Americanism Redux
May 8, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
Ah, the aroma of spring. You can’t beat it. Fresh, bright, sweet. Take it in. Every year at this time.
But more than that this year. It’s a sweetness, brightness, and freshness beyond all imagining.
The blood has dried. The tears are mostly dried, too, except maybe for night when the sun goes down. The darkness is when you hear the voice of a father or husband or son who died two weeks ago. But when the sun returns, the spring does too and the thought of the suffering of Concord, Lexington, and the Old Bay Road slips away.
And no one can deny a feeling in the air of possibilities never before dreamed. A new world—can it be made? A new kind of life—can it be gained?
It’s a new spring’s new day, today, 250 years ago.
* * * * * * *
(lilac)
In the grassy meadow, a sweet aroma drifts around a young lilac tree. The soil around the small tree tells you its planting is recent, the ground disturbed by a shovel. Next to the tree is another shovel-made disturbance. About five feet in length, two or three feet across. Nothing but dirt. It’s a grave. Unmarked. That’s the custom when you bury a person who was mentally unhealthy and who’d committed suicide. Sarah’s surviving husband had stood there day after day. Then, showing his own grief while keeping to the custom of no headstone, he planted this young lilac tree in her memory, of a wife, a mother of six, a woman of untold tragedy.
Today, 250 years ago, Patrick Henry is riding away from his living monument of the lilac tree, leaving the home he and Sarah had called Scotchtown. The widower is one of Virginia’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress. He’s also an organizer of a militia to march against the colony’s pro-imperial Governor, Lord Dunmore.
But like the loved ones after the Concord-Lexington-Old Bay Road, he too wipes a tear at night when his mind recalls the smell of recent pain, the sweetness of the lilac tree.
* * * * * * *
(Portia)
John and Abigail Adams can’t imagine life without each other. Unknowingly, they’re writing letters to each other on almost the same day, today, separated by more than 200 miles. He’s in New York City and she’s in Braintree, Massachusetts. He writes of “Providence”, she writes of “the Lord”, and together they see a new world unfolding beneath a heavenly gaze.
John describes an amazing reception for he and other delegates from Massachusetts traveling through New York City to Philadelphia’s Second Continental Congress, soon convening on May 10. John is uplifted at not only the warm welcome but also the feeling that everyone seems united around the colonial cause, including New Yorkers. He’s also heartened and bolstered by attending several church services in the city. John is always John, though, and concludes that “Resignation is our Duty at all Events.” You can’t be so hopeful as to forget reality.
Abigail writes that “the Lord will not cast off his people neither will he forsake his inheritance…(and) Great Events are most certainly in the womb of futurity and if the present chastisements which we experience have a proper influence upon our conduct, the Event will most certainly be in our favor.”
In closing, John refers to himself as Pappa and ends with not his name but a dash. In closing, Abigail uses a private code, signing herself as “Portia”, from Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”, a woman of striking intelligence, insight, resourcefulness, and perseverance. It was John’s nickname for her.
* * * * * * *
It’s a day of relationships, from the look of things. Benjamin Franklin is trying to find a way to meet with his estranged son-out-of-wedlock, William Franklin, New Jersey’s pro-empire Governor. William Franklin is reported to be meeting with the colony’s legislature, the Assembly. Benjamin laments the break in his relationship with William, and he also is writing today to a respected colleague, Joseph Galloway, who is giving every sign of “leaving public life” because of the imperial-colonial crisis. Franklin hopes Galloway reconsiders; the public needs people like him, he assures his friend. Between William and Joseph, Benjamin sees one relationship after another breaking apart under the weight of British-American animosity.
And the pace of it all is crushing.
Last Friday, Benjamin returned to Philadelphia from London. Next day, Saturday, he’s voted to be one of Pennsylvania’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress. By the day after tomorrow—which puts it at Wednesday, the 10th—the Union’s group will start their meetings.
If you’re Franklin, it’s two days to clear your mind as relationships fall apart around you.
* * * * * * *
Be very, very careful with that bottle of wine. Be equally careful with the note you’re writing that will get tucked into the crate with it. Easy does it with the packing and with the choice of words and sentences written on the paper.
That’s the challenge facing a tall, thin, reddish-haired 32-year old man right now. He’s got an eight-year old bottle of Madeira wine, grown, fermented, and corked on the island itself. He’s chosen it special to send special-delivery across the Atlantic Ocean to his mentor, cherished friend, and lifelong family-member-by-choice, William Small.
The 32-year old man ends the letter this way, after starting with an explanation of the wine and then, almost without realizing it, a descent into the politics and public controversies that threaten to destroy their relationship:
“I am getting into politics though I set down only to ask your acceptance of the wine, and express my constant wishes for your happiness. This however seems secured by your philosophy and peaceful vocation. I shall still hope that amidst public dissension private friendship may be preserved inviolate, and among the warmest you can ever possess is that of Your obliged humble servant.”
“Th. Jefferson”
* * * * * * *
(the man in the middle, Benjamin Thompson)
Today is a new day of a new spring in Massachusetts.
