Teh One Who Knocks
07-20-2012, 11:21 AM
By Vincent Carroll - Denver Post Columnist
http://i.imgur.com/Yc8oz.jpg
We like to flatter ourselves that we would have made the right political decisions had we lived in an earlier time.
If we'd been alive in July 1776, for example, rest assured we would have sided with the Patriots. Clearly we would have agreed with the Founders who were meeting in Philadelphia that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed" and that the oppressed have a right to "throw off" their rulers to provide for their future security.
Naturally, we would have endorsed the transformational idea that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
In short, we would have thrown in our lot with those colonists who supported the Continental Congress' vote for independence (which actually occurred on July 2) and its Declaration of Independence that was destined to be so important not only in our own history but also in the subsequent history of the world.
As historian Gordon Wood pointed out last year in an essay in The New Republic, the Declaration's words "have served as inspiration for peoples everywhere. Colonial rebellions against imperial regimes throughout the world have looked to the Declaration to justify their cause. In declaring Vietnam independent from France in 1945, Ho Chi Minh cited the American Declaration of Independence. Members of Solidarity in Poland and dissidents in Czechoslovakia invoked its words to oppose Soviet domination in the 1980s. And the Chinese students who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989 used its language. ... It certainly has become one of the most influential documents in world history."
Yet is our own self-regard truly warranted? Would we necessarily have sided with what we overwhelmingly consider in retrospect — and correctly so — a noble cause? To take the question seriously is to treat the Patriots — and the Loyalists, for that matter — with the respect they are due: as real people grappling with complicated questions, conflicting emotions and "with a vast and unknown future ahead of them," to quote a fascinating research paper I read the other day by Michael Longué, a recent graduate of Vassar College in New York.
What if you'd lived in Dutchess County, N.Y., for example, "sandwiched between General William Howe's army in New York City and General Guy Carleton's base of operations in Quebec" and thus "had to grapple with the distinct possibility that British regulars might knock on [your] door"? In the real Dutchess County, Longué reports, "only 1,800 of 2,700 adult white men ... took the General Association [pledge to obey the Continental Congress] in 1775, and even that was a 'fragile, undependable majority' because many were hesitant and 'agreed to sign only after much persuasion.' Such fence sitting worried seasoned Patriot leaders because it implied that residents might commit to the British if it became advantageous to do so."
The fence-sitters (as well as outright Loyalists) were hardly scoundrels. Many had simply "remained loyal to the British or tried to avoid the conflict altogether. By late 1776, however, the war had become a polarizing force that dragged neutral bystanders into the conflict." It got ugly.
By that time, choosing either side could be perilous, although we naturally tend to emphasize the peril for the Patriots — whose leaders had mutually pledged "to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
Their commander in the field, George Washington, certainly had rolled the dice. Had he been captured, Stephen Ambrose wrote in "To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian," "He would have been brought to London, tried, found guilty of treason, ordered executed, and then drawn and quartered" — a most unpleasant prospect.
So would we have made the "right" decision, too? The only honest answer is, "Who knows?" It's quite enough that they did.
http://i.imgur.com/Yc8oz.jpg
We like to flatter ourselves that we would have made the right political decisions had we lived in an earlier time.
If we'd been alive in July 1776, for example, rest assured we would have sided with the Patriots. Clearly we would have agreed with the Founders who were meeting in Philadelphia that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed" and that the oppressed have a right to "throw off" their rulers to provide for their future security.
Naturally, we would have endorsed the transformational idea that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
In short, we would have thrown in our lot with those colonists who supported the Continental Congress' vote for independence (which actually occurred on July 2) and its Declaration of Independence that was destined to be so important not only in our own history but also in the subsequent history of the world.
As historian Gordon Wood pointed out last year in an essay in The New Republic, the Declaration's words "have served as inspiration for peoples everywhere. Colonial rebellions against imperial regimes throughout the world have looked to the Declaration to justify their cause. In declaring Vietnam independent from France in 1945, Ho Chi Minh cited the American Declaration of Independence. Members of Solidarity in Poland and dissidents in Czechoslovakia invoked its words to oppose Soviet domination in the 1980s. And the Chinese students who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989 used its language. ... It certainly has become one of the most influential documents in world history."
Yet is our own self-regard truly warranted? Would we necessarily have sided with what we overwhelmingly consider in retrospect — and correctly so — a noble cause? To take the question seriously is to treat the Patriots — and the Loyalists, for that matter — with the respect they are due: as real people grappling with complicated questions, conflicting emotions and "with a vast and unknown future ahead of them," to quote a fascinating research paper I read the other day by Michael Longué, a recent graduate of Vassar College in New York.
What if you'd lived in Dutchess County, N.Y., for example, "sandwiched between General William Howe's army in New York City and General Guy Carleton's base of operations in Quebec" and thus "had to grapple with the distinct possibility that British regulars might knock on [your] door"? In the real Dutchess County, Longué reports, "only 1,800 of 2,700 adult white men ... took the General Association [pledge to obey the Continental Congress] in 1775, and even that was a 'fragile, undependable majority' because many were hesitant and 'agreed to sign only after much persuasion.' Such fence sitting worried seasoned Patriot leaders because it implied that residents might commit to the British if it became advantageous to do so."
The fence-sitters (as well as outright Loyalists) were hardly scoundrels. Many had simply "remained loyal to the British or tried to avoid the conflict altogether. By late 1776, however, the war had become a polarizing force that dragged neutral bystanders into the conflict." It got ugly.
By that time, choosing either side could be perilous, although we naturally tend to emphasize the peril for the Patriots — whose leaders had mutually pledged "to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
Their commander in the field, George Washington, certainly had rolled the dice. Had he been captured, Stephen Ambrose wrote in "To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian," "He would have been brought to London, tried, found guilty of treason, ordered executed, and then drawn and quartered" — a most unpleasant prospect.
So would we have made the "right" decision, too? The only honest answer is, "Who knows?" It's quite enough that they did.