Americanism Redux
March 12, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
So why are we waiting around? Let’s take the final step and make the big jump.
It’s plain as day to me and the people I know.
Why wait longer?
It’s today, 250 years ago, the week leading up to March 12, 1776 and you are a leader.
* * * * * * *
(James Warren, and not Tom Cruise)
“Anxiety marks every Countenance. People can’t Account for the hesitancy they observe.” That’s how James Warren, Paymaster of the Continental Army outside Boston, sees it. He’s referring to the American Union’s need to declare its independence from Britain. Warren talks with people, meets with people, watches people and from it gains a pro-independence consensus that makes him frustrated with the hesitation to act. He has touched on something, too: the longer the hesitation lasts, the more doubts and uneasiness grow. To Warren, the speed of the decision has to match with the nature of the decision. Get moving, now.
* * * * * * *
(Horatio Gates)
One of the people Warren sees in the Continental Army encampments outside Boston is General Horatio Gates. Gates can’t understand why a middle ground between independence-yes and independence-no even exists. To straddle such a question is the worst position of all in Gates’s opinion. To him, avoiding a full-on decision is as bad as making the wrong decision. Get moving, now.
* * * * * * *
(the evac)
The decision of General George Washington and his core team to launch an all-out artillery barrage of the British Redcoats holed up in Boston has paid off—by March 12 the British have evacuated the town, leaving it in Continental Army control or, in other words, a major Continental Army victory. British General William Howe and his subordinates had decided at first to counter-attack, including to the point of readying ships and vessels to transport British units to positions of assault. A massive storm, however, soaked their enthusiasm and Howe waved off the assaults in favor of evacuation. Washington and Howe negotiated terms of the withdrawal so as to allow for no further pain to the war-ravaged community. Some people will emphasize that the Continental victory coincided with a Massachusetts provincial government decision to conduct a day of prayer, fasting, and reflective “humiliation”. However it was, when you add on the amazingly orderly withdrawal agreement between the Continental Washington and the British Howe, this victory is the American Union’s biggest military achievement since last spring, maybe since ’74 when the crisis began and the Union was conceived.
And in the time lapse between the start of the artillery barrage and the fact of departing Redcoat vessels, it’s also the kind of final step and big jump, the speed and scale of decision and action, that’s been lacking in the question of independence. The contrast doesn’t speak volumes—it roars volumes, which, strangely, raise more anxiety.
* * * * * * *
(Alexander McDougall)
All eyes turn to New York and the Hudson River.
Alexander McDougall is 43-years old and one of the leaders of New York’s Union movement. A long-time merchant, sailing master, and operator of privateering boats, McDougall is looked upon as a bit of an outcast, a saltwater rough-houser, by New York’s wealthier and longer-pedigreed business and political elite. He’s also now a colonel in the Continental Army with a New York regiment. McDougall is sharp-eyed and clear-thinking, both of which are in evidence with his thoughts this week about the relationship between the style and substance of war on one hand and the human and geographic features of land on the other. McDougall states to a friend that a place defined by a city or other extensively settled community is “more fixed…and renders it necessary that the officer be more experienced” for regular warfare such as that in Boston. New York is similar. Virginia, however, illustrates the opposite condition of physically wider rural features and spatially fewer population collections. There, McDougall judges, “irregular” warfare will prevail and an officer of “less experience” can command effectively.
Whether the Union’s independence is decided upon now or not, McDougall’s analysis must be reckoned with, sooner or later, one way or another, when the last step comes and the big jump happens. In his words, “the Confederacy” will soon be tested again by powerful British forces.
* * * * * * *
(Philip Schuyler)
One of those upper-crust New Yorkers, General Philip Schuyler and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia have reached an understanding that will affect the colony and the Hudson River. The wealthy and well-connected Schuyler is too sick to resume a field command in the New York-Canada region. He knows that and the delegates of the Continental Congress know that. As a result, Congress’s delegates have decided to promote Massachusetts General John Thomas to take over actual field command duties in the north. Thomas has been there for the last few months in a lower rank. Schuyler has agreed to continue organizing defenses and preparations along the Hudson River to prevent an expected southbound Redcoat invasion from Quebec and Montreal. His influence will help convene and direct all the labor, logistics, and a dozen other items necessary to make things ready to stop the British drive south.
But life gets a vote, and the first act of this new arrangement has scarcely begun when now a group of sleigh-drivers in Albany refuse—flat-out refuse—to move heavy cannon from Fort Ticonderoga as ordered by Schuyler. To hell with you, say they. And the cold, frost, and hard ground just won’t let go, declares the winter.
