Ah, 1776 — a time when the ruling aristocracy taxed Americans without their say, destroyed printing presses of those publishers demanding liberty, and jailed outspoken critics for treason. How things have changed — not! If there were one indispensable truth to be learned from America’s glorious Independence, it is this: governments do not give freedom; they take freedom away.
Any smooth-talking politician who pretends that government should be praised for the “gifts” it bestows upon the people is a smiling agent of the Crown fashioning new chains for citizens to wear. Laws, taxes, and regulations do not liberate human beings; they are the bricks and mortar trapping us inside ever-smaller cells.
Government is the destroyer of liberty. Bureaucracies do not light the flame of freedom; they snuff freedom’s light out. People alone (separate from the organizing strictures of the State) secure their liberty by pushing back against and restraining the otherwise ever-growing oppression of power-hungry governments. Citizens hold the keys to their own prison cells. They must only find the courage to open up their doors and walk outside. This was true in 1776; it is no less true today.
What is remarkable about the period leading up to the American Revolution is how quickly public sentiment shifted. By and large, colonists saw themselves as loyal servants of the English Crown until, suddenly, they were not. They celebrated King George III’s birthday each year. They formed militias to aid their king in wars against his European foes. As late as 1775, few Americans desired anything so radical as political Independence. The idea seemed far-fetched.
A year after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, half a year after the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and a month after Richard Henry Lee of Virginia urged the Second Continental Congress to declare the United Colonies, “free and independent States,” Americans were well on their way to separating from the British Empire for good. Colonial delegates agreed to a Resolution for Independence on July 2, approved Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence on July 4, began publishing the Declaration on July 6, and publicly read the Declaration in Philadelphia’s Independence Square on July 8. A year later, Philadelphia celebrated July 4 as an official Independence Day holiday with music, bonfires, parades, military processions, speeches, and fireworks. From loyal servants of the Crown to rebellious rabble-rousers who staged mock funerals for King George in the space of two years. Sometimes History comes at you fast.
Fifteen years earlier, American colonists had been fighting alongside British redcoats in the French and Indian War. Now they were conducting guerrilla warfare campaigns against English garrisons and seizing English vessels. America had no navy; young fishermen and sea merchants created one. America lacked well-trained, professional soldiers. Sharpshooting hunters with accurate long rifles had to suffice. America didn’t have enough young men to bear alone the burden of fighting. Old veterans, patriotic young women, and dedicated wives became instrumental to the Revolution’s success.
Samuel Whittemore, around eighty years old when the British marched on Lexington, is often credited as the oldest colonial combatant. His obituary recounts the remarkable man’s heroics on April 19, 1775. “If I can only be the instrument of killing one of my country’s foes I shall die in peace,” he reportedly declared. Killing a redcoat with his rifle, taking out two more with his horse pistols, and drawing a sword to defend himself from advancing soldiers, Whittemore was shot in the face and bayonetted several times. “We have killed the old rebel,” the British allegedly exclaimed. “About four hours after,” his obituary records, Whittemore “was found in a mangled situation…but providentialy none” of the blades had “penetrated so far as to destroy him; his hat and cloaths [sic] were shot through in many places, yet he survived to see the complete overthrow of his enemies, and his country enjoy all the blessings of peace and independence.” Now that’s an obituary! Amazingly, Captain Whittemore lived another eighteen years after being left for dead.
I like to think that men such as Samuel Whittemore scared the bejesus out of the British Regulars. The Crown’s professional soldiers marched in formation and followed rules of gentlemanly conduct, and out of nowhere, some eighty-year-old madman was jumping out from behind a wall and firing on them without warning. “You’re not playing by the rules,” I bet they cried. “What rules?” Whittemore probably replied.
His story reminds me of that of Daniel Morgan, who formed a company of Virginia riflemen and marched six hundred miles to Boston in under three weeks in the summer of ‘75. During the French and Indian War, Morgan had been lashed five hundred times (yet miraculously survived) for punching an English officer in the face. He never forgot the lesson. In Massachusetts, he ordered his legendary snipers to take out British officers who believed they were well out of range. The British army was outraged. Morgan didn’t care.
