Americanism Redux

March 26, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776

Every sense you have says the same thing—a big, new reality is all around me. From what I see, hear, smell, and feel, it’s true, it’s now, and it’s going to stay this way.

And yet, the thought of applying a label, of giving it a name, seems hard.

Yet…it’s easy for others.

At either extreme, it’s today, 250 years ago.

* * * * * * *

The accolades pour in. Praise and back-slaps abound.

He’ll be getting a gold medal. The very first “Congressional Gold Medal” for his “wise and spirited conduct”; delegates at the Continental Congress vote to have the words inscribed on the round shape of precious metal. He’s also getting mail telling him that he’s surely proud “of having your Name handed down to Posterity, with the illustrious Character of being the Savior of your Country.”

He is General George Washington, right now, 250 years ago, and the victory reached in driving the British from Boston continues to unfold—but not to him.

If anyone could be said to embody the future Tennessee Williams’ title of “cat on a hot tin roof”, it’s Washington. Today, he’s big-eyed, skittish, jumpy, nervous, and anxious over the real threat that a smallpox epidemic in Boston could destroy his army entering the town; he’s worried that British vessels are floating just off-harbor and represent, to him, a constant threat of re-invasion; he’s fearful his soldiers will seek vengeance against every family and property-holder in Boston who sided with the British during their now-ended occupation. Let everyone else celebrate the Redcoats’ evacuation, Washington himself refuses to call this event proof of actual security, real possession, or an irrevocable from the American Union side of the chessboard. No labels, not yet.

* * * * * * *

(horse beans)

He’s also given the order, fulfilled this week, to inventory everything in Boston. It’s to help understand what happened during the British occupation and what exactly the American Union and Bostonians have inherited as a result of the struggle.

Samples from the list: salt, sweet oil, coal, nails, ship anchors, horse beans, molasses, and enough other random stuff to be a wartime version of Noah’s ark.

Taking inventory is a labeling exercise. The key is the label that gets attached when all the single entries are added up. Perhaps that will come when, in his head, Washington arrives at the label that best covers this entire siege experience of summer 1775 to spring 1776. Will that label crystallize the broader label of the war and the cause themselves?

* * * * * * *

(keeping a look-out)

As Continental Army officers finalize the two-by-two count of materials, Josiah Quincy, in and out of bed with sickness—not smallpox, thank heaven—has assembled about ten men and boys to do a different inventory. Quincy tasks them with roaming the shorelines, docksides, and stony Atlantic Ocean outcroppings north and south of Boston to get (develop, really) the latest reports on where British vessels are going. From these water-watchers Quincy is creating an hour-by-hour log of British naval positions that he’ll send to General Washington.

Perhaps such information will assist in ascertaining enemy plans. Perhaps Quincy’s work will nudge Washington toward a clearer label.

* * * * * * *

Like Quincy, Joseph Ward is in the Boston area and he’s not interested in hours or hourglasses. For him, there’s no doubt that all of New England is Union territory and that the British have conceded as much. They’ll head to southern waters, he believes, with “southern” defined by him as everywhere south of here. More than this, New England is now bedrock for independence, a view Ward has unearthed from his observations of the readers’ market of “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. Every person who’s now reading it with enthusiasm earns a mental label of “independence”, and Ward can’t find a person who fails to fit the description.

* * * * * * *

(First Church)

The McClellans and the Chandlers are among the congregation members of First Church in Woodstock. They would concur with Ward and with Paine. Within hours, these families and the rest of First Church congregants will receive a letter written by General George Washington. He asks—yes, asks—the congregation to please consider extending the leave of absence they gave to their pastor, Abiel Leonard, who has proven so effective as a Continental Army chaplain. That a commander-in-chief of an armed force requests their permission is almost as miraculous as any passage in their Bible. Inside his request and inside their decision is an unspoken word that could be the most explosive label of all:

consent.

* * * * * * *

(a likeness of Niles)

It’s a word that resonates throughout today, 250 years ago.

Robert Niles of Norwich, Connecticut is a skilled sailor with a reputation for seamanship and leadership. 42-years old, he has agreed—consented—to captaining a vessel in Connecticut’s navy, patrolling throughout Long Island Sound. Niles understands that a more lucrative option is open to him. He could sign onto a captaincy of a privateering vessel, do much the same service, but receive a substantial portion of everything he seizes on enemy vessels. Niles has one top priority and that’s service to Connecticut. There’s only room for a single thing at the top of a list, only space for one word on the label.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island Governor Nicholas Cooke wants to negotiate with the Continental Congress on a policy on prisoner-of-war exchanges between the Union and the British. Cooke thinks that a six-for-six rule is a good way to go (six of ours for six of theirs). But he’s also keenly aware that his political community of Rhode Island wants to hold back other prisoners who represent greater leverage with the enemy. Cooke sees some exchanges as expressions of “Union” and others as “Rhode Island”. To him, the labels are not exact overlaps.

