There are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to. Washington, 26 December 1786 , Panel 16, 1956, Jacob Lawrence, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Private collection, © 2020 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Lawrence excerpted the title caption for this recently rediscovered panel from a letter that retired General George Washington wrote to General Henry Knox on December 26, 1786. Washington conveys his concerns about the Massachusetts farmers protesting tax collections intended to repay the new nation’s war debt. In 1787, these protests sparked Shay’s Rebellion in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Excerpt from Letter from George Washington to Henry Knox, December 26, 1786, The Gilder Lehrman Collection, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York
I do assure you, that even at this moment, when I reflect on the present posture of our affairs, it seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. My mind does not know how to realize it, as a thing in actual existence, so strange—so wonderful does it appear to me! In this, as in most other matter[s], we are too slow. When this spirit first dawned, probably it migh[t] easily have been checked; but it is scarcely within the reach of human ken, at this moment, to say when—where—or how it will end. There are combustibles in every State, which a spark may set fire to.
In 1787, Prince Hall, the Black American veteran and founder of the first African Lodge of Freemasons, offered to raise an all-Black militia to put down the farmer rebellion of Daniel Shays. Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin refused Hall’s offer. Just a few months later, Hall sent a proposal of a very different kind to the legislature: since the new nation refused to recognize their equality, Black Bostonians requested financial support for voluntary repatriation to Africa.