Celebrating the “First American”

He was an outsider in  every way.

His men suspected him of being a snob.

And they struck him as crude, smelly and unreliable.

But it was George Washington, in 1775, coming to Boston from Virginia, and a career in the British army, who transformed a local uprising against heavy-handed British colonial rule into a crusade for something bigger.

Bigger in geography, than just New England. And bigger in purpose, into the making of a new nation.

The concept of “national” does not exist for anyone in America in 1775.

Washington wrestles it into our vocabulary, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s still a powerful word, “American”. A powerful idea. So often, for so many, a beacon in the darkness.

Happy Independence Day!