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Tag Archives: Independence Day

The Fourth of July According to Ronald Reagan

04 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Freedom, Political Philosophy, Politics

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

founding, founding fathers, independence, Independence Day, Ronald Reagan, the Fourth of July

Ronald Reagan

In 1981, during his first year in office, Parade magazine asked President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) to write something for them about what Independence Day meant to him. This submission was written by Reagan himself, and in his own hand. It shows his special finesse in locating himself emotionally among the people while also speaking without embarrassment about human greatness and without irony about high principles.

____

For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July.

I remember it as a day almost as long-anticipated as Christmas. This was helped along by the appearance in store windows of all kinds of fireworks and colorful posters advertising them with vivid pictures.

No later than the third of July—sometimes earlier—Dad would bring home what he felt he could afford to see go up in smoke and flame. We’d count and recount the number of firecrackers, display pieces and other things and go to bed determined to be up with the sun so as to offer the first, thunderous notice of the Fourth of July.

I’m afraid we didn’t give too much thought to the meaning of the day. And, yes, there were tragic accidents to mar it, resulting from careless handling of the fireworks. I’m sure we’re better off today with fireworks largely handled by professionals. Yet there was a thrill never to be forgotten in seeing a tin can blown 30 feet in the air by a giant “cracker”—giant meaning it was about 4 inches long.

But enough of nostalgia. Somewhere in our growing up we began to be aware of the meaning of the day, and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.

There is a legend about the day of our nation’s birth in the little hall in Philadelphia, a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words “treason, the gallows, the headsman’s ax,” and the issue remained in doubt.

The legend says that at that point a man rose and spoke. He is described as not a young man, but one who had to summon all his energy for an impassioned plea. He cited the grievances that had brought them to this moment and finally, his voice falling, he said, “They may turn every tree into a gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop, they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the Bible of the rights of man forever.”

He fell back exhausted. The 56 delegates, swept up by his eloquence, rushed forward and signed that document destined to be as immortal as a work of man can be. When they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he was not to be found, nor could any be found who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, that is the legend—but we do know for certain that 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.

John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year, he lived in the forest and in caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton.1

Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.

But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep, 3 million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world.

In recent years, however, I’ve come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation. It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history.

Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.

We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.

Happy Fourth of July.

__________

The above description says it all: The Fourth of July according to Ronald Reagan.

Ronald-Reagan-California-Ranch-1965 Ronald Reagan

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Victory or Death

03 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in History, Speeches, War

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

America, combat, Crossing of the Delaware, George Washington, independence, Independence Day, military speeches, the Fourth of July, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, War

George Washington

“It is a great stake we are playing for. Every virtuous citizen is depending on you to rid this land of the ministerial troops that have brought wanton destruction to its shores and is attempting to enslave America. The time is now near at hand which will probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves, whether they are to have any property they can call their own, or whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed and they consigned to a state of wretchedness from which they cannot be delivered.

Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance or the most abject submission.

Men, you are assembled here for tonight we cross back into Jersey. Those of you who stood with me at Long Island and on the battlefields around the environs of New York, I entreat you to remember those actions. Those of you who have since joined our ranks from General Schyler’s army up north, I beseech you to listen carefully:

Across that river not 10 miles distant in the town of Trenton and just beyond in Bordentown are posted the same regiments of base hirelings and mercenaries that attacked us at Brooklyn Heights and White Plains.

The same Hessian mercenaries that spared not the bayonet and showed no quarter to many a brave American soldier who fell on those fields of battle. The same slavish mercenaries that imprisoned hundreds of your fellow soldiers, captured at Fort Washington, on royal prison ships in New York Harbor. Those same mercenaries hired by the Ministry then pillaged and plundered the good citizens of Jersey. And those same mercenaries will… as soon as this river freezes over, march across and carry those atrocities here to Pennsylvania and throughout the rest of these United States should let them

Tonight, our mission, our duty as a free people, is to stem the tide of these atrocities, to retake what is rightfully ours and rid this great land of the plague of the mercenaries, and those who brought them to our shores. At this fateful hour the eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us. The eyes of the world are watching. Let us show them all that a freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

Yes, men! Tonight we cross back into Jersey. I beseech you all, remain close to your officers. They are good men. Heed their commands. On the march south a profound silence is to be enjoined and reflect upon what we owe those mercenaries. And when the hour is upon us fight for all that you are worth and all that you cherish and love. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct that you show.

The watch word is VICTORY OR DEATH — For I am resolved that by dawn both Trenton and Victory shall be ours!”

__________

General George Washington’s rallying speech to the Continental Army and militia on Christmas night, 1776 — the night they silently crossed the Delaware to attack the Hessian forces garrisoned in Trenton, New Jersey. You can find an unforgettable description of the scene and speech in Ron Chernow’s acclaimed biography Washington: A Life.

This surprise attack gave the Continental Army momentum as it marched straight into subsequent victories at the Second Battle of Trenton and Princeton.

This speech also inaugurated what has become known as the “Ten Crucial Days” of the American Revolution: the campaign that saved the Continental Army from defeat, allowing them to fight on until the arrival of French reinforcements coalesced around American shores.

As Washington certainly knew, this night crossing of the Delaware was a questionable tactical maneuver. His army was in desperate need of reinforcements, as enlistments were soon to expire and morale within the ranks, and around the colonies, was low. Only a commanding victory would complete the campaign season on a high note, allowing the American army to survive to fight another year.

As the exaltation of Washington’s speech slowly faded, the men — some of them barefoot — loaded their packs and checked their weaponry. In the silent dark midnight, they loaded their agitated horses, icy breath billowing from their nostrils, into rickety Durham boats. The men crouched in after. The shadowed figures of General Washington and Colonel Knox emerged from the candlelit McKonkey Ferry Inn and stepped onto the boats. Navigating the ice floes and choppy, inky water, there could be no guarantee they would even make it across; or in making it across, make it to Trenton before daybreak; or in making it to Trenton, defeat the ferocious Hessian army.

But with only the hollow howl of a December wind, and the sound of oars dipping into the Delaware, Washington’s “Liberty or Death” may have echoed in your ear enough to make you believe.

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The Great Anniversary Festival

03 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Freedom, History, Politics

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Abigail Adams, America, Declaration of Indepence, Freedom, independence, Independence Day, John Adams, the Fourth of July, The United States

John Adams

Philadelphia

July 3rd, 1776.

Evening

Yesterday the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all the other acts and things which other states may rightfully do.” You will see in a few days a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a few days…

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever.

You will think me transported with enthusiasm; but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph, although you and I may rue, which I hope we shall not.

John Adams

__________

A letter from John Adams to his wife, Abigail Adams. You can put it on your shelf — My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams.

Throughout the next day, I’m enrolling myself (as I think we all should) in a self-taught crash-course in the history of American liberty, beginning with King George III’s Proclamation Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition, then the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, The Declaration, and The Constitution. Part two will orbit other figures: George Washington, Mark Twain, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Samuel Adams, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Anna Howard Shaw, Theodore Roosevelt, Jack Kerouac, George Washington Carver, Sam Houston, Ronald Reagan, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others.

I think of these as the champions of our great American tradition of individual liberty, moral courage, opportunity — not the commercialized, commoditized, flag-waving, beer-chugging junk that to so many Americans now represents our Independence Day.

This is the best of our proud tradition, and it’s the material we need to ventilate and reflect upon now, perhaps, more than ever. I’m going to be posting the best of it here throughout the next day, so stay tuned.

Read another letter from Adams:

John Adams

Whether I Stand High or Low in the Estimation of the World

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