One of my favorite books is by an old professor from my alma mater – one who I sadly never took a class from.
Page Smith wrote the out-of-print “A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution.” It’s no puerile Marxist reimagining, a la Howard Zinn, but a peoples’-eye view of the events around our Founding.
One thing you get from it – clearly – is the incredible level of change and risk that the Founders took, and took with a clear and open eye.
He talks about the events of July 2 and 3, as the Congress debates the resolution that would finally make the United States independent.
After all these bargainings and maneuvers it seemed that Congress would at last, pressed and cajoled, vote with great reluctance to declare the colonies “free and independent” when the delegates met the next day. But John Adams, weary from a day of feverish politicking and chagrined that his oratory had failed of its purpose, wrote to Samuel Chance that the “great debate” that was to have terminated in a unanimous vote had been instead “an idle dispense of time.” He was confident that with the hoped-for arrival of Rodney the next day, the resolution would pass “perhaps almost with unanimity.” But, he added with his characteristic realism. “If you imagine that I expect this declaration will ward off calamities from this country, you are much mistaken. A bloody conflict we are destined to endure. This has been my opinion from the beginning…If you imagine that I flatter myself with happiness and halcyon days after a separation from Great Britain, you are mistaken again. I do not expect that our new government will be as quiet as I could wish, nor that happy harmony, confidence and affection between the colonies that every good American ought to study, labor, and pray for, will come for a long time. But freedom is a counterbalance for poverty, discord and war, and more. It is your hard lot and mine to be called into life at such a time. Yet,” he added, “even these times have their pleasures.”
I’ll leave you with those words, and one of my own:
Happy Independence Day to everyone.
Risks? Oh yeah. Check this site out re: “what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence.”:http://gi-bracelet.org/Stories/IndependenceDay.html
When they pledged their fortunes, their lives, and their sacred honour, they weren’t kidding.
For some corrections, see:
“The truth’s a little more subtle and less dramatic.”:http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=638656
But that’s a quibble. There’s no question at all that the 56 signers were pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, and that several of them paid hard. All of them were staking all they had.
That’s a good, well-researched and well-reasoned account. Thanks for the corrections and additional background.
Comb the used bookstores. The entire series by Page Smith belongs in your library. I’ve bought sets for schools where I was a foreign exchange student.
While you are at it, read 1776 by David McCullough. At the beginning he covers the October 1775 debate in the Houses of Lords and Commons regarding how to handle those pesky rebels. Fascinating juxtaposition between then and now regarding duty, empire, and liberty.
Liberty stands up after 230 years as worth fighting for.
Interesting comment from Dr. Shelby Foote, rece ntly deceased Civil War chronicler, that until the Civil War the United States was considered plural, and referred to such as the U.S. ‘are’, after the Civil War it became single and was referred to as the U.S. ‘is’.
sbw – it’s funny, I keep meaning to get a copy to the ITM/Free Iraqi brothers and get stuck on logistics.
I need to make that a task to get done…
A.L.