Two hundred and thirty-two years ago today, fifty-six men approved with their signatures an extraordinarily brave document. It called out a tyranny for its oppression, and declared a separation from that oppressor which would be enforced with military might if necessary. Force, it turned out, was necessary.
On this day, let us remember the courageous men who put their names to the parchment: all for one, one for all. Or, as Benjamin Franklin put it, “we shall all hang together or we most certainly will hang separately.”
Let us remember the unprecedented nature of what they did, defiantly turning their backs on the known to strike out into the unknown. They did it because the known had become untenable: abusive, suffocating, enslaving. The unknown, as frightening and uncertain as it was, at least offered freedom.
Among that brave band of men there were those who expressed reservations: “What if we fail?” And the response came: “At least we will have tried.”
They tried, and succeeded in the most spectacular experiment in human liberty there has ever been. Is America perfect? No. It has never been perfect, because men are not perfect. But America is constantly striving to create a “more perfect union,” and that was all for which the Founding Fathers asked.
“In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” Mr. Jefferson’s beautiful document begins.
And it ends this way:
“That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from All Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved; that as Free and Independent States, they have the full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
