Spirit of '76

I sometimes try to imagine what the Spirit of ’76 meant during our founding years and what it could mean today?

I never thought I would see an election like the one we are drifting toward this November. This is not the New Frontier that I was born amidst. Not the Carter Malaise that gave away to the Reagan Morning in America. It feels like Alexander Hamilton’s words during The Revolutionary War are fitting for today’s politics.

There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism

Photo by Robin Jonathan Deutsch on Unsplash

John Adams expressed a combination of hope stirred with a dash of realism in a letter to this wife Abigail, dated July 3, 1776.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

I am old enough to realize that the state of politics has never been perfect, and that it has been a labor to even try and live up to the ideas brought forth in our Declaration of Independence and preamble of our Constitution. Factions replaced our revolutionary spirit even before victory was achieved on the battlefield. Problems are difficult and there is currently no consensus on how to address them as a nation of people. Our leadership reflects our lack of agreement. So we are locked into another four years of drift, searching for the leadership we require. But myth and time convinces us that things were better in the past, and that problems are larger in the present. Politics was not a clean sport in 1824, anymore than it is right now. Is the art of journalism less yellow now than in the 1890’s? Probably not.

I sometimes try to imagine what the Spirit of ’76 meant during our founding years and what it could mean today? Levi Preston, a veteran of the Lexington and Concord battle that ignited the Revolutionary War, had a simple explanation of what the spirit meant to a participant in the making of our country.

Sixty-seven years after Lexington and Concord, 91-year-old Levi Preston, who was from Danvers, Massachusetts, and who had been a Minute Man, was interviewed by a young Dartmouth student named Mellen Chamberlain about the so-called English oppressions that had caused the war. By the time of Chamberlain’s interview in 1842, Preston had come to be regarded as an historical oddity and living relic of the past.

“Captain Preston,” asked Chamberlain, “why did you go to the Concord Fight, the 19th of April, 1775?”

“Why did I go?”

“Yes, my histories tell me that you men of the Revolution took up arms against ‘intolerable oppressions.’ What were they?”

“I didn’t feel them.”

“What, were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act?”

“I never saw one of those stamps, and always understood Governor Bernard put them all in Castle William [in the harbor]. I am certain I never paid a penny for one of them.”

“Well then, what about the Tea Tax?”

“Tea Tax! I never drank a cup of the stuff; the boys threw it all overboard.”

“Then I suppose you were reading Sydney and Locke about the eternal principles of liberty?”

“Never heard of ‘em. We read only the Bible, the Catechism, Watt’s Psalms and Hymns and the Almanac.”

“Well, then, what was the matter? And what did you mean in going to fight?”

“Young man,” said Preston, “What we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to govern ourselves. They didn’t mean we should.”

I expect the Spirit of ’76 today is in the eye of the beholder. It must flow from a place of optimism that is elusive to tap at this moment. It smacks of rugged individualism, tolerance, justice and personal liberty, local self government. All Americans believe this, but of course disagreements naturally arise on how to achieve these goals. Civilized society should be able to manage political disagreements without resorting to violence.

Politics has always been local to me. It starts at your home and radiates through your community, state, country and beyond. Let’s go forth from this time and place and ignite some good in the places more local to you. Help repair a playground. Attend a local government meeting. Mow your neighbor’s lawn while they are sidelined with a difficulty. The cure for hate is love. The remedy for ignorance is knowledge. Anger is dissolved by thoughtful calm. Find your own compass that brings forth a renewal of the Spirit of ’76.

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