The first shots of the Revolution, we are told, were fired
at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. But the blood of patriots had begun
to stir long before then. Samuel Adams, called even in his own day “The Father
of the American Revolution,” was stoking revolutionary fervor twenty years
earlier.
Adams, primarily a pamphleteer and journalist, was quotable.
Indeed, one of his quotes serves as the banner of Connecticut Commentary:
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
All the King’s men may have thought Samuel was hot, and he
was. But he was a cool thinker and revolutionary plotter, as were most of the
Fathers of the Republic -- and far seeing too:
“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
I have, thanks to William Hosley, a Connecticut
preservationist determined to make a record of notable places in the state,
access to a diary kept by Ezra Stiles, and an entrée dated September 1774 puts
us on the revolutionary spot just before the “shot heard round the world’ was fired
within sight of a home later owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his new bride.
Before they reached their honeymoon home, Henry David Thoreau entered the
property by stealth and planted a garden for the two lovebirds. They are all buried
within a stone’s throw of each other in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
Mr. Stiles was riding to Norwich with “Mr. McNeil of
Litchfield,” who gave Mr. Stiles, a tradesman, an eyewitness account of the
revolutionary activity then occurring on the route he took from Springfield to
Boston. Mr. Stiles, an itinerant preacher, kept meticulous notes:
“All along the whole track of about forty miles from Shrewsbury to Boston… the Women kept on making Cartridges & after equipping their Husbands bro’t them out to the Soldiers which in crowds passed along & gave them out in handfuls to one or another as they were deficient, mixing exhortations & tears & prayers & spiriting the men in such an uneffeminate Manner as even would make Cowards fight. He tho’t if anything the Women surpassed the Men for Eagerness & Spirit in the Defense of Liberty by arms. For they had no thoughts of the Men returning but from battle, for they all believed the Action commenced between the King’s troops & the Provincials. The Women under this Assurance gave up their Husbands and Sons &c to Battle & bid them fight courageously & manfully & behave themselves bravely for Liberty – commanding them to behave like Men & not like Cowards – to be of good courage & play the man for our people & for the cities of our God -- & the Lord do as seemeth him good. They expected a bloody Scene, but they doubted not Success & Victory.”
It is a stirring piece of prose. Those who want an honest
answer to the question “Who won the Revolution?” should stick it in their
wallets against the day when they may need courage and assurance. They will get
it from women patriots who lined the route from Shrewsbury
to Boston, whose love of Liberty was such that they could not “crouch down to
lick the hand that fed them.” These ladies were not for chains.
Comments
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Speaking from personal experience, it was (still) possible as recently as 1964 to believe in the country, indeed, virtually impossible not to. We came up with the common understanding of who we are as a people. We put a Lincolnian gloss on the Constitution and on our identity, but still we were in rough agreement that the country was dedicated to something noble. We were all on the same team. No such American community in 2014, but rather a widespread deliberate miseducation, self-diffidence and suicide by multi-culture. At this point we're no longer be shocked by the Kennedy assassination, black nationalism/urban decay, Vietnam mendacity, multi-versity rejection of Western Civilization...; that's who we are. We pray to no particular God that if we are just a bit more apologetic maybe the world will like us more, respect our "moral authority."
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James Reston, then chief political correspondent for the New York Times, published a front-page column the day after the assassination under the title, "Why America Weeps: Kennedy a Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in Nation." Chief Justice Earl Warren, who would soon head the investigation into the shooting, blamed "bigots" for the assassination. Syndicated newspaper columnist Drew Pearson wrote that JFK was the victim of a "hate drive." Sen. Mike Mansfield, in a eulogy, attributed the assassination to "bigotry, hatred, and prejudice."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579141811376490546
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Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James indicated Wednesday that she was open to reviewing the military’s ban on transgender service members.
“From my point of view, anyone who is capable of accomplishing the job should be able to serve,” James told USA Today’s Susan Page. “And so I wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t come under review.”
James’s remarks suggest that momentum is once again building for the military to do away with its transgender ban, which remains in place even though gays have been permitted to serve openly since 2011.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/10/air-force-chief-suggests-transgender-ban-may-eventually-be-lifted/
In 1637 our Puritan forbears with their Indian allies in Cromwellian style wiped out a settlement of Pequots in Mystic. Captain John Underhill reported that,"many were burnt in the Fort, both men, women, and children, others forced out, and came in troopes to the Indians, twentie, and thirtie at a time, which our souldiers received and entertained with the point of the sword; downe fell men, women, and children, those that scaped us, fell into the hands of the Indians, that were in the reere of us; it is reported by themselves, that there were about foure hundred soules in this Fort, and not above five of them escaped out of our hands."
Captain Underhill doesn't sound ashamed or remorseful. Indeed, the first Connecticut Thanksgiving was in gratitude for the military victory. And, when we built the Capitol in 1870 we were still proud of the event, thought it had mythical importance to the Connecticut republic.
As President Pen-and-Phone might say, that's who we are. But, of course, it isn't who we want to be any more. To the extent we allow ourselves to think of it or to allow our kids to hear of it, we are ashamed both of the massacre and of our previous celebration of it. Regardless of moral analysis of the event, or similarly of a moral analysis of General Sherman's March or Truman's Hiroshima/Nagasaki, it is unhealthy to condemn without equivocation the history of one's own people. And, in our case, such condemnation is particularly unwarranted. This past Thanksgiving I gave silent thanks to our guys in that militia of almost four hundred years ago. Couldn't say anything out loud; a lot of moon-bats at the table that day. In fact, it may be imprudent to bring any attention to the matter. Viet Vet Blumenthal might apologize on our behalf to the United Nations "Human Rights" guys. Eric Holder might appoint a special prosecutor, extort reparations. Texas patriot Ray Wylie Hubbard has a tune entitled, "Screw you, We're from Texas." We pusillanimous New England liberal wienies should take a cue.
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I have no idea where I got this name, how I made this mystake. The Indian fort was at Mystic
(Missituk).
I apologize. Mistakes were made, and despite President Obama's support I am a bit discouraged.
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Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes. That's how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be President of the United States, and that's why you should be proud to be members of the CIA.