About Providence

It was September 30th, 1777. Not three weeks prior, the Continental Army suffered a devastating defeat at Brandywine Creek, about 25 miles southwest of Philadelphia. The British had routed Washington’s army and captured the majority of its artillery before marching into Philadelphia unopposed, causing the Continental Congress to flee with such haste that at least one delegate, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, left without a change of clothes. With New York and Philadelphia under British control, the Continental Congress—with now only 20 members remaining of the 56 who had signed the Declaration of Independence a year prior—convened in York, Pennsylvania, questioning whether or not there was any hope left for the American cause.

John Adams noted in his diary that "The prospect is chilling, on every Side: Gloomy, dark, melancholly, and dispiriting." But it was at this meeting in York that John’s cousin Samuel Adams, the chief rabble-rouser of the Americans and their spiritual leader—whom Thomas Jefferson later remarked that, if there was a leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man”—gave perhaps his most important speech:

If we despond, public confidence is destroyed, the people will no longer yield their support to a hopeless contest, and American liberty is no more. Through the darkness which shrouds our prospects the ark of safety is visible. Despondency becomes not the dignity of our cause, nor the character of those who are its supporters. Let us awaken then, and evince a different spirit—a spirit that shall inspire the people with confidence in themselves and in us—a spirit that will encourage them to persevere in this glorious struggle, until their rights and liberties shall be established on a rock. We have proclaimed to the world our determination "to die freemen, rather than to live as slaves." We have appealed to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and in Heaven we have placed our trust. Numerous have been the manifestations of God's providence in sustaining us. In the gloomy period of adversity, we have had "our cloud by day and pillar of fire by night." We have been reduced to distress, and the arm of Omnipotence has raised us up. Let us still rely in humble confidence on Him who is mighty to save. Good tidings will soon arrive. We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection.

Good tidings arrived not three weeks later in Saratoga, New York where General Gates surrounded and secured the surrender of over 6,000 redcoats and almost triple the number of artillery pieces lost at Brandywine. It was the turning point of the war.

Adams recognized the Americans' need to rely on God's providence to see them through their struggle against England, just as the ancient Israelites relied on God's providence to see them through their exodus from Egypt. Today, Americans are again in need of God's providence: for, among other things, to see us through our inevitable exodus from a ponziconomy based on predatory loans, derivative trading, cheaply made garbage, meaningless make-work, and bottomless consumption. Providence Leather was conceived as one man's exit from the ponziconomy, a choice to craft quality leather goods with care and reverence and to trust in God's providence instead of a corporate paycheck.