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Divine Providence and the United States Philip V. Brennan I've been watching the History Channel's excellent series on the American Revolution, and the other night it dealt with the Battle of Long Island, fought mainly in the area of what is today Brooklyn's Prospect Park where, as a kid, I went sleigh riding in the winter or cantered on the bridle path in the fall and spring, when I was learning equitation. That battle both embarrassed George Washington, whose rookie battalions were outflanked on their unprotected left wing and sent running by the Redcoats in a pitiful rout, and also proved him to be a master strategist when he eluded destruction by a vastly superior force in a brilliantly conducted maneuver that kept his army intact and assured the colonies that the revolution would go on. Under cover of darkness, he managed to ferry his troops across the East River, undetected by the enemy, to the safety of lower Manhattan, saving them to fight another day. For this he has been rightly hailed as an inspired military leader, but he didn't accomplish this feat alone. He had help. While his troops were paddling across the river in all manner of hastily assembled craft, they could easily have been caught by the huge British fleet anchored in New York harbor, or by the British army of 10,000 facing their lines on Brooklyn Heights (where, many years later, my Great-grandfather Carlin built one of the first houses before going off to fight in the Civil War), and mere darkness would not have protected them. Help came when a sudden unexpected and unprecedented dense fog settled over the East River, miraculously shielding the troops in their small fleet of rickety craft from the ever-alert eyes of the nearby British fleet and the Redcoats ashore. Most historians agree it was a providential occurrence that saved the Revolution and made everything that happened since possible. That fog helped make the United States of America. Somebody up there obviously wanted Washington to escape, because somebody up there wanted there to be a United States of America. God had plans for us. Describing his astonishing earlier victory in driving the British from Boston without firing a shot, Washington acknowledged his debt to Almighty God:
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"Upon their discovery of the works next morning, great preparations were made for attacking them; but not being ready before afternoon, and the weather getting very tempestuous, much blood was saved, and a very important blow, to one side or the other, was prevented. That this most remarkable interposition of Providence is for some a wise purpose, I have not a doubt." Said Samuel Adams in a speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia, on August 1, 1776: "There are instances of, I would say, an almost astonishing providence in our favor; our success has staggered our enemies, and almost given faith to infidels; so we may truly say it is not our own arm which has saved us. The hand of Heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great providential dispensation which is completing. We have fled from the political Sodom; let us not look back lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world." The very idea that a collection of colonists could challenge the mightiest army on the face of the earth and prevail against it flies in the face of reason. But it happened, and to question the fact that the colonists did it all by themselves is to challenge common sense. Time and again throughout our history we have seen Divine Providence work in our favor, keeping us united when secession might have torn us asunder as a nation, and enabling us to recover from such blows as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, where much of our fleet lay at the bottom.
The hand of God was never more clear in our victory in the Cold War when a pope, a prime minister, and a president brought the mighty Soviet Empire to its knees without provoking a nuclear holocaust. Today, the free world faces another deadly threat – a war against a largely unseen enemy that lurks in the shadows, has no sense of human compassion, and is dedicated to our destruction and enslavement under the heels of a worldwide Islamic dictatorship. It has been left to the United States to shoulder the burden of the defense of Western Christian civilization against a barbaric enemy. Thanks to Divine Providence, we have the means to wage this unrelenting struggle in a world that largely ignores the peril it faces and condemns America for fighting to protect it. The question that Divine Providence asks us today is the same it asked the colonists engaged in a costly and seemingly hopeless struggle: "I have given you the means to prevail; do you have the will?" It took six long years of losing one major battle after another before America prevailed in the Revolution, and the Americans prevailed not merely because they had the means, but also because in the end they had the will. Remember Sam Adams' words that "The hand of Heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great providential dispensation which is completing. We have fled from the political Sodom; let us not look back lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world." Providence has given us the means to prevail in the war against Islamic fascism, a war that could last a generation and challenge us in countless and painful ways. Do we, like our forefathers, have the will?
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers
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