July 4, 2025
Several things converged to inspire me to this post. The first was reading Mike’s wonderful post today on this occasion. Yes, all the signers were not men who had nothing to lose, but everything to lose from the successful lives that they had built. That should they fail, a noose for them and poverty for their families awaited them all. They were indeed jumping into an abyss challenging the world’s superpower.
Think our political polarization is something new? Neptunus Lex reminded us almost 20 years ago that even with the beginnings of this country, there were deep political schisms among the original signers of the declaration. And yet here we are celebrating the 250th year of our country’s birth.
A book I read a few years ago reminded me that the British never left Manhattan and Long Island until the signing of the Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783. There were other revelations, such as this group of 6 spies who probably saved the revolution. If you don’t want a spoiler to the book skip the next paragraph, but since I am not reviewing it…
Some of their techniques at remaining secret are still taught by the CIA today. After 250 years, we know the identities of 5 of them, but the 6th remains anonymous. At least one of them died on that horrible British prison ship, HMS Jersey in New York Harbor. So what did they do that probably saved the American Revolution? In addition to gathering intel in taverns from the British garrison in Manhattan, they gave disinformation. When the French fleet was close to landing with their reinforcements, one or more of the spies gave them a wrong time and/or place. Would we have lost without the help of the French? It is an open question. But in a bit of alternative history, imagine that the British fleet had engaged the French fleet off that coast of Rhode Island…
Victor Davis Hanson made an interesting point. “Look at any of the British Commonwealth, or any country in Europe – they follow a parliamentary system. But the founders who created this revolutionary state and through this Revolutionary War learned about what were the alternatives for this consensual government. They came up with this Tripartite, based on Montesquieu and the separation of powers. It goes back to the Spartan and Cretan constitution and antiquity. They came up with a unique government.”
Something that I have been “meaning to do” for the last few years is to reread 2 lengthy volumes on notes of the Constitutional Convention. I read them 50 years ago while at school. And despite it being a ”slow slog”, it was also fascinating to learn of the deliberations as to such things as “how many houses” of the legislative branch should we have? What should be the office terms and why? I cringe at some of the questions our White House Press Corps gives showing a complete ignorance of our government structure. But I suspect that this ignorance is nothing new.
Today it seems an almost universal belief that all the American colonialists favored separation from Britain. But as one historian suggested, it was our first civil war. Opinions were divided by thirds – 1/3 favored independence, another 1/3rd wanted to remain loyal to the Crown, and the final third wanted to just see what would transpire as to the winner.
At the conclusion, many of the losers fled the colonies – some going back to England, some to the Bahamas, and thousands fled to Nova Scotia in what would become Canada.
I subscribe to the BBC History magazine, and in the current issue they have an interesting article on who fired the first shot at Lexington Green in Massachusetts. It was “the shot heard round the world”.
Unfortunately, most of this is a paywall but the interesting conclusion was upon the beginning of hostilities, it was a race to London between the British and the Patriots to see who would get their story out first.
A furious propaganda war ensued between the Patriots and the Governor, Thomas Gage. Both set out for London with their versions for the London press. Each, of course, wanted the world to know that they were only defending themselves.
There was a race across the Atlantic with the British using the brig Sukey. It took them the standard 6 weeks to get to London. The Americans used a much faster boat under the command of Captain John Derby of Salem. It was built for speed and reached the destination in less than a month. Once there Derby went to Virginian Arthur Lee, who used his newspaper contacts to disseminate the colonialists’ message first.
Finally a bit of possible historical trivia I read some years ago in one of these magazines but have been unable to authenticate it elsewhere. It was just a paragraph or so, but it was claimed that with the American colonies lost and the British having to send some of their prisoners elsewhere, an American Tory suggested to James Cook that they start sending them to Australia.
The Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the Revolutionary War, ended September 3, 1783 and the first prisoners were sent to Australia in 1788.
Our country has been a grand experiment. I suspect that much of it today would be unrecognizable by the Founders. For one, with the conclusion of the second civil war the term “United States” changed in meaning from a confederation of states to a meaning of a single entity.
Would they have been surprised that we have survived? Fought in 2 world wars and many smaller ones?
