Tad Stoermer – "Resistance is not defined by what it opposes - but by what it refuses to surrender" - two videos.

• Why The Founders Feared You

This video is a superb summary of the 1786 Daniel Shay's Rebellion in western Massachussetts (Scotch-Irish country - the epicentres being Colrain, New Lisburn, Palmer and Blandford), the 1787 US Constitution, and the consequential 1789 Bill of Rights - and the ideological battles and manipulations among the new power structures and ruling class.

The role of Patrick Henry in securing the Bill of Rights based upon the threat of his popular support – "he had come close to toppling Virginia's Royal government in 1775 ... mobilising the same sort of people who followed Shays ... protect our rights and liberties or there will be consequences for the Constitution" – is fascinating stuff. And look at this quote below – resolutely Ulster-Scots covenantal philosophy:

"... The awareness that the people can revoke the consent that they give to the government, and return it to their own hands to redeploy it wherever they like, is a human political right - one of those pesky 'inalienable' things Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration, and its a real legacy we have contend with as a reality today" (14:25)

• The Book that Reframed How I Understand Resistance: Halik Kochanski's Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945 (published 2022)

This is another fascinating video, mainly about how this author described "conditions, choices and consequences" of the French Resistance movement under Nazi occupation. As Stoermer says at around 4:00, "Resistance is not defined by what it opposes - but by what it refuses to surrender".

1776 and the (Scots) Irish - presentation by Professor Richard Bell

 Loads of first class content in this sweeping overview - a Zoom presentation by Professor Richard Bell of the University of Maryland. His personal website is here.

The "Hearts of Steel" in South Carolina? A letter from the Lieutenant Governor, 3 August 1774

A generation before the more celebrated United Irishmen movement, there had been earlier militant groups in Ulster. One of those groups was the Hearts of Steel; they are shamefully overlooked in our time. Active from 1769 in heavily Presbyterian areas of counties Antrim and Down and other counties too – and roughly contemporary with the Sons of Liberty movement which arose in America in 1765 – the authorities in the 13 Colonies were wise to be aware of potential transatlantic connections.

South Carolina had its version, called the Liberty Boys, with leaders such as Andrew Hamilton and Antrim-born James McCaw. There was also a group called Liberty Boys in Dublin.

On 3 August 1774 in South Carolina, the Lieut-Governor William Bull II (Wikipedia here) wrote to the overall Colonial Secretary the Earl of Dartmouth (Wikipedia here), expressing concerns about the machinations of the newly-established General Assembly of South Carolina, effectively a provisional government.

It had been formed just a month before, on 6 July 1774, with a Committee of 99 members. The General Assembly rushed through an early morning request that the Lieutenant Governor send guns to the "many poor Irish" who had settled along the western backcountry frontier, ostensibly to defend themselves against possible future attacks from Native Americans. Bull was dubious –

"Your lordship will see by this instance with what perseverance, secrecy and unanimity they form and conduct their designs, how obedient the body is to the heads, and how faithful in their secrets. 

They had prepared a message to me, which the prorogation prevented, to desire I would purchase a number of small arms to be given to many poor Irish and others in our western frontiers, with ammunition, upon the apprehensions of an Indian war. Whenever that appears to me unavoidable, I shall take every step in my power to enable them to defend themselves.

It is not improbable but many of the poor Irish may have been White Boys, Hearts of Oak or Hearts of Steel, who have been accustomed to oppose law and authority in Ireland, may not change their disposition with their climate, and may think of other objects than Indians.”

William Bull saw the potential for this 'poor Irish' western backcountry frontier community to one day use government-approved firearms against the governmental authorities.

• One of the South Carolina Committee of 99 was Edward Rutledge; his father Dr John Rutledge is believed to have been from the north of Ireland, and Edward would eventually be the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence, aged just 26.

• Letter is online here

• https://southcarolina250.com

• Charleston's Sons of Liberty by Richard Walsh (1959) is online here

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Hearts of Steel activities were reported in newspapers in America, such as The New York Journal of 14 May 1772 which referred to attacks carried out by 'Steelmen' in Banbridge, Gilford and Newry; the Pennsylvania Gazette of 18 June 1772 carried more. Richard MacMaster's book Scotch-Irish Merchants in Colonial America has further information.

• Illustration below by JW Carey; published in Historical Notices of Old Belfast and Its Vicinity.

Thomas Paine 1796 letter, citing the Glorious Revolution

In his infamous letter to former President, George Washington (online here), Thomas Paine accused him of having been as deceitful during his two Presidencies from 1789-97 as King James II had been a century earlier from 1685-1689:

"... Elevated to the chair of the Presidency you assumed the merit of every thing to yourself, and the natural ingratitude of your constitution began to appear.. You commenced your Presidential career by encouraging and swallowing the grossest adulation, and you travelled America from one end to the other, to put yourself in the way of receiving it.

You have as many addresses in your chest as James the II.

As to what were your views, for if you are not great enough to have ambition you are little enough to have vanity, they cannot be directly inferred from expressions of your own; but the partizans of your politics have divulged the secret ..."

Putting this kind of stuff in writing against a two-time President is how to end up in an unmarked grave.

"A war serves a nationalist purpose – a revolution threatens it"

This is iconoclastic stuff, a response to the new Ken Burns series The American Revolution, by Tad Stoermer, which he calls "national therapy through origin story". I know nothing about him, but YouTube's algorithm sent me it today. He quotes the seminal John Adams comment that the revolution was not the war.

As Stoermer says – the Revolution was "not for independence, not for union – for their rights – something bigger and more interesting than a political outcome".

"What do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations… This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution."

– John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, February 13, 1818

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"... During his retirement years, he was fond of saying that the War for Independence was a consequence of the American Revolution. The real revolution, he declared, had taken place in the minds and hearts of the colonists in the fifteen years prior to 1776. According to Adams, the American Revolution was first and foremost an intellectual revolution..."– source here