A Knapsack's Worth of Courage

The Atlantic

31-03-2025

It is a blessing for this troubled country that the semiquincentennial of its struggle for independence is upon it. Indeed, some notable anniversaries have already slipped by: In September 1774, delegates from Suffolk County, Massachusetts, approved a set of resolves rejecting Parliament's authority, which were then endorsed by the first Continental Congress. In November of that year, the provincial Congress of Massachusetts authorized the enlistment of 12,000 troops. Others lie just ahead: In a month, Americans will observe the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord.
The semiquincentennial offers not just a diversion from current politics or an opportunity to reassert American unity at a time of disharmony, but also a moment to reflect on the character of the men and women who made the United States out of a collection of fractious colonies. That thought occurred to me recently as I attended my final meeting of the Board of Trustees of Fort Ticonderoga, of which I have been part for nearly a decade.
Fort Ti, for those who do not know it, sits on the spit of land between Lake George and Lake Champlain in upstate New York. The small fort is a gem, surrounded by mountains, lovingly restored and preserved as a private institution. Its leadership has grown its museum to now include the finest collection of 18th-century militaria in the United States, if not the world. Tens of thousands visit every year.
Built by the French in 1755 as a base of operations against the British colonies, Fort Ticonderoga witnessed sieges, skirmishes, raids, and ambushes, first in the Seven Years' War and then in the American war for independence. Since then, presidents have visited repeatedly. Writers too: Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a famous essay about his visits there with a recently graduated, brilliant young engineer, who may have been none other than Robert E. Lee: 'The young West Pointer, with his lectures on ravelins, counterscarps, angles, and covered ways, made it an affair of brick and mortar and hewn stone, arranged on certain regular principles, having a good deal to do with mathematics but nothing at all with poetry.'
My favorite artifact in the museum is a modest thing—a knapsack that belonged to a soldier named Benjamin Warner. He attached a note to it:
This Napsack I caryd Through the War of the Revolution to achieve the American Independence. I Transmit it to my olest sone Benjamin Warner Jr. with directions to keep it and transmit it to his oldest sone and so on to the latest posterity and whilst one shred of it shall remain never surrender you libertys to a foren envador or an aspiring demegog. Benjamin Warner Ticonderoga March 27, 1837.
Warner's orthography may have been uncertain, but his values were not, and I often think of that warning—about foreign invaders, yes, but also aspiring demagogues.
Plenty of people kept their heads down during the Revolution. John Adams famously said that he thought a third of Americans at the time were in favor, a third opposed, and a third neutral. Those percentages may be off: That middle group—hoping, like most people, simply to get on—may have been larger. And then there were those who had second thoughts—Benedict Arnold most notably, but many others as well, from statesmen such as Joseph Galloway to more ordinary souls caught in the middle.
But the tone was set by those like John Morton, a signer of the Declaration who accepted that 'this is putting the Halter about our Necks, & we may as well die by the Sword as be hang'd like Rebels.' In particular, the gentry leadership of the Revolution knew, from the record of how Britain had dealt with rebels in Ireland and Scotland, that they could face loss of their home, their freedom, and possibly their life. When Thomas Jefferson ended the Declaration with the words 'we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,' he was not kidding.
Benjamin Warner was not of the gentry, though; he was a mere farmer. He led a long life, from 1757 to 1846. His tombstone, in a cemetery in Crown Point, New York, has a simple epitaph: 'A revolutionary soldier & a friend to the Slave.' One may only suppose what that last phrase meant, given that New York was on the Underground Railroad.
Warner was one of those soldiers who served repeatedly from 1775 to 1780, joining one regiment and then another, marching to Quebec, fighting in the Battle of Long Island and in New Jersey. In between campaigns, presumably, he took care of the farm. Beyond that, and his knapsack, we do not know much, other than that he saw his duty, did it, went home, and did it again. There does not seem much flash about him, but he knew what he was fighting for, and what he would willingly fight against.
Tom Nichols: Reclaiming real American patriotism
He has something to teach us. Americans see before them the unedifying spectacle of their representatives being too fearful to convene town halls where they might either be criticized or, worse, be compelled to defend a president who they know is damaging the country every day. We have senators who knowingly confirmed untrustworthy and unqualified individuals to the most important national-security jobs in the country because they feared the wrath of President Donald Trump's base. We see intellectuals talking about fleeing the country or actually doing so not because they have been persecuted in any way, but because of a foreboding atmosphere. We have formerly great law firms such as Paul Weiss groveling to an administration that has threatened them, and offering up tens of millions of dollars of free services in support of its beliefs rather than stand in defense of the right of unpopular people to be represented in a court of law.
There is a name for this: cowardice. It is not an uncommon failing, to be sure, but so far, at any rate, it seems unaccompanied by shame, although regret may eventually come. Cowardice is, at any event, a quality that one suspects the figures who won us independence would have despised in their descendants, who have had a comparatively easy lot in life. Perhaps the series of 250th anniversaries will cause some of us, at least, to get beyond the historical clichés and think of the farewells to families, the dysentery and smallpox, the brutal killing and maiming on 18th-century battlefields, and the bloody footprints in the snow.
Above all, we should take away from the commemorations before us a celebration less of heroism than of unassuming courage. Now, and for some years to come, we will need a lot less Paul Weiss, and a lot more Benjamin Warner.