Americanism Redux
September 25, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1775
Close your eyes. Try to imagine what it will feel like when a leather whip slices and cuts into the skin of your bare back. Thirty-nine times. Will you scream out? Will you cry? Will you curse and spit?
It’s 250 years ago, today.
* * * * * * *
(a later version of the Hannah)
Samuel Stinness is wondering about all these things. He’s also thinking of what he’s seen and heard about enslaved black men, women, and children who’ve endured whippings, who’ve felt the lash, the lash, the lash.
Samuel is 25-years old and a native of Massachusetts. He’s one of the crew of the colonial ship “Hannah” which has captured an enemy British vessel. In the moment, Stinness and his mates assumed all the money—prizes, booty, and the like—made from selling the goods on the captured Redcoat vessel would belong to them. Never thought twice about it; it’s how things were done on the sea. Well, that’s not what the Continental Army’s command structure had assumed, not by a long shot. It’s also not what that same Continental command, which includes George Washington at its top, believed the Continental Congress in Philadelphia would assume, either. They’re aligned in utter opposition to Stinness’s assumptions—Continental military command and Continental Congress oppose such ground-level actions and reactions from the Hannah’s crew.
When Stinness and his mates found out, they tried to seize the goods themselves through violence, intimidation, and whatever else was required. They…”mutinied.” Now they’ve been charged, convicted, and sentenced.
Stinness keeps his eyes closed, wondering how the whipping will feel.
* * * * * * *
(Ethan Allen)
Six-feet tall and thickly muscled, Colonel Ethan Allen closes his eyes as he sits in a confined space in Montreal, Canada, along the St. Lawrence River. Allen is now a prisoner-of-war—the first colonist holding an officer’s rank to be captured by the British in a battle.
It was a battle Allen led, maybe foolishly, in an attempt to seize Montreal from the British with his two hundred men from northern New England. He’d been expecting some reinforcements but—patience isn’t one of Allen’s strong-suits—he said the heck with it and charged with his force at the British at Longue-Pointe on the north side of the St. Lawrence River at Montreal. Canadian militia led by Captain Walter Butler defeated Allen’s attack and in the smoke and confusion, grabbed Allen as a p-o-w.
What will my life as captive be like tomorrow in Montreal, wonders Allen. Will I be exchanged for some British officer who’s captured by the Americans? Is there such a person?
Allen finds comfort in a soft prayer to his “Great Jehovah.”
* * * * * * *
(Josiah Quincy, the father)
Josiah Quincy lives near Boston, where the climate of war has taken over his outlook and mindset.
Josiah blames the imperial crisis for the death of his son five months ago from tuberculosis. Young Quincy was returning from England, having failed to persuade imperial policymakers to stop the drive to war. The death occurred when Quincy’s ship was in sight of the New England coast. The elder, surviving Quincy now serves on the Massachusetts “Committee of Safety”. That service is a silent, embittered commemoration of his son’s sacrifice.
Josiah Quincy has been exploring ways to defend the coastline and waterways north and south of Boston. He’s a methodical thinker, careful both to details and to connections that join one detail to another. He recommends the use of row galleys, small vessels powered by oars and suited to shallower shoreline depths.
But today, like many days, Josiah lapses into emotional outbursts about corruption-oriented British politicians and, sinking further, evil-inspired colonists who supported British power and policy. It’s this latter group that Josiah hates and detests. He prays for their fiery, vicious deaths, payback for his dead son.
Josiah clutches a single hope in pulling himself out of despondency—the hope that virtuous people can triumph over evil if, and only if, they avoid political partyism. That’s Josiah’s definition of virtue.
* * * * * * *
(where Adams sits)
With Samuel Stinness the charged mutineer in a Continental Army jail, Ethan Allen the prisoner-of-war in a Montreal jail, and Josiah Quincy the Committee of Safety member in an emotional jail, John Adams sits in the large meeting room of the Pennsylvania State House. Adams is one of the Massachusetts delegates to the Second Continental Congress. He listens, hears, ponders. Never quick with a compliment, Adams is about to offer a rarity for him—positive, encouraging words.
“This Congress, I assure you,” he writes to a friend a few hours later, “feels the Spirit of War, more intimately than they did before the Adjournment. They set about Preparation for it, with Seriousness, and in Earnest.”
Does that bode well for Samuel Stinness, Ethan Allen, Josiah Quincy, and people like them? Hard to say, but if crusty John Adams is saying good things, then it’s a solid step in the right direction for this entity of American Union called the Second Continental Congress.
* * * * * * *
(what they’re arguing about)
That doesn’t mean things are perfect or even effective in the Second Continental Congress. Not at all. The topic of clothing for the Continental Army soldiers points to this truth.
During a session in this week’s meetings, the delegates grapple with the topic of military clothing and uniforms. Sixteen delegates conduct a back-and-forth point and counterpoint on cost, fabric, location of vendor, process of paying the vendor, allowability of lower prices for officers, and on and on. An opinion, a rebuttal, a question. Hand up and a statement. Heads nod, heads shake, eyes dart, mumbled sidetalk. Hand up and a reply. Heads nod, heads shake, eyes dart, mumbled sidetalk. Hand up and a retort. Heads nod, heads shake, eyes dart, mumbled sidetalk.
