HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY 2003, FROM HORSEFEATHERS
The American Flag
When freedom, from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies
Then from his mansion in the sun
She called her eagle-bearer down
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.
--Joseph Rodman Drake
The Declaration of Independence
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.John Hancock
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett
Wm. Whipple
Matthew Thornton
Rhode Island
Step. Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut
Roger Sherman
Sam'el Huntington
Wm. Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New York
Saml. Adams
John Adams
Robt. Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Delaware
Caesar Rodney
Geo. Read
Tho. M'Kean
Maryland
Samuel Chase
Wm. Paca
Thos. Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Born circa 1753, a young American woman published a book POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS RELGIOUS AND MORAL in 1773. Since she had been born in Africa, where she had been kidnapped as a young girl, she was naturally interested in this theme which she expounded on in her poem
"ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA"
'Twas mercy brought me from a pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, That there's a Saviour, too,
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew,
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their color is a diabolical dye."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refined, and join in the angelic train.
This young woman, who corresponeded with George Washington, also wrote about natural rights: " In every human breast God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom, it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance. The same principle lives in us."
Raised and educated by the Wheatly family as any free white girl of Boston, the author Phillis Wheatley, is a fine example of the power of familial love and proper education -with a purpose- to overcome great difficulties and difficiencies.
She died in 1784 as a free woman, proud to be an American.
I close with a fragment of a speech every American should be familiar with but tragically, it seems, fewer and fewer know it which to me is evidence of a great failing of civic education.
...It is to the Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to the Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severest school of adversity. It had in its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit.
{reference to the Critical Period of the weak Articles of Confederation}
Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as if from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and , although our territory has stretched wider and wider and, our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a COPIOUS FOUNTAIN of NATIONAL, SOCIAL and PERSONAL HAPPINESS....
while the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us and for our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time,the sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched , it may be in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather behold the gorgeous Ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured...bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other WORDS OF DELUSION AND FOLLY, LIBERTY FIRST, and UNION AFTERWARDS-but every where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole Heavens, that other sentiment, DEAR TO EVERY TRUE AMERICAN heart -LIBERTY AND UNION, now and forever, one and inseparable!
{part of the conclusion to Mr. Daniel Webster's reply, January 27, 1830 to Sen. Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina}
THE WEBSTER HAYNE DEBATE ON THE NATURE OF THE UNION represents the limits of the art of rhetoric and politic thought worthy of Cicero, Caesar, Aristotle, Madison, Hamilton, Lincoln and the Roosevelts and Churchill.
Posted by: Ricardo Munro on July 4, 2003 12:48 PMBless you for reprinting the entire magnificent document. I think that period represented the American Rennaissance. No other nation had such political thinkers. No other nation crafted a system that still works gloriously as our democracy does. It makes me think, however of the paucity of eloquence among our legislators today. Who among them could even conceive of such a soaring masterpiece?
Posted by: RUTH KING on July 6, 2003 08:19 AMRuth-that's a beautiful name- it was my mother's name and my 6th grade teacher's name- I agree with you. We live in an age of pygmies who live in the temples of Justice created by a heroic age.
Posted by: Ricardo Munro on July 11, 2003 04:48 AM