* * * * * * *
(where they’re working hour to hour and day to day)
While the Continental Congress moves on from the decision about Schuyler, delegate John Adams of Massachusetts makes a few final arrangements of his own. On his off-time, away from daily Congress meetings, he’s working on an essay he’ll entitle “Thoughts on Government”, a guide to the delegates of North Carolina seeking help in forming a new government in the colony. In his on-time back inside Pennsylvania State House, Adams thinks new northern commander John Thomas has a quality that Philip Schuyler lacks—a rock-iron will that resulted in keeping his dispirited soldiers together through the bitter Canadian winter. Adams wants Thomas to also be an important source of back-channel information from Canada; Adams asks him to keep in close touch, especially passing along every scrap he finds about Canada as an issue. Adams knows it can potentially affect the speed of decision about Union independence. It’s a high-stakes game in Philadelphia and Adams wants as many cards in his hand as he can get.
Also in the Continental Congress is Connecticut delegate Oliver Wolcott. Wolcott tells a friend that the volume of business—issues, topics, votes, debates, and more—of the Continental Congress has reached exhausting levels. One of the most sensitive, and thus most complex and time-consuming, is an explosion of requests from local merchants to gain official approval for letters of marque and privateering—a designation for authorized piracy so they can seize any enemy or enemy-assumed vessel and split the loot with the authorizers (in this case, the Union). The approval-seekers smell a chance to blend individual opportunity, personal beliefs, and public cause into a single package. For their part, delegates of the Continental Congress sense a chance to turn a community asset of innovation, drive, energy, and ambition into a Union wartime advantage.
Virginia delegate Benjamin Harrison (grandfather of one future President of the United States and great-grandfather of another) reports that further complexities spin out from the issue of whether the Union’s Congress has power to imprison people who criticize its official leaders and delegates. A hearing and investigation are set to follow as yet again, in the next hour and the next day and on and on, the Union’s formal entity peels back a layer, unravels a thread, and removes a brick from the stack.
And the most visible official leader of the group, the Preside/nt of the Continental Congress John Hancock, writes to (a future President of the United States) General George Washington. Washington is grateful for the circumstances to expel the British from Boston but laments an unending and unyielding rush of problems. Hancock replies: “We must, like other States engaged in the like glorious Struggle, contend with Difficulties. By Perseverance, and the Blessing of God, I trust, if we continue to Deserve Freedom, we shall be enabled to overcome them.”
To deserve. To enable. To overcome. Somewhere in them is acceleration, somewhere in them is hesitation, somewhere in them is resolve and resolution blinded by light and deafened by sound.
* * * * * * *
(part of the miracle)
Philadelphia is more than a government town. It’s a place of global innovation, a place of work and worship and this week, there’s a reminder of its reality as a port.
Not far away from Pennsylvania State House and the Continental Congress, a Dutch ship eases toward the docks, with captain and crew speaking dialects of German, French, and God-only-knows-what. Aboard the ship is a miracle, or rather its earthly manifestation: 25 tons of gunpowder, 300 muskets, and 1500 pounds of salt petre. Through a string of secret arrangements with the Delaware Bay on one end and the English Channel on the other, the war-making material is offloaded by dock workers, black and white alike.
Every ounce, every trigger, every grain, all of it enters into the current struggle over speed, hesitation, and independence.
* * * * * * *
(source of the name)
Down the street from the Dutch ship, a few residents of Philadelphia, one or two delegates of the Continental Congress among them, are reading one of the town’s many newspapers. They’re reading the words of “Salus Populi”, the author’s chosen public name drawn from ancient Catholic iconography. The writer describes the need for the entire Union, every single colony, to seek independence from Britain. An acceptance of anything less, Salus asserts, will mean frozen regional differences and boiling-hot wars. It’s all of us, together, cries Salus. Unity over speed.
* * * * * * *
(VA)
Epiphanies pop up across Virginia.
In Fredericksburg, Fielding Lewis has his: “The opinion for independency seems to be gaining ground. Indeed most of those who have read the Pamphlet Common Sense say it’s unanswerable.”
In Williamsburg, Patrick Henry has his: I’m done with my two-week career Continental Army career. Count me out of this free-for-all for influence and authority. I’m staying in Virginia.
Leaders in Amelia County have theirs: anyone in the Norfolk region who’s been dislocated by the war should consider relocating to our community.
* * * * * * *
Elsewhere, in southern colonies, it’s a silent storm between action and hesitation.
A series of small attacks and counter-attacks have come to a halt in the rice islands off the Georgia coast. Union supporters have succeeded in blocking raids and landings by Loyalist groups and a handful of British naval forces. The tides that go out are, by all accounts, taking the immediate threat of British assaults with them.
