The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1935-06-28

0OOD old freedom and equality
have been with us so long in
~ these United States-and who
shall deny that we have them?-that
It has become property Of easiness"
and we are prone to forget, with all
the Independence days we have OBJ
served since that far day of the first
one born of the spirit of '76, just how
1T all came about. It has been some
time since we have heard Fourth
of July Grafton" or heard the Dec
laration of independence" read at the
fair grounds. So, let's take mo-
ment's pause and do little looking
backward and recover, perhaps, few
forgotten thrills, advises a writer In
the Kansas City Star.
The hall in which our freedom was
born Is still standing there In indie
pendence Square, Philadelphia, little
changed with time. Some of the chairs
the delegates sat in and the desk upon
which the president of the congress
wrote his "John Hancock" are there.
Portraits of the signers look down
from the walls. But who today can
recall the actual happenings of those
Hateful years of June and July, 159
years ago, when our independence was
in travail? What actually happened
on July 4, the subsequently dedicated
day? When was the immortal docu-
ment proclaimed to the nation? was
the great step taken amid a tumult
of shouting and bell-ringing and fir
ang of cannon, as it came to be cele-
brated in after years?
Glorious in legend as was that first
Fourth 159 years ago, it was day
of deep and cautious solemnity. They
were not noise-makers who assembled
to launch a new nation dedicated to
the proposition that all men are Gre
ated equal" The day fell upon a rainy
Thursday. In Philadelphia's old state
house there was no stately ceremony.
No crowds were waiting ouside as yet
to hear 1.-THE joyful news" In fact,
there was an atmosphere of grave I'M
certainty in the hall as to the fate Of
the great charter of American liberty.
There were gooL many minds that
were not fully made up as to the wis
dom of the declaration.
To state the historical truth, by the
record, independence had already been
declared July 2, two days before. 1t
was on that day that Richard Henry
Lees resolution, introduced in the
congress some weeks before, was
passed by a bare majority, declaring
''that the United Colonies are, and Of
Right ought to be, Free and Indepen-
dent States, and that they are Abb
solved from all allegiance to the Brit
fish Grown, and that all political con-
nection between them, and the State Of
Great Britain is, and ought to be, to-
tally dissolved" In effect that action
was a severing of the political tie be-
tween the colonies and Great Britain.
Why, then, is not July the day we
celebrate?"
Because those fathers of the Repub-
Tic recognized the gravity of the step
they were about to take and that 1t
meant war and bloodshed. They were
practical, methodical and just men.
and men bred in the parliamentary
usages and constitutional law. They
recognized that more than a mere res
olution was necessary to justify their
action to the world. and that "a decent
respect for the opinions of mankind
required that they should declare the
causes which impel them to the sepa-
ration They were determined not to
go before the world as mere 'revolu-
tionists and rebels" but statesmen
new