By Edwin Cooney
Each
year on July 4th, we celebrate the publication of the Declaration of
Independence. In the long run, the
significance and meaning of that document is what really matters!
Although
probably few colonists realized it at the time, there was really nothing very
new about what they were doing that day if all they were doing was rebelling
against injustice. After all, almost
exactly a century earlier, the Virginia colony had experienced Nathaniel
Bacon’s rebellion against Governor William Berkeley. There were two reasons Bacon, a well-to-do
farmer, rebelled against the governor.
First, Governor Berkeley had refused to grant Bacon the commission in
the colonial militia which he had promised him.
Second, the governor wasn’t doing enough to protect landowners in
Bacon’s part of Virginia against marauding Indians. Nathaniel Bacon and a group of farmers
rebelled, ultimately burning the capital at Jamestown. The rebellion, which had begun on Sunday,
July 30th, 1676, succeeded in forcing the British government to recall Governor
Berkeley, but Nathaniel Bacon didn’t live to see the results of his
insurrection. He died of dysentery on Thursday, October 26, 1676.
The
Boston Massacre had taken place on Monday night, March 5th, 1770
when British Troops fired on the citizens of Boston who were rebelling against
high unemployment brought on by increasingly intense British tyranny. That was
soon followed by the first shots fired at Lexington, Massachusetts in the early
hours of Wednesday, April 19th, 1775 in order to prevent British soldiers from
reaching Concord, Massachusetts where the citizens had stored large amounts of
ammunition. The future would bring more
rebellions.
Daniel
Shays’ Rebellion against rich Massachusetts landlords and bankers during the
spring of 1786 would be credited with bringing about the adoption of the new
United States Constitution during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. Next came the famous (or, if you prefer,
infamous) Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 declaring that the states
of the union were sovereign and therefore not subject to the federal
government. Those resolutions were
sponsored by two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Even more, they would constitute the legal
basis Confederate leaders used to justify the legitimacy of their rebellion.
Almost four years before
the South seceded from the Union, a convention of New England Federalists met
in Hartford, Connecticut in December 1814 to consider exactly that. Angered
ever since Thomas Jefferson’s embargo of 1807 which crippled New England
commerce, New England Federalists were very interested in considering secession
from the Union so that they might restore their own prosperity. There
ultimately would be no vote to secede, but you can be sure that the sons of
these delegates would view Southern secession through different eyes
forty-seven years later.
The
intensity of the industrial revolution after the Civil War would bring forth
the
advent
of increasingly militant labor unions. Anti-war protests during and after World
War One would be stirred by anarchist and socialist forces in America's largest
cities. Finally, civil rights and taxpayer protests would mark the decade of
the 1960s and 1970s.
As
we celebrate the 239th anniversary of our rebellious birth, we are prosperous
beyond the imagination of any previous generation, self-indulgent in the
expectation of conveniences heretofore incomprehensible even to ourselves just
20 years ago, anxious about the future security of our country, and cranky
about the possible alterations in lifestyle which climate change may force upon
us. The question is: what is 21st Century America ultimately all about?
Bedeviled
as Americans are about the conduct of our leaders, the stability of our economy
and our national safety, how long can we continue to be our truest selves? Sure, we’re loyal, patriotic, intelligent,
lovers of freedom, generous to nations that possess less than we do, and as
concerned about our prosperity and safety as any people around the whole wide
world. What is our heritage? Is it liberty
or revolution? Are we now, or should we
ever be, satisfied with the status quo?
Is it enough to celebrate our independence? After all, aren’t most nations independent
these days? Hasn’t colonialism,
imperialism and almost every other kind of tyrannical “ism” been renounced in
2015 -- even as ISIS and Al-Qaeda rear their ugly heads?
What
most concerns me on this 239th “Fourth of July” is whether revolution or
liberty is the most dominant part of our national DNA. I vote for liberty -
everybody’s liberty!
RESPECTFULLY
SUBMITTED,
EDWIN
COONEY
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