"The Glorious Fourth": A Poem on Independence Day by Hannah Griffits, 1785

The 250th anniversary of American independence is in 2026. Given how Trump is undermining the principles the US was founded upon, it is worth looking at the views of an intelligent women who was ambivalent about the whole thing. 

Hannah Griffits was a Quaker poet who lived in the late colonial and early national period of American history. She witnessed a lot of changes: her life spanned 90 years (1727-1817).

Hannah decided to be a poet when she was just a child. At age 10, she promised God that she would not write poetry about "trifling themes." She kept her promise. 

Griffits came from a prominent Pennsylvania family. She supported colonial resistance to British rule. In addition, she was also a proto-feminist who wrote poems celebrating the efforts of the Daughters of Liberty to boycott British goods in response to the attempts of Parliament to tax colonial imports.  

But she was also a devout Quaker. She abhorred violence and advocated a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Once hostilities commenced she denounced the behavior of both sides and the suffering and divisions they created. The war divided Griffits' relatives into Patriots and Loyalists, a common outcome in many families.

She was appalled by the carnage of the first major battle after the Patriots had declared independence, the Battle of Long Island.  [Image: "The Battle of Long Island" by Alonzo Chappell, 19th century recreation.]

She was particularly harsh in condemning Thomas Paine (one of my heroes), calling him "a Snake beneath the grass" whose extreme rhetoric drowned out that of moderates. The British came in for a drubbing as well. They exhibited evidence of a "deep degeneracy of nature." 

In the wake of the war, she wrote a poem expressing disillusion with the costs and results of independence. It is short and simple, but immensely powerful. It sums up, I think, the feelings many people have today about the current situation of the United States. It deserves wide dissemination at this perilous time. 

"The glorious fourth --  again appears,

A day of days -- and year of years,

The sum of sad disasters,

Where all the mighty gains we see,

With all their boasted liberty,

Is only change of masters." (1785)

Griffits' poetry received little attention in her time. The literary establishments of the day were hostile to women authors. Griffits never tried to publish her poems. A few did get published but not through her own efforts. Many others survived in commonplace books kept by relatives and friends. 

Further Reading: 

Hannah Griffitts - Wikipedia

Hannah Griffitts | History of American Women (womenhistoryblog.com) by Maggie Maclean

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Boycott: The History of a Word

I hope the following tale helps to explain where "boycott" came from, and inspires you with an example of how a boycott can be effective. Boycotts are needed more than ever, against the corporations, institutions, and individuals supporting and enabling the Trump Regime.

To boycott something means to ostracize someone or something, to refuse to patronise a business or an establishment or an organization. It can be used both as a verb or a noun, "to boycott" or "a boycott." Boycotts were used as a tactic against racial discrimination in the US South in the 1950s and 60s. They are often used today against companies that are perceived as discriminating against certain groups or engaging in unjust practices. Tesla is a recent  example [Image: Civil Rights Boycotts in US South, 1950s]

"Boycott" is a fairly recent addition to the English language It was  first used about 160 years ago in what is now the Republic of Ireland, which was then a part of the UK. The word comes from the name of a person who was the object of an agrarian protest, Captain Charles Boycott. He was a retired army officer who had become the land agent of an absentee landlord in County Mayo. [Image: Captain Boycott, as Drawn by Spy (Lesley Ward) in Vanity Fair, 1881]

In 1880,  Boycott became the focus of a coordinated protest by activists of the Irish Land League, instigated by its founder, Michael Davitt, and its leader, Charles Stuart Parnell, MP. Davitt himself was from County Mayo. [Images: Parnell and Davitt]

Davitt had established the Land League in 1879 to protect tenant farmers against oppressions by large landowners, notably arbitrary evictions and rack renting (raising rents excessively). The League campaigned to secure what it called the Three Fs: Free Sale, Fixity of Tenure, and Fair Rents. In pursuit of these goals, and specifically to prevent planned evictions on Lord Erne's estate, League activists urged estate workers, including seasonal crop harvesters, to refuse their labor. The protest quickly evolved into a community-wide movement designed to isolate Boycott, the land agent on the spot. 

Shops and tradesmen in the nearby town of Ballinrobe refused to serve him or do business with him. (The League coerced some of them into participating.) In short order, his life became unbearable. News of Boycott's predicament soon spread to London. The government sent a regiment of Royal Hussars (light cavalry) and over 1000 men of the Royal Irish Constabular to protect volunteer harvesters, mostly Protestant Orangemen. They managed to harvest about £500 of crops -- at a cost to the British government of about £10,000 (millions in today's money). 

Boycott left Ireland after the harvest and took a job as an estate agent in Suffolk, England. He died in 1897. The Boycott affair was widely followed and reported and people began using the word "boycott" to describe similar protest actions. A poster promoting Parnell's pamphlet "Boycotting" shows that it quickly became an eponymous word. Parnell is pictured on the cover.

According to one contemporary source, "boycott" was first coined by a local priest, Father John O'Malley, who was helping an activist to find a simple term for the action the local people would understand. He rejected "ostracism," and "social excommunication" as too elitist. and suggested calling it "to boycott him."  

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