JULY 2ND 1776 - AMERICA’S FIRST D-DAY

By Edwin Cooney

As I’m guessing you know, Thursday, July 4th, 1776 was the day the Declaration of Independence was published. Tuesday, July 2nd, 1776 was the day that independence from Britain was declared by the Second Continental Congress. Thus, some historians insist that July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is America’s real birthday.

More significant than the triviality regarding the actual date is a question we inevitably ponder even as late as Monday, July 2nd, 2018. That question is invariably: what does the latest news all mean for our future?

For the moment the big question was whether our new independence could be militarily sustained or might Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and surely George Washington eventually be hauled off to the Tower of London for a grand hanging as an example to future would-be rebels against the British crown. Even more intriguing was what the future relationship of the separate colonies would be toward one another as well as toward the world at large. After all, there was nothing in the Declaration of Independence outlining the form of government the 13 separate colonies were prepared to agree to. Passage of the federal constitution was 13 years away and within individual colonies were various forces that urged ultimate allegiance to both Britain and France. These 13 separate colonies had just declared themselves united in rebellion, but they weren’t at all united in either policy or purpose.

The fact of the matter is that for the most part we today celebrate a unity of policy and purpose that really and truly wasn’t in existence when the first Fourth of July fireworks and parades took place. The southern colonies had a strong tendency to favor France while northern and eastern colonies, whose merchandizing economies were still closely linked to Great Britain, were quite reluctant to break loose from George the Third. Additionally, it’s been estimated that as many as two thirds of the people were, at best, indifferent to this radical idea of independence from Mother England. For the greater number of people the question wasn’t Patrick Henry’s call to “…give me liberty or give me death!” It was rather:

“How are the crops coming along?”

“Might the summer ahead be dry or rainy?”

“What can I buy with what money I earn?”

“May God protect our families from last year’s epidemic of small pox, typhoid fever or diphtheria!”

For most people, life wasn’t primarily a political or even an economic venture, it was a struggle for survival from starvation, disease and yes, from the will of Satan which they believed was guaranteed only by the protection of Almighty God.”

As we indulge our historic fantasies and our cravings for fun and food throughout this Fourth of July season, we find ourselves facing a future easily as momentous as was that facing “The Founding Fathers.”

For many 21st Century Americans, George the Third is no match for tyrannical behavior in comparison with President Donald J. Trump. In other American eyes, President Donald J. Trump is the equivalent of Patrick Henry if not of Washington or Jefferson. Surely the decisions being made by the president to break away from the bonds of treaties and other agreements made by Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama affecting everything from climate change, trade and world economy will be equally and perhaps even more significant than were the efforts nearly two and a half centuries ago to rebel against “taxation without representation,” the quartering of British soldiers in citizens’ homes, and the tea tax.

Even more challenging is the question constantly being raised by those who claim to love America much more than does any “liberal.” That question appears to be whether a multi-cultured America consisting of increasingly dominant females, skeptical blacks and Hispanics, and unhappy LGBTQ and immigrants of all sorts is worthy of a patriot’s love.

Two and a half centuries ago, resolution of these painful questions could more-or-less simmer on the back burner of our body politic and thus heal in time as the institutions of family marriage and connection invariably mixed Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and even agnostic and atheist people together within family folds. This summer, however, at least two national conflicts will be up for public and political resolution that could well permanently rupture the very fabric of our national unity. They are:

(1.) Will the right of women to choose whether they or the state dictates their physical, emotional, and moral path when it comes to abortion rights be jeopardized by a single appointment to the United States Supreme Court?

(2.) What is the real key to solving the “illegal immigration” question? Is the family unit the right place to be addressing this issue or is illegal immigration a much deeper problem?

The term “D-Day” became 74 years old this last June the 6th. On that day a great American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a brilliant set of statesmen and generals named George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle made June 6th, 1944 a day of decision, just as Tuesday, July 2nd, 1776 was America’s first real “D-Day.”

D-Day of 1776, whether you celebrate it on July 2nd or 4th, brought forth an almost endless supply of wonderful possibilities: freedom of press and speech; a market economy; FDR’s “four freedoms” as enunciated in his January 6th, 1941 State of the Union address before Congress; labor and minority group legitimacy legislation; and the capacity to build alliances to protect ourselves from international aggression - to name only a few of these possibilities which stretch back to that glorious Fourth.

The question is: what will America’s 2018 version of D-Day bring forth?

Are you sure you know the answer to that question? If I knew the answer to that question, I’d be glad to share it with you!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY