The Great Anniversary Festival; R. Bradford

IT WAS NEAR MIDNIGHT of a warm summer's day in Philadelphia. An earnest, stubborn man from Mas sachusetts was writing a letter home to his wife. In it he told her of an event which had taken place that day - a memorable "Epocha," he called it - which he believed would have profound consequences. And he predicted that in years to corne the people of the country would celebrate that event as "the great anniversary Festival." It ought to be commemorated, he added, Has the Day of Deliver ance, by solemn acts of Devotion to God Almighty." His name was John Adams; .the lady he addressed was his beloved Abigail; and the happening which he announced with such solemn pride was the adoption of the Dec laration of American Independ ence. As a prime mover in the Mr. Bradford is well known as a writer, speaker, and business organization consultant. He now lives in Ocala, Florida. RALPH BRADFORD l1eGreat Anniversary Festival events which led to that action, he had good reason for pride and sat isfaction; and as to the future, his vision was indeed prophetic. The Fourth of July celebration became a standard, almost a stereotyped, American institution. Its devo tional content was perhaps never quite as elevated as he imagined it would ~e; but its patriotic fer vor was strong and persistent.

Now we approach the 200th an niversary of that event. Nearly two centuries of American history and experience have been enacted on the world stage - in theatrical terms, a truly colossal production. Our physical growth and expan sion have been phenomenal - from a narrow cluster of isolated colo nies along the Atlantic seaboard, up the inland valleys, over the Ap palachian ridges, across the prair ies, plains and mountains, north to the gold-endowed and ultimate ly oil-rich Arctic, and far into the near-tropical mid-Pacific. Ameri259 260 THE FREEMAN May can achievements, too, have been legion - invention, the cotton gin, the row planter, the reaper, the binder, the combine; railroads to span the continent; highways to augment, and maybe to supersede, the railroads; steel and aluminum fabrication; the automobile; syn thetic products; longer life; gen eral education; mass merchandis ing; atomic fission; nuclear pow er; aviation; rocketry; men on the moon - and now the illimit able reaches of space beckoning.

A brilliant scene in the great drama of world history. A Devastating War But there were also vicissitudes of fortune. In the very first place, there was a war to be fought - a long and devastating struggle against overwhelming odds, with the American hopes sustained by an ill-trained, seldom-paid and' poorly equipped little army. It -was a time of low morale, deteriorat ing finances, incredible inflation and military humiliation. Armies need the stimulus of at least an occasional victory; and the early years of the American war for independence were an almost un relieved disaster. It was, of course, too much to hope that the struggling armies of a poorly organized colonial federation could prevail against the military might of Britain. Even with the handicap of dis tance and the attendant problems of logistics, British power was great and formidable. The Ameri can leaders knew this. Most of them had understood from the be ginning that war's end might very well be rope's end, so far as they were concerned. Washington, in deed, predicated his only hope for victory on somehow hanging on and prolonging the unequal con test until the exigencies of Euro pean power politics would bring France to the aid of his forces not necessarily for love of' Amer ica, but to harass the English.

In his diary for May 1781, Washington made a gloomy entry: "Instead of having magazines filled with' provisions we have a scanty pittance scattered here and there in the different states. In stead of having our arsenals well supplied with military stores, they are poorly provided and the work men all leaving them ... Instead of having a regular system of transportation established upon credit, or funds in the quarter master's hands ... we have neither the one nor the other; and all that business, or a great part of it, be ing done by military impress [that is, seizure by force] we are daily and hourly oppressing the people - souring their tempers and ali enating their affections. Instead of having the regiments complet1975 THE GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL 261 ed . . . scarce any State in the Union has, at this hour, an eighth part of its quota in the field and Iittle prospect, that I can see, of ever getting more than half. In a word - instead of having every thing in readiness to take the field, we have nothing; and instead of having the prospect of a glorious offensive campaign before us, we have a bewildered and· gloomy de fensive one."

