Tad Stoermer on nationalistic "mythology dressed up as education"

 He's speaking about America, but it could be any western entity, including Ireland...

The Greenwich Tea Burning of 1774 – and the Ewing sword from the Boyne

Boston gets all the attention, but almost exactly a year after the Boston Tea Party, there was another almost identical event, this time at Greenwich in New Jersey, on 22 December 1774. Wikipedia page is here.

One of those who took part, disguised as a Native American, was Dr Thomas Ewing (1748-1782). 

"There is record of one James Ewing who was born at Glasgow, Scotland about 1650. His son Findley removed to Londonderry, Ireland in 1690 and there married Jane Porter. 

Findley Ewing was a staunch Presbyterian and an ardent advocate of liberty. For his distinguished bravery at the battle of the Boyne, a notable struggle between William III and James II, he was presented with a sword by King William. 

This token of military merit, afterward found its way to this country and was worn during our Revolutionary War by Dr. Thomas Ewing an army surgeon and great grandson of its original owner. 

By him it was bequeathed as a highly prized family treasure to his son Dr. William Belford Ewing".

• Photo of the Greenwich Tea Burning monument from this website; among those named on it are Thomas Ewing and James Ewing.

 

The Fort Gower Resolves, Virginia Gazette, 5 November 1774

A group of militia officers returning from Dunmore’s War composed the Fort Gower Resolves in the relative remoteness of the western bank of the Ohio River, on 5 November 1774. These were published in the December 22, 1774, issue of the Virginia Gazette. As you'll see below, theses Resolves, like all of the community documents which predate the Declaration of Independence, proclaim loyalty to King George III - while also asserting the officers’ preparedness to defend their rights. This is seen as the first time colonists expressed in writing their willingness to take up arms in defence of their liberties. 

It's a covenant – we give the King our allegiance, as long as he gives us our liberty.

Of course, it was the King's government, then a Tory Party government, which had withdrawn the colonists' liberty. And thanks to the 1689 Bill of Rights, the King could not override Parliament.

Also, I wonder if the men in Fort Gower appreciated the historical, revolutionary, significance of the date of 5 November...

.....................................

At a Meeting of the Officers under the Command of his Excellency the Right Honourable the EARL of DUNMORE, convened at Fort Gower, November 5, 1774, for the Purpose of considering the Grievances of BRITISH AMERICA, an Officer present addressed the Meeting in the following Words:

GENTLEMEN,

Having now concluded the Campaign, by the Assistance of Providence, with Honour and Advantage to the Colony, and ourselves, it only remains that we should give our Country the strongest Assurance that we are ready, at all Times, to the utmost of our Power, to maintain and defend her just Rights and Privileges. We have lived for about three Months in the Woods, without any intelligence from Boston, or from the Delegates at Philadelphia. It is possible, from the groundless Reports of designing Men, that our Countrymen may be jealous of the Use such a Body would make of Arms in their Hands at this critical Juncture. That we are a respectable Body is certain, when it is considered that we can live Weeks without Bread or Salt, that we can sleep in the open Air without any Covering but that of the Canopy of Heaven, and that our Men can march and shoot with any in the known World. Blessed with these Talents, let us solemnly engage to one another, and our Country in particular, that we will use them to no Purpose but for the Honour and Advantage of America in general, and of Virginia in particular. It behooves us then, for the Satisfaction of our Country, that we should give them our real Sentiments, by Way of Resolves, at this very alarming Crisis.

Whereupon the meeting made Choice of a Committee to draw up and prepare Resolves for their Consideration, who immediately withdrew; and after some Time spent therein, reported, that they had agreed to and prepared the following Resolves, which were read, maturely considered, and agreed to, nemine contradicente, by the Meeting, and ordered to be published in the Virginia Gazette.

• Resolved, that we will bear the most faithful Allegiance to his Majesty King George III, whilst his Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free People; that we will, at the Expense of Life, and every Thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in Support of the Honour of his Crown and the Dignity of the British Empire. But, as the Love of Liberty, and Attachment to the real Interests and just Rights of America outweigh every other Consideration, we resolve, that we will exert every Power within us for the Defence of American Liberty, and for the Support of her just Rights and Privileges; not in any precipitate, riotous, or tumultuous Manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous Voice of our Countrymen.

• Resolved, that we entertain the greated Respect for his Excellency the Right Honourable Lord DUNMORE, who commanded the Expedition against the Shawnese; and who, we are confident, underwent he great Fatigue of this singular Campaign from no other Motive than the true interest of this Country.

