Abigail Adams once said in a letter to her husband, the future
second president of the United States and the man whose ideas helped shape the Declaration
of Independence, “Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able
to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.”
Of the soldiers of the American Revolution, they were sometimes called “peasantry” and “rabble in arms” because of the deplorable state of their clothing. Any uniforms they wore were left over from an earlier conflict. They often went without baths because of digging trenches and moving rock. In John McCullough’s book, 1776, he writes before Washington’s pivotal move crossing the Delaware and surprising Hessian troops, Charles Wilson Peale walked among the troops. “… they looked as wretched as any men he had ever seen. One had almost no clothes. ‘He was in an old dirty blanket jacket, his beard long, and his face so full of sores … so ‘disfigured’ was he that Peale failed at first to recognize that the man was his own brother …”
The troops on board the 400 ships in the British armada,
the largest armada ever sent out from any nation, exceeded the population of any of the colonies largest cities. The armory on just three of their ships
outnumbered the total of all the armory in the colonies.
McCullough again, the year 1776 “ . . . was for those who carried
the fight for independence forward a year of all too few victories, of
sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice,
disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never
forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and
that, too, they would never forget.”
The idea of America was a dream that our ancestors paid for with
their lives. In the face of overwhelming odds, they moved forward toward that
dream.
Today,
we live in the freedom that they and nearly 1.2 million others in conflicts since have given their
lives. These “unalienable Rights … life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness” are ours because we stand on the shoulders of
ancestors who paid a price in ways we cannot imagine.
I
am including a link to a transcription of The Declaration of Independence.
Every once in a while, it is good to read this document that set a revolution
into motion and especially on this 250th anniversary of our country.
Make sure you pay attention to the reasons this document was written and the
names so boldly signed at the end. Remember, in signing this document these men
were committing an act of treason and willing to face the consequences.
As
we celebrate this momentous 250th anniversary, enjoying the
fireworks and barbeques, let’s also remember the cost and give thanks for those
who have come before and the freedom and grace that God has given us. Though we
are flawed, we are still the “sweet land of liberty.” Let freedom ring.
“Blessed
is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12).