IRISH FREEDOM COMMITTEE™ NEWSLIST
www.irishfreedomcommittee.net
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Subject: Independence Day Greetings from the Irish Freedom Committee
Date: 07 04 02
(Reprinted from IFC NewsList Archives, 07 04 00)
As we in the United States head out today to our barbeques and fireworks
displays, in commemoration of our national Independence; we must all
give pause and thank a well-trained militia led by impassioned “dissenters” of their day, that we are not still subjects of a British
Crown.
The men and women who established these United States of America did not
see fit to sit in a puppet British seat of government established on
these shores to better manage British interests here. Men like Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine did not consider the option of
opening up their stockpiled resources of black powder and muskets to be inspected and mapped by the British. The break with England was a
bloody and arduous one, which did not have the support of all of the people at the time; but which today is celebrated from shore to shore,
across this land, as the birth of a nation.
Happy Fourth of July from the Irish Freedom Committee.
The Irish Freedom Committee™
www.irishfreedomcommittee.net
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"I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will
cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these
states. Yet through all the gloom I see the rays of ravishing light and
glory. I can see that the end is worth all the means.
This is our day of deliverance."
-John Adams
3 July, 1776
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"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 ....."
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and
to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station
to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
causes which impel them to the separation.
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. That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to
provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of
Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George
III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct
object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for
the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should
be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to
them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and
formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records,
for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his
measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others
to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of
Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State
remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from
without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that
purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing
to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the
conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent
to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their
offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of
Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without the
consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to
the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to
our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their
Acts of pretended Legislation:
For protecting them by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders
which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring
Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its
Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing
the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and
altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested
with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here by declaring us out of his Protection
and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and
destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to
complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with
circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most
barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to
bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their
friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to
bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages,
whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in
the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by
repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act
which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.
We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature
to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and
settlement here.
We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have
conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and
correspondence.
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We
must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our
Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in
War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in
General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world
for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the
authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare.
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;
and that as Free and Independent States, they have 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.
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REMEMBERING INDEPENDENCE DAY
Stuart Stone, Clan Morrison
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the
Declaration of Independence? Five signers were captured by the
British as traitors, and tortured before they died.
The homes of twelve of them were ransacked and burned.
Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had
two sons captured.
Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the
Revolutionary War.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor.
What kind of men were they?
Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine
were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well
educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing
full well the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his
ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and
properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British he was forced to move
his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without
pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken
from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer,
Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr, noted the British
General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his
headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open
fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
The home and properties of Francis Lewis were destroyed. The enemy
jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying.
Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his
gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in
forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his
children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a
broken heart.
Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution.
These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were
soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they
valued liberty more.
Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: "For the
support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection
of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our
lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history
books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary
War. We didn't fight just the British. We were British subjects at
that time and we fought our own government!
Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we
shouldn't. So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July
holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for
the price they paid.
Remember: Freedom is never free!!
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The American Revolution Home Page
http://www.dell.homestead.com/revwar/files/DECLARA.HTM
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