America Needs a Fourth of July Seder

[thedrifter]

America Needs a Fourth of July Seder
By Dennis Prager
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 3, 2007


Perhaps the major reason Jews have been able to keep their national identity alive for 3,000 years, the last 2,000 of which were nearly all spent dispersed among other nations, is ritual. No national or cultural identity can survive without ritual, even if the group remains in its own country.

Americans knew this until the era of anti-wisdom was ushered in by the baby boomer generation in the 1960s and '70s. We always had national holidays that celebrated something meaningful.


When I was in elementary school, every year we would put on a play about Abraham Lincoln to commemorate Lincoln's Birthday and a play about George Washington to commemorate Washington's Birthday. Unfortunately, Congress made a particularly foolish decision to abolish the two greatest presidents' birthdays as national holidays and substituted the meaningless Presidents Day. Beyond having a three-day weekend and department store sales, the day means nothing.

Columbus Day is rarely celebrated since the European founding of European civilization on American soil is not politically correct.

Christmas has become less nationally meaningful as exemplified by the substitution of "Happy Holidays" for "Merry Christmas."

Memorial Day should be a solemn day on which Americans take time to honor those Americans who fought and died for America and for liberty. But, again, fewer and fewer Americans visit military cemeteries just as fewer communities have Memorial Day festivities.

We come, finally, to tomorrow, the mother of American holidays, July Fourth, the day America was born. This day has a long history of vibrant and meaningful celebrations. But it, too, is rapidly losing its meaning. For example, look around tomorrow -- especially if you live in a large urban area -- and see how few homes display the American flag. For most Americans it appears that the Fourth has become merely a day to take off from work and enjoy hot dogs with friends.

Our national holidays were established to commemorate the most significant national events and individuals in our history; they now exist primarily to provide us with a day off. This was reinforced by the nation's decision to shift some of the holidays to a Monday -- thereby losing the meaning of the specific date in order to give us a three-day weekend.

National memory dies without national ritual. And without a national memory, a nation dies. That is the secret at the heart of the Jewish people's survival that the American people must learn if they are to survive.

When Jews gather at the Passover Seder -- and this is the most widely observed Jewish holiday -- they recount the exodus from Egypt, an event that occurred 3,200 years ago. We Americans have difficulty keeping alive the memory of events that happened 231 years ago.

How have the Jews accomplished this? By the ritual of the Passover Seder. Jews spend the evening recounting the Exodus from Egypt -- and as if it happened to them. In the words of the Passover Haggadah -- the Passover Seder book -- "every person is obligated to regard himself as if he himself left Egypt." The story is retold in detail, and it is told as if it happened to those present at the Seder, not only to those who lived it 3,200 years ago.

That has to be the motto of the July Fourth Seder. We all have to retell the story in as much detail as possible and to regard ourselves as if we, no matter when we or our ancestors came to America -- were present at the nation's founding in 1776.

The Seder achieves the feat not only through detailed recitation of the story, but through engaging the interest of the youngest of those at the table (indeed, they are its primary focus), through special food, through song and through relevant prayer. Obviously, just as secular Jews tend to avoid the prayer part of the Haggadah, so, too, secular Americans are free to avoid the prayer part of an American Seder Book.

But someone -- or many someones -- must come up with a July Fourth Seder. A generation of Americans with little American identity -- emanating from little American memory -- has already grown into adulthood. The nation whose founders regarded itself as the Second Israel must now learn how to survive from the First.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Patriotism
By Cal Thomas
Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Washington, Indiana - It's a long way from Washington, D.C., to Washington, Ind., where my father was born a century ago next January and where I am attending a Thomas family reunion. On the drive from Indianapolis, one passes towns that could fill a Norman Rockwell album. My favorite is named Freedom because, though the town has only a single flashing caution light, it displays many flags. If I don't slow down, I will miss both.

Driving past miles of cornfields, listening to local radio stations that still play music, not syndicated political talk, and carry commercials for farm equipment and feed, I ponder what it means to be patriotic and to love America.

