Americanism Redux
May 7, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
A pair is two of something. As a pair, the two show you something.
Like a…duplication, or a contrast, or a similarity, or a difference, or a complementary connection, or a polarized rejection, or, or, or.
But the start is two. The meaning is yours.
Intriguingly, 250 years ago right now, pairs are popping up all over.
(pair, more than two of a kind)
* * * * * * *
A pair of money-watchers have the same worry 250 years ago right now.
The Continental Congress’s team of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll sent to recruit Canada as the 14th colony—an effort that began with promise but sank into disaster—has talked with enough people in northern New York to know that Union currency printed by the Continental Congress is unpopular among Canadians. It’s trading at a very low value, meaning that most people won’t accept it in daily buy/sell transactions. Meanwhile, in Boston, newly recaptured from the British after a long Union siege, William Gordon shakes his head. All along the cobblestone streets just about every Bostonian rejects the use of new Union currency and instead seeks Spanish milled dollars in selling a good or service. Gordon blames the Continental Congress for printing too much paper money. This is a pair of observations on a single topic.
* * * * * * *
A pair of women love their husbands in a life that brings enormous strain beyond currency, money, and economics.
Abigail is upset with her husband John (Adams) because he’s waved off her thoughts about including women’s rights in the current moment of seeking separation from old, imperial ways, rules, and strictures. She fully embraces Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” arguments about separating from an outdated and misconceived system of concentrated power. She’s written to John a few days ago at the Continental Congress that women—especially wives, in her experience—have basically no formal legal rights in marriage. She wants John to advocate for women’s rights, men’s rights, rights in general. For her, it’s all the same struggle over “arbitrary power.” His dismissiveness infuriates her and she lets him know it in her new letter.
Rachel understands about arbitrary power, having been kidnapped by Lenape warriors from her family, the Doddridges in western Pennsylvania, when she was five years old all those years ago. Since then, she’s lived life as a Lenape Native, becoming wife to Koquethagechton (White Eyes). She welcomed him back home last winter from his visit to the Continental Congress and its delegates. She knows that he tried, and failed, to convince them to accept the Lenape in the Ohio River valley as the 14th colony. Rachel is celebrating now, though, basking in the decision of villagers at Coshocton to make her husband the community’s sachem. Still, Rachel fears what might come after rejection of her husband’s idea that the Lenape become the 14th colony. Where does that leave them as a people, as villagers, as husband-and-wife? In Rachel’s lost memory is the moment when, for a child, power ended one future and began another. Perhaps the flow of life will return her to a next time paired with the past.
* * * * * * *
(two make a corridor)
A pair of newly built communities exist five miles apart on the Hudson River north of New York City. They have a shared reason of being: armed power, military force, war. They have one purpose: defend the new Union and the waterway now seen as vital to its continuance. People live there, work there, have laws and customs and habits there. The pair’s names reveal some of the lifeblood of the new Union with Fort Montgomery (in last week’s Redux) honoring the most famous deceased soldier yet in the war, Richard Montgomery. The other of the pair has an even more symbolic and visionary name—Fort Constitution.
Isaac Nicholl is a commanding officer at Constitution right now. He’s monitoring the construction of Constitution. Nicholl thinks a bit more rum might incentivize the soldiers to do the back-breaking work needed to finish the place. He’s also heard that some local Union supporters are rounding up Loyalists and sending them to Fort Montgomery where they’ll be sentenced to “hard labor” until further orders are received. Nicholl worries that there are more people sentenced to “hard labor” than there are guards to watch them. He’s further bothered by the whole idea of “hard labor” as the proper thing to do to them. From Nicholl’s small, wooden desk at Constitution, the notion doesn’t sit well about the goings-on over at Montgomery.
These are paired places, coming to life for the Union’s armed forces and projection of the Union’s armed power.
* * * * * * *
(better weather needed)
Two former residents of Albany, New York, Dr. Gill and Captain Schaleh, have been accused and incarcerated for their Loyalism. They’re kept prisoner now in New York City where in the past weeks a long period of cold and wet weather has left them miserable. The conditions make them fear the onset of disease. To keep their health, they’ve appealed to a local business owner, Garret Abeel, to help them get approval to be moved south to New Jersey, “on account of the healthiness of the climate.” Gill and Schaleh have done their best to act like gentlemen and, Abeel notes, “men of the clearest honor.” Paired up, Gill and Schaleh see this as their best chance to survive.