The only possibility of bright ening this somber outlook, he muses, would be to receive a pow erful aid of ships, troops and mon ey from some generous allies. (No doubt he was thinking especially of the French.) But then he adds realistically that such aids, at the moment, were "too contingent to build upon." And that, be it re membered, was in the fifth year of the war! No General Government The situation was further exac erbated by the fact that there was really no American government, in the present sense of that word. In the discouraged diary entry just quoted, Washington does, to be sure, refer to both "the States" and "the Union" - but the Union was still a half-hearted dream, and the States remained an ag gregation of mutually jealous, dis trustful and often antagonistic colonies. Some of them actually had tariff regulations to prevent the importation of goods from neighboring colonies. There was still little comprehension of na tionhood. When a man from Wil liamsburg spoke of "his country"

he didn't mean all of colonial America; he meant Virginia. In the same way, "the country" of a man from Boston or Concord was not a string of colonies on the edge of a continent; it was Mas sachusetts. For a long time efforts had been made by leaders of vision to bring the scattered colonies into some sort of union for the ad vancement and protection of their mutual interests - but to little avail. As early as 1643 an attempt at a defensive union was under taken by the Plymouth, New Ha ven, Massachusetts Bay and Con necticut settlements. It was a very loose-knit alliance, born mainly out of fear of Indian depredations. It lasted about ten years, and collapsed. The next move toward unity was from an unlikely source London, of all places; the King's ministers, of all people! In 1688 they tried to consolidate the New England colonies with those of New York and New Jersey, pri marily in the hope of making them more effective against France's adventures in the New World, and also against the In262 THE FREEMAN May dians. The new arrangement was to be called The New England Do minion; but it was accompanied by so much royal ruthlessness that it met no favor among the colo nials and was eventually aban doned.

Plans 01 Union Others reached for unity from time to time. William Penn pro posed a plan of union, but the colonists, fearful that their rights might be abridged, rejected it. In 1754 all the New England colonies held a conference with those from New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, .primarily to deal with the matter of their treaties with the Indian tribes. At the confer ence Benjamin Franklin presented what came to be known as the Al bany Plan of Union. It was ap proved by the Conference, and submitted to the several colonies, and to the King. Hope for some kind of colonial union seemed at last on the way to realization. But the Plan was roundly rej ected by the King because it gave the Colonies too much self-govern ment, and by the colonial assem blies because it didn't give them enough! And so it had gone, through the decades. Only the repressive mea sures successively (and stupidly) imposed by the British govern ment, such as the Stamp Act, gradually forced the colonials to em brace more cooperative attitudes and led finally to the First and Second Continental Congresses, and to the beginnings of nation hood under the Articles of Con federation.

What was the reason for this stubborn aversion to centralized government? Was it ignorance unawareness -lack of vision? Something of all that, perhaps, since the colonials were average human beings. But they were also influenced - maybe it is not too much to say they were guided by something else. Average citi zen and political leader alike, they were afraid of government! This fear was a result of their own experience with oppressive Brit ish policies; and more remotely it was a heritage out of the experi ences of their parents and grand parents, whether as colonials or as citizens of European countries. Their experience with the institu tion of government had not been such as to lessen their distrust of it. Even Thomas Jefferson, you may recall, was convinced that "the best governed are the least governed." The strange, hard-to-understand thing was the behavior of succes sive British ministries toward their fellow Englishmen who hap pened to be living in America in stead of in Lancashire or Corn1975 THE GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL 263 wall. Their own history had been replete with .struggles to obtain the very rights which they so per sistently denied to the colonists.

Steps Toward Freedom In 1215 the Magna Carta had been wrested at sword's point from King John by the Barons at Run nymede. By it the principle of lim ited monarchy was established, and the rights of Englishmen un der law were set forth. Never mind that the barons could scarce ly. be called "the people," or that their quarrel with the King had small resemblance to a popular movement. The villeins, or peas ants, who made up most of Eng land's population at that time got very little out of the Great Char ter, and that little was theirs mainly because they were consid ered to be the property of the barons on whose land they lived. Their civil and political rights were only incidentally at issue. The issues, indeed, were primarily those of conflict between royal exactions and baronial privilege, of how much "scutage" or shield charge the king could collect from them (or they from their own re tainers); of the restoration of riparian seizures - and all with a strong undercurrent of recon quest-of-N ormandy international politics into the bargain. But nev er mind all that. A great blow had been struck. Principles of deep hu man import had been formulated.

A symbolic monument to freedom had been erected. True, the rights outlined at Runnymede soon began to be erod ed by kingly and ministerial usur pations; and by the year 1628 they were largely ignored by the government of Charles I. But the old fires were not completely banked; and by that time, more over, the average citizen was more deeply concerned than had been the case in the days of King John. So again a king was compelled to yield, not by force of arms this time, but by the expedient of a parliamentary withhholding of his revenues. Brought to terms, Charles signed an instrument called the Petition of Rights - a document, by the way, which as serted .several of the principles that were named a century and a half later in a statement known as the Declaration of American Independence. But it was a slow and often a discouraging battle, that struggle to make government an instru ment of the people, rather than the other way around - to insure that the people could live under laws enacted with their consent and approval, rather than under whimsical royal decrees imposed upon them. And one of the com pelling reasons men left the com264 THE FREEMAN May fort of their ancestral homes and emigrated to America was simply because of their deep desire "to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity."

A Bid for Home Rule And that was the reason, finally, for the so-called American Revo lution. So-called? Yes; because it was not a revolution in the sense of being a "fundamental change in political organization, or in a gov ernment or constitution." It was a revolt, if you like - a determined effort to get rid of the restrictions and exactions of a government on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a bid for home rule. It was not aimed at creating more gov ernment, but less. Aside from get ting out from under the sometimes petty but always irritating tyran nies of London, the colonials were not contending for radical changes in the social contract. That statement, of course, is a denial of certain kinds of propa ganda that have been slipped into some of the developing material for the Bicentennial celebration. There is frequent reference, espe cially in some of the television programs, to colonial leaders as "radicals," with the obvious intent to give a coloring of respectability to some of today's political ex tremists. But it is a mistake to equate the protests of the Sam Adamses and John Hancocks and Patrick Henrys with the present day "radical" demands for social ism, communism and superstatism generally. The colonials didn't de mand or want a radical revision of governmental forms; they didn't want to "revolutionize"

British institutions. They didn't propose to set up a socialistic Utopia in America. They simply wanted to be the directors of their own Iives and destinies, under the simplest and least restrictive form of government they could devise. So strong was this desire, and so intense the distrust and fear of government, that for some time all during the war and for several years thereafter - the American people came perilously near to having no general government at all. However, it was obvious that some central authority was need ed - at first to formulate and ex press the colonial grievances; and thereafter to conduct the war for independence. This need resulted in the First and Second Conti nental Congresses. The situation, in brief, was this: The people of Massachusetts had resisted the tax on tea, among other things. Feeling ran high and culminated in the purely symbolic but. historically important Boston Tea Party. It was just a bit of theatrics, of course - but it was drama, not comedy; and it was ex1975 THE GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL 265 cellent propaganda. And it went deeper than farcical theatricality, for it expressed a very firm colo nial determination. The British government could shrug off the Tea Party, but it couldn't shrug off the hard-cash fact which the Tea Party symbolized - namely, that the people of Massachusetts had no intention whatever of buy ing any more English tea. That was a stab in the pocketbook, and it hurt.

So England retaliated with what the colonials called the "Intoler able Acts" of Parliament - aboli tion of local government in the colonies, closing and blockading the port of Boston, quartering troops in private homes, transfer ring title to the vast Northwest Territory from the colonies to Canada - and so on. Meanwhile the colonials were busy with their committees on correspondence ;and before long, upon a call from Vir ginia, the First Continental Con gress was convened in Philadel phia. Rightsof Englishmen With remarkable speed and clarity, it protested the British treatment of the people of .Massa chusetts, got out a Declaration of Resolves and Grievances, and as serted that the colonies were en titled to preserve their rights un der their several charters - and under the British Constitution. You see? There was no "revolu tion," expressed or implied. They wanted to proceed under existing laws and agreements. There was, however, a threat, not too heavily veiled, that if the British govern ment failed to take remedial ac tion the Congress would meet again the following year.