Last week, senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said that religion is not the exclusive property of conservative Christians. He is right. Neither is patriotism a trademark of the Republican Party.

As with religion, some people on the right have used patriotism, which should be a unifying theme, to divide Americans. My liberal friends love America as much as I do. They might disagree on some, or all, of my political and religious beliefs, but that does not make them less in love with America, much less un-American.

Many political and religious liberals have family members who have served or are serving their country in war and in peace. These have spilled their blood and given their lives to guarantee our freedom to disagree and to still live together.

Here in this Washington, I am told stories of how our family stuck together, neighbor helping neighbor, during the Great Depression; of a grandfather who was out of work at the B and O Railroad for two years; of employees with more seniority than he who took a day off so he could work and earn some money; of one of his sons (my uncle) who had a paper route and would bring home eggs donated by subscribers.

Few here judged their neighbor's worth based on his or her political or religious beliefs. They helped each other. This was the real America. When the "boys" went off to war, they had total support from family, friends, neighbors and all they left behind and for whose benefit they fought. When those who survived came home, some voted for Democrats and some for Republicans, but no one questioned their patriotism because of their electoral or religious choices.

Last year, I visited Normandy, France for the first time. At the American cemetery, there is not an "R" (for Republican) or "D" (for Democrat) on the grave markers of those who died on D-Day.

The 2008 presidential candidates and their supporters should be asked not to question the patriotism of their opponents. Surely most of us prefer debate and discussion of the issues that confront us to a litmus test about whose blood runs more red, white and blue.

Leaders of many nations, including America, have used patriotism to persuade citizens of policies that are not always in their country's best interests. Hitler's deputy, Herman Goering, cynically observed: "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

And still we love America for opportunities that do not exist in such proportion in any other nation. A person who criticizes a particular policy does not necessarily love his country less than one who supports that policy. G.K. Chesterton said, "'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"

After 231 years, we still try to make wrong into right and cheer the right and the nation that makes change possible when we succeed. That's patriotism.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

July 4th... For Those Who Actually Remember It
Men's News Daily ^ | 7/3/07 | Warner Todd Huston

The day of celebration of the independence of our great country is once again at hand... for those of us who can remember what it's all about, that is. As former Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, William Bennett, has commented, this country is on the verge of a national amnesia about our own history. He warns that we are becoming a country who's citizens are born as aliens a fact that will, in the end, make it impossible for our young Americans to sign up and fight for our country. After all, they won't understand why this country is a "way of life worthy of their own lives" if they do not know its history. And that is a dangerous thing.

But it isn't just the young that are in danger of losing touch with the greatness of our country. In a day when we barely stopped our own Senate from signing away our national sovereignty and making citizenship a hallow convention, far too many Americans seem to have no idea what makes the USA special or deserving of any devotion.

Our Founders, of course, realized how important the light of liberty is that they sacrificed so much to ignite. They well understood that it's not just important to their fellow Americans but to all of humanity. As James Madison said, "the origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived." But today we are not only depriving humanity of those lessons, we are even depriving our own people from such revelations.

Unfortunately, today we haven't the luxury to be so thoughtless of our national charge as the light of liberty. There are forces in this world that wish to deprive not only Americans of our liberty, but all mankind of theirs. To that threat we must apply Samuel Adams' assertion that "our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty."

Adams wasn't the only one who characterized the American experiment as that of interest vital to all mankind. The great liberal, Thomas Paine, also celebrated this nation's birth as one of prime importance to human liberty. His words are also fitting to our time, words that we should never forget. They are words far from mere dusty historical curiosity, they are words that resonate today and that we can apply directly to the dangerous world in which we now live.

"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind," Paine wrote. "Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling."

Americans should proudly take ownership of the ideal that our nation is the light of liberty making us defenders of, in Paine's words, "the natural rights of all Mankind." We should make that assumption that, as Benjamin Franklin put it, "...t is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own."

