GREAT MINDS IN THE GREAT STORM
I. SUPPRESSING AMERICANS
General Thomas Gage was, in the approaching crisis, made military
commander at Massachusetts, as the man most experienced and able to
enforce the Parliamentary laws. He had led the advance guard at
Braddock’s defeat, had married an American girl and had lived long in
the colonies. It would seem that he ought to have known well the
character of the colonists. But, he had already advised the King that,
“The Americans will be lions only as long as the English are lambs.”
The idea still prevails that there is a lamb-coward always in the
presence of a lion-hero. General Gage promised that he would enforce
all laws if given five regiments.
As suggested by the Virginia Assembly, “a solemn league and covenant”
was circulated throughout the provinces, in which the subscribers
bound themselves to cease from all intercourse with Great Britain,
from the month of August, until Massachusetts should regain its
chartered rights. Furthermore, it was an iron-clad use of the boycott
and lock-out. It pledged the signers that they would have no dealings
with any one who refused to enter into that compact. This meant that
home-principle had to have a method against home-profit. Capital was
timidly cowering between what seemed to it as “the devil and the deep
sea.”
General Gage declared in a proclamation that the document was illegal
and the signers traitors. He planted a force of infantry and artillery
on the Boston Common and prepared himself to enforce the edict of the
British Parliament and his own judgment. Thus, another high step was
taken in the climb to war. The great drama was developing scene by
scene that was to bring forth Washington as a warrior, president and
statesman, the titular “Father of his Country.”
As we proceed on our historic journey, needed to understand the making
of Washington, and his meaning for Americans, we are now approaching
his first appearance as a leader. This comes to pass after he decides
that every resource and means have been used in vain for justice
toward the colonies.
On July 18, 1773, a meeting of Fairfax County was held, with
Washington as the presiding officer, to discuss their attitude toward
the English government and its methods toward the colonies. This
general meeting of protest was held immediately after Washington’s
return from the session of the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg.
As Chairman of the committee on resolutions, he had probably much, if
not all, to do with the language used, and it is significant, that the
resolutions ended with a phrase which contained the threat of
independence through war. They called on the King to reflect that
“from our Sovereign there can be but one appeal.” This shows the idea
that was in Washington’s mind for he had already decided, as shown by
his letters, that the King could not be changed, and, therefore, that
the only appeal was to be made to the higher authority of right
through the might of war.
Washington was now entering heart and soul into the great controversy.
He was chosen as a delegate from the county to the colony meeting at
Williamsburg on the first of August, 1773.
The Virginia delegates assembled at the capital as planned. Washington
presented the resolution adopted by his county and made a fervid
address in its support. It is said he declared himself ready to raise
a thousand men at his own expense, and march at their head to the
relief of Boston. It is safe to say that if Washington and Patrick
Henry could have lived through to 1861, there would have been no Civil
War, or even if the Spirit of Washington and Henry could have lived in
the hearts of the people.
The Virginia convention adopted resolutions based on the Fairfax
resolution, and Washington with six others, destined to become famous
in American history, were appointed delegates to the General Congress,
that was to meet in Philadelphia.
The high-handed measures against Boston had ruined that town. The rich
became poor and the poor were at the verge of starvation, but there
was no outcry. The silent misery and calm determination were a puzzle
to the General who could not subdue such opposition with cannon. The
people went in crowds to hear their speakers placidly arguing the
conditions. There was no excuse to order the people to disperse, so
that Gage found it necessary to have a law passed that the people
should not assemble to discuss government affairs. But the whole
problem had now taken on a larger form. On September 5, 1774,
delegates from all the colonies, excepting Georgia, met in Carpenter’s
Hall, Philadelphia.
Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton came on to Mount Vernon, and from
there the three giants of moral rights and human liberty rode on
together to the meeting, affecting so deeply the eternal meaning of
America.
When the question arose in the meeting concerning the voting of
delegates, some colonies having more than others, Patrick Henry, with
his fiery zeal, declared any idea of sectional distinctions or local
interests to be absurd.
“All America,” he cried, “is thrown into one mass. Where are your
landmarks--your boundaries of colonies? They are all thrown down. The
distinction between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New
Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.”
What a great pity that eighty-six years later, the patriotism of
Patrick Henry could not have been felt, and the one great horror of
American history would then never have occurred.
II. THE BUSINESS OF GETTING READY
The first General Assembly in the history of the New World came
together in great solemnity. They felt that it should be opened by
some religious service, and yet, they feared to introduce religious
antagonism, for it was a period when religious controversies were
often more extreme and bitter than any political controversies.
Then Samuel Adams of reverend fame arose and said, “I shall willingly
join in prayer with any gentleman of piety and virtue, whatever might
be his cloth, provided he is a friend of his country.”
Samuel Adams was a very rigorous Congregationalist, but religion with
him had no claims that did not include justice and patriotism. He
nominated the Reverend Mr. Duche of Philadelphia, who was an
Episcopalian, to open the session with prayer.
The reverend Duche appeared in his canonicals attended by his clerk.
He read the morning service of the Episcopal church. The Psalter for
that day of the month, the seventh, included the thirty-fifth Psalm.
