Americanism Redux
June 5, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
Life is trying to re-settle. Well, maybe not exactly re-settle if you take it to mean settling down.
No, it’s better said that life is trying to re-find a kind of equilibrium. It’s where one feels the ground underfoot and can extend their arms without fear of exposure or vulnerability or backlash.
Such an equilibrium might look a lot different than it did for you a season or a year ago.
* * * * * * *
(Peter Salem)
Today 250 years ago, Peter Salem and 27 other men want a new equilibrium outside of Boston. They joined a unit led by Captain Thomas Drury of Framingham, Massachusetts after the combat alarm and battle emergency of April 19 at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road. A mere number of hours ago, however, Salem and his comrades discovered the unit was being transferred to a different regiment under a different commander.
Salem and his group viewed their decision to enlist as a contract between them and Drury, them and Massachusetts, them and the American Union’s Continental Congress. Note the key word: contract. They hadn’t agreed to alter the contract to allow for their transfer.
Salem is 25 years old, black, had recently gained freedom in exchange for joining Drury’s unit, and can’t read or write. He marks his signature with an “X” on the document of complaint.
Salem and the group submit their document to Artemus Ward, the man currently seen as in charge of the 20,000 armed colonial men surrounding the British Redcoats in Boston.
It’s an independent declaration of re-dependence to serve the leaders of their choice.
* * * * * * *
(an older Lemuel Haynes)
Lemuel Haynes is biracial and the 21-year old adopted son of a white family from western Massachusetts. Like Peter Salem, Haynes had joined a unit after the April 19 clashes. He traveled to outside Boston and became part of the 20,000-man semi-circle around the Redcoats in the town. Unlike Salem, Haynes had left after a month and is now writing and re-writing a poem with the working title of “The Battle of Lexington.” He’s continuing a recent trend of black poetic composition started by teenaged Phillis Wheatley. His final stanza is: “Sin is the Cause of all our Woe/ That sweet deluding ill/ And till we let this darling go/ There’s greater Trouble still.”
For Haynes, the new equilibrium will be a world where he can be free to write, to worship, to live as he decides.
* * * * * * *
Those 20,000 men surrounding Boston are the subject of a letter and petition written by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and delivered a few days ago to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
Haynes’s poem had his closing stanza and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress has its closing point and question: we in Massachusetts “suggest to your consideration the propriety of your taking the regulation and good direction of it (the 20,000-man force), that the operations may more effectually answer the purposes designed.”
In other words, please take over this force and keep as our principle that the civil government has ultimate control over the military. Maintain our equilibrium.
* * * * * * *
(Joseph Hewes)
The Massachusetts letter to the Second Continental Congress arrives at a room where letter-writing is the dominant activity. Delegates have split into separate committees to write official statements to King George III in England, to the British people, to the Irish people, and to the Jamaican people.
Joseph Hewes, a delegate from North Carolina, believes letter-writing-by-committee is not the type of work that the Second Continental Congress should be doing. Hewes wants the Union’s prized collective body to react quickly to, one, news from the outside as it arrives in Philadelphia and, two, the urgent demands of necessity.
Perhaps an example of Hewes’s two priorities can be seen in reports now arriving from New York City that New York colony is firmly committed to the American cause and the American Union.
If Hewes’s approach is taken, the equilibrium will be refreshed over and over. Is that useful?
* * * * * * *
(Beekman House)
A letter or report or some other type of paper can depict equilibrium one way, but real life can show it to be something else entirely. Back in New York City, James Beekman is now a member of the “Committee of One Hundred.” The group has organized to help keep New York’s social order and maintain public safety in the post-April 19 world. Beekman is a staunch supporter of colonial rights, the American cause, and the American Union, as are most of the One Hundred.
But dissent is strong, disagreements go deep, and division over vision and strategy is a problem that defies solution. The One Hundred can’t agree on what to do with the British 18th Infantry Regiment encamped in New York City along Chambers Street—seize them as captives and risk a bloody fight in doing so or let them leave for Boston without provocation? Are severe critics of the American cause and Continental Congress allowed to write and speak freely or should they be punished and silenced? Is every violation of civil governmental control of the military to be identified and addressed or are gaps and inconsistencies allowable?
Beekman’s hope is that somehow an answer, a policy, a person will emerge from the Continental Congress. In that way, perhaps, an equilibrium might be found in the confusion of New York City.
* * * * * * *
(how a five-year old sees it)
Five-year old Elizabeth Gilchrist can’t spell the word “equilibrium.” Yet she knows when it’s gone. Its absence shows in the face of her father, Thomas Gilchrist at the family’s home in Suffolk, Virginia. He worries, stares, sits with his thoughts.
