Americanism Redux
May 1, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
Now everything resets.
What it was—is not what it is. Read that again.
And what it’s become—is what it now is. Read that again.
But what it now is—stays so…for how long?
We really have no idea.
It’s today, May 1, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
(Dr. Warren)
Dr. Joseph Warren writes to a ghost. Doctor to Doctor.
Well, ghost-like, at any rate.
He thinks the recipient of his letter is still living in London. He’s wrong. The ghost is gone, on the Atlantic Ocean, shipbound and westward sailing, riding the gulf-stream current he was the first to identify.
“To Dr. Benjamin Franklin, of London…”
Warren writes on behalf of the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly, the colonial-rights government in charge of all non-Boston parts of Massachusetts. They don’t control the big bean town where the Redcoats are now holed up and surrounded.
Warren and the Assembly are inviting Franklin to become their lobbyist again—their agent—in London. They hope he’ll keep track of all the important events and information in this important crisis and breaking point. Stating that “we are at last plunged into the horrors of a most unnatural War,” they specifically want Franklin to spread the reports and accounts of the April 19th clash at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road contained in this packet of mail with Warren’s letter. They hope their enclosed accounts get to London ahead of British General Thomas Gage’s versions. Warren and the Provincial Assembly believe it’s vital for the people and politicians of London—the city—to get this data immediately so they can push, prod, and protest the imperial government on the colonists’ behalf.
They have an interesting view of what they call “the two Englands.”
“It is the united efforts of both Englands that must save either. But whatever price our brethren in the one may be pleased to put on their constitutional Liberties, we are authorized to assure you that the Inhabitants of the other, with the greatest unanimity, are inflexibly resolved to sell theirs only at the price of their Lives.”
* * * * * * *
(Parker)
Captain John Parker of Lexington, Massachusetts is thinking back to his testimony. Five days ago he gave what was in reality a deposition about his involvement in the April 19th bloodshed. He asserted to an interrogator that he ordered his Lexington militia not to fire on the Redcoats, to let them pass without resistance. Then, he attested, the Redcoats opened fire on his unit. Eight of his friends and neighbors, slumped over, dead, and the cloud of gray smoke rolled over them. That’s how he saw it, that’s how he sees it. And into the official report it went, among the papers mailed to Franklin in London, who’s no longer there.
No matter, someone will see it and they’ll know what to do.
* * * * * * *
(new residents here at Massachusetts Hall)
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group of British Redcoat officers walk inside Massachusetts Hall on the campus of Harvard College. Room by room, they toss their gear inside. Get used to it.
That bed over there, it’s the captain’s. That desk and chair in the next room, they’re the lieutenant’s. The big space down the hall with the fireplace, that’s the colonel’s. As a group, this is their new home, at least until they leave. Students and faculty out. The British Army is now running this part of Massachusetts on behalf of King George III and the British empire.
Reset.
* * * * * * *
(in Connecticut)
South of Boston and Massachusetts is Connecticut. In a swift and decisive action, members of the Connecticut Assembly today vote to raise 6,000 men to serve in a new military. They’ll join the thousands arriving daily near Boston to surround the British Redcoats inside Boston and adjacent communities, like Cambridge, and various spaces like the Harvard campus and Massachusetts Hall.
* * * * * * *
(where the natural leader was)
West of Boston, along the very furthest inland edge of Massachusetts toward New York, lies the town of Pittsfield. On the east side of South Street in Pittsfield is a tavern.
Easton’s.
The owner is just one of those people you like to be around, a person you tend to trust, a person that gives you a good feeling for whatever length of time you can spend with them, maybe especially during a reset.
Among the many terms for such a person is this:
Natural leader.
He’s James Easton and he’s arranging chairs, benches, and tables inside his tavern. Food and drink close at hand.
He’s waiting for a couple of his guests, John Brown, a neighbor of Easton’s, and Edward Mott, traveling up from Connecticut.
In addition to tavern-owner, Easton is a Congregational deacon, a builder and construction contractor, and a first-term local elected representative to the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly, the one with Joseph Warren who wrote the letter to Benjamin Franklin.
Yeah, the term fits, natural leader.
Easton has a big, bold idea in his head. In light of the new news of April 19th‘s bloodshed at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road, Easton wants to strike at the British from the western side of Massachusetts. He’s got a target: Fort Ticonderoga on the southern end of Lake Champlain in northern New York. It’s an iconic spot, filled with active memories of the French and Indian War, and of weathered and mossier remembrances of longer-ago battles between the British and French Empires in North America.
