A perspective on the Revolutionary generation

[Perd Hapley]

I thought this shed some interesting light on the mindset and feelings of Americans of the Revolutionary/Founding period. Nothing ground-breaking; it just puts things in perspective. I think it gives some insight into the frustration of the colonists, with a distant government dictating how they and their ancestors' land would be governed.

     "We tend to see the colonial period in American history foreshortened by time. We need to remember that by 1787 Englishmen had been living in North America for over 170 years. Some of the men at the [Constitutional] Convention had great-great-great-grandparents who had been born Americans and who had died a hundred years before. Families like Martin's had worked farms that their grandfathers had worked, and laid flower before gravestones that in 1787 were moss-stained and eroded by a century and a half of weather. They were not newcomers, and the intense patriotism such men felt for their country is explained in good measure by the fact that their ancestors -men and women bearing their own names - in blistering sun and stinging cold had cleared the land and built the barns and left their bones in the earth. They were thinking and feeling and working just as their forefathers had done for four and five and six generations, and out of this came not only patriotism but that conservatism that urged them to do as had been done before."

--Christopher and James Lincoln Collier, Decision in Philadelphia.

[230RN]

That perspective, stretched into today, is why I don't like the idea of "amnestees" (illegal aliens converted to citizens automatically) being able to vote.

They do not have the awareness of what it took to generate this country.  Heck, they don't even know how to tap a maple tree for its syrup, butcher an animal, fight the cold, chop wood for the winter, break 40 acres of dirt for planting...

They're entering a "turnkey" operation and figure everything just exists for them, free for the taking --or simply by turning in food stamps at the grocery for their bellyful of beef.

Not, you understand, that many of our native-born city dwellers do, either, but there's a different perspective when one is aware of one's nitty-gritty past..."putting flowers on one's ancestors' graves."  Which might be a good metaphor to cover what I think you're saying.

I don't know if this makes sense or not.  Maybe I ought to fine-tune my thoughts on this after a few more cups of coffee.

Which I didn't grow and grind myself, either.

Kind of amorphous thinking on my part, but that's the feeling generated by your post, Fistful.  I don't know if this is the direction you wanted to go.

Terry, 230RN

[Perd Hapley]

I'm mainly interested in understanding the thoughts and feelings of the Americans of that era, as it's the period of American history that most interests me. I happened across that quotation in the book, and it really struck me, so there you go.

If it has any application to today, for me it would just be the way that we all get tired of the Beltway elite telling us how to run our lives.

[taurusowner]

That attitude seems more like how people felt during the Civil War.  Since mass transit was non-existent, people really felt tied to the small plot of land their family lived and worked for centuries.  State-solidarity was much more a part of people's lives than it is now.  Since rail-travel became more popular in the late 19th century, then cars and planes, people don't really live in the same place as their family nearly as much.  A college kid from Vermont moving to California is such a common thing, that allegiance to a state is now an outdated concept.  Even the idea of individual states having their own Armies, like in the Civil War, would never work now.  Active Army units all over the country are filled with people from every state in the nation.  Even National Guard units have people who have moved to those states from elsewhere.  The idea of being a citizen of your state doesn't really exist anymore, especially since one can change states in a few hours.  As a consequence, the feeling of being tied to your plot of land is getting less and less prevalent.

[MechAg94]

That perspective, stretched into today, is why I don't like the idea of "amnestees" (illegal aliens converted to citizens automatically) being able to vote.

They do not have the awareness of what it took to generate this country.  Heck, they don't even know how to tap a maple tree for its syrup, butcher an animal, fight the cold, chop wood for the winter, break 40 acres of dirt for planting...

How do you tap a maple tree?  We don't have those down here. 

[vaskidmark]

How do you tap a maple tree?  We don't have those down here. 

You drill a hole in it, and then pound in a tube that directs the sap into a bucket hanging from the tube.

It's more about knowing when to tap, and even more importantly how to boil it down, than how to tap for the sap.

stay safe.

[Ned Hamford]

You drill a hole in it, and then pound in a tube that directs the sap into a bucket hanging from the tube.

It's more about knowing when to tap, and even more importantly how to boil it down, than how to tap for the sap.

stay safe.

And if you do it wrong, you can split the tree.

Learned that from a sci-fi book 

[sanglant]

if you do it wrong, you starve because you screwed up your family's income for the year.

[S. Williamson]

I thought it took something like 2,073 trees to make an ounce of syrup or some insane number like that. 

[Ned Hamford]

The margins are that thin.   

[vaskidmark]

I thought it took something like 2,073 trees to make an ounce of syrup or some insane number like that. 

Close.  IIRC you need around 50 units of sap to get 1 unit of syrup - all depends on how watery the sap is.  The farther above freezing the temp gets the more watery the sap, so sugaring when it is coldest best - except that the sap is slow as molasses and you wait all day to get enough to make a gallon of syrup.  Temps get too high and you get mostly water instead of sugar and spend all day and night boiling it off to get syrup.

Maple sugar comes from boiling off more water from the syrup - bringing it down to somewhere around 1% water.  It's fairly easy to boil down syrup to sugar - until you get to the magic moment when the last bits of moisture are evaporating.  Then you can either hit the magic moment on the nail, stop just short and have something as thick as molasses/honey that has no commercial value, or burned crap on the bottom of the pan that ruins the pan for any future use.  That's why most maple sugar is made these days by vacuum process instead of boiling syrup.  Easy to control and you can't go too far and burn it.

