Friday, July 4, 2008

For the Fourth, some thoughts from author David McCullough



On the courage of the founding fathers, from a speech he gave in Kansas shortly after 9-11:

[T]wo statistics I came across in my work on John Adams, my work on 1776, struck a bell, gave me a sense of proportions that I never would have had otherwise.

The first was that the population of Philadelphia in 1776 was all of 30,000 people, smaller than Manhattan, Kansas [today], and that the population of New York was about 18,000, Boston maybe 15,000, and the population of the entire country was about 2,500,000 . . . . and the audacity of the patriots of that day to claim independence, to stand in opposition to the British empire was such as we probably have to struggle to even comprehend. But the other statistic that I'm going to stress gives a sense of that proportion.

In the same week when the delegates to the Second Continental Congress at Philadelphia were about to vote for the Declaration of Independence, that first week, crucial first week in July, the British were landing a total of 32,000 troops on Staten Island. In other words, they were landing a military force on Staten Island which was larger than the entire population of the largest city in the American colonies. And furthermore, they were the best troops in the world. They were fully equipped, they were veteran troops, and they were only about a day and-a-half, two days march from Philadelphia.

So when those delegates, those founding fathers we sometimes call them, signed their names to the Declaration of Independence, they were signing their names to their own death warrants. They were declaring themselves historically, publicly as traitors. And when they said they pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, those weren't just words, that wasn't pure rhetoric for effect, it was the literal truth. So the courage that they had is at least as important as any single factor to take into consideration in trying to understand that time and understand those people.

They were not like we are. It's very commonly said, "Oh, the people of the past are just like we are." They were nothing like we are, because they lived in a different time, they lived in a different culture, the inconveniences, the discomforts, the hardships, the fears, fears of disease, for example, that they had to live with on a daily basis were of a kind that we don't know.
Consider, for example, when the first Continental Congress set off-the members of that Congress set off to go to Philadelphia for the first meeting of the Congress, they were going to a city in which only the year before, really less than 12 months before, more than 300 people had died of smallpox. Now, that's one percent of the population. It would be as if a meeting were going to be held in Philadelphia today and over 10,000 people within the last eight or nine months had died of smallpox. How many would be brave enough to go there? And, of course, there's been no cure for smallpox, and smallpox is a killer. And in fact, one delegate to the First Continental Congress died of smallpox. But they went anyway. They followed their principles, if you will, and we are all their beneficiaries.

One would hope that at least among the most important side effects of a knowledge of history or appreciation of history is a capacity for gratitude, our gratitude for all that has been done for us through essentially, it seems to me, three great qualities that we should draw upon.

The first is courage. We're all descended, every one of us is descended from someone of enormous courage, fortitude, strength, toughness. Imagine just crossing the Atlantic Ocean to come here in the 17th Century or the 18th Century. Horrible, and almost as perilous as anything one could comprehend. And on into the 19th Century, the risks they were taking. This nation was built on risk. We are risk takers, we've always been risk takers.

I think to me as moving to my spirit, as memorable as any moment in the whole process of writing the book about John Adams, was the day I went with my son in the dead of winter, just this time of year, February, to stand at about the place that we think that John Quincy Adams, the father and the little boy, stood on the shores near Quincy at what's called Howe's Neck, with the wind blowing, with the temperature in the low 20s, nearly dark, on a day in mid February, to be picked up in a rowboat and taken out to the U.S. frigate Boston to sail for France, in the midst of winter and in the midst of war, neither the father nor the son having ever set foot on a ship before in his life.

Well, my son and I went to that place. John Quincy Adams was ten years old at the time, a little boy. His father was in his early forties. My son is in his early forties. We got out of nice warm car and we had good L.L. Bean down coats on and we walked down across the snow to the water's edge, and the wind was blowing and it was about 30 degrees, not 20 degrees, and it was bitterly cold. And the sky was lowering, glowering and these big green rollers were coming in, and we tried to imagine what it would have been like to have gotten into that rowboat and gone out to a frigate sitting out on the horizon, to sail to France in the midst of winter. Nobody ever went to sea on the North Atlantic in the winter if it could be avoided, even in peacetime. And to go in the midst of war was to go knowing that there were British cruisers lying offshore just waiting to capture a ship with somebody like John Adams, to take him to London, to the tower to be hanged.

I think I felt then in a way one can only feel from the experience of being at the place in roughly the same conditions, the extraordinary courage of that man, and to be taking his son, because his wife Abigail wanted the boy to go to see history happening and to see his father in action, and to learn from his father and to experience the associations that she knew he would have with some of the greatest minds of that extraordinary 18th Century once they reached France.

The whole speech can be found at: http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/landonlect/mcculloughtext202.html

3 comments:

Cassondra said...

This was incredible and fascinating to read! Thank you!

Gardners said...

Thanks for posting this. I love our country and I am so grateful to learn more of the incredible men who help build it.

Brent and Ronda said...

Ok, ok, we'll go to Philadelphia, too, although there have been over 700 murders in the last 8 months ...

I think your post demonstrates proof that there was such a powerful spiritual force behind it all and that no sensible man would ever step into the circumstance alone.