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Martha Gerdeman: Exploring the motivations behind America’s drive toward independence




Gerdeman

Gerdeman

In just a few days the country will celebrate Independence Day. Actually, it’s the second Independence Day in a matter of two weeks, because we have just observed Juneteenth. And if you didn’t come to the Clement Railroad Hotel Museum for the celebration, you missed both fun and education.

Coincidentally, I am currently reading Ron Chernow’s biography of George Washington. Chernow is the author of the Alexander Hamilton biography that inspired the musical “Hamilton.”

Side Note: several years ago, I spoke to the middle school students in Charlotte about women who participated in the Revolutionary War. I began by asking if they knew of any women involved in that war. In every class, nearly every girl shouted, “the Schuyler sisters,” one of whom married Hamilton.

Actually, I was going to tell them about the sisters’ mother, Catherine Schuyler. When Burgoyne’s forces were heading south into New York, Catherine rode on horseback more than 35 miles and set the family wheat fields on fire so that the British couldn’t use them. Then she rode 35 miles back to Albany.

 

 

Back to Washington. I knew why the New Englanders opposed continuing British control. I have a bunch of New England ancestors and they are just a cantankerous bunch. The Boston Tea Party was caused at least in part because the British monopoly on tea cut into their smuggling.

But why did all those Virginia planters, who saw themselves as British aristocrats, decide to rebel against their “mother country”? They furnished their mansions with the latest British styles, wore the clothes that British aristocrats were wearing, and even ordered fancy saddles for their horses. Why would they want to side with a bunch of unwashed, undisciplined rabble (as they saw it), who didn’t even follow well-born leaders but elected their own officers?

Once again, money! All those planters, just like their counterparts in the 1860s, were land rich but cash poor. Frequently, they were cash impoverished. What I had never realized was the tight hold on all goods that England held.

Those planters, whose income depended almost entirely on tobacco, had no market for their crops but England. They were prohibited from exporting anything to any other market. And they had to depend on “factors,” agents in London who sold the crop for them and then sent them the profits.

Washington himself usually felt that his crops had been sold for less than they should have — or at least the money he received was not what he expected.

In turn, they had to order everything they needed from England. Those cantankerous New Englanders dressed in homespun for the most part and raised or hunted for all they needed.

A Virginia planter had to maintain his appearance. They were constantly in debt, partly because cutting back on expenses could hint to the neighbors that they weren’t as rich as everyone thought them. That, in turn, could impact things like the ability to borrow money.

All those fancy clothes and expensive furnishings had to be ordered from England, and they had to take what they got. In at least one case, Washington ordered an ornate carriage, sending explicit instructions up to and including the abilities of the craftsmen who made it. Within two years, pieces of it were coming apart.

Needless to say, there were many other reasons Washington himself became disenchanted with English rule. But the almost total economic dependence on a country thousands of miles away goes far to explain a major reason those rich Virginians decided to rebel.

Martha Gerdeman is a professional researcher with a passion for family genealogy. She is a past president of the Middle Tennessee Genealogical Society and lives in Dickson.

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