Americanism Redux
May 15, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
Get your gear, the gloves, the hard hat, the tool belt.
The Union is going to work.
Today, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
(Pennsylvania State House, or Independence Hall)
There will be 66 of them when it’s all said and done.
They’re the delegates for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They arrived a few days ago to begin work not at Carpenter’s Hall like last fall but at Pennsylvania State House. Represented are twelve colonies and one county (parish) from the thirteenth, Georgia.
Most of the names are the same. Among them is Peyton Randolph, from Virginia. He’s been chosen again to preside over daily meetings, the presiding officer, the preside-ent. His continuance gives continuity, a sense of carrying on. The preside-ent maintains control of the chair at the head of the room. Next to him is the same one employee of the group, the Clerk, Charles Thomson. Together, they’ll ask for the same preacher or chaplain, Reverend Jacob Duche, to deliver an opening prayer as he did last fall. Taking all this together, then, we can confidently say that it’s time to add a number to our name: it’s the Second Continental Congress.
From preside-ent to prayer-giver, the Union’s strongest, clearest, and may we even say greatest (?) symbol of itself is again in session and back at work. It seems, delegate Richard Henry Lee remarked, “there never appeared more perfect unanimity among any set of men.”
How deep below the surface does that feeling run?
* * * * * * *
(that uniform)
Some newcomers are here. John Hancock, one of the chief drivers of last month’s bloodshed at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road, is one. Dr. Benjamin Franklin is another. Thomas Jefferson is a third. Almost half the entire New York delegation is new.
Also, stretching the term “newcomer” just a bit, some returnees dress differently so as to have a kind of “newcomer” feel to them. George Washington is at the top of this list—out of nowhere, he’s suddenly appearing daily in a military uniform designed for county militia in Virginia.
Speaking of him, Washington joins one of the first committees formed this week in the State House meeting. It’s a committee tasked with assessing and organizing military defenses in New York City. It’s believed that with Redcoats already stationed in the port city, New York could be the next spot for an armed clash between the British military and local armed resisters. Washington and the committee will make recommendations on building barricades, stockpiling supplies, conducting reconnaissance, and training men. It’s a perfect fit—Washington has a war record from the French and Indian War, has helped Virginia devise militia units, and, by golly, has the right profession’s clothes packed in his trunk.
* * * * * * *
(Preside-ent)
Today, 250 years ago, Preside-ent Peyton Randolph knows tomorrow’s agenda for the Second Continental Congress. He’ll be overseeing a motion offered—and then seconded—to transition the session into a “committee of the whole” for the foreseeable future.
In this form, delegates will have greater freedom to speak, debate, question, and engage in dialogue with each other. It’s a good format for diving deeper into individual understandings of the current situation, group beliefs as separate colonies’ delegations, and overall consensus as a collective body of the Union. Topic Number One will be the aftermath, after-effects, and after-shocks of events at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road. It’s the first time the delegates will be together to sort fact from fiction and approach a shared sense of meaning and strategy.
Randolph knows he’ll continue as chairman of the committee of the whole. This next round of points and counterpoints is vital to the colonial-rights movement and cause. Injury and death in combat have occurred. The British “drew the Sword and began the War,” as Franklin puts it in a letter he writes today. It’s the responsibility of the delegates to clarify what they think about the moment and what they hope to do next in the future. Starting tomorrow, Preside-ent Randolph will have to carefully listen, watch, and consider as the minutes unfold.
The Union is at work.
* * * * * * *
(Black Bear Tavern)
40 miles north of the Second Continental Congress is Bucks County, Pennsylvania. At the Black Bear Tavern owned by Richard Leedom, the Committee of Safety laid out their reasoning for calling on county residents to organize a militia. The hope that Britain would rectify the situation in Massachusetts is now dead, states the Committee. In fact, it’s clear that Parliament will now rely on armed force to execute imperial laws. So, in addition to endorsing continued use of the Association’s economic boycott, the Committee now states that a militia must be outfitted and readied.
The Union is alive and living at the Black Bear.
* * * * * * *
(Allen and his words)
A wild sequence of events has already unfolded 336 miles north of Philadelphia. An assortment of armed men committed to the colonial-rights cause—100 Green Mountain Boys led by Ethan Allen; 40 men from the vicinity of Pittsfield, Massachusetts; and another 20 or so cobbled together by Benedict Arnold from across Connecticut and Massachusetts—have assaulted and seized the broken-down British post of Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. Following that, a contingent seized a handful of watercraft, primarily a schooner (the “Katherine”) built by the wealthy imperial-rights supporter Philip Skene, and set sail north to another decrepit British site called Fort Crown Point further up Lake Champlain.
Tensions have flared within the crowd of armed colonial-rights men with Ethan Allen and Seth Warner claiming the loyalty of some and Benedict Arnold staking out support from others. Cross-currents of influence and control are sparking and crackling between Connecticut, Massachusetts, and upstart Vermonters seeking their own colony.
The names and terms they’re using have gigantic meaning. The seized schooner Katherine has been renamed the “Liberty.” The vessel will be a crucial transportation resource for the next goal—a northern strike to Canada, the potential fourteenth colony. The vessel’s name will symbolize what the men believe is their collective cause, as much invitation as an invasion.
Further, when a frightened British officer asked to know under whose authority was the capture of Ticonderoga done, Ethan Allen roared in reply: “In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!!” Allen’s instinctive linkage of spiritual mission and civic-political organization reveals what is for some a foundational belief of, and in, the Union.
