"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion."--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee, 1825
By Douglas V. Gibbs
During yesterday's Independence Day celebration, we heard July Fourth being referred to as America's Birthday. The reference to America's Birthday relates to the Declaration of Independence, in which the Founding Fathers listed their grievances with Britain, and declared that it was time to "dissolve the political bonds that connected" The Colonies to Mother England, on July 4, 1776. The United States, however, was not born. July 4th is not the nation's birthday. This country was forged through war, blood, sweat, and tears.
From the very beginning, we were unique. Rather than come as conquerors, the early English Colonists came to America as families and entrepreneurs, taking advantage of the charters offered by the King of England. Those early Americans did not come to America slaughtering the native population, or raping and forcing into marriage the native women, as did the Spanish warriors that conquered the rest of the Americas in decades prior in what is known today as Mexico, Central America, and South America. The colonists along the Atlantic Coast came as immigrants that needed, and obtained, assistance from the native population - a reality of coexistence best portrayed by the real story of the first Thanksgiving.
The English Colonists were unique in that they were individualistic, rather than members of a military force. Colonization by charter, rather than by conquest, instilled in the American Colonists the traits of self-sufficiency, self-reliance, hard work, and personal responsibility. The frontier to the west encouraged the Americans to step into the unknown, to seek a better life, obtain property, embrace the toughness of the New World, use their guns, take care of themselves, and leave behind the old way of doing things. The treatment of the colonies by the British Empire taught the colonial Americans to not settle for being nothing more than a revenue source for the king. They learned to stand up for their rights, demand liberty, and fight on the side of virtue. The character of America was forged through struggle, economic risk taking, and hardship, developing long before the advent of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, or the Constitutional Convention in 1787. We were, and are, an exceptional nation that refuses to settle for anything less than life, liberty, and an exception opportunity to pursue happiness.
The English watched Spain colonize the New World by conquest, and learned exactly what not to do. The lessons from Spain’s tactic of military conquest, and the incredible financial expenses of empire Spain had encountered, convinced the English monarchy to use a different tact when colonizing the Atlantic Coast of North America. Rather than set out to conquer lands with troops and equipment, adventurers were encouraged to invest in the New World. To English colonists, the ownership of property was true wealth, so the opportunity to invest in a new land, where they could own their own property, and become self-sufficient without the iron fist of Britain always on them, was appealing. With that new land in the New World, the English colonists envisioned that they would be able to grow various crops of their choice, and make themselves rich in a way the Spanish were never able to achieve. And with the passage of time, the English did indeed produce crop surpluses for export to the Old World, making the English colonies profitable in a potentially unlimited manner.
England’s colonists were middle class families and businessmen. The English colonists were not soldiers filled with the desire of conquest and gold, but families filled with the desire of a new start, property ownership, and riches through farming and trade. Investors, like the Virginia Company, risked their capital because they saw great potential for profit in the new colonies. For the monarchy, the system was a proposition Britain felt it could not lose. Britain did not have to put up any money, or effort. All the king needed to do was issue charters. If the colony failed, it cost England nothing, for the loss would be absorbed by the investors. If the colony succeeded, England would benefit through taxation, trade, global influence, and profits from the agriculture of the new land. The struggles were immense. Many colonists died, and the people that survived were sick, hungry, and miserable. The colonists endured Indian attacks by a minority of the local tribes, disease, and starvation with little assistance from the British homeland. Faced with the immense difficulties associated with settling in an uncivilized environment, bickering among the colonists left the settlers with unplanted crops, and shrinking food supplies. The North American wilderness was not quite the paradise described by the Virginia Company’s publications in England. Disease and starvation threatened to wipe out the Jamestown settlement early on. The people lay day and night groaning in misery. The weakened and demoralized people were on the verge of death, on the verge of failure. The local native people came to the rescue. In 1607 the local Indians began to bring corn to the colony for barter, which assisted in feeding the colonists, while stocking the Indians with Old World goods they desired. However, the corn was not enough. By the time 1610 had rolled around, after the “starving time” winter of 1609-1610 where food was in such short supply some settlers resorted to eating their recently deceased neighbors, only 60 of the previous 500 settlers remained alive. These early struggles, however, had an important impact on the English colonies that the Spanish never encountered. The struggles, with no help from England, instilled a spirit of survival, self-reliance, and independence into the English colonists. From the very beginning the virtues of hard work, and personal responsibility, were important for the sake of survival. Without these characteristics, which were taught to the colonists through their struggles, the English colonies would never have survived. Like the struggling butterfly that becomes strong enough to fly because of the struggle to free itself from the cocoon, the storms of colonization strengthened the English colonists, forging this nation through the difficulties of existence, preparing the new nation for the hardships of war, and the arduous journey as a new nation.
The Western Frontier’s influence on America’s character added to the spirit of toughness that was fast becoming a common trait among the English colonists. With that spirit of adventure came the desire to seek a better life, obtain property, battle the difficulties of the untamed land, become skilled with their firearms, and leave behind the old European way of doing things. When George Washington was a young man, he constantly sought adventures on the Virginia Frontier. In March of 1748, when Washington was but a sixteen year old young man, his frequent adventures epitomized the toughness of Americans. “George and his companions swam their horses across swollen rivers, slept under the stars, and feasted on wild turkeys cooked over open campfires, had their tents carried away twice by high winds, and on one occasion awoke to find their straw beds in flames. But through it all they successfully surveyed or ‘ran off’ hundreds of acres along the South Branch”. As the colonies grew, so did the colonist’s encroachment into the Indian frontier. With this kind of life came hunting, fishing, living off the land, and numerous confrontations with the native population. The tough adventurous side of the character of America lends much of its existence to the presence of the wild frontier, American’s willingness to explore, and conquer, that frontier, and epitomizes what it means when I say America was forged into existence.
In the New World, the colonists created for themselves a society that was “distinctively colonial and distinctively British. The emerging political identity of the English colonists was British, so when the king began to revoke various charters in the New World, and when the king began to send British bureaucrats into America, the response was one of anger. Though “chafed under increasing royal control, they still valued English protection”. The rise of various rebel governments challenging the British at the turn of the eighteenth century, however, was only a small sign of things to come.
The British Empire eventually revealed itself as a tyrannical system that was even willing to use troops against the Americans. The Americans began to see the British as rulers that limited there freedoms, and denied them of their natural rights. The American Revolution was fought against a highly centralized state that was headed by a despotic chief executive. The Americans, due to over a hundred years of building their American character, posed to be a difficult opponent for the British, and did not lay down quietly. The attempt by the British to quell unrest became a war, and that war emerged as a revolution for the independence of the American colonies. The British army considered itself to be an army of skilled professionals who would come in and easily defeat the rank amateurs in short order, putting a quick end to the nonsense. Their approach to victory was the traditional one, pushing the enemy from point to point. They came to fight a war over real estate. The Americans, however, were not your traditional foe. The American’s history of self-reliance, hard work, and experience in the frontier changed the face of the conflict. In the end, the British finally departed from America’s shores, for the forging of a new nation seeking independence was too much for them to control.
Independence was inevitable. Thomas Paine pointed out that securing independence from England was America’s destiny. If the United States did not achieve independence, the country would never be able to disentangle itself from the family feuds going on in Europe. America’s unique character, which had been constructed in the American psyche from the earliest days when the Americans struggled as new colonists without outside help under the charter system, and from the American taming of the frontier through hardship and struggles, and the harsh treatment the colonies received from Britain, followed by the challenges of war, made independence inevitable. The character of America demanded independence, history foretold independence, and pre-revolutionary events ensured independence. And that is how America was forged.
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