Maryland Not Known For Its Signers but For Its Soldiers Who Fought in Continental Army

Maryland Not Known For Its Signers but Its Soldiers

Who Fought in the Continental Army

The signers of the Declaration of Independence from Maryland are not known for stirring much enthusiasm.  Out of the 56 signers, the Maryland ones are generally in the bottom half for consideration.  What does excite audiences is the contribution of the soldiers from Maryland.  The Continental Army battalions from Maryland, starting at the battle of Brooklyn, received General Washington’s respect as the “go-to guys.”  Many times when Washington was in a pinch, he would look for Maryland troops.

Brooklyn is not usually thought of as a battlefield.  How many people have visited Gettysburg in contrast to those who have visited Brooklyn as a battlefield?  The Declaration of Independence was signed on July2/4, 1776 but the price tag paid by Maryland soldiers on August 27 was huge.  At Brooklyn, Marylanders charged ten times against larger forces and gave the rest of the Continental Army time to get away.  From a distance, Washington saw their sacrifice and cried out these words: “Good God, what brave men this day I have lost!”  That made a deep impression on Washington.  When we fought  at Kip’s Bay and Harlem Heights,  Washington would call on Maryland. 

When the battle theater shifted from the Northern colonies to the South, Maryland played a huge role.  Imagine marching down to South Carolina from Maryland.  Our generation is weary from riding that distance in a car; think about the march for them.  They had to hunt and forage on the way down there.  On the trip down, they received news that Charleston South Carolina had fallen. The consequences of that were that all the Virginia battalions were captured.  Leadership fell on the Marylanders. 

Continental Congress had appointed General Gates to be the Southern commander.  General Dekalb had led the Maryland and Delaware forces down south but Gates took control just before the battle of Camden.  DeKalb’s advice to follow the route where supplies and new militia could be obtained was overridden by the “Johnny come lately.”  Not only did Gates’s strategy fail, he fled his post.  He travelled ninety miles in five days.  DeKalb and his Maryland troops stayed and fought because they were given no orders to surrender or retreat.  About 800 Marylanders died with DeKalb and you can see a statue dedicated to his bravery and sacrifice outside the Annapolis Maryland State Capitol.

It did not end there for the Marylanders.  They regrouped at Hillsboro, North Carolina and fought well at Guilford Courthouse (near Greensboro).  There is a monument there for the Marylanders and Delawareans that fought there. As a Marylander that lives near the Delaware border, it gave me an awesome awareness of the immense sacrifice that these men gave in the service to the new nation.

Moses Mather's Reply to Blind Submission to The King: 

America's Appeal to the Impartial World

[This is a 50 page sermon from 1775 which I will try to condense.  Moses Mather served as Minister in Darien, Connecticut.  The British put him in jail twice for his views.]

The king must have the consent of the governed.  Biblically, authority comes from God through the voice and consent of the people.  Magna Carta is unique in human history by controlling the power of the king. The House of Commons had as an unalienable right to originate all money bills.  This has been the history of Britain and its American children for over 800 years.

"The king's power does not come from the crown, it comes from the constitution of the colonies (their consent).  Power is derived from the Almighty and our consent.

"Government originates (under God) from the people.  Monarchy, aristocracy and democracy have failed in their turn.  Civil government is a temporary remedy against the ill effects of general depravity.

"The king by removing his protection and levying war against us has discharged us of our allegiance and of all obligations to obedience.. He having violated the compact on his part, we of course are released from ours...The king has discharged us of our allegiance and forced us from our dependence, and we are become necessarily independant. [sp]"

"The king broke off the agreement and we are not bound by it, especially when he has withdrawn his protection and declared war on us."

Submission: Did Our Founding Fathers Sin by Rebelling Against Our Sovereign King George III?

Submission: Did Our Founding Fathers Sin by Rebelling Against Our Sovereign King George III?

There were many voices in the time of the American War for Independence which stated that the Thirteen Colonies should obey their rulers and that rebellion was as the sin of witchcraft.  This article is an attempt to defend the Founding Fathers from a scriptural viewpoint.  One would be the whole of
Scripture and second would be the case of hundreds of years of Church History.

An excellent resource is the collection of sermons edited by Ellis Sandoz entitled Political Sermons of the American Founding Era 1730-1805. With 1596 pages, it is no light assignment but one that contains treasure.  Among the authors are George Whitefield, Charles Chauncy, Samuel Davies, John Joachim Zubly, John Witherspoon, Samuel Cooper,Samuel Miller, Noah Webster and Timothy Dwight.  There are many others but what a cast!

