Americanism Redux
October 2, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
After what happened to me today, well, I just don’t know where it goes from here. But tomorrow is coming, and I need to know what I’m taking with me, from here to there.
Yes, today is about over and I’m heading into tomorrow with…what?
* * * * * * *
The tears are still flowing and still drying on the face of Abigail Adams in Braintree, Massachusetts. Her mother has been dead for a day, 250 years ago. Abigail’s heart is broken from the loss of her beloved parent, the woman she could always count on for love, support, advice, guidance.
Beyond the farm that she and her absent husband John own—he’s a Massachusetts delegate at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia—Abigail knows that almost every family in the area is suffering from sickness that has killed dozens of people.
Every cough from their young children fills her with horror. Who can tell—tomorrow could bring another family tragedy, another new grave with the name “Adams” chiseled in the stone.
Dear mother, I miss you.
* * * * * * *
North of Braintree, in Watertown, is Hannah Winthrop. She’s watching closely the outbreak of sickness that so worries Abigail Adams. Hannah says, “I often wish for that Equanimity of Soul…(that) Can Survey present and future in a brighter mirror, supported by that golden Anchor hope, that exhilarating guest which alone can keep us steady through the many storms we must expect in our passage through this mortal life”.
It’s hope that Hannah wants, hope for the trials of tomorrow ahead.
* * * * * * *
An unknown man winces at the pain in his right hand.
He hasn’t really used right hand since injuring his right wrist back in May when a group of armed colonists seized Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York. He’d like to have joined one of the colonial units that are off for Canada under General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold. But with only one functioning arm and hand, it’s no good thinking about joining.
So with a quill pen in his left hand he scrawls out a letter to General Philip Schulyer in Albany, New York. He figures the wealthy and influential general can advocate for him with the Second Continental Congress and convince them to give him money as a token of gratitude for his injury and incapacitation. After all, he served for those hours at Ticonderoga on behalf of the Cause embodied by the Continental Congress.
He figures they owe him tomorrow.
* * * * * * *
Caleb Haskell is exhausted. Everything aches—his hands arms, legs, shoulders, and back. He’s also soaking wet from the eight hours he’s spent today, 250 years ago in the cold water of the Kennebec River. He and his comrades in Benedict Arnold’s military expedition to Quebec have been slogging up the river, half-hauling and half-wrestling large canoe-like vessels every inch of the way.
Strikingly, he’s upbeat: “Now we are learning to be soldiers”, writes Caleb in his diary. Armed with such an attitude, he sees tomorrow as the frame of a better day.
* * * * * * *
(Cummings Point)
There are three canoes coming out of the water at Cummings Point in Charleston harbor, South Carolina. Damp from sweat and salt water, the colonists in the canoes had survived a cannon attack from the British ship “Tamar”. They were approaching the British vessel to unleash a volley of musket shot in the latest exchange of fire in the harbor. At the order of Tamar’s commander Edward Thornbrough, British cannoneers had fired six-pound iron balls at the colonists. They’d fled in their canoes and today, 250 years ago, are safe again on the grass-lined beaches.
Tomorrow will likely be another test of who actually controls Charleston, the British imperial authority or the newly created provincial assembly.
* * * * * * *
(JH Holt’s work)
Similar tensions exist in a similar port town. In Norfolk, Virginia, a group of fifteen Redcoats who land on shore from a nearby ship. The Redcoats have two targets: the newspaper printer John Hunter Holt and his printing press. Outraged by a wave of essays and articles in Holt’s newspaper ridiculing British authority and military power, the Redcoats seized the printing press and carried it back to their ship. They wanted Holt more than the machine, but the young printer slipped away in the darkness. Rowing back to their ship, the Redcoats begin plans to print their own essays to humiliate and satirize their opponents.
But wait, did anyone remember to grab a bucket of ink? No, they didn’t.
It’s on to tomorrow and whatever Plan B is.
* * * * * * *
It’s the word “rebel” that has upset many in the Continental Army’s command. General George Washington and his colleagues are hearing that British officers in Boston abuse local people living there as “rebels”, objects who can be mistreated without regard to rules, protocols, and customs associated with formal wartime opponents from organized, legitimate governments. The Redcoats regarded the French in past wars as honorable and gentlemenly. The colonists who actively oppose British rule seem less protected by these mutually understood restraints.
