Confinement hail! in Honour’s justest Cause
True to our King, our Country and Our Laws
Oposing Anarchy, Sedition, Strife
And every other Bane of Social Life
These Colonies of British freedom tired
Are by the Phrensy of distraction fired
Surrounding Nations with Amazement View
The strange infatuation they pursue
Virtue in tears, deplores their Fate in Vain
And Satan smiles to see disorder reign
The days of Cromwell, puritanick Rage
Return’d to Curse our more unhappy Age
Rushing to Arms they madly Urge their Fate
And levy War against their Parent State
We friends of Freedom Government and Laws
Are deemed inimical unto their Cause
In Vaults with Bars and Iron doors confined
They hold our Persons but can’t Rule the Mind
Act now We cannot, else we freely wou’d
But Calmly suffer for our Country’s Good
Success on Earth sometimes to Ill is given
To brave misfortune is the gift of Heaven
What man could do, We did, our Cause to Serve
We can’t Command Success, but We’ll deserve
—Anonymous, Written on Gaol Wall, Philadelphia, January 5, 1776
Never, perhaps, since 1865, have these United States been so divided as they are now, while this 250th year since the founding draws to its close. It is not just that the 250th anniversary celebrations have been terribly muted as compared to those of the Bicentennial (although carried on dutifully at the sites of the various events of the Revolutionary War); it is that the nation has divided into two factions, neither of which seems particularly competent or intelligent — and one of which seems committed to moral evil, with the other willing to compromise for the sake of government jobs.
In the midst of all of this, I revisited Concord’s Old North Bridge this month. I have been there many times, often visiting the Old Manse and the Wayside as well. But on this occasion, my mind filled with worry about the future of our country, I passed them by and focused on the Bridge itself. Thinking of that fight, I gazed on the inscription on the adjoining Minuteman Monument taken from Emerson’s Concord Hymn:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
For most Americans, that would be enough. Under this spell, I would ask myself which of our two factions — or perhaps some third or fourth alternative — are the closest heirs of the “embattled farmers.” Who in public life are worthiest to wave the Star-Spangled Banner, and recite the Declaration of Independence? As an Eagle Scout, a Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus, and the son and brother of American Legionnaires, I truly wish I could see the national dilemma in that fairly simple light — not that said dilemma would really be any easier.
But I have rather a deeper dilemma, which came back to me once more as I passed back over the bridge, and stopped to gaze on the gravestone of two British soldiers killed in the fight. Inscribed on it are the words “They came three thousand miles, and died, To keep the Past upon its throne; Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, Their English mother made her moan.” Two Union Jacks and some paper poppies decorate the grave. Most pass it by quickly, granting it barely a look — if that.
But for me, it is much more than a random memory of a long-ago war. It is a reminder that the conflict we are feebly commemorating was our country’s first civil war; in addition, it was the latest in a series of conflicts that from 1534 until 1865 would determine the nature of the world-wide Anglosphere; and it was also the most recent in a series of world wars between Britain and France that determined the ownership of the North American Continent. Caught up in all those dramas were thousands — indeed millions — of people: our own ancestors, and we, their descendants.
The events at Concord and Lexington began the siege of Boston, which would only be concluded in March of 1776 by the placing of guns on Dorchester Heights. But these cannon themselves had been brought from Fort Ticonderoga, a place that in itself symbolises all of these struggles. I had visited there too, a few days before. Originally built as Fort Carillon in 1755, it anchored French control of Lake Champlain as the war clouds gathered for the Seven Years’ War. A masterpiece of period engineering, it was the boast of New France.
When the British attempted to take it on July 8, 1758, they were repulsed with heavy losses — 400 French versus 2000 British. This victory was immortalised by the French-Canadian national poet Octave Crémazie a century later, with his stirring poem Le Drapeau de Carillon, which opens:
O Carillon, I see you again;
No longer, alas! as in those blessed days;
When within your walls the resounding trumpet
Had gathered us together to save you.
I come to you, when my soul succumbs;
And already feels its courage weakening.
Yes, near you, coming to seek my grave;
For my flag I come here to die.
The flag of Carillon which Crémazie immortalised, with the Sacred Heart emblazoned on it in the mid-19th century, became the national flag of the French Canadians — and remains so for those who reject the poison of the Quiet Revolution; in a more secular form it was the basis for the modern Quebec provincial flag. But in 1759, the fort fell without a shot, as its garrison was withdrawn for the ultimately unsuccessful defence of Quebec City. The victorious British renamed it Fort Ticonderoga, and so it was called when Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys seized it from the tiny garrison “in the name of the Continental Congress and the Great Jehovah” on May 10, 1775. Shortly thereafter, its cannon made their way south.
