Americanism Redux
October 9, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
A piece of wood can break cleanly, or splinter into pieces. The one feels smooth and straight, the other feels ragged, jagged, and a bit of a mess.
Today, 250 years ago, the splintering has begun.
* * * * * * *
(Quamino)
John Quamino waits for his scheduled time with college president John Witherspoon. They’ll do what they’ve been doing—working on John’s mastery of the Bible and Christian theology. Sprinkled in will be lessons of English, John’s second language after Akan, his native language before he was sold into enslavement in western Africa. President Witherspoon is eager to send John back home from the College of New Jersey to spread the Christian gospel.
Quamino doesn’t know it but in about a week he’ll learn that today his former enslaver and the man who agreed to accept John’s lottery winnings in exchange for John’s freedom, that man will be the target of public hatred and disdain. He is Benjamin Church, John’s ex-enslaver, and he’s just confessed to George Washington of being a traitor to the cause of colonial rights, a secret transmitter of information and intelligence to British officials and commanders.
The irony is as thick as the autumn leaves falling outside the college president’s door.
John Quamino will be forever free. Benjamin Church will be forever condemned.
* * * * * * *
(Lee)
One of the first people to hear about Church’s confession is Charles Lee, a Continental Army general and member of George Washington’s core team of military leaders.
Lee worries how colonial-rights supporters will take the shocking news of the traitorous Church. Lee perceives that a cause and movement dependent on a shared belief and value of civic virtue will be shattered by Church’s confession.
With this expectation in his mind and heart, Lee begins advocating for confiscation of all property held by the “enemies” of the American cause. In his view, a clean sweep could put the pieces back together.
* * * * * * *
(Poor’s hometown)
Also in immediate range of the news about Church is 26-year old Salem Poor. Salem Poor is a free black man with a public reputation utterly the opposite of Church’s: twelve officers in the Continental Army or Massachusetts provincial militia have nominated Poor to receive formal commendation and recognition for bravery during the combat that occurred in Charles Town, a part of the Battle of Bunker Hill. The Massachusetts Provincial Assembly is ready to issue Poor’s commendation.
A resident of Andover and now the town’s most decorated soldier, Poor decides to re-enlist in the 5th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army. People like Poor can help repair the public damage done by Church.
* * * * * * *
(Adams later)
Like Poor and Church, John Adams is a native of Massachusetts. But he’s in Philadelphia now, seated as one of his home colony’s delegates at the Second Continental Congress. A few days ago, Adams reflected on the current moment and in so doing, he revealed the resilience that would counteract Church’s conduct.
“The Situation of Things,” said Adams, “is so alarming, that it is our Duty to prepare our Minds and Hearts for every Event, even the Worst.”
“From my earliest entrance into Life, I have been engaged in the public Cause of America: and from first to last I have had upon my Mind, a strong Impression, that Things would be wrought up to their present Crisis. I saw from the Beginning that the Controversy was of such a Nature that it never would be settled…The Thought that we might be driven to the sad Necessity of breaking our Connection with G(reat) B(ritain) exclusive of the Carnage and Destruction which it was easy to see must attend the separation, always gave me a great deal of Grief…But all these must go and my Life too before I can surrender the Right of my Country to a free Constitution. I dare not consent to it.”
Whether a clean break or splintered pieces, Church be damned.
* * * * * * *
(plus 39)
The “carnage and destruction” to which Adams referred is ocean-going today, 250 years ago.
They bleat. They eat. They pee and poop. They are forty sheep penned up on one of the British ships led by Captain James Wallace. The sheep on the ship are the outcome of a violent negotiation between Captain Wallace and local residents of Bristol, Rhode Island. Wallace’s ship “Rose” had cannonaded the town for ninety minutes after refusals to send supplies to the British vessel. Wallace had also ordered a British landing party to destroy property and intimidate people in the town. The forty-sheep agreement—the town’s ransom payment, in essence—results in the Rose’s departure from the Bristol wharf.
Is the town now safe? Ask the sheep before they become mutton.
Meanwhile, another British naval commander, Captain Henry Mowat, is in charge of a five-ship expedition sailing north from Boston. The “task force” is three days out of port, with a bearing for Falmouth (of future Maine). Mowat has been here before, engaged in naval strikes and counter-strikes several weeks earlier. Mowat is eager to get back at it, targeting Falmouth with the cannon of his ship “Canceaux” and the rest of his flotilla.
How long can wooden structures hold up against a naval attack? Fast-flying iron balls can do a lot of damage. Fast-moving flames and cinders can do even more. The destruction that John Adams envisioned may override the wreckage that Benjamin Church produced.
