Page 4 - Gears and Ears July 2013

Happy Fourth of July

The Signing of the Declaration of Independence

We know for certain that 56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their like since, had pledged their lives, their
fortunes and their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their
sacred honor.
What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were
farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education; they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security
but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told nearly enough.

John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in caves before
he returned to find his wife dead, his children vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with Ellery, Clymer,
Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston and Middleton. Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home
and destroy it when it became the headquarters for General Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt. But they sired a nation that
grew from sea to shining sea. Five million farms,

quiet villages, cities that never sleep, 3 million square miles of forest, field, mountain and desert, 227 million people with a
pedigree that includes the bloodlines of all the world. In recent years, however, I’ve come to think of that day as more than
just the birthday of a nation. It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history. Oh, there have been
revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution
that changed the very concept of government.
Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain
God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own
except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.
--
Ronald Reagan, President of the United States (1981)