I (Claude) suppose that I should note that for a few days last week I sounded a little odd. You’re not wrong; I was not in my usual recording space and not using my usual recording equipment; what’s more I was plagued by allergies and sounded a little rough on top of the funky acoustics. I hope it didn’t bug you too much.
Anyway.
Today, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress takes the time to organize its militiamen into a decent army. Meanwhile in New York, word gets out about Lexington and Concord, and people in that colony have a big decision to make.
In the aftermath of the battles at Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress held a series of hearings to determine who fired the first shot.
The purpose of the hearings was partially to find out exactly what had happened, but it had another purpose: if it turned out that the British had fired first, then the Assembly could turn to England and say “SEE? It wasn’t us!”
Even 250 years ago, Congressional hearings had a second agenda attached to them. (*sigh*) In the end, despite getting lots of testimony, the answer was still somewhat murky. But the Assembly still had enough information to give reconciliation one last shot.
Word spread rather quickly about the events at Lexington and Concord, and everybody mobilized to be ready for when (rather than if) hostilities broke out.
Most people were arming themselves and avoiding confiscation of supplies by the British, but in South Carolina they turned the tables and did a little confiscating of their own.
Word was already getting out about the fighting in and near Boston. While Virginia hadn’t been much of a concern to anyone until then, the British wanted to ensure that there wouldn’t be any trouble.
So in the middle of the night, they removed the gunpowder from the magazine at Williamsburg. Oddly, as we’ll learn shortly, this wasn’t a popular move on their part.
This is the big one, and it’s a date that many people don’t remember, but today is the day that the Revolutionary War officially began.
Oh sure, there were a few skirmishes here and there, which we’ve already discussed in earlier episodes. But this was the true tipping point from which nobody could recover or walk back.
Looking through social media the past couple of days, it’s heartwarming to see the number of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of things like Paul Revere’s ride, and the sheer number of people who are participating, even if they’re doing something relatively simple such as putting two lights in a high window of their homes.
We don’t recommend that you spend today shooting at British people wearing red, though.
Once in awhile, we fear that students of history don’t necessarily put things into the appropriate perspective when it comes to dates. We offer them some facts regarding what happened and when, but the events still kind of mush together.
That’s how we get the Simpsons joke: “Let’s take a look back at the year 1928- the year when you might have seen Al Capone dancing the Charleston on top of a flagpole!”
To that end, students might place the Boston Massacre, say, as quite close in the timeline to the start of the Revolutionary War, when in fact they happened several years apart. But at this specific period of time, things were in fact moving quickly and closely together: Colonies were lining up behind Massachusetts, various areas began to prepare for all-out war, General Gage was doing his best to control the colonists based on the orders that were sent to him several weeks earlier from London, and Lord North was in fact hoping to provoke the colonists into doing something that would give him a reason to crush them hard.
So when word got out that the British were coming up the Charles river to make a move on Concord and Lexington, Colonist spies were wise to it and they got the word out as fast as they could. Listen, my children, and you will hear.
War was coming closer, but nobody knew just how close. Two committees came together in Concord to make plans. They arranged for certain munitions to be moved around, for others to be prepared for action, and to ask people to lead combat units. And if those people said “No Thanks,” who the backup person would be.
Then they all went out to a nearby tavern, as you do when planning a revolution.
But nobody could suspect that the time from then to the war was measurable in hours by then, not by weeks.
I (Claude) remember once reading something about how it’s not so much the dates on the tombstones so much as it is the dash in between the dates. Because the dates represent singular events, but a lot of stuff happened during the dash.
And while that sentiment is often so much glurge, it does get me to thinking sometimes about the legacies left behind by tombstones. These were people who wanted to be remembered somehow. That’s not to say that people who choose to be cremated or buried at sea or dispensed with by some other means don’t want to be remembered; they just don’t seem to care whether there’s a marker saying I WAS AND NOW I’M NOT. These are largely the types who feel that you’re forgotten when your name is spoken for the last time, or when the last person who remembers you is, themselves, dead.
Sylvester Maxwell, to me, is in an odd place. We have his name and we know a few things about him, but we don’t have a good handle on who he was. He could be any one of hundreds of stones we pass in any given cemetery.
I’m getting maudlin here; I apologize. And I’m on vacation! In a beach condo! I gotta lighten up!
Okay, then: for all that, Mike has a story for you about Sylvester Maxwell. And there is something rather notable about his life, that he’ll tell you about.
Enjoy. I’m going to see if I can get some Vitamin D the natural way.
In retrospect, we feel like we may be picking on this historic site a little bit. In fact, the park surrounding the ruins of Fort Pownall are quite nice for hiking, biking, picnics and, as we mentioned, there are historical markers all over the place so you do get a sense of how important this particular site was.
At any rate, on April 5 we told you about a detachment sent to the fort to disarm the place; today was the day that they arrived and succeeded, because even if spies knew about it (and they almost certainly did), word was not going to get to the fort in time to prevent what was going to happen.
N.B. for those of you who download the episodes as they come out, apparently the audio didn’t attach to this post correctly. Our apologies. It should be in your feed now.
(Note: it’s in the alt text for the image, but in the interest of broader accuracy and general transparency, we know that this artwork isn’t the symbol for an American abolitionist society but rather a British one. But this is one of those cases where the story works better than the truth, and we found it to be a powerful image that underlines the intent of the tale. In short, let it go this once, OK? –CC)
It might come as a surprise to you that societies dedicated to the elimination of slavery in America came about as early as this, especially inasmuch as we had other things on our mind, such as the largest army in the world putting us in their sights. It might also come as a surprise that the one that came first in America, exists still, but with a different focus. Tune in and learn their story.