There is also a sermon by John Wesley entitled "A Calm Address to Our American Colonies" written in 1775.  It is hardly a sermon.  I was surprised to not see one verse of the Bible quoted.  There was a passing reference to Ahithophel (a counselor to King David who later sided with the rebel Absalom and later committed suicide) but no explanation to the readers.  It was assumed that the readers would be familiar with his siding with Absalom.  Wesley's "Calm Address" elicited an anonymous response entitled: "A Constitutional Answer to Wesley's Calm Address" also in 1775.

An anonymous pastor wrote a reply in "A Constitutional Answer to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's Calm Address to the American Colonies."  In the second paragraph, this pastor says the following:
   
     "You present your book to the world, as your own; but the greatest part of it is taken, verbatim, from Taxation No Tyranny, written by the pensioned Dr. Johnson, a declared enemy of civil and religious liberty! This is another deception, equally mean and obvious."

This anonymous pastor does not deal with scriptural texts either but appeals to Magna Carta and Pennsylvania laws.

Many well meaning people will blindly rattle off Romans 13: 1a  "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities."  They leave it at that.  Just blindly submit, do not ask questions!  Get in line for the Jim Jones koolaid.  Churches like the example given of Jim Jones have used that line of thinking.  If these same people had lived in the time of Moses would have gone alone with the government edict of killing all the Hebrew babies.  They might have had to tow the government line when King Herod gave the rule that all babies in Bethlehem must be killed.  Would these blind goverment-followers have taken part in the killing of their own founder [Jesus]?

Let us read what the whole text of Romans 13:1 states.  "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established.  The Founders of the United States followed the example of the British rulers in Magna Carta.  The king of England was held to limitations on his power.  Our Founders did not believe in the Divine Right of Kings.  King Charles I wrote a book entitled the Divine Right of Kings.  That same king was beheaded by Parliament under Oliver Cromwell.  The king is also held responsible to God's law.  If the king goes against God's law, the people have to hold the king responsible.

What should Christians have done in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s?  Should they have just been docile submissive creatures for everything Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party demanded? Christians like Deitrich Bonhoeffer saw that they had to make a stand in their culture.

Our Founders took the second part of Romans 13:1 and followed the whole verse.  There is no authority except that which God has established.  They saw that the established Church of England in many cases was a political appointment.  There were sincere believers in the Church of England but there were also many wolves in sheep's clothing.  There were many in the ministry that had not been born again.  Especially from New England there was a cry to make sure that there was freedom of religion.  Take note of the tie of the established Church of England in the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and New York with the slave trade.

The American Revolution From Scotland

The American Revolution From Scotland

          The research that I have done on the Founding Fathers has taken me to check out my own family history.  I have assumed for most of my life that I was from English background.  If my studies are correct, my ancestor Richard Webster came from Glamis, Angus in Scotland.  He supposedly was a schoolmaster and lived in Cambridge, Maryland from about 1704 to 1744.  This knowledge has spurred me on to study the history of Scotland, especially in terms of its impact on the Founding Fathers.  An excellent book to give me that overview of the country has been Scotland: The Story of a Nation by Magnus Magnusson.  With some seven hundred pages, it has been a long read but also an enlightening one. 

          There are nine Scottish signers of the Declaration of Independence: Thomas McKean, James Wilson, George Ross, Matthew Thornton, Edward Rutledge, William Hooper, Philip Livingston, George Taylor and Rev. John Witherspoon.  As I study more about Scottish history especially from about A.D. 1600 onward,  I am seeing many links between the Scots and the desire for independence in America in what became the United States.  Especially when one finds out that Rev. John Witherspoon was a direct descendant  of John Knox of the Reformation, this is really worthwhile to dig into. When one finds out that the American Revolution has been called a Presbyterian revolution and that Scotland had a National Covenant, I had better check this out.

          Being from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, there are many place names that have huge Scottish significance.  Queen Anne’s is the name of a county (where Charles Willson Peale the painter came from).  Little did I know that Queen Anne had 18 children (only one of which survived infancy).   A major battle was fought at Preston in northern England where 2,000 Scots died in battle.  There was also a battle in Worcester and Dunbar.  A lot of these names sound so familiar.

The Whigs got their start in Scotland as a part of the Covenanters.  The Declaration of Arbroath, signed in April 6, 1320 might have had something to do with another Declaration signed 456 years later.

This is just the beginning of hopefully more articles on Scotland and her neglected history.