For all anyone knows, tomorrow will bring new reports of “rebel” mistreatment.
* * * * * * *
(none built yet but the order is coming)
Preside/nt of the Second Continental Congress, John Hancock of Massachusetts, wrote five days ago to George Washington and asked for the general’s recommendations on how the Continental Army can absorb those colonial units with enlistment terms expiring at year’s end. It’s a chance to broaden the Continental force. Let the delegates in Philadelphia know the rations needed, the costs, and so on, wrote Hancock. Also, Hancock instructed Washington to start preparing soldiers’ quarters for the winter and perhaps longer into next spring and summer. But do not, Hancock warned, make any changes in officers’ appointments. That can wait since “the New Modelling the whole is so soon Expected…”
That “New Modelling” is put to the test this week when South Carolina delegate Edward Rutledge calls for the removal of all black soldiers from the new Continental Army. His fellow delegates from southern colonies are quick to support his idea. At the same time, an equally powerful opposition from all non-southern delegates rises to shout down Rutledge’s proposal. For the moment, the sizzling issue burns out, leaving only smoke to hint of the fire below. Nothing more is done.
Today is one day closer to the much-anticipated New Modelling or, at least, the building of soldiers’ wooden huts for the winter ahead.
* * * * * * *
(RH Lee)
Richard Henry Lee has some good news. He’s learned the latest observations among people in England is that the enemies of American colonial rights are on the verge of political defeat and “total overthrow.” Among key segments of the British public, efforts to support the American colonial cause must be having an effect on government policy.
Tomorrow can expect to see signs of positive change.
Also
(one side of Bristol)
A few days ago, a group of merchants from Bristol, concluded their meeting in the port town of southwestern England. They discussed and, at last, voted to endorse several “resolves”. They view the current conflict in America as disastrous for international trade in general and their livelihoods in particular. They signed a petition asking for British King George III to “interpose” himself in the clash and stop the slide into a “ruinous civil war”.
These merchants hope their collective voice will be enough to sway the British monarch toward their way of pro-colonial thinking.
* * * * * * *
(another side of Bristol)
The following day, elsewhere in Bristol, another group of residents made plans to hold their own meeting. They are in total disagreement with the merchants. These residents want King George III to adopt even harsher and more severe policies toward the resistent colonists in America.
“Double-down on the aggressiveness” would be how a later era might phrase it. Whatever the wording, the anti-merchant group wants nothing to do with reconciliation and negotiation in the colonial dispute.
One town, one king, two opposite viewpoints, and a thousand potential directions that the current turmoil can take.
For You Now
Today gives me something to take into tomorrow.
For Abigail Adams grief will be carried into tomorrow. She’s reeling from grief unlike any she’s known before, her sorrow over her deceased mother. Everywhere around her life goes on unchanged. That makes the grief harder to bear.
Hannah Winthrop would tell her to hold tight to the anchor she calls hope. Hannah and Abigail share a spiritual faith that serves as the source of hope. Hope without a source is a husk without a seed.
Caleb Haskell is taking into a new experience into tomorrow. He’s convinced that the accumulation of these new experiences are making him into something different. A week ago he was a man in an army. Now, he feels different, adding one more soldier to the ranks of the army around him.
John Hancock wants tomorrow to have more than new soldiers; he wants a New Army in it. He seeks the re-creation of a spiritually charged force of 125 years ago called the New Model Army. That was a revolutionary Puritan force led by Oliver Cromwell, which sought to overturn the existing order in 17th century England. Cromwell had failed, mostly because of God’s disfavor and a lack of virtue, in the eyes of Hancock and others. That Hancock and his colleagues have coined a new term—New Modelling—tells you all you need to know about their fervor in seeking such a change in the days ahead.
You take something from today into your tomorrow of the next 24 hours, and the next, and the next. You’re wise if you can find a moment to stop, reflect, and know at least some of what it is you’re carrying with you. For what you can identify, even if it’s just feeling with your fingers inside your backpack, knowing what’s with you gives you a better chance at knowing how you’ll react after the sun comes up.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: so, what is it?–what’s the thing from today that you know you’ll carry into tomorrow?
(Your River)
