Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Philadelphia. Fall 1776. <\/p>\n
Independence hangs on by the slenderest thread. Philadelphia panics. <\/p>\n
And Thomas Paine seeks once more to summon lightning with his quill. <\/p>\n
Paine, 39, the Revolution\u2019s most dangerous pen, witnesses firsthand the despair of the Continental Army. Traveling with the troops, Philly\u2019s firebrand pamphleteers the patriots\u2019 sacrifice and suffering. The author of \u201cCommon Sense\u201d \u2014 a 47-page thunderclap mocking the monarchy that, only months earlier, transformed independence from a daydream into a public demand \u2014 hopes to return to Philadelphia to set his latest revolutionary rallying cry to type. The American experiment, still in its infancy, may depend on it.<\/p>\n
That is, if Philadelphia itself can survive.<\/p>\n
Only months after the intoxicating euphoria of July 4, when a world-shaking Declaration<\/a> rang out from the makeshift capital, unease and uncertainty now reigns in Philadelphia. After a series of defeats, the Redcoats have Washington on the run in New York. The Founders are convinced Philly is next.<\/p>\n Rumors of impending invasion course the stricken city. Outside the State House, where the Founders conspire, officials rally volunteers to the city\u2019s defense. Militias train. Desertion grows. Newspapers plead with subscribers to go door-to-door to raise $50,000 for the city\u2019s defenders. Smallpox rages. Hunger and fear mount. The dead of Philadelphia are buried in shallow trenches near Walnut Street Prison.<\/p>\n By December, as the British advance just 30 miles outside the city, Philadelphia businesses shutter for safety. Congress flees. Philadelphians abandon their city for the rural hinterlands.<\/p>\n \u201cThis city for days was the greatest scene of distress that you can conceive,\u201d writes Philadelphia patriot Robert Morris a few days before Christmas 1776. \u201cNow it looks dismal and melancholy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Times that tried Men\u2019s Souls\u2019<\/p>\n Independence was not easy. Especially in Philly. It wasn\u2019t all Declarations and fireworks and drinks at the City Tavern, said Tyler Putman, senior manager of Gallery Interpretation at the Museum of the American Revolution.<\/p>\n \u201cIndependence was announced in July, but by October and November and December, all signs from New York are that it\u2019s not going to be successful,\u201d he said. \u201cThe mood would be that the Republic is not going to survive the year.\u201d<\/p>\n This weekend, the Museum of the American Revolution aims to recreate those perilous, often overlooked months, when independence seemed fleeting, and doom knocked on Philadelphia\u2019s door, in its largest-ever living-history festival. <\/p>\n Entitled \u201cRevolutionary Philadelphia: 1776<\/a>\u2033 and scheduled for Oct. 17 and 18, the event stretches beyond the museum\u2019s galleries, onto the plaza and sidewalks outside the Old City<\/a> plaza with recreations of colonial markets and military camp grounds, scores of reenactors, guided walking tours, book-signings, dramatic vignettes, street theater, and even a Halloween costume contest for the kiddos. <\/p>\n Falling just months after the nation celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it seemed only natural to focus the annual event on the travails of Philadelphians in the months that followed that world-changing event, officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it is easy to forget that the Revolutionary War took eight years and was a closely run race,\u201d said Putman, who will serve among the ranks of reenactors, and recently donned a tricorner hat and waistcoat in a hilariously engaging Revolutionary War Rocky spoof<\/a> advertising the event.<\/p>\n The goal is to make history feel real and provide a fuller understanding of a time when independence was new \u2014 and far from guaranteed. <\/p>\n \u201cYou get to really meet people in a specific moment of history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Like Paine, Philly\u2019s working-class literary bomb-thrower, who in those cold, hard days of 1776 was determined to rekindle the fading fires of rebellion. Paine did not know that in the weeks ahead, Washington would read his powerful clarion call for American resilience \u2014 the \u201cAmerican Crisis, No. 1<\/a>\u201d \u2014 to the troops in the trenches, just before their daring Christmas Eve raid across the ice-choked Delaware at Trenton that rescued America\u2019s fading chances.<\/p>\n Paine wrote, \u201cThese are the times that try men\u2019s souls.\u201d<\/p>\n