As we celebrate the 4th of July, I consider the origin of the war that brought this nation into being. The “shot heard around the world” was fired on 19 April,1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence.
The British considered the colonies as part of England and subject to rule by King George III, and most colonists did as well. But in two small villages in Massachusetts, Lexington and Concord, locals had begun to build up a supply of rifles and gunpowder. The British heard about this, and decided a show of strength was in order to seize the weapons and put an end to any thoughts of rebellion.
As soon as the British began their advance, five riders were sent out, Paul Revere, Samuel Prescott, Israel Bissell, William Dawes, and Sybil Ludington.The countryside was raised against the Redcoats, yet they were not fully aware of what was happening.
Just before dawn on 19 April, 1775, seven hundred British troops arrive at the village of Lexington, and sweep past the local resistance and kill seven or eight men, including the local militia leader. Emboldened by their success, they march on Concord, pass through but then discover close to five hundred “Minute Men” have taken positions all around them.
The Brits retreat, while the Minute Men advance, and the “shot heard around the world” is fired.
From that point, the British are in an orderly retreat in as much as they can be, and the locals are firing from behind trees and from higher ground. The British suffer horribly on their way back to Boston and the first battle is an American victory.
The idea that a group of ill-trained rebels can take on the best army in the world and beat them should have told the British military something of the nature of warfare against the colonists, but no one thought the war would last very long and there was no doubt the regular British Army would do anything but crush the rebellion.
The war would grind on for eight more years. The British were bled white by the Colonial Army as increasingly, George Washington realized he did not have to win the war, but only not lose it.
In 1781, the British suffered a major defeat at Cowpens, South Carolina, and many on both sides, saw this as the beginning of the end. The French Fleet destroyed the British in September of 1783. British forces trapped by Washington at Yorktown Virginiaand by October of 1783, the British had nothing they could do but surrender.
The Fourth of July, 1776 was not the end of British rule but rather the beginning of the fight against it. Yet during the seven years between those two dates, Americans from thirteen different colonies came together as one to throw off the yoke of the most powerful country on earth.
This brief and very condensed version of events, should in no way diminish the idea that unity of a people, not force of arms, is what made the most difference in a nation who would be free.
Take Care,
Mike
Yep, and it made the best nation.
Although I need to do more research, I wonder if the War of 1812 also helped let England know we are not theirs anymore.
I think at that point England was the drunk boyfriend trying to show his girlfriend how much her loved her through violence.
my sincerest apologies, dear readers. I set these up the night before and apparently was after midnight when I set this to post “Tomorrow”
*which meant Saturday
I think both my fans will understand, Mike.
Back then the forefathers wanted to throw off the yoke of having a king. I’m sorry to say that a lot of Americans are welcoming the idea of having a king again.
Buzz, I have to agree. We’ve lost the ability to think.
Mike, you will not agree with this comment but I will do so anyway. The outcome of the Revolutionary War was predestined by the Creator of the universe. It was Divine power that helped the colonists defeat the British and establish the greatest nation on earth. All according to the plan of the Eternal God….
Emmette, I do not write to be agreed with. I write so people can respond with that they wish to.
Your opinion is as important as everyone else’s.
Lest we forget, the war was also against an earlier form of fascism. If we use Mussolini’s definition of fascism: the merger of corporate and state, we find the 1773 Tea Act — a tax law passed in London that led to the Boston Tea Party — was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. The Tea Act gave the world’s largest transnational corporation — The East India Company — full and unlimited access to the American tea trade, and exempted the Company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the Company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea they were unable to sell and holding in inventory.
The primary purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders (which included the King and the wealthy elite that kept him secure in power), and to help the Company drive its colonial small-business competitors out of business. Because the Company no longer had to pay high taxes to England and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and tea houses in every town in America.
This infuriated the American colonists, who were wholly unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the world’s largest multinational corporation, The East India Company. They resented their small businesses still having to pay the higher, pre-Tea Act taxes without having any say or vote in the matter. (Thus, the cry of “no taxation without representation!”)
We’ve come full circle, where corporations have more say as to how this country is run than the people. “We the people…” was the opening words to our Constitution that explained how a nation going forward was to be run by the people for the benefit of the people. It was the beginning of a “we” society. But starting in early 1980, “we” became “me” and slowly a nation that grew the largest middle class the world had seen in earlier decades, started to erode from the idea of a nation for all, to a nation just for the few. Where self-interests became the dominating force, where “I got mine. Screw you” became the mantra. And in that time the world’s greatest nation that ranked #1 in almost every category has fallen to the lower echelon of those same categories. We have let the worse take the reigns and guide us into a nation of serfs, while those in charge, plunder not only the country’s wealth, but all the people’s worth, just so that they can fulfill their needs to always have more.
Today, people say they want what America was in “Leave it to Beaver’s” day, back when life was better. But many fail to know history when that all that we accomplished back then was when “we” were a country that when we did well, sharing in that wasn’t a burden, but a blessing because that’s how our country was designed to work.
Back in the day, corporations were kept in check. Monopolies were prevented and unions had power that prevented corporations from dominating their fiefdoms. But quietly, and quite in the open, an elite class, resentful of a powerful middle class, slowly organized to gain power to squash that contentment by sowing doubt and division into the population. Their version of “Leave it to Beaver” wasn’t a middle class with a dad who had one job that paid well enough to have kids and a stay at home mom, a house and able to buy a car every two years or so, it was a cast of white people, the rest was incidental Hollywood stuff.
Start by eliminating civics classes in schools. Eliminate funding for education, so only the wealthy elite can attend. Or those who take out loans will be in debt for years. Blame someone else for all your ills. Create a propaganda network to sell your ideology. Destroy everything that helps the American people. Grow cynicism about the very product that allowed the Cleaver family to exist in reality.
It used to be when we chose an elected official to lead us, it was someone we could aspire to. Now we have people who see a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, cheated on all 3 wives, known to have a solid friendship with a sex trafficker, lost multiple businesses via bankruptcies, stiffed hundreds of contractors, driving some of them into bankruptcy via stiffing them or suing them when they try to collect, avoided paying banks millions of dollars in loans and then having a voter knowing all this and think, “That’s what I want in a leader. That’s the kind of person I think will represent America the best.”
Standards for leadership have changed, because standards of cordial debate and critical thinking have been diminished. That has been part of the plan all along. It was long, slow in happening, but all out in the open.
This lengthy rant wasn’t a clever metaphor like yours Mike, but a frustration that fears we have lost everything our founding fathers initially fought against and won, only to lose it 250 years later.
CAI, not as clever, but much better said!