s reading, writing, and thinking almost constantly. He’s upset over the ownership of land, of other property, of the wealth that a few seem to accumulate at the expense, he believes, of everyone else, especially people like the Spences.

So he scribble furiously on parchment paper that somehow he’s paid for, with ink he’s somehow paid for, with quill pens he’s somehow paid for. Every coin he lays out for his supplies in one less coin that should have been used for something else.

“Property In Land Everyone’s Right” is the working title of his piece. 250 years later, it will be featured on “Marxists Internet Archive.”

For You Now

Familiar whispers of 2025 in the first week of summer 250 years ago.

So this is how the fighting begins?

With some soldiers convinced their leaders are conspiring to have them killed? With a young man filled with grievance who sees life through eyes later called “Marxist”? With a remark that the new military leader is a “Generalissimo”? With an adult woman on her own and on the run in a hostile world?

I draw your attention to the exchange between Livingston and Washington in New York City.

The weight of war has come crashing down on the imperial-colonial crisis. We’ve seen many references over recent weeks to such phrases as “the horrors of a civil war”. They testify to the dread that most people have in seeing the dispute shift from protest to combat. People fear the reality of war.

And yet, Livingston wants to emphasize the past experiences with standing armies. He wants more colonial rights and fewer imperial restrictions. He wants more freedom rather than less. He is an British colonist turned American activist.

But Livingston still warns about a standing army forming out of necessity on his own side and for his own cause.

Truthfully, he really doesn’t know Washington. He’d heard accounts and received assurances. Okay, Washington sounds to him like a good guy, the right guy. That does not guarantee, however, a standing army will be safe with him at its head. Livingston understands this and so do a lot of other people.

So, before he’s stepped foot outside Boston, Washington pledges his agreement on the point of military subordination to the civilian power.

Suggestion

Take a moment to consider: what could Washington say that would make you believe him before any actual action or events occur?

(Your River)