We still have that liberty, but it shouldn't be taken for granted. Defense against tyranny is still warranted. Patriotism is called for in these perilous times.

It isn't just mindless jingoism we are in need of, however. Patriotism isn't just a blind assumption of national superiority. Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of our lesser known yet amazingly erudite Founders, said that, "Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families." This is another thing we are in danger of losing sight of in this time of pervasive denunciations of U.S. "imperialism." The all too common scoffing about our national character so woefully prevalent in places like our University classrooms leads too many Americans away from patriotism.

Unfortunately, we are forgetting all these important lessons. And we should reverse that decay forthwith. Let us take heed of James Monroe's warning about the wisely organized government and the often inevitable decay of human institutions: "How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism."

We may or may not be seeing despotism overtaking our government and there is still time to reintroduce our people to the concepts upon which our nation was born. Let us take the occasion of this celebration of our national day of independence to reflect upon that great legacy. And let us never forget that the chores of liberty are not done. We have more work to do, work that is of great import to all mankind.

Happy Independence Day, my fellow Americ

Ellie

[thedrifter]

July 04, 2007
The American Spirit 1776-2007
By J. James Estrada

July 4, 1776, the day in which not only a nation was born, but also a "spirit." The American spirit is alive and well all these 231 years later. It is a spirit that has carried us to the ends of the earth to promote freedom, leaving scattered seeds of greatness in the graves of fallen warriors in many far reaching countries; it has taken us to breakthroughs in both science and medicine, curing diseases thought to be incurable and solving many difficult problems which have long plagued humanity; it has taken us to the moon and back, defying the limits of the practical and the doubts of the always present naysayer's.

And, along the way, this spirit has found voice in a lone representative pressing towards a greater America than assumed possible by the many. Abraham Lincoln spoke of an "unfinished work" that the living must advance so that the sacrifices of those who died for a cause would not have done so in vain. Franklin D. Roosevelt challenged a struggling people with the words "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." John F. Kennedy spoke in soaring terms in which we "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Who can forget this more recent declaration: "...if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity...if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! ...open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Ronald Reagan said this at the Berlin Wall in Germany, but he may as well have been at Bunker Hill or Manassas or Iwo Jima or Baghdad.

While blood, sweat and tears from American men and women who do God's work throughout this world ("go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own" - Kennedy), is shed and bottled for posterity, it is the words of the shared American spirit that lives on. From the Declaration of Independence to the declaration of George W. Bush in September 2001 ("I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."), these words live in the atmosphere more than they live on parchment or in granite.

This July 4 marks a nation at war to protect its people and its shores. It marks a nation once again in a domestic struggle - this time a struggle not against famine or drought, the "fear" FDR addressed, but against a threatened famine of freedom of speech and a drought of an adherence to the rule of law that dominate the headlines day after day.

The entire world should celebrate this historic day with us, for all the world has leaned on us in times of trouble and times of need. As Lincoln said, we are the "last best hope of earth."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Why We Keep This Creed

By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, July 4, 2007; A15


One of the great Independence Day speeches of American history was an attack on Independence Day.

On the Fourth of July, 1829, William Lloyd Garrison-- who looked like a shop clerk and set rhetorical fires like an arsonist -- took the pulpit at the Park Street Church in Boston. Rather than celebrate, he said, Americans should "spike every cannon and haul down every banner" because of the "glaring contradiction" between the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery. The grievances of slaves, he argued, made the grievances of the American colonists look like trivial whining. "I am ashamed of my country," he concluded. "I am sick of our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our hypocritical cant about the unalienable rights of man."

Even across the centuries, his gall is startling. But Garrison laid bare the central contradiction of the American experiment: that the land of the free was actually a prison for millions of its inhabitants.

