Tampa Chapter

Sons of the American Revolution

October 2021

 

 Contents

          Meeting announcements

          Dues are Due

          Revolution History note

          Program Schedule

Wreaths Across America 

Color Guard Events & Opportunities       

          Misc. reminders and information

 

Meeting Announcements

October

Tampa Chapter S.A.R. will have our next meeting on Saturday, October 16th at 12:00 noon at the Mission BBQ at 5602 WEST WATERS AVENUE, Tampa 33634.  We have the room beginning at 11:00AM so come early, get your food, and join us in the private meeting room for fellowship before we start at noon.  Our program this month will be more or more of our members presenting a history of their patriot ancestor.  It should be interesting.  We will also be welcoming more new members and discussing future. 

 

Dress is casual.  Elections are next month. Dick Young is the Chair of our Nominating Committee.  He tells us there are still vacancies.   If you are interested in serving your chapter in a leadership role, please contact Dick at 352-942-8688 or www.dyoung22@aol.com . Training is provided!  

 

September

We held our first meeting of the 2021-2022 Program Year at the Mission BBQ.  A good crowd of members and future members were present.  President David Bryant presented a number of chapter and individual awards from the Florida Society Annual Meeting in May.  Three new members were presented their Membership Certificates.  New members James Bradley and Scott Danielson are also retired military and were recognized for their service with a presentation of the SAR War Service Medal.  The Certificates were available; however, the medals did not arrive from National prior to the September meeting and will be presented at the October meeting.

 

Dues Are Due

Dues for 2021 are coming due.  Dues are $80 as they have been for the past few years.  Of that $35 goes to National, $20 to Florida SAR and $25 stays in Tampa.  Send your

check or money order to Paul Ergler, Treasurer

                                      503 Surrey Lane 

                                      Lutz, FL  33549

Paul says he can take PayPal, too, but you will need to contact him for that one at paulergler@hotmail.com. 

 

American Revolution Notes

Lilburne, Cooper, Locke, Trenchard and Gordon: 

Who should get credit for colonial America’s enthusiasm for Natural law and Natural rights?

 

When I would teach the Declaration of Independence, I would ask my students where Jefferson got the ideas he included in the theory of government paragraph.  Invariably, the students would answer, John Locke.  I would then ask, where did Locke get those ideas from.  Someone might say he thought them up himself but mostly the students admitted they never gave that a thought.  I would tell them he got them from John Lilburne. However, I would add, Locke never met Lilburne and as far as we know never read anything Lilburne wrote, so, how did Locke get them? What is the missing link?  I made that an extra credit assignment.  Most semesters 3-5 would turn something in and usually at least one got it correct.

          But, before we get to the answer to that question, let us consider John Lilburne.  Lilburne was a member of a group known as the Levellers in mid-17th century England.  The name is slightly misleading because it implies to some people a sort of idealistic socialism.[i]  The Levellers advocated expanding the vote, equality before the law, religious toleration, freedom of trade and protection of private property.  They based their views on natural law. They attached themselves to the Parliamentary forces during the English civil war against Charles I, believing that their ideas and proposals would get a fair hearing once Parliament won.  However, Cromwell persecuted them just as Charles I had for being too radical.

          Which bring us to Ashley Cooper, the missing link between Lilburne and Locke. After briefly supporting the Royalist forces, Anthony Ashley Cooper switched to the Parliamentary side and came under the influence of the Levellers.  Following the Parliamentary victory, he served on the English Council of State under Cromwell, though he opposed Cromwell’s dictatorial rule. In October 1666 Cooper met John Locke.  I will let Murray Rothbard take it from here:

“… something happened to John Locke … when he became personal secretary, advisor, writer, theoretician, and close friend of … Anthony Ashley Cooper … who in 1672 was named the first Earl [of] Shaftesbury. It was due to Shaftesbury that Locke, from then on, was to plunge into political and economic philosophy, and into public service as well as revolutionary intrigue. Locke adopted from Shaftesbury the entire classical liberal Whig outlook, and it was Shaftesbury who converted Locke into a firm and lifelong champion of religious toleration and into a libertarian exponent of self-ownership, property rights, and a free market economy. It was Shaftesbury who made Locke into a libertarian and who stimulated the development of Locke's libertarian system.  Without Shaftesbury, Locke would not have been Locke at all. But this truth has been hidden all too often by historians who felt they had to hide this relationship in order to construct an idealized image of Locke the pure and detached philosopher, separate from the grubby and mundane political concerns of the real world.