Like before, John Adams sits, watches, and looks. He takes notes. And then he writes to another friend, this time with greater negativity: “It is almost impossible to move any Thing but you instantly see private Friendships and Enmities, and provincial Views and Prejudices, intermingle in the Consultation.”
* * * * * * *
(one of the camps that needs a bridge)
This week, a lengthy letter is being written to the preside/nt of the Second Continental Congress, John Hancock. The author of the letter is Continental Army commanding general George Washington, seated at his headquarters outside enemy-held Boston. Washington describes multiple issues that will need resolution among Hancock, Adams, and the other delegates in Philadelphia. He emphasizes that one of the issues is how to transition—to bridge—the short-term volunteers from New England local units into longer-term soldiers in the still-new Continental Army. It’s delicate and potentially explosive, especially with the mood of so many men like Samuel Stinness and his fellow mutineers.
* * * * * * *
(Henry Laurens, the father)
Henry Laurens worries about his son. Like Josiah Quincy I and Josiah Quincy II were several months ago, Henry and John Laurens are separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Henry as John’s father is in Charleston, South Carolina. John, Henry’s son is in England.
Henry writes to his son and urges him to keep his focus on his legal studies, education, and training. Henry also wants John to pay special attention to his siblings who are there with him. Unwritten but in bold invisible print is Henry’s sub-message: there’s plenty of time for other things at later moments, but now is the time for the basics, for learning and for family.
Henry Laurens adds to his son’s letter a description of coastal defenses in his home area, in this case, Charleston harbor.
* * * * * * *
A pair of fathers-and-sons. The fathers, Henry and Josiah Sr in America; the sons, John and Josiah Jr, in England, the ocean between. The Laurens of South Carolina, the Quincys of Massachusetts, the land between. A world gone to crisis blamed for death in one family, and a world going to war inviting death to another family.
250 years ago today.
Also
Today in a pair of workshops, the highly skilled craftsmen and artists are at their work. One group is in China. The other group is in France.
They are working on the same project, commissioned by Hongli, the 61-year old Qianlong Emperor of Han China, the fifth in the Qing period. Hongli wants replicas made of ten pieces of enamelware flower baskets that originated many centuries ago in the Qing dynasty. He’s using artistic talent based in both East and West.
* * * * * * *
(a stretch of Tejas road)
A group of twenty-five Spanish soldiers begin a journey today toward their next assignment. Led by a sergeant, they’ve been ordered to guard a stretch of desert road between Laredo and Las Iglesias in Tejas of New Spain. The purpose is to deter Native attacks on people using the road, especially those travelers affiliated with Spanish missions and presidios in the region.
The twenty-five men will see brilliant skies, sweeping vistas, and lots of dust. They’ll live 99% boredom and routine, and 1% shock and terror. It’s a soldier’s life on a desert road at the edge of empire.
* * * * * * *
The Cabinet of British Prime Minister Lord North has put itself on notice. With King George III having declared the American colonies in open rebellion and called for monitoring internal sympathizers offering secret aid from the British Isles, Cabinet members feel compelled to make their support of the war-based policy better known and appreciated.
They state to North their total commitment to wage war “with the utmost vigor.” They’re on the record.
* * * * * * *
(the original Casca)
Knowing that King George III’s rebellion proclamation has that (often overlooked) part about domestic sympathizers within England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, the writer of a newspaper essay series called “The Crisis” has used fake names in publishing the installments. This decision is all the more crucial now as a consistent supporter of colonial resistance and opponent of British imperial policy.
Today’s Number 36 begins:
“The best of Kings destroys us like a Flood,
Each Morning washes in fresh Streams of Blood;
Like Pious Nero mounted on a Throne.
Thinks he’s a God, and all Mankind his Own.”
Signed, Casca
For You Now
We’ll go by level.
At the personal level, one father and son can’t return to the life they knew. It’s gone. The other father and son can avoid such a fate, but likely only with accepting a life they haven’t yet known. Their life will change further if they separate even slightly in their interests and aims. And what are the odds that a father and son will diverge in such ways? You know the answer.
If war widens, lengthens, or deepens, the personal level has the potential to shatter, to re-create into something starkly different. That’s already happening with Samuel Stinness and Ethan Allen.
Go up a few levels to the collective, to the volcanic peak of American Union, the Second Continental Congress. It’s spewing ash and rock, blasting sides of earth outward. In this instance nutrients fill the air, in that instance toxic fumes billow like clouds. The delegates turn to face a common direction while gripping separate objects of comfort. Tectonic plates wage war beneath the crust.
Rise another level to the exalted. Cabinet members of a British king promise war actions. Craftsmen paid by a Chinese emperor polish fine enamel. These are old places, of silent and thinning air, of plantless soil and cliff-faces high above a desert floor and ant-sized people along a lonely road.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider—what would you want to say to Samuel Stinness as he waits for the whipping?
(Your River)