The war that ended slavery, it turned out, did not end oppression. In "Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War," Nicholas Lemann recounts how armed paramilitary groups, often consisting of former Confederate officers and soldiers, conducted a violent guerrilla campaign to reimpose race-based rule across the South in the 1870s. In our own period of ethnic cleansing, local officials were assassinated, elections were overturned and resisters were massacred. Lemann tells the story of Charles Caldwell, a black state senator from Mississippi, lured to a bar for a Christmas drink and shot in the back. Staggering to his feet, he said: "Remember when you kill me you kill a gentleman and a brave man." He was then shot 30 or 40 more times.

Why love such a country? Why celebrate its birth? The answer was given from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Independence Day 1965.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that America has a "schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against herself." But we are redeemed, he argued, by our creed, expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which manages "to forever challenge us; to forever give us a sense of urgency; to forever stand in the midst of the 'isness' of our terrible injustices; to remind us of the 'oughtness' of our noble capacity for justice and love and brotherhood." Americans, he said, believe in "certain basic rights that are neither derived from nor conferred by the state. . . . They are God-given, gifts from his hands."

"You may take my life," King said, "but you can't take my right to life. You may take liberty from me, but you can't take my right to liberty." And this creed of "amazing universalism" calls "America to do a special job for mankind and the world . . . because America is the world in miniature and the world is America writ large."

The privileged and powerful can love America for many reasons. The oppressed and powerless, stripped of selfish motives for their love, have found America lovely because of its ideals.

It is typical of America that our great national day is not the celebration of a battle -- or, as in the case of France, the celebration of a riot. It is the celebration of a political act, embedded in a philosophic argument: that the rights of man are universal because they are rooted in the image of God. That argument remains controversial. Some view all claims of universal truth with skepticism. Some believe such claims by America amount to hubris.

Which is why some of us love this holiday so much. It is the day when cynicism is silent. It is the day when Americans recall that "all men are created equal" somehow applies to the Mexican migrant and the Iraqi shopkeeper and the inner-city teenager. And it is the day we honor those who take this fact seriously. Those in our military who fight for the liberty of strangers are noble. Those dissidents who risk much in Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and China are heroic. Those who work against poverty and injustice in America are patriots -- because patriotism does not require us to live in denial, only to live in hope.

In America we respect, defend and obey the Constitution -- but we change it when it is inconsistent with our ideals. Those ideals are defined by the Declaration of Independence. We have not always lived up to them. But we would not change them for anything on Earth.

michaelgerson@cfr.org

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Independence Forever
By Matthew Spalding
Heritage.org | July 4, 2007

The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to renew our dedication to the principles of liberty and equality enshrined in what Thomas Jefferson called "the declaratory charter of our rights."


As a practical matter, the Declaration of Independence publicly announced to the world the unanimous decision of the American colonies to declare themselves free and independent states, absolved from any allegiance to Great Britain. But its greater meaning—then as well as now—is as a statement of the conditions of legitimate political authority and the proper ends of government, and its proclamation of a new ground of political rule in the sovereignty of the people. "If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence," wrote the great historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, "it would have been worthwhile."

Although Congress had appointed a distinguished committee—including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston—the Declaration of Independence is chiefly the work of Thomas Jefferson. By his own account, Jefferson was neither aiming at originality nor taking from any particular writings but was expressing the "harmonizing sentiments of the day," as expressed in conversation, letters, essays, or "the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc." Jefferson intended the Declaration to be "an expression of the American mind," and wrote so as to "place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent."

The structure of the Declaration of Independence is that of a common law legal document. The ringing phrases of the document's famous second paragraph are a powerful synthesis of American constitutional and republican government theories. All men have a right to liberty only in so far as they are by nature equal, which is to say none are naturally superior, and deserve to rule, or inferior, and deserve to be ruled. Because men are endowed with these rights, the rights are unalienable, which means that they cannot be given up or taken away. And because individuals equally possess these rights, governments derive their just powers from the consent of those governed. The purpose of government is to secure these fundamental rights and, although prudence tells us that governments should not be changed for trivial reasons, the people retain the right to alter or abolish government when it becomes destructive of these ends.

