Americanism Redux
April 2, your today, on the journey to the American Founding, 250 years ago, in 1776
Before you begin, please watch my very brief introductory thoughts…
This time of year, look for those little signs that, yes, the old season is gone and the new season is here.
Buds and blossoms, shoots and sprouts, the new is small and the small is new.
It’s today, April 2, 250 years ago, in 1776.
* * * * * * *
(Abigail’s)
Two homes stand far apart, one in stony Braintree, Massachusetts and one in riverside Virginia, along the Potomac. The earliest moments of spring surround the leaders of these homes, each of whom sees a different path ahead—a world ahead and a world behind.
Abigail Adams on the farm in Braintree worries about the Trout family next door. Grief and suffering fill the Trout home. Illness has killed two of George Trout’s children in three days. She’s tending to the surviving father while praying she’s not bringing the illness back to her own four kids. Whenever she returns to the Adams farm, she’s also facing the task of fulfilling her absent husband’s wishes: to master the skill of making salt petre to help the Union’s war effort against the British. It’s going slowly, to be charitable.
But worry and woe aside, she feels more alive, vibrant, hopeful, and optimistic than ever before. She’s giddy—the only word for it—about the prospects of American independence, which will surely be declared any day now. With this independence, a new world can be made. She’s quite assertive with her husband John, having written him at the Continental Congress this week “to remember the ladies” and reorient laws and legal procedures to reflect a more equal basis between men and women in the not-yet-announced independency of the Union. She knows that now is the time to plant new ways, new attitudes, and new cultures in the homes that comprise the Union.
Running through Abigail’s euphoria is a thread of suspicion toward a particular part of the Union—enslavers from the south. She’s disbelieving that they can champion liberty and freedom on one side and deny it on the other. She knows it’s not impossible; some New Englanders do it, too. But she can’t totally quiet her doubts, doubts that grind against the door of a new future she sees for American people, families, and households.
* * * * * * *
(George’s)
George Mason is one such southerner, and today, 250 years ago, he’s writing a long letter to his friend and neighbor, (General) George Washington. George M congratulates and praises George W, wonders if the British are coming to the Chesapeake Bay after evacuating Boston, and describes his exhaustive activities locally on behalf of the Union, despite being seriously ill. The list is so long, in fact, that if perhaps Abigail Adams had read it, she would reconcile this southerner’s blessing and curse.
But it’s Mason’s depiction of the future condition he now envisions that separates him from Abigail: a return to the time when George M and George W were at Mt. Vernon, resting in the shade, relishing relaxation, and enjoying “the Sweets of domestic life.” All these blessings, thinks Mason wistfully, might one day be passed along “to our Posterity, unimpaired, (which)…we have received from our Ancestors.”
* * * * * * *
(Bunch of Grapes)
George Washington is finally breathing easier. Definitive reports confirm the British military and vessels have left the waters off Boston. They’re gone. Celebrations of this fact continue for Washington in Boston, including the return of what’s been called “the Thursday lecture” for the past 140 years. Reverend Andrew Eliot delivered the sermon with Washington and colleagues in a Boston church—the text was about the unshakeable community of Zion and the debt owed to the commanding general—and afterwards savored food and drinks at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern. The commendations are still pouring in to Washington, the latest being from the Massachusetts General Court. Washington finds himself recounting for the fifth, tenth, and fifteenth time the story of the British evacuation from Boston in messages dictated to his aides and distributed to various local officials. By now, a memory of the story is engrained in him and in the public. News of the evacuation carries west to Albany, New York where Continental General Philip Schuyler speculates it will calm bad feelings between Oneida and Cayuga tribes in western New York.
* * * * * * *
Regardless of how engrained the evacuation story is by this week, it still lags far behind that still being achieved by Thomas Paine’s booklet “Common Sense.” It’s now in multiple printings because inventories fly off the store shelves. In communities like Hartford, Connecticut the title has become the favored theme of formal toasts—”raise our glasses to Common Sense!”—at gatherings, events, and social occasions. Further, George Washington tells a friend that “My Countrymen I know, from their form of Government, and steady Attachment heretofore to Royalty, will come reluctantly into the Idea of Independency, but time, and persecution, brings many wonderful things to pass; and by private letters which I have lately received from Virginia, I find common sense is working a powerful change there in the minds of many Men.” Fresh printings for a rabid reader-base, toasts offered at parties, the contents of personal letters, these are the power-packed small and new signs of Paine’s printed work as April begins.
* * * * * * *
The shift in men’s outlooks is on Washington’s mind for another reason.
Washington knows the truth.
“No Man perhaps since the first Institution of Armys ever commanded one under more difficult Circumstances than I have done,” he confesses in a letter to his younger brother, “to enumerate the particulars would fill a volume—many of my difficulties and distresses were of so peculiar a cast that in order to conceal them from the Enemy, I was obliged to conceal them from my friends, indeed from my own Army, thereby subjecting my Conduct to interpretations unfavorable to my Character….”