Signed by Order, and in Behalf of the whole Corps.

BENJAMIN ASHBY, Clerk.

"No Kings"? 1776 was a Revolution against Parliament

Pic above from this website.

The "No Kings" protests in the USA over the past months are a curious contradiction. It's a great present-day slogan, but it's not historically true. Thanks to the 1688 Glorious Revolution, almost a century before, in 1776 King George III was pretty much just a figurehead. The problems and tyrannies that the Colonists faced were because of the London Parliament, which from 1770-83, had a Tory Party majority.

Which is why, for a decade, in multiple documents – from The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 to the Second Continental Congress which began in 1775 – the Colonists listed their grievances against what Parliament was doing and appealed to the King to intervene. But even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't. He had no executive power. Since 1689 Britain had been a limited monarchy. Parliament had all the power.

• The timeless preamble to the eventual Declaration of Independence made six comments about Government, and then turned its attention to "the present King of Great Britain". It then listed a series of 27 grievances against him, saying that "our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people".

As James Wilson would say in 1787, “The people of [America] did not oppose the British King but the parliament—the opposition was not [against] a unity but a corrupt multitude.”

...............

In The Royalist Revolution; Monarchy and the American Founding (Harvard University Press, 2015) Professor Eric Nelson explains this essential point, especially in the current "No Kings" protest era. As the Amazon summary says – The Founding Fathers were rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. Here's an intelligent review of the book from the Harvard Law Review.

"No Kings" is potent and relevant for our day, but it inverts the history.

Kings can be tyrants – but Parliaments can also be, and have been, tyrannies.

• Excellent article from September 2025, entitled On the Law of the Declaration of Independence by Professor Adam Tomkins of the University of Glasgow, is online here

...............

PS – 1776 was primarily a rebellion against a London government that the Founding Father John Ja described as  “wicked Ministers and evil Counsellors”. It is no coincidence that the 1688 Declaration of William Henry Prince of Orange spoke of "evil counsellors" on 20 occasions, and of "wicked Counsellors" with "wicked designs" and "wicked ends".

Edward Rutledge, First Continental Congress, 28 September 1774 – "I came with an idea of getting a Bill of Rights."

His father was from Ulster, some say County Tyrone. Rutledge was just 24 or 25 when, at the First Continental Congress on 28 September 1774, he said "I came with an idea of getting a Bill of Rights". On 14 October, Congress issued its Declaration and Resolves, written by John Dickinson (Wikipedia here).

The eventual Bill of Rights (the amendments to the new United States Constitution) would't be created until 15 years later in 1789. Rutledge had been reading Sir William Blackstone's recent volume Commentaries on the Laws of England written between 1765-69 (Wikipedia here). John Adams' personal copy is online here on Archive.org.

Livingston, Smith & Scott – it sounds like a law firm and it pretty much was. New York, 1765.

They were known as the "Presbyterian Whig Triumvirate" – Williiam Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. They founded the New York Society Library in 1754, and produced a publication, the Independent Reflector.

Scott was (perhaps) the first to entertain the possibility that one day "Great Britain and her colonies" might separate – "the connection between them ought to cease". A 1765 article, anonymously attributed to "Free Man", was thought to be the handiwork of Scott. George Bancroft, in his History of the United States, quotes extensively from the article, and concludes with this –

"... There never can be a disposition in the colonies to break off their connection with the mother country, so long as they are permitted to have the full enjoyment of those rights to which the English constitution entitles them. They desire no more ; nor can they be satisfied with less." 

Such were the words in which the sober judgment of New York embodied its convictions. They were caught up by the impatient colonies; were reprinted in nearly all their newspapers; were approved of by the most learned and judicious on this continent; and even formed part of the instructions of South Carolina to its agent in England.

Thus revolution proceeded. Virginia marshalled resistance; Massachusetts entreated union; New York pointed to independence.

• The Whigs of Colonial New York is online at JSTOR, here. 

"Gallant Resistance made by their Forefathers " – The Pennsylvania Gazette, 17 June 1756

Recommended reading in America in 1756, almost exactly 20 years before the Declaration of Independence.

John Locke, Algernon Sydney, The Bible, Smollet's A Complete History of England, Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, the 1701 Act of Settlement. As it says in the article extract below, "every Briton has the happiness to be born free". That's almost a straight lift from Rutherford's Lex Rex of 1644 – "every man is born free".