Abeel seeks the advice of Continental Army General Israel Putnam on the two men’s request. Having never met them, Putnam will have final say on their behavior and demeanor. The war and the moment have placed in Putnam’s hands the power to judge the next course of these paired lives.
* * * * * * *
Albany, the one-time home of Gill and Schaleh, bustles with activity not far from these two new spaces of Union on the Hudson River. Philip Van Rensselaer is one of those local Union supporters tasked with deciding dozens and dozens of war-related issues in the area, including what to do with a substantial Loyalist population. But today Van Rensselaer’s challenge isn’t that—instead, it’s supervising the collection of weapons for Union soldiers. The problem is clear: in terms of weapons, there are none, or next to none. Worse, the hoped-for capacity to manufacture them hasn’t materialized. And reinforcements—Continental Army units sent to Albany—don’t seem to have any weapons either. So Van Rensselaer turns the only way he knows. He writes to General George Washington to update him on the problem.
Meanwhile, Colonel Edward Hand sees another item lacking in his own unit of Pennsylvania riflemen, a group of soldiers with growing reputations as elite and uniquely effective. So what’s wrong? They dress bad—their clothes are ragged, scruffy, and threadbare and Hand sees a problem. “A decent pride being one of the most necessary constituents of a soldier, and as nothing contributes more to a man’s good opinion of himself than dress…”, this is how Hand decides to express a request to a Pennsylvania delegate at the Continental Congress to send money to pay for new uniforms. “I am convinced it will be of great utility and contribute much to the good of the service,” writes Hand.
A pair of people—one a civilian and one a soldier—see flaws, gaps, and weaknesses in the Union’s armed power.
* * * * * * *
A pair of scenes from the thin line dividing order and anarchy, fact from fiction, reality from falsity.
In New York City, Henry Dawkins convinces a group of Union supporters not to try people accused of civilian crimes in a Continental Army court-martial; when military and civilian courts exist as a pair, the civilian court must prevail and predominate in their use. Inspired by his own efforts, Dawkins also perceives that successfully arguing in favor of Union independence can be manipulated to protect himself against the paired factions on either side of the issue, whether pro-Union or pro-Empire. Dawkins sees an opportunity emerging—counterfeit currency could have a booming market in this city, and after all, he’s a gifted artist, both hand and mouth.
At the same time, William Duer states that he’s witnessed “irregularity” in recent elections held in Charlotte County, New York for the upcoming New York Provincial Convention. “Jealousies and dissensions” have arisen which have produced “the most wicked and false aspersions…by men who are strangers to integrity.” Duer’s statements are important because the new Convention will be expected to tackle the issue of setting up a new “state government” in the Union. If true, the accusations point to the chances of people saying one thing while believing and doing quite another.
It seems there is more than one way to counterfeit.
* * * * * * *
The Union is moving swiftly into a new condition in a pair of southern places.
In South Carolina, more than 400 men are now named “justices” under the new Union-based “Constitution”. In addition, Continental Army General John Armstrong and his son have landed in Charleston to much fanfare—music, cheering, official welcomes, and the like—to further prepare the town’s fortifications against an expected British attack. A four-person delegation of local Christian ministers have offered their formal thanks and praise of the new self-titled “President and Commander-in-Chief” of South Carolina, John Rutledge. Only in South Carolina has a former British imperial colony seen a chief executive combine both political and military authority into a single position at the head of government. It can also be said that in naming the 400 justices with advice from the new “Privy Council”, Rutledge also has deep influence on the judiciary process in South Carolina. That’s one man, one office, and a lot of power.
From Savannah, Georgia, Archibald Fuller writes with enthusiasm to John Adams in Philadelphia. Fuller admits that many Loyalists populate Georgia but Union supporters are zealous in how they “look up to the Continental Congress” and “seek to preserve the Grand American Union.” A South Carolina-like step forward with a new constitution isn’t happening right now, though the recruitment of a new Continental Army regiment has definitely boosted Union support in the area. Indeed, this unit is the strongest attraction of public involvement. Regardless, whether as emotional truth or additional weight, Bullard’s excited tone in sharing these items feels purposeful. He’s breathless for a reason.
The pair of places share a border in a changing Union.
* * * * * * *
Two visions arc even higher above Bullard’s exuberance.
