Americanism Redux

November 20, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775

The basics can get hard to see when so much is flying through the air. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

The basics never go away. They’re often the reason things are as they are.

Basics. Today, 250 years ago.

* * * * * * *

A basic is getting people to do the work.

The Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia is struggling to get that done. Members have to be reminded to show up early in the morning—no later than 10am—because there’s so much that needs doing. Nothing can move forward if enough members aren’t in attendance when the daily session begins. In addition, once they’re in Pennsylvania State House, they tend to mill about, standing, talking, staring into space. They’re there bodily, but they’re not there mentally. Finally, delegates are increasingly not even at Philadelphia. They’re being pulled back home, kept back home, and focused back home because the war is causing a multitude of home-based issues and problems.

The union has basic work that must be done. It requires people present and locked-in if that’s going to happen.

* * * * * * *

The union also needs an answer to a basic question: what do you do on a union level of life? Each colony has an internal government but what about the union?

250 years ago now, a delegate, John Adams of Massachusetts, has sketched out an early answer to this basic question. He’s sent his ideas to fellow delegate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Adams states “the Course of Events, naturally turns the Thoughts of Gentlemen to the Subjects of Legislation and Jurisprudence, and it is a curious Problem what the Form of Government, is most readily and easily adopted by a Colony, upon a sudden Emergency.” Adams lays out thirteen items that should characterize the new governmental arrangement of three branches of power.

At the same time, Adams tells a friend that “It behooves the Congress, it behooves the Army, to Show that nothing but a rigid inflexible Virtue, and a Spotless Purity of Character, can preserve or acquire any Employment….Politics are the Science of Human Happiness and War the Art of Securing it.”

What to build in governance and how to behave in serving, these are the union’s basics seen today by John Adams.

* * * * * * *

Worry is growing among Adams’s colleagues in the Continental Congress of a “growing thirst for power in some of the inferior departments of the army,” as one delegate put it. Another delegate fears that southern army officers are eager to see soldiers identify with the “Continental” army rather than with colonies and local communities. Strict measures must be in place “to keep the military entirely subservient to the civil in every part of the United Colonies.”

It’s a fear that has new fuel in decisions about the basics made today near Boston. The Continental Army needs people to do its work of soldiering just as much as the Continental Congress needs delegates to attend to their daily work. As a result, in the Continental Army’s encampment outside Boston—in the temporary military community that could easily be called “union city”—new orders have gone out that each freshly created regiment of the “New Army” will send an officer going into surrounding colonies to recruit new men for the units. The orders include special instructions for having enough money to give to recruits to meet the unique needs of New England farmers in late autumn. It’s an attempt to show that the Continental Army—union city—understands the basics of seasonal life they and their families live out.

* * * * * * *

The basic can change.

James Lovell suffers as a British prisoner-of-war in Boston, Massachusetts and on his way to Halifax further into the dark world of military incarceration. The Redcoats have deemed him a spy and informant for the rebellion against England. This week Lovell has written a last-ditch letter to Continental Army Commander George Washington to plead his case for the Virginian’s support. Lovell begs Washington to take up his cause with British officials and to support Lovell’s family in his unending absence. Lovell sees Washington as his and his family’s last hope.

Samuel Freeman lives in burned-out Falmouth, Massachusetts/Maine and he’s helping organize defenses of the destroyed port community. He believes Continental Army Commander George Washington can be convinced through praise—some truly genuine and some naked flattery—that Falmouth is a key to the rest of the “Continent” and embodies a “general interest” that must be protected. Freeman implores Washington to embrace Falmouth.

John Holt resides in New York City and has learned James Seagrave, a former neighbor in the city and avid imperial-rights supporter, is now helping direct the Continental Army’s artillery fire on the British in Boston. He believes Continental Army Commander George Washington might be risking another major betrayal and traitorous act with Seagraves as potentially the latest version of the disgraced Dr. Benjamin Church. Church is still under investigation for espionage. Holt warns Washington to be on the lookout.

See the thread running through Lovell’s, Freeman’s, and Holt’s actions 250 years ago today. They’ve reduced everything down to one basic, George Washington. They’ve got a problem and they’ve got the same destination of an answer—the man occupying the heaquarters tent of the Continental Army.

* * * * * * *

A heavy man on a horse—that’s the basic focus of George Washington’s thoughts today 250 years ago. Washington knows the only thing that can defeat the British in Boston is artillery. Without proper cannon firing on them from the high ground outside the port, the Redcoats can stay there as long as they like. This means that the community which has often served as a sort of center of colonial-rights protests and activism would stay in British control.