Thomas Jefferson & co didn't invent liberty in 1776. They reclaimed it and recharged it. As Professor Gordon S. Wood says, 1776 was a revolution on behalf of the liberties of the British constitution against the rogue government of the Tory Party who came to power in 1770 (previous post & podcast clip of Professor Wood is here).

Isaac Barré's 1765 Speech in Parliament – "Sons of Liberty"

It wasn't Britain v America, Liberty v Tyranny - on a transatlantic scale. Here's an audio recording of the famous speech given in the London Parliament in February 1765 by Dublin-born MP Isaac Barré, in which he coined the phrase 'sons of liberty'. Barré had been a soldier in a British regiment in America during the French & Indian War. The speech was reprinted in newspapers in America, where the colonists adopted his expression "sons of liberty" as the name of a new organisation.

“They planted by your care? No! your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle and I take upon me to say the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s Earth. And yet, actuated by the principles of true English liberty, they met all these hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country, from the hands of those who should have been their friends.

They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this House sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice, some, who to my knowledge were glad by going to a foreign country to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.

They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country, whose frontier, while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And believe me, remember I this day told you so, that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first, will accompany them still.

But prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat, what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart, however superior to me in general knowledge and experience the reputable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country.

The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them, if ever they should be violated, but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more.”

Tad Stoermer on the mythological retro-fitting of Thomas Paine

Brilliant summary here. This year, the 250th anniversary, there's going to be a lot of myth-reinforcement. Few will be interested in challenging the two and a half centuries of nationalistic baggage with which the American revolution has been subsequently packaged. Challenging orthodoxy is tricky when reinforcing orthodoxy pays the bills. 

There's been a bit of highly selective Paine-worship over the past week, marking the 250th anniversary of his pamphlet Common Sense. Here's a corrective dose of reality –

 

John Dickinson's writings were more influential than Paine (see previous post here), and had put in place a decade of thought and philosophy, grounded in the previous Glorious Revolution; Paine arrived very late to the party, in November 1774, and only publishing from spring 1775 - as Stoermer correctly says here "most of the real American revolution had already happened before Paine ever set foot on America's shores", between 1765-1775.

So, as Tad Stoermer explains above, the myth of Paine began almost at day one, when John Page selectively extracted the politically useful parts of Common Sense, and printed it in newspapers which had a far wider readership than the print run of the complete pamphlet itself. 

The Scots-Irishman poet, David Bruce, refers unfavourably to Paine in his 1801 collection. Check out Brother Tamie, A Song. 

• A more substantial Common Sense is the philosophy that emerged as part of the 1700s Scottish Enlightment (which sounds a bit fluffy as a term anyway) - Scottish Common Sense Realism. That's a subject for another day...

Revolutionary Psalms – Isaac Watts, the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution

Isaac Watts' The Psalms of David was first published in 1719. His father, also called Isaac, had been a local 'nonconformist' church pastor in Southampton, who was imprisoned at least twice during the regime of King Charles II. When James II became monarch in 1685, the public executions of his Bloody Assizes included two locations along the south coast not very far from Southampton; 12 men at Weymouth and five men at Wareham were sliced and diced by order of his majesty. Isaac junior had just turned 11 years old when the hanging, drawing and quartering began.

"... The trials of the parents made, as may be conceived, a deep impression upon the mind of the son; the adversities of his early years were remembered by him in after life ; and doubtless here originated that ardent attachment to civil and religious liberty which marked his character, and which led his muse to hail its establishment with exultation, when the dynasty of the tyrannical Stuarts was driven from the throne..."*

 

So, when Isaac published his The Psalms of David, he added a dedication to Psalm 75 which read:

Power and Government from God Alone 

Apply'd to the Glorious Revolution of King William, 

or the Happy Accession of King George to the Throne

 

Watts' The Psalms of David was probably the most-used sacred song book in the English-speaking Atlantic World; the first edition to be printed in America was by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1740. The Psalm 75 dedication remained throughout an estimated 39 editions that were printed on both sides of the ocean.