It was all to no avail. London was determined to punish the re calcitrant colonials; the latter were equally set on resistance. Such a tense situation could not continue without violence; and so before very long there were Lexington and Concord. There was Bunker Hill. There was the burning of Charleston, the shelling and burn ing of Falmouth. There was the siege of Boston. And, as had been promised (or threatened) there was the Second Continental Con gress, the protracted debate, and finally the passage of Richard Henry Lee's little 47-word resolu tion. And so the die was cast. It was to be Independence. It was to be war. For seven long and dis couraging years, it was to be war! Incredibly, in five of those seven years, with no Chief Executive or other supreme magistrate, the war was conducted by the Congress, simply because it was the only thing in existence that bore any semblance to an organized, central government. It was weak, shot 266 THE FREEMAN May through with dissension and jeal ousies; it lacked authority over the states or colonies; it had little spirit of nationalism or unity.

This was not surprising when the several colonies themselves were bidding against the Congress in the matter of raising troops for the Continental army by ·offering a higher enlistment bonus for their local militia than the Con gress was offering for recruits to Washington's pathetic little army! We have seen in the earlier quota tion from Washington's wartime diary how the states ignored the requisitions of the Congress for his pressing military needs. De spite all this, it was a working Congress, with many committees whose members toiled long hours day after day through those weary years. And all the while, devoted lead ers were working to bring some order out of the developing chaos. They had not forgotten that Lee had matched his Independence resolution with another which called for a central government. This germ was never allowed to die, and from its base the Articles of Confederation were finally de veloped. Consideration of these Articles produced more division and acrimony, but at last they were passed. Provision was made for a Congress; but the powers granted it, or rather denied it, made its ultimate failure almost a certainty. As a single example, one Article provided that each State should retain its sovereignty, free dom and independence! Is it any wonder Washington sometimes wept into the pages of his diary?

Muddling Through But the colonials, as was said of the British at a much later date, had a genius for Hmuddling through." Also they were fired by the inspiration as well as the prac tical imperatives of their Cause. They didn't quit. They hung onto their dream. And the w~r dragged on. Names and places emerged and got into the pages of history: Brooklyn Heights, Kips Bay, Trenton, Monmouth, Ticonderoga, Saratoga, Valley Forge; the Brit ish Howe brothers - the General and the Admiral ; Johnny Bur goyne; Lord Cornwallis; the American General, Washington, flanked by the impetuous LaFay ette, the stolid Steuben, and the brilliant Hamilton; Arnold, able and traitorous; Greene, resource ful and steadfast; and finally the tactful Rochambeau and the pon derous De Grasse. For the French did come in, prodded by the wise and resourceful Benjamin Frank lin. And so at long last into the history books came a little place called Yorktown ... and the tedi ous, bloody business was finished 1975 THE GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL 267 - on the battlefield, that is. It was still two more years before the peace treaty was signed.

So much for the beginnings. In dependence was at last achieved. But even so the "blessings of lib erty" had not yet been fully real ized, for the country was still the disorganized, headless wonder that it had been, governmentally speak ing, from the beginning. More over, it was heavily in debt to both foreign and domestic creditors. Also, some 200 million dollars in paper money had been printed, and these "continentals" had be come almost worthless. And, of course, the lack of a strong na tional authority was leading to political and economic chaos. But a strange dichotomy existed: the people recognized the need for a strong central government - and they had a deep fear of just such a government. At last, common sense plus in telligent self-interest prevailed. In May of 1787 a convention was as sembled; the problems and the proposed solutions were long and sometimes bitterly debated. Ham ilton had a plan for something like an elected monarchy. Others had their favorite prescriptions.

But finally the so-called Virginia Plan, as drafted by James Mad ison and presented by Edmund Randolph, became the basis for what eventually emerged as the 'Constitution of the United States of America. It had taken four months of work to hammer it through the Convention - but more work was ahead. First, the existing Congress had to approve the new plan - and did so. Then it had to be adopted by the sev eral States. Some of them moved quickly; others dragged out their decision, notably Virginia and New York. But those two pivotal States ratified in June and July of 1788 - and the United States of America was in business! A great many books have been written about the Constitution, by authors whose opinion of it range from the cynical thesis that it was a compromise agree ment engineered by men of wealth and privilege to protect their in terests, to the almost religious belief that it is the greatest gov ernmental document ever devised.

