My favorite artifact in the museum is a modest thing—a knapsack that belonged to a soldier named Benjamin Warner. He attached a note to it:
This Napsack I caryd Through the War of the Revolution to achieve the American Independence. I Transmit it to my olest sone Benjamin Warner Jr. with directions to keep it and transmit it to his oldest sone and so on to the latest posterity and whilst one shred of it shall remain never surrender you libertys to a foren envador or an aspiring demegog. Benjamin Warner Ticonderoga March 27, 1837.
Warner’s orthography may have been uncertain, but his values were not, and I often think of that warning—about foreign invaders, yes, but also aspiring demagogues.
Plenty of people kept their heads down during the Revolution. John Adams famously said that he thought a third of Americans at the time were in favor, a third opposed, and a third neutral. Those percentages may be off: That middle group—hoping, like most people, simply to get on—may have been larger. And then there were those who had second thoughts—Benedict Arnold most notably, but many others as well, from statesmen such as Joseph Galloway to more ordinary souls caught in the middle.
But the tone was set by those like John Morton, a signer of the Declaration who accepted that “this is putting the Halter about our Necks, & we may as well die by the Sword as be hang’d like Rebels.” In particular, the gentry leadership of the Revolution knew, from the record of how Britain had dealt with rebels in Ireland and Scotland, that they could face loss of their home, their freedom, and possibly their life. When Thomas Jefferson ended the Declaration with the words “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,” he was not kidding.
Benjamin Warner was not of the gentry, though; he was a mere farmer. He led a long life, from 1757 to 1846. His tombstone, in a cemetery in Crown Point, New York, has a simple epitaph: “A revolutionary soldier & a friend to the Slave.” One may only suppose what that last phrase meant, given that New York was on the Underground Railroad.
Warner was one of those soldiers who served repeatedly from 1775 to 1780, joining one regiment and then another, marching to Quebec, fighting in the Battle of Long Island and in New Jersey. In between campaigns, presumably, he took care of the farm. Beyond that, and his knapsack, we do not know much, other than that he saw his duty, did it, went home, and did it again. There does not seem much flash about him, but he knew what he was fighting for, and what he would willingly fight against.