After the American Revolution, with America newly independent, the first edition of Watts to be printed was in Newburyport, Massachussetts in 1791. The printer, John Mycall, revised the intro to Psalm 75 to reflect the new era –

 

Power and Government from God Alone 

Apply'd to the glorious revolution in America, 

 July 4th, 1776 

 

Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale, wrote this summary in his diary:

"This year has been published the fortieth Edition of Dr. Watts's Psalms: it was printed at Newburyport in Massachusetts by Mr. Mycall, Printer. He with the Advice & Assist of neighbors ministers & others, has made some Alterations in Psalms where G. Britain is mentioned, & references to the King of Gt. Britain as in the 75th Psalm. At first it may seem as if these alterations were many: however they really are but few. Thus the Ps. Book is well adapted to the Ch in America"

• * The Life, Times and Correspondence of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. by Thomas Milner (1834) is online here

• The American Revisions of Watts's Psalms, by Louis F. Benson (1903) is online here.

Below: The American edition with the revised dedication

John Adams on David Hume – "varnishing over the crimes of the Stuarts" (King Charles II and King James II)

Most people today have little or no idea about the 'Stuart' kings' tyrannies of the 1600s. It is easier to promote the concept of loyalty (or, as we'll see below, passive obedience) if the evils of all monarchs are airbrushed away, or "varnished over" as John Adams says in the quote below, which is from this famous and sparkling letter of 1818.

Adams takes aim at the mega-history that had been published before the Revolution, at the key moment when King George III settled onto the throne in 1760, written by the Scottish writer David Hume.

The rewriting of history is nothing new. History is often appropriated, not to inform about the past, but to recruit in the present. Here is Adams' own copy, sold a while ago at Christies.

 

"...Another gentleman who had great influence in the commencement of the Revolution, was Doctor Jonathan Mayhew, a descendant of the ancient Governor of Martha's Vineyard. This Divine had raised a great reputation, both in Europe and America by the publication of a volume of seven sermons in the reign of King George the Second, 1748, and by many other writings, particularly a sermon in 1750, on the thirtieth of January, on the subject of Passive Obedience and Non Resistance, in which the saintship and martyrdom of King Charles the First are considered, seasoned with witt and satyre, superior to any in (Jonathan) Swift or (Benjamin) Franklin. It was read by everybody, celebrated by friends, and abused by enemies. (see previous post on the Boston pastor Mayhew here).

During the reigns of King George the First and King George the Second, the reigns of the Stewarts – the Two Jameses, and the two Charleses – were in general disgrace in England. In America they had always been held in abhorrence. The persecutions and cruelties suffered by their ancestors under those reigns, had been transmitted by history and tradition, and Mayhew seemed to be raised up to revive all their animosity against tyranny, in church and state, and at the same time to destroy their bigotry, fanaticism and inconsistency or David Hume's plausible, elegant, fascinating and fallacious apology in which he varnished over the crimes of the Stewarts had not then appeared (Hume's multi-volume history was published from 1754-1761).

To draw the character of Mayhew would be to transcribe a dozen volumes. This transcendant [by choices] threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of his country in 1761, and maintained it there with zeal and ardour till his death in 1766..."

• Adams was of course creating a narrative too. His thinking and justification for the 1776 revolution in America leaned heavily upon the 1688 revolution in Europe. It doesn't matter that there was a revolution - what matters is why there had to be one. Or two.

"and can speak broad Scotch" – from Magheralin to Maryland, escaping with a man from Madagascar - 1739

St Mary's County on the western shore of Maryland is just across the Chesapeake Bay from Somerset County, the location of the first major Ulster-Scots community settlement in America, where the renowned Francis Makemie from Donegal became the minister in 1683.

Thomas Macoun was (very likely) from Magheralin / Maralin. He spoke “broad Scotch” and went to America as an indentured servant. In 1739 he, and a Black slave from Madagascar known as Robin, escaped together from their master’s plantation on the banks of the Potomac River, in a stolen boat with a pile of flamboyant clothes and a silver hilted sword.

This notice appeared in a few newspapers - if anyone in Pennsylvania found the two of them, Benjamin Franklin the printer was to be informed.

• the famous scientist John Macoun emigrated to Canada; his autobiography tells of the family's Scottish roots and of how they joined the resistance against King James II's army at The Break of Dromore in 1689. 

It would be worth fact-checking this interesting summary, from The Days of Makemie –

Much is said of his fairness in dealing with the Indians, but it is a fact, about which there has been no boasting, that our own province is nearly a half century ahead of Penn in setting the example. At St. Mary's no land was taken but was paid for, and the pleasantest relations of amity were established between the two races. The village of Yowacomaco was sold to the whites and became their capital, and there the English and Indians lived side by side in the rude huts constructed by savage hands, the one teaching the art of hunting the deer and planting the maize and preparing the succotash and hominy, the other teaching the lessons of civilized life and religion.

