Happy Birthday America!

Happy 243rd Birthday to the greatest nation ever conceived on God's earth. Sometimes you would not know it from the protests, and frankly the whining, but I have been to over 20 foreign countries and there is not a country that ever existed, nor exists today, that offers the freedoms and chance to pursue happiness like the United States. All it takes is a sense of gratefulness and individual responsibility. God Bless America!

And for those who are younger and have not been taught American history, I offered the short timeline below on the beginnings of what would come to be called the United States.

1754–1763: French and Indian War
The Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, the American phase of a worldwide nine years’ war fought between France and Great Britain.  As a result of the war, France ceded all of its North American possessions east of the Mississippi River to Britain. The costs of the war contributed to the British government’s decision to impose new taxes on its American colonies.  The experience gained by the American Colonialists fighting against the French and their Indian allies, would prove to be invaluable in the coming revolution.

March 22, 1765: Stamp Act
Like the Sugar Act (1764), the Stamp Act was imposed to provide increased revenues to meet the costs of defending the enlarged British Empire. It was the first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation on a wide variety of colonial transactions, including legal writs, newspaper advertisements, and ships’ bills of lading. Enraged colonists nullified the Stamp Act through outright refusal to use the stamps as well as by riots, stamp burning, and intimidation of colonial stamp distributors. This is a hint to American governments of the future to avoid over taxing the population.

March 5, 1770: Boston Massacre
In Boston, a small British army detachment that was threatened by mob harassment opened fire and killed five people, an incident soon known as the Boston Massacre. The soldiers were charged with murder and were given a civilian trial, in which John Adams conducted a successful defense because he believed in legal representation for all and was a fine lawyer.  Of course John Adams became a leader in the revolution and 2nd President.

December 16, 1773: Boston Tea Party
Protesting both a tax on tea (taxation without representation) and the single source monopoly controlling prices of the East India Company, a party of Bostonians disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded British ships at anchor and dumped thousands of dollars (actually British pounds at the time) worth of tea into the harbor, and this became known as the Boston Tea Party.

September 5, 1774: First Continental Congress convenes
In protests to the Intolerable Acts, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates represented all the colonies except Georgia, who were likely too busy with their peach harvest.

March 23, 1775: Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech
Convinced that war with Great Britain was inevitable, Virginian Patrick Henry defended strong resolutions for equipping the Virginia militia to fight against the British in a fiery speech in a Richmond church with the famous words, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”  Patrick Henry would go on to serve two separate terms as Governor of Virginia and died in 1799.

April 18–19, 1775: Paul Revere’s Ride and the Battles of Lexington and Concord - the Shot Heard round the world
On the night of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere rode from Charlestown to Lexington (both in Massachusetts) to warn that the British were marching from Boston to seize the colonial armory at Concord (gun confiscation as an unarmed population is a compliant one). During the march, the British force of 700 men were met on Lexington Green by 77 local minutemen and others. It is unclear who fired the first shot, but it sparked a skirmish that left eight Americans dead. At Concord, the British were met by hundreds of militiamen rallying to their countrymen. Outnumbered and running low on ammunition, the British column was forced to retire to Boston. On the return march, American snipers took a deadly toll on the British. Total losses in the Battles of Lexington and Concord numbered 273 British and more than 90 Americans. The Americans learned to use cover and concealment from the French and Indian Wars however would not always use unconventional tactics against the British and suffered dearly in set European style battles against the British in the coming years.

June 17, 1775: Battle of Bunker Hill
The battle of Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, mistakenly named the Battle of Bunker Hill, was part of the American siege of British-held Boston. Some 2,300 British troops eventually cleared the hill of the entrenched Americans, but at the cost of more than 40 percent of the assault force. The battle was a moral victory for the Americans.

January 1776: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense published
In late 1775 the colonial conflict with the British still looked like a civil war, not a war aiming to separate nations; however, the publication of Thomas Paine’s book (actually a pamphlet - but you should find a copy and read it) Common Sense put independence on the front burner. Paine’s 50-page document, couched in a direct language, sold more than 100,000 copies within a few months. More than any other single publication, Common Sense is credited to pushing the path for the Declaration of Independence.

July 4, 1776: Declaration of Independence adopted
After the Congress recommended that colonies form their own governments, the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and revised in committee. On July 2 the Congress voted for independence; on July 4 it adopted the Declaration of Independence.  For entertainment on this whole process watch the musical "1776".


November 15, 1777: The Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation
Although ratification of the Constitution by all 13 states did not take place until March 1, 1781.

September–October 1781: Siege of Yorktown
After winning a costly victory at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, on March 15, 1781, Lord Cornwallis entered Virginia to join other British forces there, setting up a base at Yorktown. Washington’s army and a force under the French Count de Rochambeau placed Yorktown under siege, and Cornwallis surrendered his army of more than 7,000 men on October 19, 1781, effectively ending the war.