We’ll get our militia and volunteers together and strike west for Fort Ti and seize the damn place for the American cause, so thinks the deacon/taverneer/builder/local politician/militia officer.
Did you hear that? Yeah, they’re here, Brown and Mott. Gentlemen, pull up a chair, fill your glass, and listen to an idea I’ve got.
It’s today, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
(Pinkney’s publication)
The lid rattles on top of the pot in Virginia. A sound of reset.
Three days ago—216 hours after the fact—William Pinkney published the first local news of the April 19th clashes near Boston. Virginians are reading the Virginia Gazette’s reprints of letters and statements from Massachusetts. Soldiers and civilians firing back and forth at each other. Extensive loss of life. Warm red blood spilled by Empire and colony. Good God.
Virginia’s imperial governor, Lord Dunmore, just a few months ago popular with people across the colony, had ordered a quiet, night-time removal of gunpowder from storage in Williamsburg. In the context of the new news from Massachusetts, colonial-rights supporters in several towns and counties in Virginia are outraged with Dunmore. They hate him, his imperial regime in the colony, and the British government back in England. Seething and hell-bent to gain control of events, militia are gathering to march from Fredericksburg to Williamsburg to set things right, to assert liberties and powers like their brethren in Massachusetts. Hugh Mercer and three other militia officers are finalizing plans to lead the men to Williamsburg.
* * * * * * *
(Randolph)
Peyton Randolph is speaker of the Virginia Assembly. He’s also the former member of last fall’s Congress swiftly elected by his fellow members to preside over that September-through-October meeting in Philadelphia. He’s got an impressive record, a leader trusted and respected by followers.
Randolph writes a letter urging Mercer and the Fredericksburg militia to stand down, hold off, remain on the sideline. Don’t march. Don’t bring ignited people into a fuel-rich environment. Keep the match and the gas apart, the explosion in a future that may yet dampen red-hot emotions. Randolph wants to give Dunmore the chance to save face, to back down on his own accord and own timeline. Give peace room to breathe without fumes.
In Hanover County, Patrick Henry is bringing another militia together. He and Randolph are very different sorts, very different leaders.
To Henry, a letter with Randolph’s signature on it likely won’t amount to much.
Also
King George III and Lord Mansfield ride together in a carriage. Ahead of them, laying on the ground, is a copy of the Magna Carta. Next to it is a copy of the unwritten British Constitution. The two men are inches away from having their horse-drawn carriage run over the top of the copies, grinding them to dust.
Hold on, “a copy of the unwritten”? That doesn’t seem possible. And the Magna Carta laying outdoors on the ground?? How can that be?
Well, it can’t be and it isn’t possible, truth be told…unless you’re a pro-colonial rights political cartoonist and your latest work is published today, 250 years ago, in the Westminster Magazine.
You’re making the point that in its handling of imperial-colonial issues, the British government is trampling long-time rights and liberties in English political culture.
(a cartooned reality reaching out to the people)
* * * * * * *
Remember Joseph Warren writing about “the two Englands”? The cartoonist is making the same point on a different side of the Atlantic.
For You Now
A reset is not a re-attaching. Once the tie is untied, there’s no telling where things will go, where things will find a new place and position. The only expectation worth your while is to know that a new place and position WILL be found, sooner or later.
Look at the two moments in Massachusetts and Virginia.
The reset with Easton results in him casting a sharp eye west toward a fort on Lake Champlain. At this point, he’s operating with only the constraints of what he and his two colleagues think will or won’t work. The reset with Mercer and Randolph has already run into potential disputes and disagreements; Mercer and his three colleagues want to drive hard at Dunmore, while Randolph pleads to wait and restrain. And then there’s Henry, ready to take the reset where he thinks it should go. Randolph’s ability to cover all the hot spots is headed for testing.
The reset also includes the undefined. An example is this shapeless group in England known loosely as “the people.” Warren’s invocation of the two Englands points to his understanding of their existence—they’re in London and they can be mobilized, that’s his and the Massachusetts Provincial Assembly’s belief. Similarly, despite not having knowledge of April 19th, the British political cartoonist is trying to bring “the people” to the forefront. If Warren had known of the cartoon in real-time, he likely would have hoped for that immediate outpouring of the London people he so deeply sought.
The campus is reset. Class dismissed and the dorms emptied out. New learning, new instructors, new tests.
Going someplace other than here. Trying to get a grip on the idea of where.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: if you sense a reset underway right now, do you have a sense as to what happens next, after reset?
(Your River)