He’s that much more grateful for the praise and commendations after the reoccupation of Boston. “In retirement,” Washington concludes, “(these) will afford many comfortable reflections.”
Retirement? In a way, Washington shares Abigail Adams’s dreamy vision of the future ahead.
* * * * * * *
It seems a bumpy road between now and the future.
The shift of the Continental Army’s central focus and energy from Boston to New York City is ragged and unraveling. In chasing the next British target, the Union’s central military force seems to be losing its coherence.
Take a breath—here you go.
James Wadsworth, a Connecticut officer, reports to Washington that his units have, without orders or oversight, split into small groups and on their own chosen the routes, manner, and timetables of moving southwest toward New York City. General William Heath has command of another force traveling to New York and discovers they can’t cross over the Thames River in New London, Connecticut because of low water levels and unpredictable winds. When they finally get to New York City, Heath will delete a negative-sounding part of his report to Washington and replace it with bland, uninformative language to disguise his opinion of disarray there. This doesn’t stop another general, William Alexander, from giving a completely opposing and utterly gleeful report to Washington, ending with Alexander’s hope that the British actually land there so he can reach his goal of preventing “any foot hold in this part of the world.” Rhode Island Governor Nicholas Cooke writes on one day in a panic to say that British vessels have been spotted off Newport, only to write the following day that “never mind”, it was a rumor. And two local leaders north of Boston are left waiting for someone to tell them if the Continental Army, the Continental Congress, or the Continental anything will adopt their plan to invade Nova Scotia.
The integrity and credibility of the Union’s armed force soften in the spring thaw.
* * * * * * *
In New York City, the small and new signs point in a bad direction. John Jay is staking his hopes that a high number of local merchants will answer the Continental Congress’s call for privateers; Jay’s tone reveals more than a little doubt. His doubt comes from another quarter: no one has answered the call to start making salt petre for ammunition. His doubt deepens with local decisions to print more paper currency to pay for war costs rather than impose higher taxes and avoid calamitous inflation. Jay fears that social ties in the community are weakening as relationships narrow to no further than lines drawn by brutish self-interest. His dark views echoed by another New Yorker, Hugh Hughes, Jay’s assessments portend a very different war setting in New York City than it was in Boston.
Meanwhile, a group of five men get to New York City during this week. They were grumpy on arrival. They were grumpier on departure. They’re a raw stew of people with some family, some neighbors, some strangers, some local, some foreign, some famous, some unknown. To put it charitably, they are an assortment: Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of the Continental Congress; Father John Carroll, a Catholic priest; and Baron Von Woedtke, a newly arrived German immigrant and newly appoint Continental Army general. They’re supposed to go north to Canada and convince the Canadians to reconsider joining the American Union. The problem is that they don’t travel well together, have unmatched talents and skills, and know individually that a mountainous challenge awaits them.
Known for its raucous, clamorous, and cacophonous nature, New York City roars into spring.
* * * * * * *
The least disposed to grumpiness, Benjamin Franklin writes to a friend in England during the trip through New York City. He’s checking on whether the friend has gone all-imperial in support of the British side or whether some new and small acceptance of the Union has sprouted with him. In writing the letter, Franklin itemizes the chaos he believes Britain has unleased on America. He sees a silver-lining: “Every Days Plundering of our Property and Burning our Habitations, seems but to exasperate and unite us the more.” For him, war serves a purpose that he thinks rises above the daily disagreements in the Continental Congress or among his travel companions.
* * * * * * *
A man’s stubbornness kills him. His death gives the Union’s foremost civic entity, the Continental Congress, a chance to further weave connections from shared emotions.
Rhode Island delegate Samuel Ward dies from smallpox after refusing to be inoculated for horrific disease. Leaders from Philadelphia and the Continental Congress attend an elaborate funeral ceremony. A Baptist minister, Samuel Stillman, delivers the eulogy. Stillman emphasizes the reality of death and the faithful Christian’s inherent disregard for its finality. He also lists a long litany of names of “Patriots” who’ve died in the past several months. “No other circumstance need be mentioned to show the esteem the colony had for him,” affirms Stillman, “than their choice of him as a Delegate, at a time when everything dear to America was at stake.” Attendees nod at the recognition of what they’re enduring together.
* * * * * * *
John Adams, a Massachusetts delegate, was one of the nodding attendees. He’s excited, upset, enlivened, and most of all, quite sleepy. His excitement is that the Continental Congress has now formally established a Treasury Office with a staff. An independence sign if ever one existed! Yet he’s upset that twelve days elapsed between hearing Continental soldiers had entered Boston and news of their safe control of the town. Twelve d— days! His liveliness comes after learning Boston is secured, sending him into a frenzy of advice-giving on how to keep British forces out of the port and harbor. But it’s his baggy eyes and occasional yawn that matter the most.
Adams has stayed up late into the nights, his only free time, to finish and mail two letters to a pair of North Carolinians. One is William Hooper, and the other is John Penn. The letters are Adams’s instructions, insights, and strongly-held recommendations for how to set up a new government in North Carolina (and anywhere else, for that matter) as part of a Union blossoming, ripening, and becoming an independent nation.
