Patriots' Day: Sons of Liberty Then and Now

________________________________________
Patriots' Day: Sons of Liberty Then and Now
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________

Patriots' Day: Sons of Liberty Then and Now
By Mark Alexander · Thursday, April 19, 2012
'Tis the Season for a Patriot Spring

"Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions -- The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us. ... Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth." --George Washington, 1776

Today, April 19th, is the 237th anniversary of Patriots' Day, marking the opening salvo of the American Revolution and the beginning of the greatest experiment in human Liberty.

A quick search of the Obama White House website reveals not a single reference to this most notable date in the history of our Republic -- not that I expected to find any acknowledgment of such. I am certain that the current statist regime occupying the Executive Branch would not want to promote this formative event distinguished by a call to arms1 to turn back a growing tide of tyranny.

Try though Barack Hussein Obama might to ignore it that is precisely what occurred on this day in 1775, when a small band of citizen Patriots challenged the authority of the most powerful government in the history of man. Take a moment to revisit the events of that day, and share this account with those you know who may never have had an introductory lesson in civics, the story of how a small group of American Patriots irrevocably altered the course of history toward a new bearing of Liberty.

In December of 1773, the Sons of Liberty, a group of Boston "radicals" acting under the leadership of Samuel Adams2, galvanized a rebellion against authoritarian colonial rulers, through the simple act of dumping tea into Boston Harbor -- a protest of a small three pence tax levied by the British. That event was immortalized as the "Boston Tea Party," and was the inspiration for the rising rebellion in this era called the Tea Party Movement3.

Sixteen months after the Boston Tea Party, the first Patriots' Day began with the horseback gallop of Paul Revere and William Dawes, just after midnight, en route to Concord, Massachusetts. Their mission was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British troops were coming to arrest them and seize their weapons. The British understood that to render neutral any resistance to tyranny, they must first disarm the people and remove from them the palladium of the liberties4.

Revere was captured but Dawes and Samuel Prescott, who had joined them along the way, escaped and continued toward Concord. Dawes later fell from his horse, but Prescott, who knew the area well enough to navigate rapidly at night, made it to Concord in time to warn the Sons of Liberty.

At dawn, farmers and laborers, landowners and statesmen alike, gathered to confront the British, pledging through action what Thomas Jefferson would later frame in words as "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor." Thus began the great campaign to reject the predictable albeit tyrannical order of the state and to embrace the difficult toils of securing individual Liberty. It was this as-yet unwritten pledge by militiamen in the Battles of Lexington and Concord5 that would delineate the distinction between Liberty and tyranny in Colonial America.

Why would the first generation of American Patriots forgo, in the inimitable words of Samuel Adams, "the tranquility of servitude" for "the animating contest of freedom"?

The answer to that question defined the spirit of American Patriotism at the dawn of the American Revolution, and to this day and for eternity, that spirit will serve as the first line of defense against tyranny.

In the first months of the American Revolution, English author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, a Tory loyalist, wrote that American Patriots' quest for liberty was nothing more than "the delirious dream of republican fanaticism" which would "put the axe to the roots of all government." Johnson concluded famously, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

In the same year Johnson founded the now-popular pastime of denigrating American Patriotism, Founder Alexander Hamilton was aptly defining its Foundation: "To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature."

Hamilton continued: "Upon this law depends the natural rights of mankind: the Supreme Being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal Liberty, and personal safety. The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

Our Founders declared "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," and they constituted this affirmation in order to "secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

Unlike King George's partisans and generations of authoritarians since, American Patriots were and remain unwaveringly loyal to something much larger than a mere man or geopolitical institution. They pledged their sacred honor6, as do we, in support of Essential Liberty7 as "endowed by our Creator8" and enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and its subordinate guidance, our Constitution.