In Massachusetts, labels are leading to interesting moments. Joseph Peele Jr lives in Salem and belongs to its “Committee of Safety” charged with war-related issues and policies locally. Peele is convinced that Salem has four cannon among the Continental Army’s stockpile of artillery and he thinks he can pick them out in an inspection. They belong to us. A fellow coastal resident, Winthrop Sargent, is frustrated because some of the cargo he owns was recently damaged in military operations and could get him a substantial amount of monetary reimbursement. As it turns out, the barrels Sargent said were labeled as “wine” were actually filled with vinegar and grout. The label said one thing, the seepage tasted another, and consent took the form of admitting reality got the final word.

* * * * * * *

(Mifflin)

Thomas Mifflin is on his way to New York City from Boston. He’s a fundamental part of the likely new scene of war, of where George Washington, Washington’s core team, and many others expect the British will relocate their military forces for attack and invasion.

The span of Mifflin’s duty staggers: locate homes to serve as hospitals; build barracks for officers and soldiers; get supplies and materials for all forms of construction; erect stables for horses, mules, and oxen; and secure the labor and the equipment needed for building.

As Mifflin bounces along on horseback, maybe the biggest challenge of all rings in his head—you’re suspected of funneling contracts to favored vendors and getting kickbacks for the deals. That’s what Washington’s aides believe and that’s what they’ve told Washington and that’s what Washington told Mifflin. 32-years old, married, and now expelled from his war-hating Quaker congregation, Mifflin faces a mountain of work. It’s uphill every step, lugging a label in his knapsack.

* * * * * * *

(McDougall)

In New York City, Alexander McDougall describes the arena awaiting Mifflin. “I fear Liberty is in danger from the Licentiousness of the people on one Hand, and the army on the other,” says McDougall. “The former feel their own Liberty in the extreme, and we are too fond fom our Zeal to encourage the latter, for the advancement of the Public Safety, to connive at many undue exertions of their power, which may in the end be fatal to us. For ought we know we are but in the beginning of a long war. God save our Poor County.” As for the New York convention that now exists to direct the local war, they “are Virtuous, but they want wisdom and knowledge as a Body.”

A label is best on top of deep bonds. 

* * * * * * *

(the modern likeness)

At five feet, seven inches tall and with a stout frame, John Adams fills every square inch of his Continental Congress chair at Pennsylvania State House. Not a lot of room left. Whatever fraction of an inch remains is a canyon compared to his understanding, acceptance, and embrace of the American Union and American independence as the label for everything going on right now, 250 years ago. To people he trusts, Adams is open and forthright about looking at every issue, every question, and every decision through the lens of independence. Does it help or hurt? Does it advance or obstruct? Independence fills it all.

Adams see the path as”…forming Constitutions for particular Colonies, and a Continental Constitution for the whole, each Colony should establish its own Government, and then a League should be formed, between them all.” But southerners oppose it as “barons” and the middle colonies as “Proprietary Interests” and all show an “Avarice of Land.” The only way ahead, he thinks, is the everything-is-independence frame he’s looking through. A key part of the totality is trade, an issue he regards as basic to human life. So, this week he’s pushing hard to finalize again a new document reaching out to Canada—it includes references to trade and the circulation of Continental credit and currency as well as freedoms of speech and worship. The delegates accept the wording, while Preside/nt John Hancock instructs General George Washington to ready four Continental battalions for Canadian service. Both document and armed units will go north, moving, as Adams intends, under the powerful label of Union independence.

* * * * * * *

(a privateering certificate)

And onto the seas a further motion goes out. From the Pennsylvania State House, delegates of the Continental Congress vote to authorize, this week 250 years ago, privateering as policy, strategy, and action. Got a boat and crew? Sign up, receive authorization, and set sail to snag any enemy vessel you can catch in your net. Some of the captured profits will go into your pocket as the privateer, some into ours as the Union. One by one, to people just like Robert Niles of coastal Connecticut, the offer is made and the opportunity is dangled. For those like Adams who pin the label of Union independence on their hearts, the vote is a major step toward making the arguments and inspiration of “Common Sense” the law of the land.

* * * * * * *

(a modern likeness)

Label-making from the world around you appears along all sorts of waters 250 years ago today.

