Interdependence Day
No, the title of this essay is not misspelled. I meant to call this day of picnics and fireworks by the word I believe most accurately describes who we were back then. Over 50 congressmen convened in sultry Philadelphia to affix their names on the document that started us—the U. S. more specifically. It was a blow struck for freedom and the possibility of creating a sovereign nation from the ambitions and interests of thirteen tribal entities. As it turned out, rebellion’s fervor quickly settled into the sobering reality that our “Continental” Army was little more than a hodge-podge of militias that even George Washington couldn’t adequately feed, equip or will to victory. But time rewards those who wage wars of attrition against opponents who, in counting their cost, choose expedience over valor when the latter’s price is unacceptable. And thanks to “a little help from our friends” in France, we lived to see our July 4, 1776 impertinent overreach rewarded.
Looking back it takes some historical imagination to understand how and why those 56 representatives from such disparate colonies were able to pull it off. To call what they did gutsy would be an understatement. But while they were anything but of one mind on most every subject that affected their lives in America, they understood—-in ways we seem to have lost—-how interconnected to and interdependent on each other they truly were. Having endured taxes they regarded as punitive, experienced heavy-handed military discipline from the King’s professional red coats, and been rebuffed in their entreaties for equivalent political representation, they felt compelled to draw their line in the sand. Of course, in doing so, they understood what was at stake, and took to heart their eldest member’s warning that “we must all hang together or, most assuredly we will hang separately.” In openly challenging the mightiest nation on earth, they incurred the enmity of half the population who saw in their Declaration a foolhardy, suicidal and treasonous provocation.
What an unusual team of rivals this Second Continental Congress appears to have been. Unequally representative of their colonies, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia alone marshaled more voting clout than Delaware, Georgia, New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maryland combined. A noteworthy comparison with today’s political leadership is the fact that 57% of the signers were under the age of 45, two of them at 26 being younger than all but seven of the 11,000 who have ever served in the U. S. House of Representatives. And only eight delegates exceeded the age of 60, making it quite a youthful assembly compared to our current Congress, with 50% of our senators and 32% of our representatives having already blown out at least 65 candles on their birthday cakes. Chosen by their colonial governments, 25 of the signers of the Declaration were attorneys, 17 were merchants, 17 made their livings in agriculture or land speculation, four were physicians, two each came from scientific or ministerial backgrounds. All but two of them were married, 16 of them more than once, and 51 of the 56 had fathered between 1 and 18 children, the average Congressional family caring for more than six offspring. As many as 25 of the delegates owned slaves at one time or another, their legacy leaving a shameful mark on American history, culture, law and politics up through the present.
In thinking about what these rebels set in motion in publishing their Declaration, I am struck by three qualities that, in my judgment, inspired and empowered their efforts: their courage, their commitment, and their willingness to compromise in realizing their ambitious and lofty aims in forging a new nation.
Courage: Each of them had to weigh the consequences to their lives of “putting their money where their mouth is,” in many cases adversely affecting both their livelihoods and their lives. Who among them imagined that they would endure uncertainties and deprivations over the course of a revolution that dragged on for seven more years? And then, realizing the shortcomings of the first government they had created, they let their vision of a more perfect union guide them—with healthy input from younger prodigies named Madison and Hamilton-—to create the fabric of constitutional government that has sustained us since its adoption in 1788. I’m not sure what requires more courage: starting a protest, sustaining a rebellion that had little chance of succeeding, launching one government or thoroughly retooling and amending it—27 times in fact—-as we’ve done in addressing its inadequacies or adapting it to our changing needs and values.
Commitment: Their commitment, both to their cause and to each other, is hard to underestimate when reading the closing sentence to the Declaration:
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
There are doubtless few times that both the intent and demands of commitment have found better expression than these. Facing the very real threat of losing their lives, of sacrificing their fortunes, and having their honor permanently maligned, this disparate group of the King’s subjects—-eight of whom were born in the British Isles—-nonetheless made a pact with each other held accountable by their published witness to the world. Talk about commitment, through thick and thin—the latter experience no doubt giving many of them a host of second thoughts in the years and decades that were to come.
Compromise: As I try to fathom the vitriol of modern political discourse, in which compromise and moderation are so often equated with weakness and waffling, I need to remember that our refusal to negotiate our differences is rarely a sign of strength or resolve. Rather it usually betrays a measure of arrogance that serves as a smokescreen obscuring deep-seated insecurities that pass for righteous conviction. Even the self-assured Jefferson allowed himself to be persuaded by Adams and Franklin to tone down his anti-Royal rhetoric in revising his Declaration draft, seemingly out of character with his “smartest man in the room” demeanor. Our first president proved the wisdom of his election by holding his tongue and stifling his temper in moderating the bipolar agendas of the Republicans and Federalists whose intransigence threatened to paralyze our fledgling government during its infancy. While compromise often leaves all parties less than satisfied, it has, nonetheless, been the means by which we have somehow managed to herd our many self-interested cats in a way that has advanced both our ideals and our prosperity. Shelby Foote’s analysis of the nadir of our democratic experiment puts the necessity of compromise into historical perspective:
The Civil War happened…”because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise. Americans like to think of themselves as uncompromising. Our true genius is for compromise. Our whole government is founded on it. And, it failed.”
Courage, commitment and compromise are indelibly etched into the character of the men and women around whom the United States was brought to life. And it is those qualities that have enabled us to rise above our parochial interests in that noble effort to fulfill those lofty aspirations upon which the satisfactions of life, liberty and happiness so depend. It is therefore critical that we, at this moment of our living in the wake of their dreams and determination, realize that our founders’ raised fists were not an assertion of their independence from each other or even, other than in governance, from the mother country. Their rebellion was predicated upon their acknowledged interdependence on each other, which they understood as both self-evident and essential to their success and their survival. While we may fault them for not carrying forth the ideals of freedom as far as they could or to the levels we now expect and take for granted—we should never waver in our respect and gratitude for their dreams and their accomplishments. For it is their vision of government that is both responsible and accountable to its citizens that continues to offer hope, perhaps the best of hopes, to a world still held hostage by the machinations and brutalities of its warlords and autocrats.
