By Gelene Simpson
July 01, 2008 02:00 am
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When we get close to the Fourth of July each year, something happens to Americans. The celebrating spirit takes us over. It is a tradition coming down to us from that first famous American Fourth of July in the year 1776.
The best celebration takes place when a people have come through a long struggle in which the courage and endurance of the country have been extremely tested. Such was that first Fourth when the Continental Congress accepted the Declaration of Independence.
It was in the month of June when a committee of the Second Continental Congress consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston received an appointment which would change the direction of history. They were to draft a declaration of independence. You know how it is with committees. They always select someone to do the writing. Thomas Jefferson got the nod and wrote the text which received only a minimum of changes before being presented to Congress on June 28.
Also, committees have to make a report, and then the Congress has to debate the issues. Can you believe it? This very important step in our history didn’t suffer the long, drawn-out procedure that we often see today. No, it was only several days before the document was adopted on July 4, 1776.
You will notice when reading the Declaration that Jefferson included his personal values like political freedom, religious freedom, and intellectual freedom. Notice, also, that Jefferson didn’t believe that people should make such a declaration without having attempted to achieve their purpose by working within their present system. He wrote that neither should they change “for light and transient causes.” Look at this statement he included in the Declaration: “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.”
He describes the patience with which the colonies have borne such indignities while repeatedly petitioning for redress; yet they “have been answered only by repeated injuries.”
Jefferson also has some choice words about the King of England. In fact, the king is described in these lines: “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.” You can see that Jefferson’s dander was up, and from what we can tell about the way his words were accepted by the body of the Congress, its patience had been exhausted as well.
It is often difficult to embrace a change in how things are done, however. Shakespeare has Hamlet describe that human nature often causes us to dread what we don’t have experience with and to “bear those ills we have” rather than “fly to others we know not of.” But these American colonists had the courage of their conviction.
Yet they did not trust solely in their own ability to achieve their independence. No, they appealed to “the Supreme Judge of the World” to support them in the “rectitude” of their “intention.” And they expressed their “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”
To their credit, they also pledged “to each other “their “lives,” “fortunes,” and “sacred honor.”
What a wonderful document! We Americans need a good reason before we change. We hang tough. But don’t push us too far.
Now, think about an often misunderstood part of the Declaration — those “certain inalienable rights” so often cited in arguments. Nearly every year of my teaching career, I had at least one student who would explain his or her unacceptable actions with the excuse: “It’s a free country!” We all know that this is a cop out. Our freedom of action ends where the other fellow’s nose begins.
With the Fourth of July coming up on Friday, may I dedicate this reaffirmation of our Declaration of Independence to the James Blair Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, whose motto is “God, Home, and Country.”
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Gelene Simpson is a Daily Sun columnist. Her column appears on Tuesdays.
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