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I only occasionally publish a What Are They Thinking (WATT) blog post on this website. Too much serious and sometimes downright boring Civil 3D technical stuff gets to be too much for me and everyone else as well.
As a constructive habit, I almost never publish two WATTs in a month. Last week I published The First US Army Veteran post to enumerate some of the significant contributions to our Republic made by the oft forgotten Army soldier and Revolutionary War hero who I am named after.
Political folks love to conflate our modern conception of a word like revolutionary with the actual and very different historical realities. Therefore, I must make an exception and deliver another WATT post this week.
Welcome to the Jungle
Intentionally, most What Are They Thinking posts are simultaneously historical, humorous, and sometimes political. Such matters have always interested me. We can probably blame all of that on my rather unusual name, a classical formal education, and a 1000-year-old documented family history.
For some pretty absurd reasons some of my nuanced political humor has gotten me banned by Google, the old Twitter, and other more unmentionable social media companies a few times over the last decade or two. No biggy. Comes with the territory.
That Good Citizen’s Territory
My father wrote letters to the editor of the local paper regularly when I was a child. He told me that it’s an old family tradition. He taught me early on and by example what comes with the good citizen’s territory.
We all can laugh at the often obvious contradictions and gross historical errors expressed by folks in the public domain. Politicians, bureaucrats, and news people have been famous for this sort of rash behavior throughout all of history regardless of party, government, or association.
What I Learned in High School
For example: I once had a well-educated, high school teacher who attempted to teach my sophomore US history class that our country’s founding fathers were prototypical forms of Marxist social revolutionaries. Say what?
Mind you. The American Revolution happened a generation before Karl Marx was born on another continent and in another very different culture.
Declare the Difference
I was so incensed by his false socialist dogma that I wrote a long essay in response. I employed the full text of the Declaration of Independence to prove the significant differences. In no uncertain terms, the Declaration states that the colonies were capable of governing themselves. It proclaims they had already done so successfully. The colonists were separating from British rule over these listed issues of false representation and taxation without representation.
None of the signers of the Declaration of Independence could be called revolutionaries in a modern sense. They represented almost the exact opposite in our context. How can this be?
Clearly, my teacher did not like what I had to say but bowed to the facts outlined in the paper. He gave me an A. The man did not change his political party. He left the school after that year. I am sure he taught the same mid-19th century socialist drivel elsewhere for way too many years.
The Why is as Important as the What
Our founding fathers believed in self-government, moral accountability, and the necessary social responsibility of a rule of law founded in a shared faith in an Almighty God and not in false pseudo-historic principals of a theoretical social revolution conceived of years into their future.
The substantive success of the American Revolution relative to the well documented and significant atrocities of a soon to follow French Revolution help to illustrate some obvious and very significant differences in both context and content.
Nothing Can Be Further From the Truth
I am descended from a brother of Mathew Tilghman who was a member of both the First and Second Congressional Conventions. He formally voted for the Declaration of Independence for the colony of Maryland. The man had another man formally sign the original document as his replacement in early August of 1776. Say what?
You mean the public painting that represents the day is not quite true? How can this be.
Why did the patriot Mathew Tilghman do that?
His friend and associate, Charles Carroll, became the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. The Irish Catholic, Charles Carroll, was probably the richest and best educated man and patriot in the American colonies. He was Jesuit educated in France. He was fluent in five languages.
They never taught you that in high school did they? One should wonder why.
End Religious Persecution
To everyone involved Carroll’s signature on the Declaration was important and very significant. In our time this gets lost in the shuffle and political hubbub. The naming of Charles Carroll to the Second Continental Congress as Mathew Tilghman’s replacement formally ended the British practice of the formal persecution of Catholics in the American Colonies.
As some might say – This was a big deal.
Mathew Tilghman, who surrendered his well-worn seat in Congress, later claimed publicly he was too busy raising and finding the funds to support the Maryland militia for the Continental Army. He was also publicly too busy writing the state’s constitution.
This description of Mathew’s actions was true. However, the statement conveniently dodges the nuanced point the signers chose to make to King George and his government about the colonies and their shared views on religious liberties in the colonies.
Married Matters
Mathew Tilghman probably helped James Madison and others write and compose our formal Constitution. He is publicly credited with the writing of the Constitution for the State of Maryland. He lived to see his Republic made real but died shortly after it began in 1790.
Notably, the man only outlived his son-in-law by a year. Tench Tilghman married Mathew Tilghman’s daughter Anna Marie during the war. She was his first cousin. Tench was demonstratively closer to Mathew, his uncle and father-in-law, than his own father who remained a British Loyalist throughout the war.
It is also historically interesting that both Charles Carroll and Tench Tilghman both spoke fluent French. As I point out in The First US Army Veteran post this facility was rare in the colonies. It proved to be significant capability in Tench Tilghman’s military career and duties.
No Written Word
As I also point out in the above post there is a very strange absence of written correspondence between George Washington and Tench Tilghman. Tench by many accounts kept Washington's books during the war.
Once again here are two men who certainly knew each other well. Both men publicly dealt with critical issues of Army logistics and its supply. However, there is no surviving evidence of any written communication between the two.
All of that is strange for an Army officer who stated duties required that he carry written orders to others as his primary military duty. Say what?
I Know Nothing
Charles Carroll certainly personally helped fund and support the Army and the war effort while serving as a Maryland representative in the Continental Congress. Some folks say that Tench Tilghman’s business partner in Philadelphia and their supply company was the most likely go between. The odd fact that Franklin and Tilghman both ran businesses on the same street in the same small town must be another happy coincidence. Eheh.
Carroll and his Jesuit contacts in Catholic France perhaps aided in Benjamin Franklin’s success in gaining the support of the French King. That French military support and involvement eventually help end the war at Yorktown.
I always rather enjoyed the juicy fact that the Commander-in-Chief of all British forces in the colonies who never showed up to help Lord Charles Cornwallis was named Lord Henry Clinton.
Speaking of Armies, Lords, and Kings here’s an additional fun fact to consider…
Missed by That Much
Charles Carroll managed to outlive all the other signers of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll lived 95 years until Nov 14, 1832.
Carroll survived both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who circumstantially died on the same day July 4, 1826.
That was 50 years after the signing…Errrr. Well, sort of.
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