The central idea of the Psalm was that of the Assembly.
“Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against
them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand
up for my help. Draw out, also, the spear, and stop the way of them
that persecute me.”
It is said that when the assembly was organized and ready for the
introduction of their momentous business, that a long, deep,
death-like silence fell upon them. Every one hesitated to begin. The
sense of inaction was becoming oppressive when Patrick Henry arose.
Such a great occasion was suitable to his eloquence and when he sat
down amidst the murmurs of astonishment and the shouts of applause, he
was conceded to be the greatest orator in America.
This history-making convention had fifty-one delegates and it remained
in session fifty-one days. The meetings were held in secret, and it is
now unknown the part that Washington took in it, but, when Patrick
Henry returned home, he was asked who was the most powerful councillor
in the convention, and he unhesitatingly said, “Washington.”
That Washington foresaw the course of events may be readily gathered
from a letter he wrote at this time to a very close friend, Captain
Robert Mackenzie, who had severely criticised the colonies from the
British point of view. Like too many who are now charged with the
destiny of the great American republic by their votes, Mackenzie could
reason only on the visible results, and could not give any attention
to the causes of the events. He had no spiritual valuation. He could
reason only from material interests. Washington closed a very emphatic
and radical letter to him with the warning and prophecy, “and give me
leave to add, as my opinion, that more blood will be spilled on this
occasion, if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity,
than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of
North America.”
England had been what might be termed good to the Southern colonies.
As for harsh measures, the worst from a political point of view was in
dissolving the Virginia legislatures. The Southern Colonies were under
the business management of descendants from the royalist cavaliers who
had been driven from England by the forefathers of the descendants
making up the colonies of New England. There was thus an inherited
tradition of antagonism, which many well-meaning patriots assume as
their basis of justice and judgment. Political welfare must be
estimated from present conditions. Avengers of the ancient wrong want
to punish history rather than make history. They assume that it is
better to begin with what was than with what is. But in the common
need, all such differences were forgotten. The differences were
remembered only by the great grand-children of the revolutionary
heroes.
The Northern Colonies and the Southern Colonies were, true enough,
antagonistic in their origin, entirely opposite in the social
differences between the severe Puritan and the aristocratic Cavalier,
and worse than all, they were antagonistic in their religion, the
North being many kinds of dissenters, and the South, in its governing
classes, being Episcopalian. Their social, religious and material
interests never had been the same, and they had little in common even
in the French and Indian wars. This outline contrast is given to show
how the question, especially for the South, was not material profit or
of opposition to oppression from force, but was the expression of an
American Ideal uniting all minds, as a meaning for the equal rights of
all in our humanity. It shows that there is an ideal of human rights
that has the allegiance of human hearts above all considerations of
flattery, or coertion, or for any of the thousands of considerations
that may cause an individual judgment or fix the will. There may be
amazing differences in personal and party interests, but there can be
none, even in the varieties of intelligence or conditions, when it
comes to the rights to freedom in the views of genuine Americans. Only
partisans attack the motives of persons who are trying to advance
human liberty and peace according to the duties and rights of
civilization. By such signs shall ye know them and beware. They are
not Americans and their moral deformity is the peril of America. The
real idealist lives the vision of moral order, not only for his group,
but for all the world. The moral law for each and all is our idealism
of the universe.
III. MANY MEN OF MANY MINDS
England could not manage its American colonial interests because the
government had no ideal of the colonies beyond that of a commercial
business, and the colonies could not handle the interests of England
in America because each colony was a separate organization having
political interests together in common only in the British Parliament.
On that account they never felt together, except as their mutual
interest in Parliament was injured. Notice this fundamental origin of
social union, and see how it had to be wrangled over from the close of
the Revolutionary War in 1781, to the adoption of the Constitution,
and the election of a president under it in 1789. And even then, a
fundamental origin for social interests, and, therefore, of
patriotism, was not achieved until a frightful civil war closed the
struggle for separate units of interest, as independent
sovereignities, in 1865.
Mr. Curtis, an English philosopher-historian, writing about one
hundred and fifty years after the beginning of these world-making
origins of the American ideal, quotes Doyle’s history referring to the
revolt of the colonies, in which it is said, “If the Southern Colonies
were to take their full share of interest in the struggle, it was
clear that it must not be left to a New England army under a New
England general. But we may be sure that the choice, desirable in
itself, of a Southern general, was made much easier by the presence of
a Southern candidate so specially fitted for the post as Washington.
Not indeed that his fitness was or could be as yet fully revealed.
Intelligence and public spirit, untiring energy and industry, a fair
share of technical skill, and courage almost dangerous in its
recklessness,--all these were no doubt perceived by those who
appointed Washington. What they could not have foreseen was the
patience with which a man of clear vision, heroic bravery, and intense
directness, bore with fools and laggards, and intrigues; and the
disinterested self-devotion which called out all that was noblest in
the national character, which shamed selfish men into a semblance of
union. Still less could it have been foreseen that, in choosing a
military chief, Congress was training up for the country that civil
leader, without whose aid an effective constitution would scarcely
have been attained.”