A Revolutionary Spirit … Once Upon a Time

Its principles held fast for some years before the militarists and mercenaries—their creed of all things purchasable, all life cheap—took root their tentacles of corruption spreading far and wide: across many countries and cultures and nations including the United States of America

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN

We took to heart, manifest solidly in policies and practice

1776 “We hold these truths to be self-evident— that all … are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.… [W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive …, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it; and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to (effectuate) their Safety and Happiness. …

    “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government; and to provide new Guards for their future security.… “The history of the present (regime) is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny ….” The facts are evident “to a candid world.” [Minor edits, excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence: A Transcription, in Congress, July 4, 1776, document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript]

Before every milestone became a Day of Gluttony, Celebrations of Violence

1777 “Resolved: that the flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation”— John Adams June 14, 1777, speaking before the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. 1818: the Fifteenth Congress stipulated that the thirteen original stripes would be retained and as each new state entered the Union, a new star would be added. 1949: the Eighty-First Congress of the United States of America designated “National Flag Day.”

Three Cheers for the Red White and Blue!

Before the Mercenaries, Reflective Gratitude
“America the Beautiful”

1893 originating from the original New England and Middle Colonies
A poem (lyrics revised in 1904 and 1911) by poet and author Katharine Lee Bates, music by organist and composer Samuel Augustus Ward

First published on July 4, 1895

America the Beautiful … God shed His grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea… America! America! God mend (your) every flaw. Confirm (your) soul in self-control, (your) liberty within law… (your character refined) until all success be nobleness, every gain divine!

Poet and composer never met: Katharine Lee Bates of Falmouth, Massachusetts (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) and Samuel Augustus Ward of Newark, New Jersey (December 28, 1848 – September 28, 1903).

Library of Congress Notes: On July 4, 1895, the poem by Katharine Lee Bates made its first appearance in a weekly newspaper (The Congregationalist). Bates amended and added to her lyrics in 1902 (published in November of that year in the Buffalo Illustrated Times) and in 1913. (America the Beautiful, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 2002, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200000001/)

 

Happy Independence Day USA

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Composition and images Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

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