Americanism Redux

June 4, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776

WATCH HERE

Temp to perm.

It’s something temporary that becomes permanent.

Time is the pivot. Goes on for a while—that’s the temporary—and then shifts to an entrenched long term—that’s the permanent.

It’s today, June 4, 250 years ago and your toes are on the present’s edge, that thin point between temp and perm.

Welcome to Gwynn’s Island in Chesapeake Bay.

(Gwynn’s Island)

* * * * * * *

This island is tiny. Once the land of the Powhatan native tribe, the island consists of about 1400 acres of sandy soil, a little over three square miles, and sits in the mouth of the Piankatank River. The river is distinctive, a mix of salt and fresh water with grassy banks. Usually, you’d expect to see oysters, blue crabs, herons, dolphins, and the occasional fisherman or waterman. It seemed permanent.

That was then. Now, temporarily, it’s much different.

* * * * * * *

A shocking assortment of seventy vessels have stacked the river and bay around or near Gwynn’s. Wooden masts of the boats fill your sightline, a forest planted in water. One look at the scene and you just know in your gut this won’t be lasting long. Temp won’t be going to perm, right?

The vessels have congregated, gathered, and clustered around the island because of Virginia’s ex-imperial governor, Robert Murray, or Lord Dunmore. Among his officeholding ilk, Dunmore’s gone to the greatest length by far to fight the colonial Union. It’s Dunmore who promised freedom to every enslaved, apprenticed, and forced-rented out man who agrees to join with him and fight for the British Empire. Everyone interpret his offer as invitation to a revolt, uprising, and insurrection (precisely the words used to denounce the Unionists) by the enslaved. He’s sponsor of a race war, they say, and he’s done next to nothing to dispute it.

The stampede of people to Dunmore’s side didn’t happen as expected. A few hundred men, women, and children had joined him, along with Loyalists who also opposed the Unionists. Dunmore’s forces had destroyed several estates, villages, and towns, but Virginia’s Unionists had steadily driven them to the coast. He’s acted with swiftness to the point of impulsiveness, and with reactiveness to the point of randomness. Gwynn’s Island is his latest stop. More planning and strategy occurred with colonizing Virginia in Shakespeare’s day than with Dunmore’s wartime actions now.  

And thus on these acres are the deposed ex-governor and approximately 1500 people. It’s a grab-bag assortment: 100 Redcoats from the 14^th Regiment of Foot; 150 British sailors and marines; 150 white Loyalists and some families from the Norfolk area; and 300 self-freed black men and some families.

The arrangement is a living monument to the temporary. The question left is this: how temporary is temporary? A few weeks? Couple of months? Something else?

* * * * * * *

One of the black men is Philius Thorowgood. Enslaved by a family of longstanding in Norfolk, Philius jumped at the chance offered by Dunmore. He took one of his sons with him. Together, they boarded one of the seventy ships that sailed to Gwynn’s. Left behind was a world they feared was all too permanent.

Philius and his son are learning how to use properly a musket and bayonet in combat. They’re also becoming familiar with the meaning of different shouts and music in movement—forward, retreat, turn left or right, turn out on alarm, and so forth. Wearing a uniform, serving closely with other soldiers, aware that always at the end of some chain of events could be an explosion of violence, Philius bolts a sense of duty onto the ideas in his head.

It’s impossible to say how long this life will continue. Judging by the zig-zag path taken by Dunmore since his proclamation to unfree workers, the herons have a better idea of their course ahead. No matter. The point is that today isn’t yesterday and where we are is miles from where we were.

The unknown of war is less troubling to Philius than that other great threat. Smallpox. Like everyone and anyone, he’s terrified by it. The disease kills more than any enemy general, any enemy force. Smallpox is already appearing inland; as a result, Dunmore had insisted that every man be inoculated. Even so, a few people on Gwynn have shown the killer’s early signs: deep aches in the body, an overwhelming tiredness, and a spiking fever. And if the tongue starts to appear unusually red, well, then the real problems, and the countdown, begin.

Did you see the person alone on the grassy shore, coughing and shaking?

Hour by hour on this day, 250 years ago, Philius Thorowgood is on Gwynn’s Island, where he walks an invisible wire above permanence.

* * * * * * *

(General Henry Clinton)

Meanwhile, one of Thorowgood’s fellow temporary Gwynn Islanders, Lord Dunmore, has also been part of a historic stream of events.

Dunmore and four other ex-imperial governors have had recent and direct interactions with British General Henry Clinton during the Redcoat commander’s boat-bound journey from Boston, past Chesapeake Bay, to Cape Fear, North Carolina. During the journey, Clinton has met face-to-face or received detailed written input from Dunmore (Virginia), William Tryon (New York), Josiah Martin (North Carolina), William Campbell (South Carolina), and James Wright (Georgia). Never before in the history of the British Empire in North America had such communication occurred. It was an opportunity for strategy, collaboration, coordination, and vision. Hovering in the air was a break-through in British conduct of the crisis. Clinton has had an extended chance to collect the input and grow insights. 

