We, like Thomas Jefferson, should appreciate the cost of a declaration of independence
By Capt. Bill Hart
Thomas Jefferson woke at his usual time on July 4, 1776.
As always, he measured the weather. Dawn broke that day in Philadelphia, Penn., at 68 degrees. At 1 p.m. he took the temperature again; it was 76 degrees. He made his final notation in his weather journal for July 4, 1776, at 9 p.m.; it was 73.5 degrees.
By that time the work was complete, and all agreed. The vote was taken. The declaration issued. As Jefferson considered the temperature and the day, he knew war would come. While he deeply believed in what he was doing, he also felt it was sadly unnecessary. Clearly the rights declared by the men gathered in Philadelphia were rights that accrue to all English subjects. After all, the debate over whether or not a human being had an unalienable right to life was over and well settled a century before. Clearly, Jefferson thought this was beyond argument. Clearly the King and Parliament would see that what these men of the commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia, the Plantations of Rhode Island, the colonies of Georgia and Delaware wanted was simply what they had as British subjects. Perhaps, he mused, the events of Concord in April last year, could be put in the past. But, he thought, if the King were to have war, then let it come.
War did come. It lasted seven years. It was another five years before the Constitution as we know it was ratified. The colonies were profoundly divided by the war; many people left their families and friends for Nova Scotia or returned home to England. Those who stayed and built a new country were aware that these United States were different, that indeed a new birth of freedom had taken place. They knew that a great experiment in the hope of self-governing men was beginning, every day. The leaders who drafted the Constitution also understood that human nature and politics remained static. They recognized that ambition, the lust for power or fame, sometimes overwhelmed a person's common decency, as it still does.
The framers, who were no different than today's political leaders, used Greek and Roman models to describe the relationship between the government and the citizen in the Constitution. Each owed obligations to the other. For the most part, the government's obligations were prosaic: to provide for the national defense to assure that transportation and commerce would be effective and, in general, unfettered. The citizen's obligation was a virtuous citizenship to the new nation. A part of that virtuous citizenship was an understanding that we were not individuals, though we possess individual rights; rather, we are individuals who are citizens within a nation, and that our obligation is not just to ourselves but also to the commonwealth, that is, the common good. This relationship, while described by the ancients, was new in that sovereignty was vested in the commonwealth of citizens, that is, those citizens who by their virtue as citizens come together for the common good, when it is necessary.
Today is the 232nd anniversary of that 70-degree day in Philadelphia, when men like you and I declared, "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."
These men, cowards and heroes alike, each with their own reason, knew that they put their lives on the line by making that statement. We today should take just a moment, in the midst of security, summer sun, family and friends, to recommit ourselves to that virtuous sentiment, bought and paid for by those who even today stand ready, as the framers were, to put their lives on the line so that this noble experiment in freedom and commonwealth may continue.
Happy Fourth.
nnn
Londonderry police Capt. Bill Hart's column appears Fridays in the Derry News.
