I’m not a fan of the modern 4th of July and I don’t care for fireworks. If you ask the man standing behind you in Walmart today with a slab of ribs under one arm and a case of beer under the other what this holiday is all about, he might not know. I remember a segment with Jay Leno on the Tonight Show where he asked people on the street what 4th of July was all about. Most didn’t know. When he told them it is Independence Day and asked “from whom did we gain our independence?”, he got some strange answers. One young woman said “China.” China?
I am a back-east girl, native of Pennsylvania (one of the 13 original colonies), raised in a small town on the banks of the Monongahela River not far from Pittsburgh. As such, my history lessons did not center around the discovery of gold or settlement of the west, they centered around the founding of our nation, the signing of our Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War and drafting of our constitution.
One of the greatest moment of my life was when I stood in that darkened chamber in the National Archives and read the words: “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.”
It’s not about BBQs and beer and burned bits of exploding cardboard. It’s about men, their sons and their fathers, who picked up their muskets and fought long and hard for the right to declare that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. And it’s about the women, their daughters and mothers who sewed flags and wrapped bandages, who cared for the wounded and sometimes saw their men brought home in a box.
If you have never read their declaration, you can do it today, this July 4th. Link: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
