Americanism Redux

March 27/28, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775

This time in day and week, 250 years ago, is one of the most important times in the entire American Revolution and the world’s history in the 18^th century.

Before a shot is fired at an enemy. Before anyone rides on a horse shouting “the British are coming, the British are coming”. Before violence turns to combat, battles, and warfare and you start getting some of the images you automatically associate with the American Revolution.

These hours rise above them all. This day and week deserve its own national commemoration for what happened in two speeches and two letters.

At the bottom of the string a bright light shines. An elder holds, a boy stares, and shadows surround the glow.

Welcome to a very important entry of Americanism Redux for right now, 250 years ago.

* * * * * * *

He’s walking toward the front of the room. Around the tables, the chairs, and the people seated there. Seventy, eighty, maybe ninety folks or so.

Those years ago they were chickens and hogs, cattle and horses, within the sound of his voice on the land of the family home, twelve miles away from where he’s headed now at the front of the room.

In a strong rural voice.

Next, after the farm, they were judges and juries, clients and crowds, hearing him talk in the courtroom of Hanover County.

In a strong rural voice.

The topics were case laws and rulings. Then they were legislation and edicts. Over the centuries they came from robed jurists in England and from God in the Bible. More lately, they’re the work of a parliament and a king and he no longer wanted it that way.

And today, he stops at the point at the front of the room. He turns and faces the people who used to be the animals. He begins to say how he thinks and feels. Only one choice left.

In a strong rural voice.

38-year old Patrick Henry stands indoors at Richmond, colony of Virginia, unburdening his farmer’s heart and mind, a man of rain, sun, seeds, and soil. And of the enslaving, too, an infection of thoughts in the red and white cells around his soul. He’s aware of the illness.

In that strong rural voice, Henry speaks to the men in front of him. We have hoped, says he. End it, give it up, lay it down, cover the hole, plant the stone. Hope is dead.

Instead, he says, we have left what we always have in living—experience. That’s our guide and from it, one thing remains—it is time to fight, to battle, to war. Nothing else.

He shares more words about taking heart.

And then the stirring final statement, the closing thunder over the clouds bringing torrents to the ground.

“As for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

He walks back to his table, to his chair, to his seat. The people lean out of his way and open the path.

Twelve miles away, hawks fly over plowed ground on the Henry land called Studley.

* * * * * * *

Just a short while later, 250 years ago, with Patrick Henry’s words hanging in the air, these people in this room in Richmond take a vote. They agree as a “Convention” to call for lawyers, suitors, and witnesses to neither prosecute nor defend legal cases of civil rights. Suspend them, every one. “During this suspension of the administration of parties, it is earnestly recommended to the people to observe a peaceable and orderly behavior”; and to the creditors that they show flexibility and understanding to the people who owe them money; and to the debtors that they offer to pay what they can. And to everyone in absolute need of pursuing a dispute, a call to ask for neighbors to judge and resolve. Rely on them for help.

Left unsaid is whether the Convention’s call is a continuance of experience or a resurrection of hope.

* * * * * * *

A man as renowned in his part of North Carolina as Patrick Henry is in his part of Virginia scribbles his signature onto the bottom of a letter. He is John Harvey, 60 years old, and as Speaker of the colonial Assembly, a major leader in this colony. He’s written his name many times at the bottom of a letter.

In this letter John Harvey makes one final call, one final request, one final demand. He asks Governor Josiah Martin of North Carolina to show a life-saving and world-saving flexibility and use his personal judgment and common sense to change a law about foreign debt. By himself, on his own, for the sake of maintaining peace.

Don’t do what King and Parliament tell you to do. Do what’s right for us, here and now.

Do it and people won’t kill each other. Refuse to do it and you might as well pull the trigger, light the fuse, unsheathe the knife and sword. Blood will flow.

Though he doesn’t know it, John Harvey is essentially restating the speech just made by Patrick Henry in Richmond, Virginia.

We’re down to final choosing.

* * * * * * *

Sam didn’t have much of a choice. The man who enslaved him ordered him to come on this trip, to blaze a path from Virginia to Kain-tuck-ee that will have the name “Wilderness Trail” made by the thirty-five axemen of Daniel Boone. William Twitty, Sam’s enslaver, never thought twice about whether Sam wanted to do it or not. Twitty goes, Sam goes, get your gear and get my gear while you’re at it.

Two nights ago, Sam was kneeling next to a campfire burning along the Taylor Branch of Silver Creek in Kain-tuck-ee. Boone had gotten what Boone hardly ever was in the forest and woods—neglectful. He’d struck a deal with Cherokee Native leaders a couple of weeks ago to gain access to these lands. Never occurred to him that not everyone had agreed. Never dawned on him that life gets a vote.

Shawnee Native leaders hadn’t agreed and they were about to vote with guns, knives, and clubs.

A small band of Shawnee warriors had secretly slipped into the brush near the Taylor Branch campfire. They’d seen men sleeping. They’d seen a black man crouched down next to the low flames.

In a swirl of sound and speed, the black man fell over into the fire, his body riddled with bullets as he hit the flames. Other bullets struck his enslaver, who cried out in pain. The rest of the men with the enslaver—including the one called Boone—ran into the forest. The Natives let them run. After a time, they left, too.

Next day Boone and the axemen were back. They buried Sam, nursed the bleeding-out Twitty, and built a rough shelter of logs around and over him.