The South Carolina Committee of Safety orders Joseph Turpin to take his small ship from Charleston and sail a day’s journey north and a day’s journey south and report back on what he sees. It’s best to get the latest information before making major decisions on next steps and big jumps.
Sarah Turpin nearly cries when she sees her husband, Benjamin, return to their home in Wilkes County, North Carolina. He’s back to her and their half-dozen children after a brief stint in emergency-duty as a militia officer. The few enslaved people working at the Turpin home called Horseshoe watch the husband, wife, and children reunite.
North of Horseshoe, three black men are among the enslaved population at the Mount Vernon estate of George Washington. Known on the estate as Jock, Orford, and Sambo, they’ve succeeded in resisting the latest attempts of their enslavers to force them to work. Somehow, inexplicably, Jock, Orford, and Sambo just can’t quite remember how to use an ax, swing a pick, or shovel up dirt, or if they do, they suddenly develop achy or bruised muscles. Go back to your huts, they’re told angrily.
* * * * * * *
Some hesitation hinders independence, and some hesitation is a redirection toward independence.
Also
It’s a helluva week in the bookstalls and print shops of London, England.
On one shelf is a new arrival by Adam Smith, entitled “An Enquiry Into The Nature And Causes Of The Wealth Of Nations”. Smith has finished his project after twelve years of work, grounded on reams of data and an imagination that makes oceans look like ponds. He’s thought through the title with great care, leaving readers with keys to what follows in the massive bound book.
Enquiry. Nature/Causes. Wealth of nations.
It’s about production, not possession. It’s an extension and elaboration on his ideas about the importance of relationships over resources.
On another shelf is a new arrival by Edward Gibbon, entitled “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. Gibbon has finished his project after ten years of work, inspired by a tourist trip to Rome and his gaze upon ancient ruins. He’s amassed documents and pulled from them the story of the physical expansion of politics and power, revealing to readers the connection between the range of the external and the health of the internal.
The outcome and result are undisputed—they declined and they fell. The reasons are the mystery and the lessons learned.
It’s a week that, years later, will be an object of marvel for books taking on lives of their own.
* * * * * * *
Members of the British Parliament and the British imperial government share the same wonder—and it’s not from the pair of authors.
What they’re wondering about is the current state of British efforts across the western Atlantic. Has the attempt to separate radical colonists and their so-called Continental Congress succeeded? Will a call for each colony to assign three new representatives to a “negotiating body” come to fruition?
For You Now
Come with me. I want to tell you something.
I want you to realize that in this one week we have four life-changing forces in play. As it happens, all four consist of words, pages, and binding material.
Break down the four and things start to happen.
Two are new: Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. One is existing: Paine’s Common Sense. One is forthcoming: Adams’s Thoughts on Government.
Two are in the Old World: Smith and Gibbon. Two are in the New World: Paine and Adams.
Two are long-arc, deep-sourced, and scholarly: Smith and Gibbon. Two are short-arc, sweat-sourced, and applied: Paine and Adams.
As of right now, 250 years ago, not one human being has read all four. They’ve read Paine and that’s it. Understandably, they believe that at the bottom of the big jump is independence, the Tom Cruise landing-point. They don’t know, and can’t know, that a place exists of self-government where there is no bottom and the jump is the jump is the jump—over and over again, down and up at once, each new and each renewing. With each turning of the earth, as more people read all four (and more besides), that reality and the realization begins to change.
I needed to get a mental grasp on all this through an analogy.
(Rho Ophiuchi)
I chose the heavens, the stars, the nothing of everything. The best for my purposes was the formation of stars, the closest of which, as it turns out, is the Rho Ophiuchi, shown to us by the Webb Hubble. It’s a place where pre-existence becomes existence and pre-matter becomes stars, like ours, with compression, collision, crash, flash, ignition, explosion, launch, vault, spin, rotate, and wave. And Life. This is precisely what’s happening right now, 250 years ago, with our four forces called the PaineSmithGibbonAdams vortex and the gaseous clouds of a Revolutionary star nursery.
And when I took one small step for me and my mankind, I ventured to seek the translation of Rho Ophiuchi…and the greatest shock of all hit me.
You see, when Benjamin Franklin took his quill pen, dipped it into the black matter, and drew the first living figure meant to depict the sense of Union, he chose this in 1754:
And when I found the translation of “Constellation Ophiuchus”, it is this:
“Serpent Bearer”
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: the working myth of the serpent 250 years ago was its ability to remake or reconstitute itself. Out of many, one. What’s the first step in making the myth real for us, 250 years later?