BTW - if you want to get rich, invent a way to turn sugar back into syrup.  Not maple-flavored water, but real syrup.  (Hint: look at Dept. of Ag. definition of "maple syrup" and see if you could convince them your product meets the definition. )

stay safe.

[taurusowner]

Talk about thread drift lol 

[280plus]

No, because maple syrup leads to pancakes and pancakes are never a drift in any thread. 

[BridgeRunner]

Again, I think Ragnar has taken an idealized version of the past as a historical reality.  It has never been that simple.  A relatively small proportion of Americans have ever been tied to one farm/plot of land across multiple generations.

Immigrant attitudes too, vary widely.  A couple friends of Mexican ancestry are as proud to be Texans as any white Texan.  Don't know if their family backgrounds are legal or illegal immigrants.  

Personally, I have ever felt more allegiance to Michigan as my state than to the US generally, but I suspect I'm hardly typical; my childhood hero was George Washington, and it took me a while realize that when people talk of patriotism they often aren't talking about their state.  Deciding to leave Michigan has been, for my family, a major shift; it seems the next iteration in a long immigrant tradition, but my kids are fourth and fifth generation Michiganders from my side of the family.  Four generations on the Jewish side, all metro Detroit, five on the Christian side, all southern rural Michigan.  My spouse's family has a similarly long history in Michigan--and his mother and all four of her siblings have all stayed in Michigan.

There is not as much migration in modern life as we tend to think.  Can't give a cite on that, but I distinctly remember reading some figures on that in some sort of academic context fairly recently.  Again, APS is very self-selecting.  Many of us are military or former military, and many are of significantly above average intelligence or economic status or both.  All those factors tend to lead to a more mobile lifestyle--and almost always have.

Finally, I like pancakes, but prefer mine with jam. Fake syrup is gross, maple syrup is both too expensive and too thin, and any syrup is too messy for me to want to bother with with the kids.  

[taurusowner]

If you asked any member of the US Army to fight as a member of his state against another member of the US Army representing their state, the answer would be a resounding H*** NO!  People don't think like that anymore.

[BridgeRunner]

If you asked any member of the US Army to fight as a member of his state against another member of the US Army representing their state, the answer would be a resounding H*** NO!  People don't think like that anymore.

Perhaps Army personnel don't think like that anymore.

[Perd Hapley]

Funny. I don't see anything in that Collier quotation about one's love for one's state or colony. It speaks of "Americans," not Virginians or Pennsylvanians.

For me, having read/heard so much about the colonists/revolutionaries thinking of themselves as Englishmen (which is no doubt true), the significance of the quotation is that it stresses the deep roots that many late eighteenth-century Americans had already laid down in America, whether or not they lived on a family farm. It's a counterpoint.

Obviously, even then there were plenty of recent immigrants, like James Wilson, plus slaves newly imported from Barbados, etc.

[Tallpine]

My family seemed to move every generation or so over about 150 years: South Carolina --> Kentucky --> Arkansas --> Oklahoma --> Texas.

Can't tell where from before that, either Scotland or Ireland most likely.

Me, like Gus and Woodrow, I migrated from Texas to Montana via Arizona, Colorado, and Alaska 

[Gowen]

My family came over in the early 1700's.  I don't have a record of anyone fighting in the Revolutionary war, but one of them fought in the war of 1812.  That is how all the "scanr's"  settled in western PA, they were given land as payment for fighting.  A "scanr" fought and died in the Civil War for the North.  A family member worked on the Manhattan Project during WWII.  Yeah, my family helped nuke Japan.  My father went to Korea, one of his brothers went to Vietnam.  A son of my cousin just did a tour in Afghanistan.  In the 300 years my family has been in this land, we have shed blood, sweat and tears for this nation.  I completely under stand the sentiment in the first post.

We see the same seed of discontent sprouting up again across this nation.  Doubtful that it will culminate in to a shooting war, but a revolution is coming.

A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, "a turn around") is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.

[HeroHog]

My family left Scotland in the late 1600's and came to the Colonies via Barbados. Once we settled and fought in the War for American Independence and fought for the South in the Civil war. We also have some Choctaw and Cherokee blood so we are pretty much fighters for rights and as "American" as one can be I guess.

[erictank]

And if you do it wrong, you can split the tree.

Learned that from a sci-fi book 

Read 'Live Free Or Die', didya? 

Next one comes out in January, I believe.


Fistful, that was indeed an interesting point - I certainly hadn't thought about that aspect of things before.  I'd only considered the fact that they were subjects of the British Empire, but they had also had roots here stretching back generations.  Thought-provoking.

[freakazoid]

There is a good book called American Insurgents, American Patriots by T.H. Breen It talks about the political climate amongst the common people during the few years leading up to the Revolutionary War.

[Perd Hapley]

There is a good book called American Insurgents, American Patriots by T.H. Breen It talks about the political climate amongst the common people during the few years leading up to the Revolutionary War.

I'm not familiar with that one, but there are many such books. One that I found interesting was Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. It discusses the English and American political writing that was circulating in the colonies, and how it shaped the thought of the founding generation.

[gunsmith]

Mom's side is pretty "blue blood" and arrived on the Mayflower, family legend is that it wasn't the first Mayflower but another boat with the same name.
Dad's side is old NYC, and I cant get a straight answer from any of my relatives on his side that I still talk too.

I used to be all about how great NYC is and really love upstate NY too, but "the west is the best" to quote Jim Morrison.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

Did they send prison ships to the Americas? Because 3/4 of my lineage likely came over on one of those.