Against Overwhelming Odds
Against overwhelming odds
Next Monday is Independence Day. For someone like me, who grew up in a small agriculture-based country town in the heartland of the birth of our great nation, the holiday has always had a special meaning. I have often wondered why.
Perhaps it is because the Fourth of July is a part of our nation’s collective historic Zeitgeist, which commemorates the shared common experience of a great nation surviving against overwhelming odds.
As I have grown older and my study of history has intensified, the holiday has only grown in stature and meaning.
History is written by the winners and it is often sanitized and romanticized to an extent that the events portrayed by historical accounts, would be unrecognizable by the participants.
This great experiment we call democracy, freedom and America, should have failed any number of times in history and yet we prevail.
After the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress, which was only a revolutionary government in formation since September 5th, 1774, immediately set about the struggle to form a national government among states that did not get along, delegates that did not like each other, and regions of the colonies that had diametrically opposed interests.
On July 3, 2005, George Will wrote that when General George Washington “arrived outside Boston in July 1775 to assume command of the American rebellion, he was aghast.
“When he got a gander at his troops, mostly New Englanders, his reaction was akin to the Duke of Wellington's assessment of his troops, many of them the sweepings of Britain's slums, during the Peninsular War: ‘I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.’
“You think today's red state/blue state antagonism is unprecedented? Washington thought New Englanders ‘exceeding dirty and nasty.’”
And so began the American War of Independence.
The American colonists should have, by all measurable accounts, never ever won the Revolution. The war was not supported by a majority of the colonists.
European historical accounts reflect that the English essentially gave up fighting because the English public and government was financially exhausted and public sentiment had turned against the war. Between 1775 and 1783, England’s national debt had almost doubled while fighting the war.
After the Revolutionary War, the American colonies were essentially bankrupt and devastated. Immediately after the conflict, the only thing that kept the Continental Army from revolting in a military coup was the influence of George Washington.
If it were not for Holland loaning us millions and millions of dollars, we may have never made it. The United States was in debt to the tune of $42 million by 1783; $8 million was owed to Holland, France and Spain.
Hmmm… This is beginning to sound familiar! ...{Ctd on the link below} http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=4485
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