Independence Day

“ To-day is Independence Day in America. Little American children are burning their fingers with fire crackers. American orators are burning their audiences with oratory. They are speaking of America’s great fight for Independence. Let us all remember that the American War of Independence was fought by British Americans against a German King and a reactionary Prime Minister for British ideals, and that a large part of the British nation sympathised with the [117] rebels. The same old British fighting always for freedom! ”

“ The United States is the only country with a known birthday. All the rest began, they know not when, and grew into power, they know not how. If there had been no Independence Day, England and America combined would not be so great as each actually is. There is no “Republican,” no “Democrat,” on the Fourth of July,—all are Americans. All feel that their country is greater than party. ”

“ Independence Day celebrates the signing, on the Fourth of July, 1776, of the paper which declared this country forever free from British rule. It had been under consideration for some time by the Continental Congress, assembled at Philadelphia, and final action was finally taken on July 4. From that time forward, the American colonists were no longer rebels in arms against their country, but a free people fighting for their independence. ”

“ On Decoration Day, and again later, on Independence Day, the whole populace ceases work in the name of America, and flocks the streets, sings national songs and hymns, goes on procession, fires salutes, listens to speeches. We British are just wildly glad to get free from toil when Whit-Monday and August Bank Holiday come round. We have no national or religious fervour on these days. ”

“ The schools should teach patriotism. Independence Day should be celebrated by them in such a manner as to impress its lessons indelibly upon the minds of future citizens; it should be celebrated during the school year, for children can thus be taught its value. I trust every school in our great State will so celebrate this day.—Jason E. Hammond.
“Patriotism is one of the positive lessons to be taught in every school. Everything learned should be flavored with a genuine love of country. Every glorious fact in the nation’s history should be emphasized and lovingly dwelt upon. ”

“ In our own country Independence Day has proved to be their golden harvest. The freedom given to small boys on this day makes them easy victims to the tempters’ wiles, who under the treacherous guise of patriotism have seized upon them more and more every year, until the list of the dead and wounded has assumed appalling proportions. Still there is little talk of doing away with this hideous slaughter; while there is “big talk” about “race suicide,” and an appeal to mothers to bring forth more sons to supply the nation’s need. ”

“ And when the rolling year brings round Independence day, all the fluctuations of feeling which mature and soften others are forgotten, and it trembles with the excitement of the occasion, and laughs, and shouts, and capers merrily in its homely belfry, as though it were a boy again. ”

“ On Monday, we celebrate Independence Day, the day we declared a new nation, based on a revolutionary idea: that people ought to determine their own destiny; that freedom and self-governance weren’t gifts handed to us by kings or emperors, but the rights of every human being. We’ve learned in the years since that democracy isn’t always pretty. ”

“ I call upon the people of the United States to observe with all due ceremony our Independence Day as a time to honor our Founders and their legacy of freedom and remember with thankfulness the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. ”

“ Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation's history—the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation's destiny ”

“ The fitting celebration of Independence Day is a question on which patriotic Americans are separated into two widely divergent parties, one claiming that it ought to be observed as noisily as possible, the other believing that our national birthday is too glorious an occasion to be marred by din and disorder. Of course we know that even among those who favor a boisterous observance there are many who cannot tolerate it themselves, and escape to the country in order to avoid the tortures of the “awful Fourth” ”

“ Under President Roosevelt this country discovered a new and more vital meaning in the old term “democracy.” And it has not taken us long to find out that on Independence Day the square deal is less thrillingly symbolized by the maiming and slaughter of innocent thousands through the meaningless cracker and pistol than by the coöperation of all nationalities and social grades on our shores in great, concerted movements, large with the meaning of the [309] past, the present and the future America, and glowing with the local colors of the many peoples that have made and are to make this nation. ”

“ It seems to me that Independence Day, the Fourth of July, should be celebrated as much in Britain as in America. Not in rejoicing at the separation of the American Colonies from the British Crown, but in sincere gratitude to the Founding Fathers of this great Republic for having taught Britain a very valuable lesson. ”

“ Another Independence Day as full of racket and accident as the last, would be likely to bring on a mental lapse, for which there would be no hope. The only really safe thing to do is to take a month’s vacation—that is, go out of the country three weeks before Independence Day and stay until two weeks after. That would cover the time which is usually seized upon by the independent and ignorant boys and hoodlums of the community, to put the rest of the people in chains and agony—or exile. ”

“ COUNTRYMEN, BRETHREN, AND FATHERS,
We are now assembled to celebrate an anniversary, ever to be held in dear remembrance by the sons of freedom. Nothing less than the birth of a nation, nothing less than the emancipation of three millions of people, from the degrading chains of foreign dominion, is the event we commemorate.
Twenty four years have this day elapsed, since United Columbia first raised the standard of Liberty, and echoed the shouts of Independence! ”

“ Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. ”

“ Let this most happy day give birth to the American Republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and conquer, but to reëstablish the reign of peace and the laws. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us; she demands of us a living example of freedom that may contrast, by the felicity of her citizens, with the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. ”

“ There are brief crises in which the drift of individual and national history is determined, sometimes unexpectedly; critical moments on which great decisions hang; days which, like a mountain in a plain, lift themselves above the dead level of common days into everlasting eminence. Our Day of Independence was such a day ”

“ This week, Americans are celebrating the 226th anniversary of our independence. On the 4th of July, we count our blessings, and there are so many to count.
We are thankful for the families that share our life in this land of liberty. We're thankful for the opportunities given to us every day in this country. And we are thankful for our freedom, the freedom declared by the founding fathers, defended by many generations and granted to each one of us by Almighty God. ”

“ On that half-century Anniversary of American Independence, at nearly the same hour of the day, the spirits of Adams and Jefferson took their departure from earth! Amid the rejoicings of the people, the peals of artillery, the strains of music, the exultations of a great nation in the enjoyment of freedom, peace, and happiness, they were released from the toils of life, and allowed to enter on their rest. ”

“ Germany celebrates the Emperor’s birthday with the greatest enthusiasm, but without wholesale death and injury. France is patriotic, and yet France observes its festal days in a safe and sane fashion. In the City of Mexico, as the writer knows by personal experience, the celebration of Independence Day is a great popular success, and yet not one firecracker is exploded. The experiment in Washington demonstrates that dynamite and gunpowder are not essential to a thorough and patriotic enjoyment of the day. ”

“ I also ask each American to observe the period from Flag Day through Independence Day as a period to honor America. To that end, I ask all Americans to participate in local activities that reflect an understanding and appreciation of America and its institutions. ”

“ The thrilling subject of American Independence is ever welcome to the patriot and philanthropist. The annual celebration of the event is calculated to perpetuate a kindred feeling and a kindred love of liberty. The time may arrive when the day may not be celebrated, but to the end of time the event, and the names of those who achieved it, will be handed down on the historic page with pride and veneration. The names of the Signers of the Declaration, like those of the twelve Apostles, are surrounded by a wreath of glory unfading and untarnished. ”

“ As the great luminary over our heads, dissipating fogs and mist, now cheers the whole atmosphere, so do the associations connected with this day disperse all sullen and cloudy weather in the minds and feelings of true Americans. Every man’s heart swells within him. Every man’s port and bearing becomes somewhat more proud and lofty as he remembers that seventy-five years have rolled away, and that the great inheritance of Liberty is still his,—his, undiminished and unimpaired ”

“ The same thing happens to the small boy who indulges in Independence Day customs too freely. He gets an itching for war and brutal sports. Ralph Norwood will now give you the statistics of our annual Independence Day slaughter for the last ten years, which will show you, I trust, into what a fatal fetichism we are rapidly descending. ”

“ We read events by what goes before and after. We think of Bunker Hill as the first real battle for independence, the prelude to the Revolution. Yet these were both after-thoughts. Independence Day was still more than a year away and then eight years from accomplishment. The Revolution cannot be said to have become established until the adoption of the Federal Constitution. No, on this June day, these were not the conscious objects sought. ”

“ The Declaration of Independence! The interest which in that paper has survived the occasion upon which it was issued; the interest which is of every age and every clime; the interest which quickens with the lapse of years, spreads as it grows old, and brightens as it recedes, is in the principles which it proclaims. It was the first solemn declaration, by a nation, of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the corner stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. ”

“ Nobody’s home was burned up, nobody succeeded in killing himself or his neighbor; there are no incipient cases of lockjaw under observation. The tendency to those other forms of disorder which grow out of indulgence in the cup that cheers—and perhaps deafens—was less marked than ever before. The police and the hospitals alike had an easy time of it. Not a single accident worthy the name, of the distinctive variety which has made Independence Day an occasion of carnage and terror, took place in Washington. ”

“ It was “in the course of human events” intrusted to them to determine whether the fullness of time had come when a nation should be born in a day. They declared the independence of a new nation in the sense in which men declare emancipation or declare war,—the declaration created what was declared.
Famous always among men are the founders of states and fortunate above all others in such fame are these, our fathers, whose combined wisdom and courage began the great structure of our national existence and laid sure the foundations of liberty and justice on which it rests. ”

“ So as we celebrate our Nation's past and the values that unite us, let us look forward to the future and let us redouble our determination to give more and more of our fellow citizens their own personal independence day. ”

“ Could anything make more swiftly and surely for national solidarity than in some such way to stimulate each national element in our forming civilization to bring the best it has to the service of the future America? And what more patriotic and fitting deed could be accomplished than to transform the birthday of modern liberty from a day of meaningless destruction into a day of construction fraught with profound and beautiful significance? ”