The remainder of the document is a bill of indictment accusing King George III of some 30 offenses, some constitutional, some legal, and some matters of policy. The combined charges against the king were intended to demonstrate a history of repeated injuries, all having the object of establishing "an absolute tyranny" over America. Although the colonists were "disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable," the time had come to end the relationship: "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."

One charge that Jefferson had included, but Congress removed, was that the king had "waged cruel war against human nature" by introducing slavery and allowing the slave trade into the American colonies. A few delegates were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery violated the "most sacred rights of life and liberty," and the passage was dropped for the sake of unanimity. Thus was foreshadowed the central debate of the American Civil War, which Abraham Lincoln saw as a test to determine whether a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could long endure.

The Declaration of Independence and the liberties recognized in it are grounded in a higher law to which all human laws are answerable. This higher law can be understood to derive from reason—the truths of the Declaration are held to be "self-evident"—but also revelation. There are four references to God in the document: to "the laws of nature and nature's God"; to all men being "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"; to "the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions"; and to "the protection of Divine Providence." The first term suggests a deity that is knowable by human reason, but the others—God as creator, as judge, and as providence—are more biblical, and add a theological context to the document. "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?" Jefferson asked in his Notes on the State of Virginia.

The true significance of the Declaration lies in its trans-historical meaning. Its appeal was not to any conventional law or political contract but to the equal rights possessed by all men and "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and nature's God" entitled them. What is revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence is not that a particular group of Americans declared their independence under particular circumstances but that they did so by appealing to—and promising to base their particular government on—a universal standard of justice. It is in this sense that Abraham Lincoln praised "the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times."

The ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence speak to all those who strive for liberty and seek to vindicate the principles of self-government. But it was an aged John Adams who, when he was asked to prepare a statement on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, delivered two words that still convey our great hope every Fourth of July: "Independence Forever."

Matthew Spalding, Ph.D., is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

QUOTATIONS ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
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.

John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776

There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!

John Hancock (attributed), upon signing the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Benjamin Franklin (attributed), at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, September 12, 1821

With respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825

Independence Forever.

John Adams, toast for the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826

I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" July 5, 1852

The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

Abraham Lincoln, speech on the Dred Scott Decision, June 26, 1857

We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

Abraham Lincoln, speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858

We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.

Calvin Coolidge, speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926

Today, 186 years later, that Declaration whose yellowing parchment and fading, almost illegible lines I saw in the past week in the National Archives in Washington is still a revolutionary document. To read it today is to hear a trumpet call. For that Declaration unleashed not merely a revolution against the British, but a revolution in human affairs. . . . The theory of independence is as old as man himself, and it was not invented in this hall. But it was in this hall that the theory became a practice; that the word went out to all, in Thomas Jefferson's phrase, that "the God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." And today this Nation—conceived in revolution, nurtured in liberty, maturing in independence—has no intention of abdicating its leadership in that worldwide movement for independence to any nation or society committed to systematic human oppression.

John F. Kennedy, address at Independence Hall, July 4, 1962

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

Martin Luther King, "I Have A Dream," August 28, 1963

Our Declaration of Independence has been copied by emerging nations around the globe, its themes adopted in places many of us have never heard of. Here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted it by the people. There have been revolutions before and since ours, revolutions that simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a philosophical revolution that changed the very concept of government.

Ronald Reagan, address at Yorktown, October 19, 1981

A NOTE ON THE SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
"...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

(Each year information about those who signed the Declaration of Independence is circulated, not all of which is accurate. The following note is based on research in several established sources, which are noted below.)

Fifty-six individuals from each of the original 13 colonies participated in the Second Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. Pennsylvania sent nine delegates to the congress, followed by Virginia with seven and Massachusetts and New Jersey with five. Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and South Carolina each sent four delegates. Delaware, Georgia, New Hampshire, and North Carolina each sent three. Rhode Island, the smallest colony, sent only two delegates to Philadelphia.

