William Trego, "The March to Valley Forge"
Photo:National Park Services The View
In 1782, towards the end of the American war of independence, one of the most respected of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, scientist and diplomat, who negotiated both war and peace, expressed the opinion, “there has never been or ever will be any such thing as a good war or a bad peace”.
Viewed close up in battlefield accounts, that war like any other was a cruel and bloody affair, notwithstanding its noble ideals and its ultimately successful result. In Washington’s winter encampment at Valley Forge in 1777-8 [illustrated], even without any battle being fought, an estimated 2,000 Continental soldiers died of cold and disease.
A month ago, I was a guest speaker at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, a short walk from Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was promulgated on July 4, 1776 and the Constitution of the US agreed in 1787.
It was also the temporary capital, where George Washington spent his two Presidential terms. The theme of a special exhibition in the Museum was ‘The Cost of Revolution’, centred round the artwork and other testimony of an Irish-born soldier in the British army, Richard Mansergh St George, to whom I am distantly related, who was later assassinated on the eve of the 1798 rebellion. As with the decade of centenaries commemoration here, American historians now look at and are interested in all sides of their story.
Fighting
The young American Republic suffered the same problem as the newly independent Irish Free State post-1923. There were those who wanted to go on fighting, even when the war was over. Alexander Hamilton, as important a figure as any of those who went on to become President, warned in 1788 “on the dangers of maintaining a continuous revolutionary mentality” and against the glorification of revolution as a permanent state of mind, to quote Ron Chernow’s biography.
In the mid-1920s, the abstentionist politicians of the defeated anti-Treaty side in the Sinn Féin party faced a stark choice, between accepting a system of government based on the expressed will of the people, which is representative and parliamentary democracy, or waiting for some opportunity that could well never happen to seize power as a revolutionary military government.
All responsible authorities are determined to avoid creating any excuse for renewed conflict”
Just before the civil war, towards the end of the June 1922 pact election, when he was still anticipating a coalition government afterwards, de Valera, speaking in Cork, stated that Sinn Féin wanted the restoration of a reign of public law, and that those who had taken powers to themselves must restore them to civil authority. There is no question that the public at large post-Treaty wanted a return to normality.
One of the great achievements of the Irish State over the past 100 years has been the continuous sustaining of democracy through all sorts of difficult and challenging crises and, so far, not succumbing to extremism from any political direction. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church and the other churches were an important force for stability, the price for which was a whole society’s conservatism that could be intolerant and cruel towards those who dissented or deviated. Sometimes people chose to emigrate not just out of necessity but from a desire for personal freedom.
The common failing of revolutions is the persistence of deep problems that cannot be resolved at the time. In the US, it was the contradiction between the ringing statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” with the Southern States’ determination to hold on to slavery.
Hamilton writing under an assumed name asked: “Who talks most about liberty and equality?…is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?
Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had slaves on their staff, while they were President, though Washington freed his under his will. Even the bloody American civil war 80 years later, which formally abolished slavery, left the issue of civil rights largely unresolved. The 1790s were also a period, when advanced thinkers like the French philosopher Condorcet (guillotined) and Mary Wollstonecraft started asking questions which were then long ignored about the equal rights of woman.
The Treaty settlement with partition in Ireland subjected a substantial community in Northern Ireland of one religious and political tradition to the permanent majority rule of the other.
This too led to a delayed but prolonged conflict 50 years later, and the need for a second peace settlement in the Good Friday Agreement. Notwithstanding the current prolonged political hiatus, for the vast majority of people, including most of the combatants, peace remains a vast improvement on what went before. However, there are small groups, who would reverse Franklin’s motto, and operate as if there is no such thing as a good peace or a bad war.
Outcome
While the outcome of Brexit remains uncertain, all responsible authorities are determined to avoid creating any excuse for renewed conflict. The priority is minimise disruption, and to protect the gains of the peace process, in particular the free movement of people and goods across a nearly invisible border. The public north and south, not just the security forces, will resist efforts from any quarter to drag the country backwards, as reaction to the death of Lyra McKee showed.
It was clear to most people 100 years ago and since that the means to impose an enforced unity were not forthcoming. While most injustices flowing from partition have been corrected, the long delay in doing so came at a high price. Unity, if it comes, will require a process of peaceful evolution and détente, before any poll on both sides of the border.
Residual paramilitary activity is far more likely to impede progress than to hasten it. The narrative that rejects constitutional politics and what it has achieved belongs to a bygone era. Disengagement is not a cure for impotence.
The benefit of steady engagement is the lesson of the peace process.