The ensuing conflict leaves a great many questions which are rarely asked — but whose answers may be crucial to our future. The French Canadians of 1776 for the most part remained loyal to King George III both because of his arranging for Quebec’s Bishop Briand to be consecrated in France after the Conquest, and his piloting the Quebec Act through Parliament. But at the time the King was already known for favouring Catholic Emancipation, as two years earlier he issued a new Oath of Allegiance for his Irish Catholic subjects which no longer required them to abjure the Pope and Transubstantiation. As a result, when the war broke out in 1776, the Catholic Committee of Ireland assured him of their complete loyalty. George was the first of his line to visit Catholic nobility in their homes at a time when such visits were key to social position. His efforts in this area culminated in the First Catholic Emancipation Act of 1778, which freed our co-religionists in the British Empire of some of their most annoying restrictions. But 1778 was also the year in which — thanks to the rebel victory at Saratoga — Louis XVI decided to bring France into the war against Britain; his cousin, Carlos III, joined him the following year. The result of what he considered to be betrayal by his brother Sovereigns turned George III against Catholic Emancipation forever.
But all of this meant a turn in the propaganda war as well. Prior to France’s entry into the conflict, rebel propaganda had attacked the King as a Papist foe of Protestant liberties. But their new strange Catholic bedfellows forced the Continental Congress to change its tune. Both as a body and individually its members attended Mass in Philadelphia, and did their best to suppress overt anti-Catholicism in deference to the sensibilities of their new allies. In response, Loyalist propaganda gleefully pointed out the change in rebel rhetoric, and in turn assumed an anti-Catholic tone it had not had before.
Where did this leave the Catholic Americans themselves? Fragmented. In Pennsylvania and Delaware, the community split along income lines, with the wealthier folk like the Carrolls, Stephen Moylan, and John Barry joining the rebels, and many of the poorer remaining Loyal. The Scots Catholic settlers of the Mohawk Valley stayed loyal en masse and were forced out altogether in 1776. They returned as soldiers, with their pastor, the Irish-born Fr. John McKenna, as their military chaplain.
But like the rebellion, Loyalism itself was a varied phenomenon. Some Loyalists were office-holders who could not break the oaths they had sworn to the King. Others were less assimilated members of cultural or ethnic minorities. Still others were denizens of areas that were neglected by the future rebel-dominated provincial governments. Anglicans in New England colonies where the Calvinist Congregational Church was established tended to be Loyalist; but Anglicans in the South, where their Church was established, tended to be rebel, and Calvinist Presbyterians to be Loyalist. But there were plenty of exceptions on either side. Congregational Ministers as a body are considered to be one of the ideological seedbeds of the rebellion; but among their number, Boston’s Mather Byles and Deerfield’s Jonathan Ashley were renowned for their fearless and undying loyalty to the King.
Several years before the fighting began at Concord, officers outspokenly loyal to the King were being systematically purged by the provincial governments — such was the fate of Timothy Ruggles, a lawyer, soldier, politician, and judge from Sandwich, Massachusetts, who had been one of the few successful militia leaders in the French War. Similarly, the denizens of Cambridge’s Brattle Street were driven out of their homes in 1774 — a year before hostilities began.
Why is all this ancient history relevant to-day? As Catholic Americans, it gives us a lot to consider. Patriotism is a religious virtue. If the birth of our country was due to a revolution that was not justifiable by our Church’s standards, where does that put us now? I would argue that regardless of the circumstances of the country’s advent, it nevertheless happened. If one of our parents were illegitimate, we might not honour the circumstances of their birth; but we would certainly be grateful that it had happened. If said parent were not Catholic, part of our honouring and loving them would be to attempt to bring them into the Faith — and so it is with our country.
For those of us with French-Canadian roots, the complex history represented here forces us to think of the ways of Providence, and how we were preserved from the horrors of the French Revolution, only to fall victim to ourselves in the 1960s — under the cloak of liberation. Moreover, the fact that both the French Revolution and the later wars of Independence that arguably set up Latin America for its very difficult subsequent history were the result of the French and Spanish intervention that in turn turned George III off Catholic Emancipation is worth pondering.
Lastly, there is the role of the Loyalists to consider. They were presented with a demand to swear allegiance to a new regime constructed from scratch by those who were already the dominant elite in each colony. In the near future, we may be presented with such issues ourselves, as national polarisation continues to grow. If we are, on which side shall we fall — with what we have always been loyal to, or something new? How shall we judge which of the two is morally superior? Having made that choice, shall we have the bravery to stick by it?
When walking over Concord Bridge or Ticonderoga’s ramparts — or the streets of Colonial Williamsburg or Boston’s Freedom Trail, or any other Colonial or Revolutionary site — let us remember that those who preceded us in doing so asked themselves those very questions. In the words of William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
