French Huguenots, Apollos Rivoire and Deborah Hitchborn, made their way to Boston, Massachusetts, after being determined to leave France. They may have been in some kind of trouble. In America, Apollos Rivoire changed his name to Paul Rivoire, and then later to Paul Revere. Deborah became Deborah Revere. They had a son and named him Paul Revere. You may have heard of him.
Yes he is the one who rode with the warning that the Redcoats are coming. But the real history is not quite like the famous poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Paul never even made it all the way to Concord. But the poem’s a beauty anyway, and we love the story.
As you know George Washington wasn’t bashful about going to war—even with an army of untrained, unschooled, and even unpaid farmers, merchants, and shopkeepers. And look what he did with the British!
Not only was John Adams not present at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, neither was Thomas Jefferson. Although Jefferson had sent his good friend, James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, trunk-loads of books about government for use in preparing for the Constitution.
Today I believe the Founding Fathers are looking at our government with surprise and disbelief. The leaders of our nation seem to have forgotten that the Constitution starts out with these Words:
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, wrote a message to the States complete with a dire warning that still holds true today. It’s quite a long sentence and paragraph (I took the liberty of dividing the paragraph in two for easier reading). Nevertheless, I’m going to repeat it here for you:
Yesterday’s post reminded me of a conversation between Schroeder and Lucy in a Charles Schultz Peanuts cartoon. Schroeder is, of course playing his toy piano. Lucy, leaning on it asks: “I have an historical question for you.”
In the early years of our American nation, religion fared very well even in the Supreme Court. Joseph Story (1779-1845) served as a Supreme Court Justice at the age of 32. He was the youngest to serve in that position. Her served from 1811 to 1845. He wrote several remarkable decisions of the High Court. The most memorable was the Amistad decision (now a movie), which he read out loud in the Court.