This week, Thomas Gilchrist is worrying, staring, and thought-sitting hour after hour. Everything boils down to the equilibrium he doesn’t want to emerge: “all the horrors of Civil War”, as he calls it. Gilchrist sees one option as the best chance for its avoidance—Peyton Randolph is back in Virginia to serve as Speaker of the Assembly following his resignation as “Preside-ent” of the Second Continental Congress. Gilchrist thinks Randolph’s skill in moderation, prudence, and steadiness will help Virginia stay out of the family-versus-family, neighbor-versus-neighbor, and town-versus-town bloodshed and death he associates with “all the horrors of Civil War.”
Thomas Gilchrist of Virginia shares the same hope seen in James Beekman of New York—that the Second Continental Congress has some sort of ability to produce an equilibrium of a better present connecting to a brighter future. But within the Continental Congress itself, Joseph Hewes is frustrated by a pace of action that lags far behind the wishes of Gilchrist, Beekman, and thousands of other people.
* * * * * * *
(making a living)
Life makes its own equilibrium, a fact shown by the people of Philadelphia doing all the striving and surviving outside the walls of Pennsylvania State House and the work of Continental Congress delegates.
William Fisher has just brought in a shipload of “servant men and women” from Europe. They include workers, farmers, sawyers, and craftsmen. You can see them at Mrs. Kryder’s of the Golden Swan. Pick some that meet your needs and we’ll discuss terms.
James Clark promises to his customers that he can dye their clothing and woven materials in a week’s time.
Mary Toy wants to dispel any rumors that her tavern, The Buck, has closed. Not at all true, she says, and when you’re traveling in nearby Worcester Township, stop in and see for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.
And round and round it goes, payment coming in here, payment going out there, trying to stand out and hold on in times filled with uncertainty.
* * * * * * *
Let’s trust that today’s equilibrium of 250 years ago lasts for longer than 250 hours. Don’t bet on it.
Also
(British colonies on the other side of the world)
James Forbes is 25 years old and has been in India for a decade and a veteran employee of the British East India Company for the same amount of time. He’s only a few months into his latest and newest assignment as secretary to Colonel Thomas Keating, a commander in the hybrid “Indian Army” linked to the British military and the EIC.
Forbes witnessed the defeat of Keating’s regiment three weeks ago in an internal dispute among Maratha tribes and factions in British-controlled India.
Forbes is an “expert witness” of sorts. He has extraordinary skill in observing the physical environment around him and then expressing it in writings and drawings.
If Keating is a good leader, he’ll ask Forbes for his impressions from time to time. Forbes’s gift for observation could prove valuable in learning if the French are aligning with any of the anti-British factions within the Maratha confederation. The recent battle that Keating fought likely won’t be the last.
For You Now
(the other graphic definition)
I’ll focus on one piece of our entry about equilibrium.
James Beekman doesn’t know it but fourteen years from now he’ll get the thrill of a lifetime. He’ll lend his family’s best carriage for use in the first presidential inauguration of George Washington. Washington will ride in the Beekman carriage to the oath-taking ceremony in April 1789. On that occasion Washington himself won’t know that it will be the first of his two presidential inaugurations.
By that point, Beekman, a veteran officer of the Continental Army, (note the word “Continental”) will see Washington as what will be later called “the indispensable man” of the American Revolution. Interestingly, Washington will have resigned from the US military after the war ends (1783) and then will resign later from the US presidency (1796), thus establishing precedent for the two-term POTUS. It’s a long way of saying that the wishes of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in maintaining the supremacy of the civil government were upheld by the man riding in Beekman’s carriage.
Equilibrium is a delicate condition. It depends on and pertains to two forces or factors. A change in either of the two produces a change in the equilibrium. In this way, we can say a relationship is established by, and expressed in, an equilibrium.
The equilibrium sought by James Beekman in early June 1775 will not ultimately come from one source. It will be an interplay of many sources, countless and innumerable sources, or so it feels. Oddly, yes, the Second Continental Congress can be traced as a key and singular source because of a uniform-wearing delegate from Virginia named George Washington. But Washington will be one actor in a universe of acts, actions, and agency. The path he’ll take in climbing into the Beekman carriage fourteen years into the future exists perhaps only in the faith of a young black man writing poetry fourteen years before.
I think the best thing to do is to emulate the observation skills of James Forbes in remembering this: what we see as a fixed status quo may really be an equilibrium perched on a much longer line.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: when you think about the American nation, which has a greater hold on your mind, the status quo or the equilibrium?
(Your River)