“Cosmopolitan” writes in Maryland “that America may rise triumphant, blossom as the rose, and swell with increasing splendor, like the growing beauties of the Spring, bearing in her right hand the great Charter of Salvation, the Gospel of the Heavenly Jesus, and in the left the unfolded volumes of Peace, Liberty, and Truth, until the sturdy pillars of Nature shall totter into ruins, and the whole fabric of Creation retumbles into chaos…”
Joseph Ward writes in Boston, “It is the Will of Heaven that we shall never hereafter be dependent upon the corrupt and wicked powers of Britain, and that our Country will be a Land of Freedom where the oppressed may flee to and be happy; where learning and Sciences may flourish and true religion and virtue live with all their native glory.”
* * * * * * *
Joseph Hawley fears time, or rather the lessons of time, in his Massachusetts home. The more time passes without “Independence and Government”, the more difficult it will be to conduct trade in all its forms, both for people and the military. “Without a real Continental Government our Army will overrun us” and then, in learning from their history in England a century ago, will seek a king or dictator to save them. Thus, “Independency, and a well planned Continental Government, will save us.”
For Hawley, every important pair includes the word “and.”
* * * * * * *
(Henry Clinton)
To each and all of these pairs 250 years ago, British General Henry Clinton offers a “Proclamation.”
He writes it, and shares it, from aboard the British naval vessel, the Pallas, in the waters off Cape Fear River in North Carolina, stating: a full pardon is offered to any resident of North Carolina who lays down their arms and returns to a peaceful and loyal condition, excepting Robert Howe and Cornelius Harnett. For everyone else, accepting the pardon will avoid the “miseries ever attendant upon Civil War.”
Beneath the Pallas, massive anchors hold the ship in place.
Also
(George Germain)
In London, George Germain, charged with coordinating British war policy against the American Union, writes to General William Howe as preparations continue for the arrival to New York: “…every possible effort has been used to give you such a force and to send you such supplies, as would enable you to act with effect in the course of this summer, and at the same time to secure the possession of Canada, and reduce the Southern Colonies to obedience.”
* * * * * * *
(Suleyman Bal, seeker of a different revolution)
In Senegal of western Africa, Sulayman Bal and Abdul Kader maintain an Islamic jihad in order to create the Imamate of Futa Toro. Their vision is a government and society devoted to a narrow, exclusive interpretation of Muslim worship and teachings. They seek life anew on their terms.
* * * * * * *
In Bavaria’s University of Ingolstadt along the Danube River, Adam Weishaupt begins a secret organization known as the Illuminati. A law professor, Weishaupt outlines a structure defined by concealed practices and codes. He believes religious power has exceeded acceptable bounds, wants to protect principles of the Enlightenment, and regards Freemasonry as a replicable precedent. The professor plans hidden actions for his followers to pursue.
For You Now
A quick aside: for some reason, this particular week’s research of Redux (I began the series in July 2022) has had a striking number of pairs pop up and pop out. Pairs have existed ever since mid-2022, which is mid-1772, but wow, this week really felt unusual in the frequency. That’s why it’s my theme for today.
In historical terms, the pairs in today’s Redux are openings of new directions. “Separate” and “independence” and even “nation” are single words clouding and covering a sprawl of life. There are vast, and young, webs and networks of veins and arteries, cells and molecules, proteins and nucleic acids. Changes in rate, flow, and force happen instantly. By early May 1776, pairs upon pairs come alive across a mass of space and a compression of time. Any of them can touch and spark to ignite growth beyond control of the writhing form.
In leadership terms, a leader can see a pair and think of a building block, the step made toward the step next. That’s if the pair fits internally. A leader can see a pair and perceive a gap or clash, defining an avoidance for what’s ahead. That’s if the pair doesn’t fit internally.
A pair helps a leader understand baseline operations and tactics. The block built allows for another building the future block. Pairs of pairs take stacks of blocks and suggest a strategy for the leader reaching higher elevations. Arranging multiple stacks will create new upward pathways for a leader.
Our story today is rich with pairs for leadership. The two money-watchers illustrate a clear pairing. The two women do so as well, up to a point, but then reveal stark differences. The two visions share powerful images. The two forts offer power of a wholly distinct sort. The two southerns pair up in a physical area at decidedly contrasting stages. The two stories of crime and election combine to depict a loosening of forms and procedures. The two people paired up in trying to show their honorable conduct. The history-based warnings of a man invokes the word “and” as the key in a pair. And with these and a million more pairs in the wind, there’s good ol’ Henry Clinton waving a parchment document from his boat.
A leader treats pairs with care and remembers that each starts with two.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: are you seeing a pair today as we approach the Declaration’s 250?
(Your River)
