July 4th – 244 years! Now and Forever!
“Questions Not Asked & Questions Not Answered”.
Readers ask a lot of questions, but, often, I don’t have (informed) answers!
Q-Was the ‘Declaration of Independence’ signed by citizens of the United States of America?
AISI-The eight ‘signers’ were all Englishmen who were born in the ‘colonies’?
Q Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
AISI-Apparently many of the most meaningful lines in the Declaration of Independence were written by George Mason from Virginia. One example is “all men are born equally free and independent.”
AISI-. Thomas Jefferson’s expansion reads “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
AISI-Of course, neither one of them really meant “all men”.
Also, Mason included “Natural Rights” as “Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety.”
Jefferson whittled it down to a man’s inalienable rights as “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Q-Did the American Revolution start on 4th of July?
AISI-That was over a year earlier; back in April 1775.
Q-Was July 4 the day that they declared independence from England?
AISI-Back in June, Thomas Jefferson had written a first draft of the Declaration of Independence. It was on July 4th 1776 that the ‘Continental Congress’ approved the Declaration of Independence.
AISI-The English ‘Redcoats’ were already on their way to New York Harbor.
Q-When did they tell England that they were done with them?
AISI-That didn’t happen until about four months later, in November 1776.
Q-Can you get to see the original document they signed?
AISI- Not the ‘original’ signed document. Only copies signed in August 1776 survived. (Now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.)
Q-Was the Fourth of July always a national holiday?
AISI-Not for about 15 or 20 years; perhaps because there was a War of Independence going on.
AISI-Interestingly, in the context of what we see on TV these days, back in 1817, John Adams was already observing that America was uninterested in its own past.
AISI-Decades later, printed copies of the Declaration were widely circulated, all showing the date as July 4, 1776.
AISI-Also Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Monroe, died on July 4. But President Calvin Coolidge, was born on July 4 in 1872.
AISI-Finally, in 1870, Congress set July 4 as a national holiday (along with Christmas).
Q-Who else worked on the DoI?
AISI- There are a lot, but it was John Locke’s idea to state that governments derive “their just Powers from the consent of the people.”
AISI-the word “forgive” appears 121 times in the bible.
-“And said to them, he that is without sin; let him first cast a stone”.
-Regardless of whether people have harmed you, or if they deserve your forgiveness, your forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing their offenses against you.
Hate is poison. It will kill you, not them!
As I See It – In AMERICA there is ALWAYS hope for us all.
