250 Years of Freedom

Good Day Gentle Reader,

Today, I wish to have a quick discourse on the Declaration of Independence – the bravest documents ever written. When I give a tour at Grove Street Cemetery (the Historical Cemetery in New Haven), the most honored resident is Roger Sherman. The only person to sign all 4 documents – Bill of Rights, Article of Confederation, Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  Sherman was the first Mayor of New Haven and was considered to be a “modern” man. His work on the documents was invaluable to the existence of freedom in this country. When I discuss him at his residence in the cemetery, I define him as hitching his wagon to 13 stars. These 13 stars became a constellation of inchoate principles to enface/indited upon and into 4 pivotal ideas for a new government. These 4 papers were formed to be taken a hold of as a possible accepted government system of popular sovereignty. Or to say – to subvert the practice and ideology of a monarchy – to ordain and to practice the fancifulness of a democracy in a commonwealth. It is where the government attains its competence from the consent of the governed.

President Gerald Ford, in 1976, at the National Archives states the following: “it is the Polaris of our political order – it is the fixed star of freedom – it is impervious to change because it states moral truths that are eternal.” 

When we speak of John Trumbull, the American artist of the American Revolution, he felt the most important paintings were the scenes from the American Revolution. He resides in the Yale Art Gallery with the painting of our first President George Washington. To quote the historian Richard Brookhiser on John Trumbull: ” The American Revolution was more important than any of past events in history whether it be ancient or modern, because it was more than imperial struggle, or even defense of the homeland. It was a struggle for rights, and a demonstration of how to assert and support them, on the battlefield and in political deliberation. Nor was the American Revolution a one-time exercise. It offered a model, for men of all times and places – American of the future: French, British, foreigners everywhere – of what they could, what they must do, when under an unbearable yoke.”

To end this lenghly discussion of the Declaration of Independence, I would like to use a quote given as a eulogy for a friend of mine many years ago as to the power of the Declaration of Independence which gave us this life of freedom: ” We do not choose our parents, nor the time and place of our birth here on earth. We arrive without any understanding, and we depart against our will. Between those two points is the short human timeframe of life with a plethora of choices.”       

I thank you for reading this rather long discourse….

Until the next time…….Patti