Someone who didn’t like him, didn’t care, or didn’t know life could be lived without irony called it “Fort Twitty”.

Boone and his blazers pushed on west from there.

* * * * * * *

On the western side of the Atlantic Ocean, a speechmaker and a letter-writer push the door shut.

Also

He is seated along a bench amid raucous bench-sitters. In a quiet combination, he takes a deep breath and stands up. The men around him face him head-on, or look to their side, or look down from above. However they can, they see him. They know him well.

In a clear Irish voice.

Long ago he wanted to be a lawyer but gave it up, disappointing his father. He’d found instead a gift inside himself, the ability to write and think, to write and analyze, to write and inform.

In a clear Irish voice.

44-year old Edmund Burke begins to speak to his fellow members of the House of Commons in the British Parliament.

Over the next ten minutes he lays out—one-by-one—six categories of insight into the deplorable state of imperial-colonial relations. When he’s finished with the six, he summarizes their labels: descent; form of government; northern religion; southern manners, including enslavement; education; and geographic isolation of an empire’s fringe. The overview is a work of art, the words are masterful.

He then recounts the story of what’s been tried, what’s been proven to have failed, what’s been shown to have worsened in unintended effects.

His closing remarks are an invitation to look at one’s self in the mirror, illuminated by a glowing light.

“To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage of them in debate, without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood.”

* * * * * * *

Benjamin Franklin sits at a desk on board ship somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean, sailing toward America. His bags and trunks are packed and stowed. In a cabin slowly rising and falling, amid creaking wood planks and boards, he believes it’s only now, with the right amount of “leisure”, that he can take the time to write a letter of astounding length to his son of adultery, William. William Frankin is the royal governor of New Jersey and imperial supporter of monarchy. His father is describing and explaining his recent experiences as the most notable, famous, and infamous go-between in the imperial-colonial clash.

He tried, God knows he tried.

After a long introduction section that recounts early experiences, Franklin shifts the letter into an account of a chess game in late 1774 with Caroline Howe, sister of a sympathetic British nobleman and aristocratic family. Franklin’s scene is worthy of Shakespeare—with knights and bishops and pawns—picked and plopped on a board by a man and a woman exchanging moves, countermoves, and possibilities. Howe sprinkles clues and signs during the game, and leaves Franklin with a deep motivation to construct a written document called “Hints”. It will be his masterpiece that will circulate through the highest levels of British government. These seventeen “Hints” were Franklin’s key points for reconciliation between empire and colonies. The Hints might become the basis of repair, a kind of map or imperial version of Boone’s trailblazing in the Kentucky woods.

But Franklin found nothing but disappointment and deceit in the thicket of British politics, government, and national affairs. The Hints in London and Sam along Silver Creek meet the same fate, among the ashes in the fire.

From this section, page after page follows in Franklin’s letter to his son, a feat one-part exhausting and one-part amazing, filled with more descriptions of days, weeks, and months and the ups and downs of elusive reform and fantasy walk-backs at the brink of civil war.

Franklin ends the letter by sharing a plea from a friend still in England. The friend, Dr. John Fothergill, urges Franklin and his colleagues in Philadelphia to abandon all hope of reconciliation.

It is dead, buried, a thing of the past.

* * * * * * *

From one side of the Atlantic to the other, a speech and a letter here, a speech and a letter there.

For You Now

The rest are the details.

I hate to say that but it’s really true.

People will die and suffer. People will triumph and persevere. People will falter and disappoint. All of these things are yet to come in the actual moment when tension goes violent and violent goes war. We’re not there yet according to the officialness of life. It’s coming, though. The history lore is full of what’s to come in a few weeks.

However, the heart and soul of it has happened this week, 250 years ago. Burke’s speech, Henry’s speech, Harvey’s letter, Franklin’s letter. In them you see everything vital and alive.

Last fall, in 2024, I asked people to start a new national remembrance of the Congress that met in Philadelphia in 1774, 250 years before. It is the American Experience’s conception, the start of life before the birth. Union first, Nation second. I urge you to embrace that because it’s the truth.

Here we are again and I’m asking for another embrace. This is the week when the River truly and truthfully turns. No going back. The rapids are amongst us, slamming, splashing, pounding. Remember it.

I didn’t know I would find this until I found this. Consequently, I had to have an extra day to absorb and process the pair of letters and the pair of speeches. I’m still not done. I’m doing the best I can, toweling off and regripping minute to minute.

I think the primary point for me as of now is to realize that everything has stripped, boiled, and honed down to a single essential. All the other things are gone. 250 years ago at this exact time, that one essential is freedom. Not unanimous in condition or omnipresent in fact—but strictly as the thing desired or denied, the thing over which all is contested, all is orbiting, all is measured.

Notice that none of this is confined or restricted to a place, not to Boston or Massachusetts or even New England, though these are precisely the places emphasized in laws and policies. The entire thing is washing up and down the Atlantic coast, running inland over mountains and through valleys. The roaring waters are the single substance finding its own depth and extent.

We’re down to freedom. Center of the quark and the quark is the center of everything.

Suggestion

Take a moment to consider: no, this isn’t a question—instead, simply consider that there is a very good chance at some point in the future, we’ll look back at a stretch of time and say, “yeah, that was the week, when everything really was clear. That was the week.”