September 3, 1783: Treaty of Paris officially ends the war
After the British defeat at Yorktown, the land battles in America largely died out—but the fighting continued at sea, chiefly between the British and America’s European allies, mainly France but also later included Spain and the Netherlands. The military result in North America was reflected in the preliminary Anglo-American peace treaty of 1782, which was included in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. By its terms, Britain recognized the independence of the United States with generous boundaries, including the Mississippi River on the west. Britain retained Canada but ceded East and West Florida to Spain.

June 21, 1788: Constitution Ratified
The Constitution was written during the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia by 55 delegates to a Constitutional Convention that were called to amend the Articles of Confederation (1781–89), the country’s first written constitution. And on June 21, 1788 it became ratified when New Hampshire became the 9th State to ratify it.  Remember all documents and communications had to be carried on land by men on horseback.

September 25, 1789: Congress adopts the Bill of Rights - the first 12 Amendments to the US Constitution
The first Congress of the United States adopted 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution–the Bill of Rights–and sent them to the states for ratification. Ten of these amendments were ratified in 1791. In November 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

July 4th Independence Day

Much like many other American holidays, culture, tradition and practices have somewhat dulled the original meaning of what we celebrate. Today we celebrate the 242nd birthday of this Nation - when the thirteen colonies united to declare independence from the tyranny of the British monarchy and to stand for a God given right to self rule.

Like any rebellion, the roots began much earlier, decades earlier in our case, with the British Government looking at the Colonies as a source of revenue, and without allowing representation from the Colonialists, began to unfairly tax the colonies. The Sugar Act (1764), the Stamp Act (1765), the Quartering Act (1765), the Revenue Act (1766), the Townshend Acts (1767), and, the Tea Act (1773) all increasingly fanned the flames of that familiar phrase - "taxation without representation". The writers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights disliked the Quartering Act so much that they ensured through the Third Amendment that "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

In December 1773, the Boston Tea Party, comprised of colonial men dressed like Mohawk Indians, boarded the tea laden ships from England that arrived in Boston Harbor, and threw over 300 chests of tea into the bay. Great Britain responded with the Coercive Acts (1774) and additionally, beginning in Massachusetts, which was pretty much the center of gravity for the rebellion, restricted community meetings in a measure to curb a quelling rebellion.

England appointed the Commander of British Forces in the colonies, Army General Thomas Gage, as Governor of Massachusetts. Through 1774, the idea of a Continental Congress was conceived and in September the First Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia. Though this first Congress debated many solutions to the tyranny of British rule, this first Congress ended up with a petition to King George III for a redress of grievances, which had no effect but to birth a Second Continental Congress in 1775.

What happened between the first and second Continental Congress' was, of course, the Battles of Lexington and Concord (Massachusetts), where on April 19th, the British Army units moved to seized Colonial military supplies to prevent means for an active armed rebellion, and to arrest the burgeoning rebellion's leaders. The British were initially successful in driving away the armed Colonials, but took a toll in casualties as they were driven back to Boston by a mounting number of Colonialists called to arms, then shortly Boston became surrounded by a Colonial militia force.....and the armed American Revolution began. The will and means to resist tyranny and the British attempts to seize firearms so prompted the Founders evident in their writings of the Second Amendment - "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Throughout the founding and settlement of the Colonies, militias were formed for mutual defense, initially against hostile Indians. This began the tradition of the American Citizen-Soldier. One of my favorite stories is of the Culpeper Minutemen of central Virginia, which was basically the frontier in those days, who formed a unit under the famous white 'Culpeper Minutemen - Liberty or Death - Don't Tread on Me' flag, and in late 1775 began the fight for independence by marching to the east coast to engage the British attempting to land troops. The rifle marksmanship of the Culpeper Minutemen stopped the British attempt, continuing the already well known reputation of the marksman ability of American Frontiersmen.

The Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Declaration proclaimed that the former Thirteen Colonies then at war with Great Britain were now a sovereign, independent nation and thus no longer a part of the British Empire. By signing the declaration, these 56 Americans pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor - it was no idle pledge.

Nine signers died of wounds during the revolutionary war; five were captured or imprisoned; wives and children in some cases were jailed, killed or left penniless. Twelve signers houses were burned to the ground; seventen lost everything they owned. No signer defected, despite intense pressure to do so, their honor like their new nation remained intact. Future presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were among the signatories.

So when you celebrate the 4th of July take a minute and reflect on what it took to give us this holiday. It took the will and sacrifice of men better than us.

Independence Day

240 years have gone by since 4 July 1776 when the Declaration of Independence, written largely by Thomas Jefferson, was unanimously approved by the Continental Congress, marking the beginning of the a new nation, comprised then of 13 sovereign states, and called the United States of America. Since then America has been a beacon for freedom for individuals and nations across the world. No other Country is as charitable with it's blood or treasure.

The signing of the Declaration of Independence was preceded with hostilities between England and the Colonies in which the shooting war began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775 when the British marched to seize colonialist cannons, shot and powder.

The War for American Independence from England effectively ended in October 1781 with the surrender of General Cornwallis' British Army. During those 6 1/2 years of fighting, it was often in doubt if the fledging nation would win it's independence - but the Colonialists won their freedom, not for themselves but for every generation since. That just may be why American's love underdogs.

Happy Independence Day and safe journey!