Forgotten Foundation: The Story of Small Things Grow Great by Concord

How do you beat the biggest government in history?

The founders did it, but they knew there’s is silver bullet. The path to liberty isn’t flashy. It’s slow. Deliberate. Relentless.

In 1767, the “Penman of the American Revolution” found the key in ancient Rome. Four Latin words. One strategy to topple an empire. This is the story of “small things grow great by concord.”

DICKINSON’S GAMBIT

The year is 1767. The American colonies are on a knife’s edge.

Two years earlier, they had successfully nullified the Stamp Act through dedicated and coordinated resistance. When the British repealed the act, they didn’t retreat. They merely changed tactics.

On the very same day they repealed the Stamp Act, they passed the Declaratory Act, which claimed unlimited centralized power over everything.

The act declared that Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”

Most people celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act. John Adams immediately grasped the ominous implications of the Declaratory Act. In his diary, he asked the question that would soon come to define the entire crisis: “I am solicitous to know whether they will lay a Tax, in Consequence of that Resolution, or what Kind of a Law they will make.”

At first, it was just a threat on paper. John Dickinson understood that it was planting the seeds for something bigger. The Declaratory Act “was only planting a barren tree, that cast a shade indeed over the colonies, but yielded no fruit.”

The answer to Adams’ question arrived with the Townshend Acts of 1767.

In response, Dickinson wrote a series of essays called Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. These became the most widely read documents on American liberty until publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense – some of the most influential writing of the entire Revolution.

Dickinson saw what most people missed. Parliament’s true objective was not taxation but submission.

“No man, who considers the conduct of the parliament since the repeal of the Stamp-Act, and the disposition of many people at home, can doubt, that the chief object of attention there, is, to use Mr. Greenville’s expression, ‘providing that the dependence and obedience of the colonies be asserted and maintained.’”

THE PRECEDENT TRAP

For Dickinson, the great danger of the Townshend Acts wasn’t the size of the new taxes – they were actually quite small.

And that, he warned, was the whole point. It was a trap, designed to be overlooked.

“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.”

Why? Because it would establish a precedent for more of the same in the future.

“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.”

The logic hit like a hammer.

If Parliament had the right to take even one penny without colonial consent, there would be no end.

“In short, if they have a right to levy a tax of one penny upon us, they have a right to levy a million upon us: For where does their right stop? At any given number of Pence, Shillings or Pounds? To attempt to limit their right, after granting it to exist at all, is as contrary to reason – as granting it to exist at all, is contrary to justice.”

The Townshend Acts were more than just taxes. There was also the New York Restraining Act. It suspended that colony’s assembly for not complying with the Quartering Act. Dickinson saw this for what it was – a targeted punishment and a first move in a divide-and-conquer strategy.

Attack one, and another will come soon after.

“But whoever seriously considers the matter, must perceive that a dreadful stroke is aimed at the liberty of these colonies. I say, of these colonies; for the cause of one is the cause of all. If the parliament may lawfully deprive New-York of any of her rights, it may deprive any, or all the other colonies of their rights; and nothing can possibly so much encourage such attempts, as a mutual inattention to the interests of each other.”

Dickinson identified a classic military strategy being deployed against them.

“To divide, and thus to destroy, is the first political maxim in attacking those, who are powerful by their union.”

THE ANCIENT FORMULA

And that’s when Dickinson delivered the insight that would change everything.

Since the British were using small moves to establish big precedents, the colonists needed to do the same to stop them.

He closed the first of his Letters with four Latin words that would become the strategic foundation of the American revolution:

“Concordia res parvae crescunt”
– small things grow great by concord.

But Dickinson didn’t invent this formula. He inherited it. And to understand what he was channeling, we have to go back to the source: Ancient Rome.

It’s 41 BC, and Sallust is writing an autopsy on the Roman republic, dying before his very eyes. The decay, he noted, really started with the defeat of Rome’s great rival, Carthage.

“But when our country had grown great through toil and the practice of justice, when great kings had been vanquished in war, savage tribes and mighty peoples subdued by force of arms, when Carthage, the rival of Rome’s sway, had perished root and branch, and all seas and lands were open”

With no major foreign enemy to fear, the rot turned inward. The very things they fought for – peace, security, and wealth – became a curse.

“Then Fortune began to grow cruel and to bring confusion into all our affairs. Those who had found it easy to bear hardship and dangers, anxiety and adversity, found leisure and wealth, desirable under other circumstances, a burden and a curse.”

Two specific diseases took hold and became the root of Rome’s downfall.

“Hence the lust for power first, then for money, grew upon them; these were, I may say, the root of all evils.”

The corruption spread gradually, then completely.

“At first these vices grew slowly, from time to time they were punished; finally, when the disease had spread like a deadly plague, the state was changed and a government second to none in equity and excellence became cruel and intolerable.”

For Sallust, this was no mere observation. It was evidence of a fundamental political law with the certainty of a mathematical formula. This birthed the famous maxim that Dickinson signed off with in the first of his Letters.

“Concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maximae dilabuntur”
– Harmony makes small things great, while discord undermines even the mightiest empires.

THE AMERICAN STRATEGY

The old revolutionaries who understood exactly what Sallust meant – the path to liberty was a long and difficult road.

The danger was complacency after early victories. As Samuel Adams put it: “Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance.”

Possibly no one articulated the strategy better than Thomas Jefferson. Liberty must be won gradually through persistent effort.

“The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, that we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time, and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.”

As John Dickinson closed the twelfth and last of his Letters, he didn’t end with a legal argument or a historical lesson. He ended with a direct and personal challenge to his countrymen.

“For my part, I am resolved to contend for the liberty delivered down to me by my ancestors; but whether I shall do it effectually or not, depends on you, my countrymen.”

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