In the Holston River valley, Tsi’yu-gunsini (Dragging Canoe) wants to convince other young warriors from the seven clans of the Cherokee Native tribe that war must be adopted. He’s straining against his father’s generation that prefers negotiations and mediations with aggressive settlers along the Holston. Tsi-yu-gunsini has his eye on one target in particular, the Watauga settlement (for Watauga earlier in Redux, click here). He’ll hit them hard if he collects enough armed force. Perhaps the idea of a pan-Native confederation—a remarkable label, indeed—will spark further interest in anti-Union war.

On the banks of Cross Creek in North Carolina, Thomas Reid and a dozen other Loyalist (pro-England) fighters stand outside a small building called Cochrane’s Mill. Holed up inside, behind a stout door, is a group of armed Union supporters. Reid yells, stomps, and pounds on the door, shouting about the large number of men he commands—a hundred!—who will brutalize them unless they surrender. Terrified, they come out. Shocked, they give up to the dozen, roughly the same number as themselves. Sheepish, they agree to parole as prisoners. Reid and his men slip away toward the coast and a British vessel. The label stayed invisible in the doorway.

Off the western Atlantic Ocean in Salem, Massachusetts, Isaac Smith Sr boils in anger over the Continental Congress’s rules about how sea trade is conducted. “I have as good a right to have them employed, as any man in the Government,” asserts Smith. He can’t follow the logic of rejecting the tyranny of one government and then establishing the tyranny of another government. The labels don’t work.

Off the Rappahannock River in Virginia is Betty and her two infant boys, Godfrey and Beck. Betty is trying to nurse and raise her enslaved boys, and as such does lighter work around the house and garden at Ferry Farm, once the home of George Washington and now belonging to Hugh Mercer. Betty seeks to avoid unnecessary scrutiny from either Isabel Mercer, Hugh’s wife, or the estate’s overseer charged with monitoring Betty and the rest of the enslaved population there. Betty isn’t aware that today, 250 years ago, her enslaver Hugh Mercer filed a will in case of his death in the Continental Army. Should he die, Betty and her enslaved brethren will belong to Mercer’s heirs. To be confirmed as legal, the seal, a label of sorts, will be fixed to the will.

* * * * * * *

(JT Sr)

Jonathan Trumbull Sr sees it one way and one way only: the war that has swallowed everything up now justifies every form of countermeasure and retaliation. As governor of Connecticut, a leader in a geographical space between Boston and New York City–between saltwater coast and inland forests, the home of Israel Putnam the irregular hero from an older generation and Benedict Arnold the frustrated regular officer from a younger generation–Trumbull joins reality and label. He belongs to a tier of leadership that could prove pivotal in the breach.

Also

And across the Atlantic…

Comte de Vergennes wants to avoid a particular label for his king and boss, Louis XVI of France. Vergennes creates a range of arguments and counterpoints in case British officials accuse the French king of actively promoting the American Union. Vergennes doesn’t want to give British King George III any opening for such an accusation.

* * * * * * *

Another III is King Gustav III of Sweden. Today, he’s keeping close watch on a new monetary system that he hopes will stabilize the economy of Sweden. Smart, a quick study, and intellectually curious, Gustav III knows that part of England’s descent into an intra-imperial crisis was the state of finances. As a result, Gustav III has introduced a currency model: riksdaler, skilling, and rinnstycken. And when he can, he reads the latest information about the American problem.

* * * * * * *

Sadeq Khan looks out on the 30,000 soldiers under his command in the siege of Basra. It’s been many months of slowly constricting, anaconda-like combat. A Persian native of the Lak tribe, Khan is confident that he’s seeing signs of the enemy’s destruction, a combined force of Ottoman-Mamluk supporters. The ordeal has thus far been especially hard on Basra’s Jewish residents.

For You Now

It’s not always easy to recognize what’s around you for what it is. In the midst of warding off crises or handling problem after problem, the act of bundling up reality into a clear framework can feel impossible. It can feel all the more so when you see other people doing it—doing this impossible—with such speed and confidence. You balk at the label. They thrill at the label.

We might be a bit cynical about the word “label”. We tend to deflect it as advertising or imagery. Call it a label and you’ll likely find people turning away.

But we apply other words that mean essentially the same thing. A “vision”, a “cause”, a “brand”, an “identity”, these are only a few words that speak to label in a different package.

As I look at today’s Redux and the various historical elements within it, a few points stand out for label and leadership. First, there’s a vast disconnect sometimes between labels of the same moment. Look at Washington and those around him when it comes to labeling. They cheer “victory” while he fears setback. Second, a label can have a living, dynamic force inside it. Adams’s view of independence is a prime example. Third, today’s label can be tomorrow’s libel—McDougall reveals that competing aspects of the present vision can point to sharply different futures.

Look thoughtfully around you. A label is in the making.

Suggestion

Take a moment to consider: do you see a label in the reality around you?