Independence

It took a miracle to get here

“I never saw such a sett of people, obstinate and perverse to the last degree.”

—A British officer on the American soldier, circa the late 1770s

IT DIDN’T have to happen this way. It almost didn’t happen this way. People write books called Almost a Miracle (John Ferling, Oxford University Press) about the Revolution on these shores. But some of us ask, what was “almost” about it?

George Washington planned to defend a high point in New York City known as Breucklyn. (We spell it differently today.) After the first day’s fighting out on Long Island, the British inexplicably called a halt while the Americans were engaging in a classic maneuver technically known in exalted military terms as a dead run in the opposite direction.

With Washington’s forces split between Long Island and New York City, his position was a defeat waiting to happen. Heck, it had already happened. But it could have turned into the collapse of a whole nascent nation. For would Congress continue the fight with the Army scattering?

Washington finally ordered a full retreat into more defensible New York. But would his troops have time to get off Long Island? Cue flashes of lightning and roars of thunder. A storm put off another round of fighting. Night fell. A wind blew the British fleet to sea, or at least kept its ships from making shore. Then, as dawn broke, a heavy fog covered Washington’s retreat.

And that was just one miracle. Uh, excuse us: Just one more improbability.

They tended to happen with some frequency during the American Revolution. What would have happened to the Revolution if Major John André had not been captured and Benedict Arnold’s plan to turn West Point over to the redcoats hadn’t come to light? How in heaven did Henry Knox get all that artillery to the siege of Boston?

And how, most puzzling of all to those who follow the rough-and-tumble of American politics, could the ambitious likes of Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and such put together one continental country out of so many different colonies, ethnicities, interests and faiths? And how did such competitive, strong-minded men collaborate under a single commander, statesman, founder and finally national icon named Washington without at some point tearing each other limb from limb?

America didn’t have to happen the way it did. In many ways, it shouldn’t have happened the way it did. There were too many obstacles to independence, to union, to the very idea of From Many, One! And yet somehow, we’ve made it this far, however great the challenges, however great the sacrifices. Hmmm, you don’t suppose that part of the Great Declaration we celebrate today about “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence” had anything to do with it, do you?

IT ALWAYS does an American body good to give that Declaration of Independence another read. And not just on this holiday. It refreshes on every reading. Like stepping out of a hot July afternoon into an air-conditioned public library. We’ll make a note to read it again in August.

Most people are familiar with the “We hold these truths to be self-evident” part. The “all men are created equal” part. But the whole document is relevant today. Mr. Jefferson did a remarkable job. That is, it has been remarked on for years. (What a pity some of his original prose didn’t survive the committee that reworked it here and there. Editors can still be the bane of a writer’s life.) But his fellow founders had the good sense to leave most of the Declaration untouched.

On re-reading the Declaration, we are struck again by how not only revolutionary but how conservative the document is. Here it was more than a year after the Revolution had begun at Concord and Lexington, and only now were the Americans declaring independence. The Declaration explains why: At long last, we had had enough. But it expresses that cry of defiance in the most reasoned way:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly, all Experience hath shown that Mankind are more disposed to suffer while Evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.”

BUT OUR patience can be exhausted, despite the deep ties of loyalty, affection, and kinship that bound us to the mother country. Our trust had been betrayed, our rights trampled, too many times for too long. Even a group of conservatives will eventually have enough, and instead of standing astride of the world yelling STOP!, decide to make changes:

“The History of the present King of Great Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.”

Americans were through talking only to those who considered themselves our masters. We would talk to the world now.

“In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.”

We’d tried. Lord knows we’d tried. But we had had enough. The contract between a free people and its sovereign had long ago been violated. Now it was time to recognize that fact, and declare in the most unmistakable yet legal and reasonable terms that this was a free country:

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the name and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do—And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

IN THAT paragraph—the last one of the Declaration—note the first thing this new people, who would from this moment on be called Americans, said they now had the right to do.

Wage war. After that, then they would be prepared to talk about peace and alliances and commerce. But these founders knew what was coming, and indeed what was well under way by July 4, 1776: a fight against the superpower of the 18th century. It wasn’t going to be pretty. It wasn’t going to be quick.

It would take great men to lead the effort. It took Washington to maneuver his troops from retreat to retreat until he had the British right where he wanted them. It took Jefferson and Madison and Franklin and a slew of Adamses—and a Sherman (Roger) and a Lee (Francis Lightfoot). But they couldn’t have taken to the field and won this thing themselves. No, that took regular Americans. Like most of us today. Craftsmen. Doctors. Preachers. Farmers. Musicians. Artists. Engineers. And a whole group of miracles.

Imagine if they had failed. Or if their children or grandchildren had failed the tests that would come to them in their time. Why, think of it, we might all be speaking English today.

Instead of American.