* * * * * * *
(what’s in Lockwood’s wallet)
Some men share a plight from war in ways other than battle.
Nathan Lockwood can’t get the money he’s owed as a soldier. He joined the 4th New York Regiment and now he learns from his commanding officer that there isn’t any money available to pay the men’s expected wages. His morale will be weakened long before any report comes to Lake Champlain in northern New York about Benjamin Church’s betrayal. For every broken promise, Lockwood grows a little more cynical, a little more distrusting.
Peter Harris is a Native Catawba warrior in South Carolina. He and his fellow villagers are in the midst of debating whether or not to support the colonial cause. Some of Harris’s friends in the village have accepted a fistful of paper currency in joining the “Rovers” unit organized by Samuel Boykin. The outcome of the debate is muddied by a harsh fever that has decimated the Catawba village. The more time spent with white colonists, it seems, the more likely sickness and illness afflict the Catawba. Peter Harris hasn’t made up his mind about joining the Rovers just yet. The bad health around him makes deciding all the harder.
* * * * * * *
(Billy, later)
15-year old William Temple Franklin is in the middle of a difficult situation, too. He’s caught between his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin, and his father, William Franklin and their angry disagreement over the imperial-colonial dispute. He’s living with grandfather but trying to keep in touch with his father, writing letter after letter to him.
Billy Temple Franklin finally receives a reply today from his father William in New Jersey, who’s under close watch by anti-British activists. William is upset by reports that Billy is unhealthy and depressed. He wants his son to get more exercise—dancing and fencing are two recommendations—and also to work on improving his letter-writing. Father advises son to write as if he’s actually speaking with the person reading the letter. Regardless of surrounding events, a parent often cannot stop giving advice.
* * * * * * *
250 years ago and you’re trying to decide whether to gather the splinters up or let them blow away in the wind.
Also
(Strachan)
“I own that I never thought of seeing what I now see, or that Things would come to this pass.”
In London, England William Strachan writes these words to Billy’s grandfather, Benjamin Franklin.
Strachan states that he’s heard about Franklin’s acceptance of the position of Postmaster General for the Continental Congress. That’s sad new, concludes Strachan, because it shows unmistakably that Franklin has made his final pick—he’s picking the American side, he’s signaling that the British Empire will not stay together voluntarily.
Strachan also lays the blame on the American side. Factions and small groups determined to break the British Empire have succeeded. They’ve opened the door for people like Franklin to accept appointments and positions no one thought possible in the past. They, Strachan asserts, are guilty of the unfolding disaster.
* * * * * * *
(MN Khan)
In Rajasthan, British India, Mirza Najaf Khan continues his work today at reforming and rebuilding the armed forces of Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. Khan’s innovations include the use of elephants for transport, flintlock rifles to be used in tandem with curved swords, and expansion of infantry as the key element of combat. Perhaps these efforts will somehow reverse the slide of Mughal power in contrast to the British East India Company. Khan believes a more European style of armed power can restore the Emperor’s influence.
For You Now
The manner of splintering affects the method of repair.
What is it that has come apart?
In today’s entry, it’s hard to argue with Charles Lee about the centrality of virtue in the American cause and the subsequent devastation from Benjamin Church’s unvirtuous conduct. If Church can’t be trusted, who else can’t be trusted? You can easily hear people asking that question.
You also see the other end, too. Our two individual soldiers, Nathan Lockwood and Peter Harris, and their problems with basic material realities of monetary payment on one hand and physical health on the other. When either is lacking, the state of day-to-day life becomes disorderly, uneven, or worse. It’s more about fundamental needs more than foundational trust.
More chow than Church.
John Adams touches on a higher truth about splintering. He goes beyond fundamental and foundational, beyond the basics of getting through the day and the display of righteous living. Adams expresses what Abraham Lincoln will later call the “sheet anchor” of American life and human life—the consent in self-government. Adams bundles it up in the phrase “free Constitution”, the denial of which he refuses to “consent to…”
A key leadership point will be the next step after the gut-punch of Benjamin Church’s deceit. I wonder if a good direction to pursue is not in suspicions over who-else, but rather to realize that positive examples of goodness are discoverable in unexpected or under-appreciated places. For every Church, there’s a Poor and a Quamino, for every Church, a teen-aged Franklin and an old-man Franklin.
Among the splinters are the materials to build it better than before. A leader will be faced with seeing them and picking them up, or ignoring them and thrashing about.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: in whatever you see as falling apart, can you see something else coming together?
(Your River)