* * * * * * *
(his next war)
The day before yesterday, on the “Charlestown Neck”, a strip of dry land connecting Boston to the Massachusetts interior, 57-year old Israel Putnam is at the front of several hundred New England soldiers. He’s their commander, their leader. They like him, trust him, respect him, know of him.
Putnam relied on that trust and popularity and reputation to march the men back and forth along the Neck. It was a dangerous assignment, in full view of British Redcoats now bottled up in Boston after last month’s clash at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road. The notion was that Putnam’s men would lure the British out of Boston and then the New Englanders could fire on them in full force, in the open. The goal—more hope than thought—was that a version of Old Bay Road would recur with the Redcoats in hapless pursuit of Putnam’s force and concealed New Englanders shooting at them. Nothing happened. The Redcoats didn’t budge from Boston. Putnam returned with the men to their tents and campfires.
The incident where nothing happened sort of typifies Putnam’s experience of late. These thousands of soldiers camped next to a protected enemy in the middle of towns and villages didn’t fit with Putnam’s life of war fifteen years ago. Then, he was in the northern woods with a few hand-picked men, tracking Natives, using tactics and skills of hunting, trapping, and scouting. It was fierce and awful stuff. More than killing occurred; brutality and viciousness were the norms. Torture wasn’t encouraged but it was understood. He didn’t simply serve, he excelled.
Putnam is back in his tent, ever the object of interest, the subject of curiosity, the source of advice, to the New England soldiers gathered to surround Boston. Both he and they wait for the British to make some move to change the status quo. If, or when, it comes, you’ll have no trouble finding Putnam.
* * * * * * *
(at the Kanawha)
James Cleaveland is at the “Great Bend” of the Kanawha River in the upper Ohio River region. He’s got a thousand things going on—trying to keep a boat properly packed so it doesn’t flip over; trying to overcome strong winds in using the river to travel; trying to store and ship corn; trying to track down servants who’ve escaped to find freedom; trying to scrape enough money together to buy cattle at a cheap price; trying to learn the fastest way to clear trees and undergrowth from the land.
He’s part of the people pushing Native tribes off hunting grounds, off land that has been reported to be claimed by Virginia in the name of British imperial authority. A battle was fought at Point Pleasant last fall with the Virginians and western Pennsylvanians claiming victory.
And now, 250 years ago today, Cleaveland works at the Great Bend to convert battlefield victory and treaty negotiations into personal gain.
* * * * * * *
(Edmund Burke)
Today, 250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin writes to one of his friends in England, the Irish Edmund Burke. “All People here (in Philadelphia) feel themselves much obliged by your Endeavors to serve them.”
Franklin also reports that Congress has started meeting.
A Union is up and running on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Also
(a Peshwa)
Today, 250 years ago, Anandibai is mother to a five-month old baby. The baby seems strong and for that Anandibai is forever grateful. She can’t help being afraid, though. Whenever she looks into the face of her young son, she has fleeting thoughts of the nephew she helped assassinate. It was a necessary act, Anandibai believes, in order to have her husband, Raghunathrao, become Peshwa, the second-highest office in the Maratha Empire in western India, near Pune.
Anandibai knows that a massive battle is coming. Her husband has been part of an effort to gather soldiers from one faction in the Maratha confederacy. He and 20,000 men will fight a rival Maratha faction of 25,000 soldiers, led by Han Pant Phunhay and allied to 2500 British soldiers affiliated with the British East India Company.
The battle seems inevitable. The likely outcome is less clear.
Anandibai only hopes that the karma of her involvement in the assassination doesn’t seal her husband’s fate.
For You Now
(busy, busy)
We’re seeing the Union on the job, in full swing. I wonder what you expect of the fact.
The Congress has come again to congress. Both noun and verb are incredibly important for understanding these early days of Union. You’re seeing a preside-ent in the mix, as well as committees. You’re seeing turnover in the blend of people. You’re seeing attempts to begin a process of how to work through issues, reach consensus, make decisions.
We’re also learning that the physical scope of space has a staggeringly vital effect on things. With zero input from Philadelphia, an entirely new approach to war-making is occurring on the chilly blue waters of Lake Champlain. The same is true for land-settling at the Great Bend of the Kanawha River. A few days’ ride from Philadelphia is a group at Leedom’s Black Bear Tavern in Bucks County and their participation in the Union. And what would have happened if that mission led by Israel Putnam had succeeded in tempting a British strike out of Boston? There would be a major new event with demands, consequences, and opportunities.
Before I let you go, permit me to point to a couple of small details in Benjamin Franklin’s letter to Edmund Burke. In typical Franklinesque fashion, however, the small stuff often has hidden meaning.
First, Franklin the wordsmith was amazingly quick to state that “the War began” at Concord, Lexington, and Old Bay Road. He’s writing essentially on the very edge of present and past tenses of time; indeed, he really still has a few toes of one foot planted in the current moment. And yet he writes in the most categorical of ways—that “the War began.” Is it suggestive to you?
Second, Burke doesn’t know it but he’s actually in the midst of a several-years-long project of defining a body of political thought and political philosophy. I’m fascinated by Franklin’s phrasing of gratitude—”your efforts to serve them.” Burke’s brilliant mental explorations and journeys, his thoughtfulness and reflection, are given life by Franklin’s invocation of “your efforts to serve them.”
Efforts to serve. What a wonderful way to think of thinking.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: how is a President different from a Preside-ent?
(Your River’s, and the Ohio River’s, Great Bend)