I incline strongly to the latter opinion; but it is not my intention to undertake here any further analysis or debate. It is enough to say that it has stood the test of 187 years, which makes it the fundamental law of perhaps the oldest government in the world today. And, let it be added, the greatest! So the new nation was launched. The dream of John Adams (and of countless others) was on its way to fulfillment. But the way 268 THE FREEMAN May was long that it must travel. Washington, already feeling old at war's end (he was 53) had to leave Mount Vernon and spend eight pioneering years as the first President. Adams served four; Jefferson, Madison and Monroe served eight years each; and thus the first 36 years of the new nation's life were in the molding hands of five great figures out of the Revolutionary period. Nor was the country's experience with war ended, for in the Presidency of J ames Madison came the second war with Britain, called the War of 1812. Though political enemies of the President liked to call it "Mr. Madison's War," to most Americans this was another strug gle for principle, long remem bered and patriotically venerated - freedom of the seas, no search and seizure, and no impressment of American seamen. To most Englishmen, however, it was a minor episode of empire, little noted or long remembered.

"That Little War" In London some years ago my wife and I were entertained at luncheon by a former Lord Mayor - a charming gentleman of wide interests and broad education. He had been a member of a crack British regiment, and he rather proudly told us that a few years previously this regiment had visited the United States and among other appearances had taken part in a parade. "We were the first British reg iment," he said, "to march under arms in an American city since the Revolutionary War." I asked him if he was real sure about that, and he replied, "Of course. Why do you ask?" "Well," I answered, "I seem to recall that as late as 1814 certain British regiments marched under arms through the streets of an American city called Washington - and by a strange coincidence, that same night both the White House and the Capitol caught fire and burned." He laughed ruefully. "Touche!" he said. "I confess I'd forgotten all about that little war."

Just an incident, that little war? Yes - to most Englishmen, and even to many Americans nowa days; but it was part of the process of our maturing. Other incidents, other episodes, made up the mosaic. There were the dec ades of settlement - Appalachia, Mid-America, the Far West. There was to be the tragic blood letting of the Civil War and its slow healing; the railway, steam boat and industrial age; the 90 day war with Spain, which launched our country onto the world stage in a new character~ There would be Wilson and the 1975 THE GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL 269 First World War, with its ideal ism and naivete; the second Roose velt and World War Two, with its enormous costs and world involve ment. We were victorious in both those titanic struggles - or thought we were. As a result of our part in them, at any rate, we became a world power. For a time, indeed, it could almost have been said that we were the world power - a dangerous eminence.

A New Role in the World And then strange new things began to happen. Under. the in fluence of a kind of benevolent auto-hypnosis we undertook the role of international benefactor. Some of this, to be sure, was in the service of our proper self· interest, as in the matter of re storing devastated areas in west ern Europe. But we went much farther. It was not enough that our country had helped defeat ruthless aggression in two hemi spheres, or that we should be committed to enormous expense in maintaining an impressive mili tary presence abroad. No, we also assumed, before long, the role of world almoner, and began dispens ing fantastic sums, in cash and credit, to the so-called emerging nations, and to many others. I do not have the latest figures by me as I write - and the exact amounts are not important. But certainly a substantial portion of our 500 plus billion dollar debt was oc casioned by this lavish and in discriminate foreign aid program.

The debt was further swollen by the heedless expenditure of other billions in excess of our national tax receipts, including enormous outlays for Korea and Viet Nam. Ideologically, we have, as some people like to say, "outgrown the bucolic ethical and financial atti tudes of our yesterdays." Once, for instance, we had a healthy fear of debt. We understood its usage in both public and private finance; but we knew and feared its dangers and avoided the pit falls of excessive and long-term deficits. But now, in a kind of Keynesian euphoria, we have put debt on a pedestal, proclaimed that it should never be paid or even reduced, and made it an instrument of alleged national progress and development - all the 'while that the value of our money was being disastrously eroded and the financial security of our peo ple drastically reduced. At this point I am moved to turn backward again for a mo ment, to quote a paragraph that was addressed to the American people some time ago by a some what worried citizen. He began by saying that we ought to cher ish the public credit as an impor tant source of strength; and then, 270 THE FREEMAN May with great pertinence to our pres ent financial policies, he concluded with these words, which I am putting in italics for emphasis: "A void likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning oc casions of expense, but by vigor ous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts . . . not un generously throwing upon poster ity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."

