Fourth of July

This weekend Kyle and I are participating in the joint American Club and American Women's Club celebrations for the Fourth of July. Friday I am going to help with the decorations at the Clubhouse. On Saturday Kyle will be playing in a softball game between the two clubs while I help to setup for the food. I am going to attempt to make a flag dessert for my part of the potluck. I hear they are planning on ordering 300 hamburgers, so this should be a big event!

Since most of us will be celebrating Independence Day this weekend (rather than Monday), I thought I would go on and share some interesting facts about what our forefathers sacrificed for our freedom:

Signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was not a trivial act on the part of the men who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. These men were not natural rebels, or crazies looking for a fight. Eleven were merchants, while nine were farmers and large plantation owners. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. All were men of means and well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. Of the 56 men who signed the document, five were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, while another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds as hardships incurred in the revolutionary war.

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 that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay and this family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him and poverty was his reward.

Vandals or soldiers or both, looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge and Middleton.

At the Battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. The owner quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife and she died within a few months.

John Hard was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and 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 form exhaustion and a broken heart.

Norris and Livingston also suffered such 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.” American history books have been particularly derelict in describing what happened in the American revolutionary War. This wasn’t a case of simply fighting the foreign British. Those who joined the American Revolution were British subjects at the time and they fought their own government! They committed treason. But they did so for reasons that people today might think of as very noble. At the time, it was questionable in the extreme to go against one’s king.

The question is: What is the measure of your patriotism today?