Prof. Gordon S. Wood on how 1776 was born in 1688 - "a revolt on behalf of the English Constitution"

Professor Gordon S Wood is one of the world's foremost experts on the Declaration of Independence. In this new podcast clip he summarises some of how the 1776 American Revolution was based upon the 1688 Glorious Revolution, at 20 minutes in –

 

 "... They talk in terms of 'we're the defenders of the English Constitution'. It's a curious Revolution in that sense. It's undertaken on behalf of the uncorrupted English Constitution, that they are a free people just as the English used to be. But now 'we are the free Englishmen. We're saving you from your own corrupt system'.

And so they don't see themselves until the very end as needing to be independent. They're defending themselves as Englishmen. And in fact, you could you make a case and they understood the irony of this, that we're revolting on behalf of the English Constitution. And it's a curious kind of thing ...

... they're talking about English rights, all of their rights. And the English had this tremendous tradition of rights. The first Bill of Rights that we talk about is in the 1688 Glorious Revolution, they get a Bill of Rights against the Crown.

The only thing that's unique about American rights is the right of religion because the English keep an Established Church, but all the other rights - jury trial, all that stuff that's in the 10 amendments, The Bill of Rights - are English rights..."

Ulster-Scots speech in Colonial America: 1700s newspaper sources

Here's a potentially rich seam of research which, as far as I know, has never been looked at. The pre-1776 newspapers are gradually being digitised, and far away from the 'high politics' of Founding Fathers, Generals and Presidents, they tell a more grounded story of daily life. A few searches have revealed people from the north of Ireland who spoke "Scotch". Here are just two examples:

Pennsylvania, 1759: 18 year old Martha Steward, a runaway "Irish servant girl ... she came from Antrim, in the North of Ireland, and talks much in the Scotch manner".

She had run away from a plantation owned by Joseph Sims in Passyunk Township outside Philadelphia, with 20 shillings offered to anyone who could return her to her Master.

Pennsylvania, 1766:

RUN away from the Subscriber in Newport, an Irish Servant Man, named John Purday, and Mary, his Wife, the said John Purday is about 5 Feet 9 Inches high, and about 27 Years of Age, is pitted with the Small pox, has strait pale Hair commonly tied behind; had on, when he went away, a light coloured Coat, and Thickset Jacket and Breeches, Worsted Stockings, his Hat sharp cocked, and appears very neat in his Clothes, has been a Soldier in Flanders, speaks very good English, ***a little inclined to the Scotch Accent. His Wife is a little short thin woman, dark Complexion, dark frizled hair, speaks broad Scotch***. They are about 6 Weeks in from Ireland, and came in the Ship Marquis of Granby. Whoever takes up the said John Purday, so as his Master may have him again, shall have Twenty Shillings Reward, and reasonable Charges, paid by me ROBERT ALL, or by applying to Mr. JAMES ALEXANDER, Merchant in Water street, Philadelphia.

It seems that the ship, Marquis of Granby, operated from Londonderry.

Geographically Irish, linguistically "Scotch".

1688 & 1776 – The Official UK Government publication "Parliament and the Glorious Revolution: The Influence of the Revolution"

In 1988, to mark the Tercentenary of the 1688 Glorious Revolution, HMSO produced this official brochure to accompany an exhibition that was held at the Houses of Parliament. Published under the auspices of the Lord Chancellor, Baron Mackay of Clashfern, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Bernard Weatherill, it had a double page spread about the American Revolution which describes the indelible umbilical connection between 1688 and 1776:

"... When Britain tried to impose more of the financial responsibility for maintaining the empire on the colonists in the period after 1763, the Americans viewed the moves as an attempt to overthrow their liberty much in the way that James Il's policies had seemed an attack on English liberties 80 years before.

And when the American Revolution finally erupted, the issues involved would have been very familiar to the participants in the Glorious Revolution: the proper distribution of governmental power, and the rights of subjects and citizens. Moreover, in making their new constitution the Americans drew on the English constitutional documents of 1689, notably the Bill of Rights, even to the extent of using some of the same phraseology.

The American Revolution was an inspiration to the French revolutionaries of 1789, and when they drafted their Declaration des Droits de l'homme they consciously followed the American Declaration of Independence. In the process, they were also harking back to the Declaration of Rights of 1689, a fact which some Frenchmen at the time recognised and which the Revolution Society in England was keen to point out..."