East of Boston, near Martha’s Vinyard, the people of Bedford and Dartmouth have rallied together to outfit a small ship. Fully rigged and under sail, a joined group of townspeople have plied the salt water off the Vinyard and recaptured a local sloop that earlier in the day had been seized by the British ship, HMS Falcon.
West of Boston, Benedict Arnold carries a new title, “Colonel”. That’s the rank bestowed upon him by a Committee of Safety affiliated with the Provincial Assembly. They’ve agreed with Arnold’s idea to recruit a group of men to march into New York and seize Fort Ticonderoga where reports say the British possess artillery, a badly-needed resource for the new colonial army’s siege of the Redcoats in Boston. Arnold stops at Concord for lunch, a pint or two of ale, and to have his horse re-shoed before continuing his expedition to the fort on Lake Champlain.
In between Arnold having his lunch in Concord and the New Bedford-Dartmouth vessel off Martha’s Vinyard is Benjamin Thompson. He’s smack in the middle, in Boston, writing a letter in invisible ink for delivery to British Redcoat General Thomas Gage. The pro-empire Thompson informs Gage that New England’s colonies are promising to raise 30,000 men to besiege the Redcoats now cut off in Boston. They’ll likely attack Castle William in Boston harbor, possibly Boston itself, or some combination of the two, reports Thompson. He also asserts that the “Continental Congress” will be reaching out to European nations for support against Britain. He insists that most supporters of colonial rights have no idea that their leaders secretly want an independent nation and that the rhetoric of liberties, rights, and the rest is just a cover for their real plans of controlling a breakaway from the empire.
Thompson worries that he’ll be assassinated any day now.
* * * * * * *
(Goddard)
Today is a new day of a new spring in Philadelphia.
Across the colonies along the Atlantic coast, a total of approximately 60 men are somewhere traveling closer to the town for the “Second Continental Congress.” They’re in carriages, on horseback, in vessels in small groups and subsets. They come from thirteen colonies, have various instructions, and different orders as to what constitutes a “quorum” if the entire delegation doesn’t show up in Philadelphia at the same time. The meeting is slated to begin on May 10.
Also thinking of Philadelphia is William Goddard. He’s published a blistering essay in a New York newspaper, attacking John Foxcroft, the postmaster in Pennsylvania’s largest and most innovative community. According to Goddard, Foxcroft’s only desire is to promote newspapers, pamphlets, and books that criticize the Continental Congress and its delegates. According to Goddard, the people living in or visiting Philadelphia should be on the lookout for Foxcroft’s poisonous handiwork and his manipulation of networked information.
* * * * * * *
(East Greenwich)
In East Greenwich, Rhode Island, the Assembly of the colony has made a startling decision. They have voted to remove Joseph Wanton as their governor. He has opposed and refused to enforce every major law enacted by the Assembly, including the payment of officers for the 1500 men raised to help defend the Provincial Assembly of Massachusetts—its “army of observation.” They have further voted to replace Wanton with his deputy governor, Henry Ward, who will have full authority to commission and pay the officers Wanton has ignored. It is, essentially, a revolutionary act of impeachment, made on behalf of transmitting to their “posterity” the “ancient rights” of “life, liberty, and property” that the current generation of Rhode Islanders have received from their ancestors.
Also
(Bukovina coat of arms)
A few days ago, the territory of Bukovina has been shifted officially to Austrian control and that of the Habsburg monarchy. The region lies between modern-day Romania and Ukraine.
The area is thickly wooded and no one is entirely certain of the exact boundaries of Bukovina. Approximately 70,000 people live there, most of whom are scattered in four towns and a dozen smaller villages.
An Austrian military administration seems likely to be tasked with keeping law and order in the rugged district.
* * * * * * *
Are they people or pawns? It’s not easy to tell.
For You Now
Ties. Bonds. Connections. Relationships.
What do you do with them? A few words come to mind.
Create. Build. Maintain. Protect. Repair. Sever.
From marriage to family to community, you’re somewhere along this line of judgment and action in the state of together.
Patrick and Sarah Henry have seen their joining ripped apart. John and Abigail Adams are trying their best to keep their embrace; only a few weeks ago, though, he had advised her to take the children and run into the woods if war roared toward their home. Benjamin Franklin is hoping a son and a colleague can be kept within arm’s reach, but in the moment he is limited to the gesture of expression. Thomas Jefferson wants the wine to show his underlying affection for a friendship he wishes never to lose.
Some take alternative measures. Benedict Arnold and William Goddard use audacity to draw others to them. Saying and doing with verve and boldness, they believe, will bring people to them. A similar blend of daring and strength can be seen on that two-towned vessel that defeated the Falcon near the Vinyard.
A group of legislators in Rhode Island achieve a different kind of togetherness. They stand with each other in articulating their approval of a fundamental change. To make such a change—to force it without resort to violence—they transcend a potential of chaos, traveling over a state of nature, by removing one formal leader in favor of another formal leader. They declare, resolve, endorse. They become something new.
A spring arrives every fourth season. But not all springs are the same. Once in a great while, the new has a newness and life can feel truly young. For many people, the thing holding them together reflects the strain of old becoming young.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: in this spring, are you going to something new or are you leaving something behind?
(Your River)
