A review of our nation’s history on this Independence Day

by Pat Laster

 

                I haven’t written anything to celebrate July 4 since that year a Son of the Confederate Soldiers organization wrote to all church music directors urging us not to use "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in our services.  Not that I “obeyed,” of course. For we had different ideas about the hymn.

                I decided that I needed a refresher course in the nation’s history as regards the celebration of the birth of our country. And perhaps you did, too. And though we now celebrate The Fourth, in 1776, it happened on The Second. Hear John Adams—in a letter to Abigail Adams dated 3 July 1776:

                “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.  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 and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”

                Here’s Mary Antin, an immigrant, writing in The Promised Land, 1912: “So at last I was going to America! Really, really going, at last! The boundaries burst. The arch of heaven soared! A million suns shone out for every star. The winds rushed in from outer space, roaring in my ears, ‘America! America!’”

                And James Baldwin, from Notes of a Native Son, 1955: “The making of an American begins at that point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and adopts the vesture of his adopted land.”

                Louis D. Brandeis, Supreme Court justice, wrote in “Whitney v. California” in 1927, “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”

                A Revolutionary leader, Abraham Clark, is supposed to have said in 1781, “We set out to oppose Tyranny in all its Strides, and I hope we shall persevere.”

                George M. Cohan, showman, said this to John McCabe in 1940: “From my earliest days I was profoundly impressed with the fact that I had  been born under the Stars and Stripes, and that has had a great deal to do with everything I have written.

“If it had not been for the glorious symbol of Independence, I might have fallen into the habit of writing problem plays, or romantic drama, or questionable farce. Yes, the American flag is in my heart, and it has done everything for me.”

The poet E. E. Cummings wrote in his “Next to of course God,” these two lines: “next to of course god America i/ Love you land of the pilgrims and so forth oh.”

Charles Dickens, English novelist said in American Notes, 1843: “There is no other country on earth which in so short a time has accomplished so much.”

“I name thee Old Glory,” William Driver said of the American flag as it was hoisted to the masthead of his brig in 1831.

In a Proclamation to the American people, 3 July 1976, President Gerald Ford said, “Break out the flag, strike up the band, light up the sky.”

[These quotations were taken from The Morrow Book of Quotations in American History, by Joseph R. Conlin, published in 1984, and were selected by myself. Since the entire book is available to be read online, I eschewed getting permission to reprint these.]

 Happy Independence Day, 2013.