So Washington has sent his new artillery chief, Henry Knox, west to Fort Ticonderoga to see if he can retrieve the cannon seized there in the spring and, somehow, bring all of it back east to use against Boston. The three-hundred pound Knox faces a task far larger than himself—winter woods, winter rivers and creeks and streams, winter slopes up and winter slopes down, winter ice and snow and temperatures. Can Knox make it happen? No one knows as he’s one day into the mission, one day west of Washington’s tent. There’s a long way to go for the heavy man on the horse.

If they fail, if they fall, the army could wither and the cause could die. You don’t get more basic than that.

* * * * * * *

An anonymous writer called “A Soldier” writes 250 years ago this week: “A few more noble exertions…a few more spirited struggles, and we secure our liberties; a few more successful battles, and we are a free and happy people.”

The basics of how all this happens? When your most commonly used word is “few”, the basics are always ignored.

* * * * * * *

The beliefs of “A Soldier” seem centered on Boston where the two main bodies of the British Army and Continental Army are facing off. The implication is that the basic reality of war is where the two armies are. But war has also come this week to Fort Ninety-Six in South Carolina, Fort Johnston in North Carolina, and the region of Kemp’s Landing in Virginia and indeed throughout much of the colony’s coastline. And to the north, from Chesapeake coastline to St. Lawrence River bank in Canada, Benedict Arnold and his 700 men have demanded Quebec’s surrender. British General Guy Carleton loudly refused, and Arnold and his force have left to a new camp outside the fortified city.

A new basic emerges at these scenes of violence and bloodshed, actual and potential alike.

* * * * * * *

Mary Robins lives on the eastern shore of Maryland. She has been one of the witnesses and testifiers in a large investigation of pro-imperial organizing and war preparations on the eastern shore. Members of Maryland’s provincial assembly have listened to Mary recount her husband’s activities. Her story points to his involvement in efforts to recruit and outfit a pro-England unit.

Meanwhile, the provincial assembly of South Carolina have authorized printing of two-shilling/six-pence notes. The notes will have value only so long as the issuing source—the assembly—exists as a viable entity.

For many, a basic of life is the relationship between a wife and husband. For some, the value of money in the marketplace has a similar quality. For everyone 250 years ago this week, the basic is reclaiming attention.

Also

In a House of Commons debate in London, England, Edmund Burke attempts to reintroduce the basics of the war breaking out in America. Burke strives to show that the only way forward is concessions from both the imperial and colonial sides. He’s trying to find how to build a basis for concessions from the current situation. Prime Minister Lord North, however, wants nothing to do with Burke’s ideas. North calls for a Parliamentary ban on all colonial trade during the present rebellion.

* * * * * * *

Formal addresses to King George III arrive by the day at Westminster. The aldermen of Forfar ask the king to continue waging an aggressive war against the colonial rebels; a similar address is sent by representatives of Cambridge, England.

* * * * * * *

Catholic priest Father Vincente Fuster of San Diego Mission looks out uneasily onto the coastal plain. It’s not even been a month since 500 Kumeyaay Natives set fire to the mission in an uprising against the Spanish colonialists. A combination of friars, priests, soldiers, and some friendly Natives succeeded in putting out the blaze. Fuster can still envision the slicing sounds made by the hundreds of arrows shot into the mission during the fire. Plans to expand the size and scope of the mission, however, will continue going forward. The Kumeyaay Natives will be subjected to even harsher efforts to force them to labor for the mission’s occupants.

For You Now

There’s basic, and then there’s basic.

We’ve been seeing the basics of political philosophy and political life for more than a year of Redux entries. Since late 1773, town hall meetings, debates, resolutions, speeches, sermons, essays, and more have delved into rights, freedoms, and liberties. People have invoked the writings of Locke and Montesquieu, Seneca and Cicero, and Trenchard and Gordon, as well as life-lessons from Algernon Sidney and John Hampden. The list goes on and on. God, Nature, antiquity, and ancient British lore have been seen as sources of basic principles.

But now we’re seeing a different kind of basic. It’s the basic of how living actually gets done—by having people show up and people doing their work. That’s what we’re seeing in this Redux with references to delegates at the Continental Congress and soldiers with the Continental Army. You have to show up and roll up your sleeves. That’s basic.

Part of the reality of all the stuff swirling in our lives is that it obscures sight of the basic. The barrage of stuff pulls our eyes onto other things when we’d be much better served by remembering the basics behind the stuff. Yes, that can pertain to ideas, values, and principles. More than that, though, it can also pertain to the basics of basic. You can’t get anything done if you don’t have people with you and they don’t decide to get to it.

And by attending to the basics, by doing them effectively and well, bit by bit a sense of accomplishment grows and with it, a source of inspiration gains a hold. Stack enough inches and increments on top of each other and soon you find a height.

The basics can yield a lot more than the baseline.

Suggestion

Take a moment to consider: in the chatter and bustling and discourse of our nation, are you hearing about the basics?

(Your River)