The letters are the same and different together. His Hooper letter, written first, is more personal and revealing. Adams divulges the literary and philosophical books he relies upon, and also describes the vital reality of local life in New England. His Penn letter is more directive and instructional, hinting more at teaching and tutoring than not. Both letters share Adams’s views about originating government, dividing government, balancing the divisions within government, and deliberately creating representations for government. Adams further emphasizes the pivotal role that the character and condition of individual people as a public as the most essential factor of all. And though he doesn’t write it in a line, the underlying spirit of the letters point to the importance of relationships formed in the meeting room of Pennsylvania State House and the taverns of Philadelphia.
The impact of these letters begins, quietly filling in the blasted spaces left behind by Paine’s Common Sense. For now, though, Adams copes with his awful state of the Union hovering “between Hawk and Buzzard”, as he tells a friend 250 years ago today.
* * * * * * *
Another John and another of those Continental Congress delegates is John Rutledge. He’s in Charleston, South Carolina where he’ll being work as “President and Commander-in-Chief” of South Carolina, under a new Constitution that he wrote. His framework has a two-body legislature that selects the government’s chief executive—himself—and which is armed with broad, vast, and deep powers.
A Charleston newspaper highlights a reprint of Salus Populi’s essay in support of Common Sense. It also features the release of Rutledge’s new Constitution, filling the blast-created by Thomas Paine.
* * * * * * *
Small signs of green have started to abound, whether as buds on the tips of old trees or sprouts from seeds fallen from their branches.
Also
You’re one of those readers in London or Edinburgh and you’ve set aside everything to read those two books you purchased a few weeks ago, one by Adam Smith and one by Edward Gibbon. It’s today, 250 years ago, you’ve put your life on hold, and you’re on page 100 of each.
In Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, you’ve read thus far about the division of labor and the importance of specialization as the true basis of national wealth. Wages and prices fluctuate and in their movement point to the state of a nation’s prosperity. On page 100 you encounter this: “The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives.”
In Gibbon’s Volume One of “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, you’ve read thus far about the surface-level greatness of the Roman Empire as of 180 CE. Everywhere appears to offer proof of the empire’s vitality and indestructibility. On page 100 you encounter this: “On a sudden, before the break of day, the senate was called together in the temple of Concord, to meet the guards, and to ratify the election of a new emperor.”
* * * * * * *
In London, too busy to read Gibbon or Smith today, David Barclay writes to his friend, Benjamin Franklin. Barclay hopes his letter will convince Franklin to help lead efforts to embrace the “commissioners” who will be sent by the British imperial government to America. Among them is Lord Admiral Richard Howe, whose brother William is currently in charge of British armed forces doing the “burning and plundering” Franklin is writing about today on the other side of the Atlantic. Barclay does not know about Franklin’s current mood or current writing. If he had, would he have written anyway?
* * * * * * *
(later in life)
In the West Indies, on French-controlled Santo Dominque, Toussaint Breda (the future L’Overture) enjoys his new freedom as a black man. He is devoutly Catholic, owns a coffee plantation, and enslaves thirteen black people. He seeks a wife, a partner, to help him pursue the life he wants. Meanwhile, a French officer not far from Breda finishes writing a letter to Continental Army General George Washington. Emotionally on fire for the cause of the American Union, the officer wants to join Washington’s army. Before sealing the letter, the man decides not to sign with his real name, just in case his letter gets intercepted.
* * * * * * *
For You Now
Sit for a moment and absorb the history here. John and Abigail Adams, separated by hundreds of miles, are writing about making new governments. John Adams and John Rutledge, separated by hundreds of miles, crystallize their ideas about making new governments. Abigail Adams and George Mason, separated by hundreds of miles, envision a future in their heads. Boston and New York City, separated by hundreds of miles, exist as sites of war made and war yet made. And on and on.
Here is what I’m finding:
Simultaneity is the simultaneous occurrence of multiple events and actions across distances. As these things happen at the same time, a leader will need to know and understand that what is happening to him or her will, eventually, connect to some of those other simultaneous events that occurred elsewhere.
Multi-reality is the presence of different realities across different places and spaces. The reality that one person has is not necessarily the same as that known by another person a mile away, a county away, a state away, and so on. The fact of the multiple does not translate into denial of fact itself; a person on the west side of town can prosper while a person on the east side of town can be impoverished.
Simultaneity and multi-reality are two fundamental findings in Americanism Redux.
And I also have these:
- We are a Union before we are a Nation.
- The Union operates, lives or dies, in three spaces—Union House (where the Continental Congress and related colonial “capitals” hold forth as political power); Union City (where the Continental Army encamps at any given moment as armed power); and Union Home (where supporters of Union live, work, pray, learn, and “hang out” as private, personal human beings).
And today, 250 years ago, signs of the small and the new emerge, the green coming to life, fresh for you to see now in early April 2026.
Suggestion
Take a moment to consider: what does it mean that we were a Union first?
