Page 11 - Demo

The American Revolution started long before the battles at Lexington and Concord.
John Adams—a perceptive observer if ever there was one— thought the most important part of the Revolution happened before the war began. “The Revolution,” Adams wrote in 1818, “was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.” This, Adams said, was “the real American Revolution.”
I don’t know that I agree with Adams. I think the eight years of war that started at Lexington was both very revolutionary and very real. Something like 250,000 Americans bore arms in the Revolutionary War. Ordinary people who had not been much involved in the political debates over Parliament’s right to tax the colonists enrolled to serve in the army or at sea to set the colonies free from British rule.
Most of them didn’t drink tea nor care much about whether it was taxed, but they didn’t like being pushed around and they really didn’t like it when British warships sailed into their harbors and British troops marched into their towns. They were outraged when British, Hessian, and Loyalist soldiers looted their homes, took their property, and
threatened their way of life. The war brought the Revolution home to millions of Americans. The war made the American Revolution real. John Adams, with all due respect, got it wrong.
That said, Adams was right that what happened before the shooting war was an important part of the American Revolution. But how far back should we look? To the Stamp Act? The French and Indian War? When did the Revolution begin?
Thoughtful people from Adams’ time to our own may differ over this, but I suggest the evening of March 5, 1770, when British soldiers fired into a crowd in front of Boston’s Customs House, killing five people. There had been violence before and there would be periods of relative calm after, but at that moment, in that place, animosity and mutual misunderstanding turned to deadly violence that fueled revolution.
As it happens, March 5, 2020, will be the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, which we will mark as the start of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
Here’s our the challenge:
In the thirteen years between 1770 and 1783, our ancestors
secured their independence, created a republic, built a national identity, and announced to the world that they would be guided by ideals of liberty, equality, natural and civil rights, and responsible citizenship. THAT was a revolution.
In the thirteen years between March 2020—the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre—and December 2033—the 250th anniversary of General Washington’s resignation of his commission at Annapolis—can we turn history education in the United States around? Can we renew understanding and appreciation of the extraordinary achievements of our ancestors? Can we make, and win,
a revolution of our own?
Let that be our challenge.
Let that be our test. Let that be the moment we fulfill the mis- sion our ancestors assigned us, to perpetuate the memory of the vast event at the heart of our national experience.
Are you with me?
William Pless Lunger
President General
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