Article by Judson Berger in The National Review
Words to Remember from the American Revolution
The American Revolution was a squalid, miserable affair for the winning side. While the British were able to, for a time, have their pick of house and harvest in New York City, the Patriots often didn’t have so much as shoes.
Existence was even more wretched for those taken captive. This account, recalled in the rather obscure History of Long Island (1839), comes from one Alexander Coffin, held aboard the notorious Jersey (the British prison ship, not the state):
I soon found that every spark of humanity had fled the breasts of the British officers who had charge of that floating receptacle of human misery. . . . Many of the prisoners, during the severity of winter, had scarcely clothes sufficient to cover their nakedness . . . we were fed (if fed it might be called) with provisions not fit for any human being to make use of; putrid beef and pork, and worm-eaten bread. . .
Another account survives from Captain Jabez Fitch, who was taken prisoner in 1776 and did 18 months on the ships. In this passage — transcribed, to the best of this writer’s ability, from Fitch’s manuscript — he recalls a fellow captive who,
after he was taken and stripped . . . [was positioned] as a mark for them to shoot at for diversion or practice, by which he [suffered] two severe wounds, one in the neck and the other in the arm.
He lived, briefly, but his captors went on to “destroy him” and hundreds of others by means of starvation.
Fitch’s account was logged from a time when victory was far from certain. Yorktown was five years away. What on earth could have motivated these colonist-soldiers, and all who would join, to keep going?
Thomas Paine’s immortal words, from The American Crisis pamphlets beginning that same momentous year, help explain the case (in part, one of sheer survival) as it was made at the time:
America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign dominion . . .
There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice . . .
Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.
“I dwell not upon the vapors.” . . . Indeed, pity the sap who might enter any rhetorical ring with Thomas Paine. More to the point, these writings serve us a powerful reminder: American independence — with it, the country we have today — was never a sure thing. It took the collective will, wisdom, wit, and warfare of thousands to accomplish. It took the cooperation and faith of generations to uphold. This weekend, as we celebrate this occasion, we should contemplate not only this historic mobilization of national spirit, but all that has gone right since — even with our current angst over the uglier parts of the American story and the attendant legacy of racism.
As our own Rich Lowry points out:
The Revolution didn’t devour its own. Its leaders died in their beds. At the end of long lives, sworn political enemies John Adams and Thomas Jefferson struck up a respectful correspondence, and both died on July 4, 1826, still honored 50 years after the Revolution.
When the country’s politics factionalized after the war, no one was guillotined or exiled for his beliefs. Instead, the profound disagreements between the two sides played out in battles in the newspapers and at the ballot box.
And, ICYMI, Mr. Cooke reflected recently on his decade in America, seeing a story that is still an overwhelmingly positive one:
There is nothing at all wrong with our bitching and moaning all day about the government or the culture or this or that; indeed, as citizens, that is our right and our responsibility. But it is a great sin to do so absent context, and the reality is that Americans who are alive in 2021 have won the grand prize in the cosmic lottery.
And it all started with what Paine, years after publication of his above call to arms, happily declared “the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew.” In that closing message, he spoke to the opportunity ahead:
To see it in our power to make a world happy — to teach mankind the art of being so — to exhibit, on the theatre of the universe a character hitherto unknown — and to have, as it were, a new creation intrusted to our hands, are honors that command reflection, and can neither be too highly estimated, nor too gratefully received.