I seem to recall having made this point before, but I will repeat it here: James Cook was a not a member of the British government, just a naval officer, albeit a remarkably skilled navigator and cartographer. He had no authority to have been making any decisions about whether or not to establish a settlement on what was later called the continent of Australia, the east coast of which he carefully explored during his epic voyage in 1770, which was one of exploration, not of settlement. That decision was made some years later, by much more senior figures in government, for a range of reasons, one of which was having somewhere to put the burgeoning number of people convicted of property crimes during the 18th century. The real reasons for this ambitious and difficult venture is one of the core topics of Australian historiography.
The Founders were not a band of adventurers. They were mostly prosperous men with a great deal to lose by leading a war of independence. We celebrate their courage, but I think we also need to credit their wisdom. Before deciding to declare independence, they must have decided it was possible to succeed. Unfortunately none of them seems to have written about that. I can’t believe that George Washington, for instance, would have joined a movement he thought was doomed to defeat, just in order to go down fighting.
Were they deluded about their chances — like the leadership of the Confederacy or Imperial Japan — and just happened to get lucky? The history of the Revolutionary War doesn’t look like a series of lucky breaks. The Patriots won the first and the last battles but not much in between. I think they must have seen a path to victory. I wish I knew what they thought.
“somewhere to put the burgeoning number of people convicted of property crimes during the 18th century”…a couple of relevant songs:
Ten Thousand Miles Away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWBXQrEafW0&list=RDxWBXQrEafW0&start_radio=1
Black Velvet Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we5zNOgw4Gs&list=RDwe5zNOgw4Gs&start_radio=1
Mike – this was simply a little paragraph I read years ago about Captain Cook and have never been able to substantiate it.
He Certainly could not affect policy about where to send prisoners but he certainly had the ears of those who could
I too wonder what they must’ve thought. Challenging the dominant superpower of the world… Somebody on Facebook today posted a funny video of “redcoats” complaining about the colonials ambushing them and shooting them behind trees
Don’t know if this war was the first of what you would call guerrilla warfare but guerrilla warfare is always used by a side overwhelmingly weaker than their opponent
Obviously you’ve got to think you have a chance of winning but a path? I’m trying to paraphrase whoever started this but it goes something to the effect the “war plans change as soon as the first shot is fired”
It’s impossible to look at the entirety of American history and dismiss the idea that there was more than just “good luck” involved. There are many choke points along the way where outcomes could have been very different.
The first days of July also mark the anniversaries of the battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg. In many ways the effective end of the Civil War. Like so many other wars, the killing and dying continued long after the outcome was settled.
Despite the passions on both sides, there were few true atrocities. Not too many years elapsed before Union and Confederate veterans could come together peacefully for commemorations. There are so many examples that show just how much worse the aftermath could have been.
Bill Brandt July 5, 2025 at 7:59 pm:
<i?Somebody on Facebook today posted a funny video of “redcoats” complaining about the colonials ambushing them and shooting them behind trees
Don’t know if this war was the first of what you would call guerrilla warfare…
The American Revolutionary War was not a guerrilla war. The Patriots formed the Continental Army, and fought as regular troops in many battles. All of Washington’s campaigns were “regular” combat. So was the Saratoga campaign (won for the Patriots by Benedict Arnold before he went bad).
Historian Fred Anderson makes the case that the French & Indian War, which began 20 years before the Revolution, was The War That Made America (his book accompanying a PBS series of that name). An earlier book by him, Crucible of War, is much more detailed and covers the whole Seven Years’ War, including the European parts. Both are fascinating if you have any interest in what was then Britain’s North American colonies.
In that earlier war (1754-1763), many American colonists, Including George Washington, fought on the side of Britain against the French and their indian allies. Not surprisingly, those Americans took away lessons about the British army, its officers, and how it fought battles that were useful later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Anderson_(historian)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War
The Mention of George Washington’s Secret Six reminds me of the Faulkner quote that the past isn’t dead—it’s not even past. My fourth grade Sunday School teacher was a direct descendant of one of those mentioned in the book. At the regional high school my sister and I attended, we were classmates of two descendants of another of the spies in the book–one of whom was named for his famous ancestor. Then there was the mother of my brother’s friend who was descended from one of the hanging judges who sentenced King Charles I to death.
But there was hardly any mention of those famous ancestors in our everyday life. Those with famous ancestors did not engage in ancestor worship.