Revolutionary greetings, fellow Americans, on our semiquincentennial. How odd it is that we who disdain revolution celebrated it. Some may consider this an irony of history. In fact, it is built into the new system of government from its birth in 1775 through the Philadelphia Convention of 1787.
The first year of the American Revolution was 1775, at least on the battlefield. And without that battlefield, all the talk in that hot summer in Philadelphia would’ve gone nowhere.
Like millions of other Americans, on this day, I also salute our forebears who fought in the Revolution. According to a book I read, 75 of my family members were under arms, most lowly grunts.
One actually made it into one of those majestic paintings hanging in a museum. He is near a mounted George Washington treating a wounded Lt. James Monroe. The lieutenant survived and later declared a doctrine that people debate to this day. George Bailey and Paul Harvey, call your offices.
Of course, the important person in the picture is Gen. Washington: No Washington, no revolution. Or even worse, no Washington, and we get an American version of the French Revolution! That would’ve been a double calamity.
Americans talk about the Civil War, that unpleasantness between North and South. But they forget the first civil war was between loyalists and what we now call patriots. So hats off to their descendants today, whether living in the United States or Canada. Since things turned out so well, all is forgiven.
In high school, our summer reading assignment included books on the revolution by Kenneth Roberts. Arundel and Rabbel in Arms from the revolutionary point of view, and Oliver Wiswell from the loyalist point of view. In grammar school, we read Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. Good books, as I recall, and conducive to understanding both history and patriotism.
The hidden warning in the American Revolution is government debt. With massive debt and the tragedy of compound interest over generations, England was desperate for money and decided the colonies were a ripe chicken to pluck. Mismanagement of debt and hubris led to their fall. Have we learned the lesson?
The founding fathers were, dare I say it, a bit nuts as creative geniuses tend to be. The two most opposite extremes were John Adams and Thomas Paine.
Paine was a radical anti-clerical atheist who relied on Satan's speech and other gems in the epic poem Paradise Lost in his writing, including Common Sense. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n” is the most famous line of the poem. No wonder the Catholic Church placed Milton on the Index of Forbidden Books.
And there was Adams, who, as the revolution loomed, didn’t get cold feet but felt something of a cold chill at the prospect that this revolution would lead to a destructive form of democracy. He feared control by a mobocracy like the ones that destroyed every other republic in recorded history, especially if radicals like Tom Paine were to take control. In fact, Paine eventually did join the French Revolution.
Adams took a different course. Ever the rival of Thomas Jefferson, Adams was of the opinion that the true Declaration of Independence was actually on May 15, 1776, when the Continental Congress passed “the most important resolution that was ever taken in America.“
It is worth quoting historian Joseph J. Ellis's book Revolutionary Summer: The grievances against the king, all British laws, and every kind of authority "under the crown should be totally suppressed." And the people of the United Colonies should fill the void with governments of their own making, "exerted under the authority of the people of the colonies for their own peace, virtue, and good order; as well as the defense of their lives, liberty, and properties against the hostile invasions and cruel depredations of their enemies.“
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Adams felt this was the real start of the revolution. The transfer of legitimate government authority, conserving law and order under new management. This was the lightning, and the Declaration of Independence was the thunder. Who was right? The debate over the balance of liberty and law, epitomized by Adams and Jefferson, continues to this day.
God bless the revolutionary generation, from the lowly grunts to the leaders on horseback to the squabbling pamphleteers and political leaders. They may not have fully understood what their actions would bring. But as Benjamin Franklin later said after years of war and political infighting, they’d bequeath us “A republic, if you can keep it.”
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