Pertinent counsel, it seems to me, in our present period - the more so because the somewhat troubled author of those senti ments was a tall gentleman fromVirgjnia named George Washington. Advice Unheeded It would be easy to dwell upon how far we have departed from that good advice, and the extent to which we have abandoned the ideals of work and achievement and morality that we like to think motivated our colonial forebears. Certainly the political, economic and moral formularies of our past are now questioned, debated, discounted, sometimes ridiculed, occasionally violated; and one frequently encounters a cynical at titude toward what used to be accepted as proper and valid American ideals and values. Per sonal industriousness (the "work ethic") is often scoffed at. The worth of frugality is questioned. Capitalistic enterprise is often un der attack by those who think of "capitalism" as wicked aggrega tions of rich men intent on plun der, rather than as a convenient economic vehicle through which many investors can pool their sav ings for both personal and so cietal advantage.

And so on ... and on ... and on, in a doleful threnody that would pound fear into the heart of any one who loves this country, values its past, and has hopes for its future. Unless, that is, unless .... Unless he probes somewhat be neath the surface, both now and in the history of those colonial days. He will find'that all was not sweetness and light then, either - that the demand for Indepen dence was for a long time a minor ity sentiment; that there was little enthusiasm for the war; that the army was plagued with deser tions; and that there was political chicanery and humbug, then as now. And as to the current scene, the despairing lover of this coun try today will despair less and hope more if he will consider the other side of the medallion, re membering tha:t the voice of criti cism is nearly always louder than the voice of approval; that fear is usually more strident than courage; that hope is quieter than despair. What one sees in a casual 1975 THE GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL 271 survey of the country, and es pecially what one sees on the tube or in the press, is a surface pic ture - the froth on the wave, the noisy sibilance of the breakers, not the calm surge of the tide.

Our country has always had its doubters, its detractors, and alas, its betrayers. John Adams himself witnessed such things, even at the beginning. It is not too surpris ing, human nature being what it is, that the heroism of a Nathan Hale was shown in the same war that brought forth the treachery of a Benedict Arnold. Washington himself was traduced and slan dered and made the victim of a vicious and nearly successful ca bal. All of which is simply to say that men are men, of whatever nation and whatever, generation. Look Back With Pride As we approach the Bicenten nial of our nationhood we can take stock of our country and its institutions with pride and sat isfaction. We have done a lot to it, we Americans. We have bur dened it with unnecessary debt. We have cheapened its money through inflation. We have de pleted its resources through prof ligate exploitation. We have ex tended its powers and functions beyond anything dreamed of by its founders. We have put it into business in competition with its own people. We have converted it into a gigantic bureaucracy which today employs more people than there were in the whole country in 1780. We have, in short, done our worst to overload· and bank rupt it. But like a tall tree in a wasteland, it stands up well among the troubled nations of this wab bling world.

If weak and unscrupulous men have betrayed the trust reposed in them by their fellow citizens, that is a matter for our sorrow, but not our shame. The shame is theirs, as their guilt is confessed or determined. The fault is theirs, and not that of the American system. As' citizens under that system we are able to look in cold eyed disapproval' on venality, be trayaland political humbuggery and yet continue to know and con fidently assert that our country is still, as Lincoln said of it, the last. best hope of earth. And we can imagine John Adams, grown old, but stubbornly immortal, peering downward and backward out of the mists of eternity, and taking renewed sat isfaction in observing the strength and resilience of the nation he helped to found - and being happy to see that the Nation is once more celebrating its birth in fit ting style with the Great Anni versary Festival of which he dl"eamed~ .~ Bettmann Archive THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY was born in 1800. In 1825 he be gan his writing career .and soon became one of England's most pop ular essayists. In 1848 the first volume of his magisterial History of England appeared and became an instant success, rivaling only the works of Byron and Sir WaIter Scott in popularity. Owing to its briIIiantstyle and encyclopedic coIIection of facts, it established Macaulay's reputation for all time.