As worked out and developed by John Locke in the early 1680s in his Two Treatises of Government, Shaftesbury's arguments turned out to be pretty much the same as the ones John Lilburne had offered the literate English public back in the turbulent 1640s. [ii]

          Locke’s Two Treatises would cross the Atlantic and be read by people in the colonies.  But who, exactly, is reading Locke?  While most of the American colonists in the 18th century were literate, only the wealthy and well-educated could afford the books and had the leisure time to deal with Locke’s sometimes dense prose. So, how did Locke’s ideas get to the common man, the masses of the people?  We will explore that question next month.   [iii]

[1] While they advocated expanding the number of people who could vote, they did not believe paid domestics, for example, should be given the right to vote as they would merely vote as their employers wished.  They extended that same line of reasoning to include mechanics and artisans employed by small businesses. 

 

ii Liberty and Property: The Levellers and Locke  By Murray N. Rothbard

 

iii Shaftsbury and Locke both tutored Shaftsbury’s grandson, who would become the 3rd Earl.  The young Shaftsbury then attended Dublin college where he quickly gained admittance to a select group of thinkers and scholars.  One member of the group said of him “he is the most original moral thinker of his generation.”  Locke and his grandfather had done their job well.  He is credited with re-defining the word politeness.  He took a word used by jewelers and stone masons meaning to polish and defined it as meaning not just good manners, but also kindness, compassion, self-restraint, and a sense of humor.  He asked the question what is the basis for a society where men are polite? His simple answer was Liberty.  “All politeness is owing to liberty.”  In a free society, he wrote, you polish and refine yourself to a higher level of politeness through social interaction with others. He was an advocate of doing good for other people not out of a sense of duty or obligation, but because, he believed, doing good gave one a sense of wellbeing.  His writings and teachings on moral philosophy influenced the faculties of both Glasgow University and Edinburgh University.  It was at those universities that many Scots who immigrated to the American colonies in the early and mid-18th century received their education.  They brought the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment to America…Lilburne’s ideas transmitted to the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury by his grandfather and Locke and from him to numerous people educated in the two great Universities in Scotland. Among them John Witherspoon—President of Princeton and NJ delegate to the 2nd Continental Congress.

 

Bibliography

              Bernard Bailyn             The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

             Arthur Herman             How the Scots Invented the Modern World

   Murray Rothbard           Conceived in Liberty

   Murray Rothbard           Liberty and Property: The Levellers and Locke

 

Program Schedule

 

Dates for the fall are below. Feel free to pass along any program/speaker suggestions to either Pres. D. Brant or VP Bob Yarnell.

 

Nov. 20                 Law Enforcement Recognition

Dec. 18                  Wreaths Across America

 

 

Wreaths Across America

       The nation-wide annual Wreaths Across America Ceremony will be held on Saturday, December 18, at over 2500 locations.  For those of you not familiar with WAA, please visit their website at www.wreathsacrossamerica.org for more information.  The Tampa Chapter will again be a sponsor for the Veterans Cemetery at the American Legion Post #5 on Kennedy Blvd. in Tampa.  We also expect to be part of the noon-time ceremony, again.  More information to follow. 

 

Color Guard Events and Opportunities

 

On September 22, the Tampa Color Guard Presented the Colors during the national anthems before the baseball game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field.  Prior to marching onto the field, Rays mascot DJ Kitty dropped by to see the guys. 

 

   

 

Tampa Chapter Color Guardsmen Robbie Robinson and Dick Young were part of the Florida SAR State Color Guard at the Liberty Tree Dedication Ceremony in Port Charlotte on October 9 as part of the Charlotte County Centennial celebration.  Five SAR chapters and one DAR chapter were represented in the Color Guard.  Other DAR chapters, the local C.A.R. Society, a Charlotte County Commissioner and many others were present for the Dedication Ceremony. 

 

    

 

 

Future Opportunities

November 11          Veterans Day                  (we will try to find something)

December 4           Christmas Parade             Safety Harbor

December 18         Wreaths Across America Tampa

February 16           DAR Chapter Luncheon    Sun City Center

 

We can never have enough Color Guardsmen.  If any of you have any interest in joining the Color Guard, please contact Dick Young, Chapter Commander or any of the members of the Tampa Chapter Color Guard.  If you do not want to start with the full Continental Line uniform, we can show you how to get started with a militia “uniform” with much less cost. 

 

Miscellaneous Reminders

The face book page for the Tampa Sons of the American Revolution is

Tampa Sar. The password to add anything is American1776.

Please feel free to upload pictures or comments. Invite all your friends to look.

 

Chapter Website—remember you can find information about the chapter and programs on the chapter website.   http://www.tampasar.org/

 

One of the duties of the Chapter Chaplain is to send cards to our members that are sick. Another is to send a sympathy card to the family of a member who has passed away. If you know of anyone that should be the recipient of these cards, please mention it to Chaplain Sessums or one of the other officers at our next meeting.