Old Trapper
Verified User
Unless they change their ways:
https://www.americanheritage.com/spirit-76
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY IN 1777 ROBERT MORRIS, THE FINANCIER of the American Revolution, sent George Washington a letter that rings strangely to a modern ear. “The year 1776 is over,” Morris wrote. “I am heartily glad of it and hope you nor America will ever be plagued with such another. ” Washington shared that feeling. We celebrate 1776 as the most glorious year in American history; they remembered it as an agony, especially the “dark days” of autumn.
Americans have known many dark days, from the starving winters in early settlements to the attack on the World Trade Center. They have been the testing times and pivotal moments of our history. It was that way in 1776, from the decision for independence to the military disasters that followed. In early December, British commanders believed they were very close to ending the rebellion, and American leaders feared that they might be right. Yet three months later the mood had changed on both sides. By the spring of 1777 many British officers had concluded that they could never win the war. At the same time, Americans had recovered from their despair and were confident that they would not be defeated.
The cause of that great transformation lay not in a single event, or even a chain of events, but in a great web of contingency, in the sense of people making choices and of their choices making a difference in the world. The story began with the meeting of three armies in America. The American army of 1776 came mostly from middling families who cherished the Revolutionary cause but understood it in various ways: the ordered freedom of old New England; the reciprocal freedom of the Philadelphia Associators, who were raised in the Quaker tradition of extending to others the rights they demanded for themselves; the hegemonic liberties of Virginians who thought of rights as an unequal system of social rank; the natural liberty of backcountry settlers who demanded the right to be left alone. The choices these men made were an expression of their beliefs; so too were their autonomous ways of choosing.
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The same policy was extended to British prisoners after the Battle of Princeton. Washington ordered one of his most trusted officers, Lt. Col. Samuel Blachley Webb, to look after them: “You are to take charge of [211] privates of the British Army. … Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren. … Provide everything necessary for them on the road.” There were exceptions on the American side. Loyalists and slaves who joined the British were treated cruelly by local officials. But Congress and the Continental Army generally adopted Adams’s “policy of humanity.” Their moral choices in the War of Independence enlarged the American Revolution.
The most remarkable fact about American soldiers and civilians in the New Jersey campaign is not that they did any of these things but that they did all of them together. In a desperate struggle they reversed the momentum of the war; they also improvised a new way of war that grew into an American tradition; and they chose a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution.
They set a high example, and we have much to learn from them. A good deal of recent writing about history has served us ill in that respect. In the late twentieth century, too many scholars made American history into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us that we are captives of our darker selves, slaves to material interests, and helpless victims of our history. It isn’t so, and never was. The story of Washington’s crossing tells us that Americans who came before us were capable of acting in a higher spirit—and, I think, so are we."
America will lose simply because it has lost its moral base, and any claim to it.
https://www.americanheritage.com/spirit-76
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY IN 1777 ROBERT MORRIS, THE FINANCIER of the American Revolution, sent George Washington a letter that rings strangely to a modern ear. “The year 1776 is over,” Morris wrote. “I am heartily glad of it and hope you nor America will ever be plagued with such another. ” Washington shared that feeling. We celebrate 1776 as the most glorious year in American history; they remembered it as an agony, especially the “dark days” of autumn.
Americans have known many dark days, from the starving winters in early settlements to the attack on the World Trade Center. They have been the testing times and pivotal moments of our history. It was that way in 1776, from the decision for independence to the military disasters that followed. In early December, British commanders believed they were very close to ending the rebellion, and American leaders feared that they might be right. Yet three months later the mood had changed on both sides. By the spring of 1777 many British officers had concluded that they could never win the war. At the same time, Americans had recovered from their despair and were confident that they would not be defeated.
The cause of that great transformation lay not in a single event, or even a chain of events, but in a great web of contingency, in the sense of people making choices and of their choices making a difference in the world. The story began with the meeting of three armies in America. The American army of 1776 came mostly from middling families who cherished the Revolutionary cause but understood it in various ways: the ordered freedom of old New England; the reciprocal freedom of the Philadelphia Associators, who were raised in the Quaker tradition of extending to others the rights they demanded for themselves; the hegemonic liberties of Virginians who thought of rights as an unequal system of social rank; the natural liberty of backcountry settlers who demanded the right to be left alone. The choices these men made were an expression of their beliefs; so too were their autonomous ways of choosing.
[skip]
The same policy was extended to British prisoners after the Battle of Princeton. Washington ordered one of his most trusted officers, Lt. Col. Samuel Blachley Webb, to look after them: “You are to take charge of [211] privates of the British Army. … Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren. … Provide everything necessary for them on the road.” There were exceptions on the American side. Loyalists and slaves who joined the British were treated cruelly by local officials. But Congress and the Continental Army generally adopted Adams’s “policy of humanity.” Their moral choices in the War of Independence enlarged the American Revolution.
The most remarkable fact about American soldiers and civilians in the New Jersey campaign is not that they did any of these things but that they did all of them together. In a desperate struggle they reversed the momentum of the war; they also improvised a new way of war that grew into an American tradition; and they chose a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution.
They set a high example, and we have much to learn from them. A good deal of recent writing about history has served us ill in that respect. In the late twentieth century, too many scholars made American history into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us that we are captives of our darker selves, slaves to material interests, and helpless victims of our history. It isn’t so, and never was. The story of Washington’s crossing tells us that Americans who came before us were capable of acting in a higher spirit—and, I think, so are we."
America will lose simply because it has lost its moral base, and any claim to it.