Eight of the signers were immigrants, two were brothers, two were cousins, and one was an orphan. The average age of a signer was 45. The oldest delegate was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, who was 70 when he signed the Declaration. The youngest was Thomas Lynch, Jr., of South Carolina, who was 27.

Eighteen of the signers were merchants or businessmen, 14 were farmers, and four were doctors. Forty-two signers had served in their colonial legislatures. Twenty-two were lawyers—although William Hooper of North Carolina was "disbarred" when he spoke out against the Crown—and nine were judges. Stephen Hopkins had been Governor of Rhode Island.

Although two others had been clergy previously, John Witherspoon of New Jersey was the only active clergyman to attend—he wore his pontificals to the sessions. Almost all were Protestant Christians; Charles Carroll of Maryland was the only Roman Catholic signer.

Seven of the signers were educated at Harvard, four each at Yale and William & Mary, and three at Princeton. John Witherspoon was the president of Princeton and George Wythe was a professor at William & Mary, where his students included the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.

Seventeen of the signers served in the military during the American Revolution. Thomas Nelson was a colonel in the Second Virginia Regiment and then commanded Virginia military forces at the Battle of Yorktown. William Whipple served with the New Hampshire militia and was one of the commanding officers in the decisive Saratoga campaign. Oliver Wolcott led the Connecticut regiments sent for the defense of New York and commanded a brigade of militia that took part in the defeat of General Burgoyne. Caesar Rodney was a Major General in the Delaware militia and John Hancock was the same in the Massachusetts militia.

Five of the signers were captured by the British during the war. Captains Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, and Arthur Middleton (South Carolina) were all captured at the Battle of Charleston in 1780; Colonel George Walton was wounded and captured at the Battle of Savannah. Richard Stockton of New Jersey never recovered from his incarceration at the hands of British Loyalists and died in 1781.

Colonel Thomas McKean of Delaware wrote John Adams that he was "hunted like a fox by the enemy—compelled to remove my family five times in a few months, and at last fixed them in a little log house on the banks of the Susquehanna . . . and they were soon obliged to move again on account of the incursions of the Indians." Abraham Clark of New Jersey had two of his sons captured by the British during the war. The son of John Witherspoon, a major in the New Jersey Brigade, was killed at the Battle of Germantown.

Eleven signers had their homes and property destroyed. Francis Lewis's New York home was destroyed and his wife was taken prisoner. John Hart's farm and mills were destroyed when the British invaded New Jersey and he died while fleeing capture. Carter Braxton and Thomas Nelson (both of Virginia) lent large sums of their personal fortunes to support the war effort, but were never repaid.

Fifteen of the signers participated in their states' constitutional conventions, and six—Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin, George Clymer, James Wilson, and George Reed—signed the United States Constitution. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts attended the federal convention and, though he later supported the document, refused to sign the Constitution.

After the Revolution, 13 of the signers went on to become governors, and 18 served in their state legislatures. Sixteen became state and federal judges. Seven became members of the United States House of Representatives, and six became United States Senators. James Wilson and Samuel Chase became Justices of the United States Supreme Court.

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Elbridge Gerry each became Vice President, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson became President. The sons of signers John Adams and Benjamin Harrison also became Presidents.

Five signers played major roles in the establishment of colleges and universities: Benjamin Franklin and the University of Pennsylvania; Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia; Benjamin Rush and Dickinson College; Lewis Morris and New York University; and George Walton and the University of Georgia.
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Carroll were the longest surviving signers. Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Carroll of Maryland was the last signer to die—in 1832 at the age of 95.

Sources: Robert Lincoln, Lives of the Presidents of the United States, with Biographical Notices of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (Brattleboro Typographical Company, 1839); John and Katherine Bakeless, Signers of the Declaration (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969); Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-1989 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989).

This essay was published June 28, 2007. Originally published as Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 1451 on June 19, 2001.

Ellie