Twelve. It’s the Twelfth month, and we will not only talk about John Dickinson’s Twelfth Letter From a Farmer, but also about the Eggnog Riot of West Point involving Jefferson Davis. And some Irish Christmas music as well.
Twelve
https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/deep-dives/the-twelve-myths-of-christmas/
As you will discover, Christmas in colonial and revolutionary America was not the wholesome, family-oriented holiday that Americans celebrate today. In the eighteenth century, Christmas was often rowdy, drunken, wild, and dangerous.
You could also read this list as a guide to celebrating Christmas like someone in eighteenth-century America. But be careful not to be too authentic. You could get arrested.
Jefferson Davis And the Egg Nog Riot of 1826
Jefferson Davis and the West Point Cadets had a little too much to drink on Christmas back in 1826 when they attended West Point on the banks of the Hudson River.
And a riot broke out.
Captain Hitchcock
Jefferson Davis, before he was President of the Confederate States he attended West Point.
John Dickinson’s Twelfth Letter From A Farmer
The Twelfth Letter
Let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds—that we cannot be happy without being free—that we cannot be free without being secure in our property—that we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away—that taxes imposed on us by parliament, do thus take it away
Property rights are the key to your free. And you body is your property.
This is simple. Your thoughts, your expression and your body are your property. You control your thoughts and your body. What you own is under your control as long as it does not interfere with the property rights that others possess as well. Without the concept of property, there is no liberty, there is no safeguard from losing your freedom. Without the concept of property I can simply take what you have and you have no right to defend yourself and protect your person, your family, your belongings.
Samuel Adams stated quite clearly that natural law was the source of your fundamental rights. They are fundamental to your self preservation.
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life; secondly to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
This tax may be a small sum, but the danger is in the precedent that it sets for future laws. Some persons may think this act of no consequence, because the duties are so small. A fatal error. That is the very circumstance most alarming to me. For I am convinced, that the authors of this law would never have obtained an act to raise so trifling a sum as it must do, had they not intended by it to establish a precedent for future use. To console ourselves with the smallness of the duties, is to walk deliberately into the snare that is set for us, praising the neatness of the workmanship.