Page 14 - PGA Community News - October '24

Page 14, PGA C.A.N.! October 2024 October 2024
Book Review

American Sanctuary: Mutiny, in 2017, I had never heard of American Sanctuary and was
fortunate to come across it by accident on a table stacked
Martyrdom, And National Identity with books while shopping in a market. Its author, A.

In The Age Of Revolution Roger Ekirch, is a professor of history at Virginia Tech,
has written four earlier books, received a Guggenheim
Fellowship and is widely recognized as one of our finest
By Nils A. Shapiro historians.
I cannot recall ever The details that enrich this narrative, garnered from
enjoying a scholarly work the author’s extraordinary research, add enormously to the
of early American history overall experience, as do the many contemporary portraits
so interestingly and vividly and illustrations from that period.
told, so extraordinarily Revolutionary and early American history being one
researched and impressively of my preferred reading tastes I was surprised never to
detailed, exciting as any have heard of the very significant event that is the pivotal
novel, and as timely in subject of this book: the mutiny aboard HMS Hermione.
subject as next month’s Nor, shockingly, was it ever mentioned in any class, even awkward timing, for Adams was then in the process of
presidential election! through college. ratifying an economic trade treaty with Britain that had
The date was September At the time the mutiny took place—after the United just been negotiated.
21, 1797. The event was a vicious mutiny by the crew of States had already won the Revolutionary War several Adams had to weigh the success of the treaty against
a British naval vessel, HMS Hermione, in the Caribbean years earlier and declared itself an independent nation— the American public’s anger about the British policy and
off the coast of Puerto Rico. Little remembered today, one of the most objectionable policies of the British actions of impressment on the high seas and the idea of
its aftershock was to lead crown and its navy was the practice of “impressment”: the turning over to Britain a claimed American citizen who
directly to the election stopping and boarding of other nations’ vessels, capturing “had the right to regain his freedom after having been the
of Thomas Jefferson members of their crews and forcing them to sail and work victim of such impressment” and return home.
over the incumbent John as seamen on British ships, most likely never to see their Adams’s decision to turn Robbins over to Britain—
Adams as president of the families again. where he was executed by hanging without a trial—
United States … and the Such was the case of many on the Hermione’s crew as Adams’s Federalist Party’s defense of his decision, and the
resulting lasting image of it sailed near the island of Puerto Rico on that September consequences of Jefferson’s Republican Party’s national
America as a sanctuary day in 1797. Adding to what was already a tinder box of electoral campaign focused on driving the public’s anger,
of freedom for those a situation was the fact that this ship’s captain, Admiral form the major part of this compelling story.
fleeing from persecution Hugh Pigot, was a disciplinarian so stern that whipping Eventually—and critical in light of today’s political
in other lands—an issue and other punishments for minor crew offenses became climate and immigration crisis—the American people
that dominates today’s unbearable and sparked the bloody insurrection that ended eventually decided that, whether or not Jonathan Robbins
political campaigns just in the death of the captain and other officers. (or Thomas Nash, if that was his real name) was in fact
as it did the one in 1800. One of the main leaders of the mutiny was a man whose an American citizen, anyone fleeing from oppression
I must admit that, name throughout this book varies between Thomas Nash should be able to find sanctuary in the United States and
although it was published (if he was actually Irish) and Jonathan Robbins, depending not have to fear being turned away. It is to this day at
upon whether his claim to have been an American from the heart of our nation’s self-image, symbolized by the
Connecticut was true or not.
Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor and the inscription
Attention: the U.S. and was tracked down by the British government, on her base addressed to “the huddled masses yearning
Eventually, after the mutiny Robbins made his way to
to be free.”
which demanded that President John Adams turn over the This is the story of how and when that all started. I
PGA Residents Of “mutineer and murderer” to Britain for punishment. It was loved every word of it.

Mellowing Years

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