Each of the five governors shared more or less the same idea with Clinton. Give us support and colonists loyal to the Empire will take up arms and fight the Unionists—if they see it from you, they will come to you. And with their energy, the tide will turn and the Union will fall. That’s the five governors’ message. Left to Clinton’s analysis is where the message inclines, toward the temporary or toward the permanent.

For his part, Dunmore has decided to have a small fort built opposite the shore of Gwynn’s closest to the mainland bank, barely a clam shell’s throw apart. From there, who knows what can be done–other than watching for movements on the other side of the ribbon of water. Soldiers and workers stack rocks, dig dirt, and fasten planks and branches to create a temporary post.

So far, both at Gwynn’s and elsewhere the first week of June shows the prospects of the message narrowing to a chokepoint. The requested Imperial aid has been, as of now, uneven and disjointed. The promised Loyalist response, projected for the high thousands, has shown up in the low hundreds. Or put another way, this is the result when each side of a transaction underperforms. Is this one sign of the temporary?

But improvements can be made and advantages can be regained. Clinton is sailing on, ever further south from Gwynn’s, with a British fleet and invasion force of 2900 men. His target is Charleston, South Carolina, a real test of British imperial power. Effects of a victory there would ripple to Gwynn’s.

Dunmore’s temporary awaits victory and a restoration of his colonial world. Thorowgood’s temporary awaits victory and a revolution of his liberty. Clinton’s temporary is the realization of widespread local reinforcements combined with his professional military to crush the enemy’s Union in the south.

Today on the island, they’re staring as British forces fade out of sight. 

* * * * * * *

For the time being, Gwynn’s Island is the scene of extraordinary activity.

Also

(a depiction of Moraga)

30-year old Jose Joaquin Moraga is at Monterey, in the middle of a so-called capital of this Spanish province. Surrounded by mud-and-wood walls, he’s in charge of the presidio there. Roughly 500 people, soldiers and settlers together, live here. Right now, they depend almost totally on the occasional Spanish ship for food and goods from Mexico. Even the local water supply is unreliable. At Monterey, permanence isn’t possible.

Moraga pushes the group to continue collecting gear and supplies for a planned march north later this month. He’s bent on strengthening Spanish control of California, something he can’t do from his current location. If he fails in the northward march, odds are that British or Russian expansion could push the Spanish out. Spain’s King Charles III believed so, wants to remove any feeling of temporariness from the Pacific coast, and Lieutenant Moraga, loyal servant of the monarch, is here to execute his will.

So let’s work harder to finish up preparations for the march if we’re going to get from temp to perm: those are the King’s orders.

For You Now

(best-known temp)

For such a small space in so short a time, Gwynn’s offers us important pauses for reflection. We see a different sort of separation and independence on the island, sought by the Thorowgoods. We see an impulsive leader and a quick plan in disarray, shown by Dunmore. We see an opening for innovation and opportunity, suggested by five governors to a professional soldier. Hold at any of these pauses and you’ll uncover major implications in so-called minor moments.

In our lives, we likely think of employment when the phrase “temp-to-perm” comes along. Within that thought, it’s probable that the shift carries positive feelings of stability and predictability. We can settle in after hearing the decision goes our way in going from temporary to a longer-haul status.

Temp and perm have sharp understandings 250 years ago on Gwynn’s Island. They know the current moment is neither tenable nor sustainable. It’s interim, a stopping-point until a new foothold is established and a next step in a real plan.

This experience shows that some temps are more temps than others. The very size of Gwynn’s screams temporariness. Besides that, no one in the context of early June 1776 will be able to last on the island for long. Too much is happening and they’re too easy a target. Then there’s the bio-med reality, the greatest reality of all: smallpox. The status quo on Gwynn’s Island has all the staying power of paper-mache.

That’s what we’re finding in this Redux. Temp can’t hide. Temp is more than a shortened frame prior to further engagement, a smaller form of time leading to a longer tenure. Multiple things will find and affect it, feeding in from various directions. There’s your point—multiplicity will drastically alter the temporary. A change in any of the directions might draw in permanence, which includes surprises you never expected. Conversely, it can reset the temporary in a new form, going from island to island to island in what feels like constant impermanence.

On a river, an eddy is the pattern of water that spins off the main current, holding loosely together in a persistent circling. If you’re in a canoe, if the eddy is large enough, you can enter it and find time away from the speed and flow of the river’s central channel. That’s a temporary position, one to reset and regain a place in the broader movements. 

Not knowing the future of Gwynn’s Island gives one the impression that an eddy is occurring there. But that’s not reality; multiplicity won’t allow it. To be temporary here resembles the delay of the inevitable. Disease is on the way, the presence of the governor’s force will undoubtedly attract attention, and the overall pressures of the crisis are rushing ahead to create new war dynamics. The temp and the status quo have a relationship that is changing by the week, the day, the hour. 

Who could have guessed that temp and perm are teeming down in the mud and grass where the crab and heron live.

Suggestion

Take a moment to consider: how does the temporary become permanent, and which permanence is desired?

(Your River)