Happy 4th of July

July 4, 2021 | Category: BPE Newsletter, Holidays

Happy 4th of July

By: Carl H. Block, Esq.

July 4, 2021

Two hundred and forty five years ago, the 13 colonies declared independence from England. The declaration of independence was written by Thomas Jefferson, and adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

The Declaration of Independence did not just appear out of thin air. A series of events led up to the point where the Continental Congress felt they must declare independence. Relations between the Colonies and the British parliament spiraled downward after the French and Indian War in 1763. Britain had significant debt after the war, and passed the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Townshend Acts in 1767 to make the colonies pay their fair share of the costs from the French and Indian War. Colonists argued that a British subject could not be taxed without his consent, and consent had not been given since the Colonists did not have representation in the Parliament. Britain sent more than 2,000 soldiers to Boston to enforce the tax laws, which resulted in the Boston massacre in 1770. Taxation without representation continued, as exemplified by the Tea Act of 1773 which, among other things, validated Parliament’s tax on tea. Shortly thereafter, Colonists held the Boston Tea Party where they threw tea off British ships to protest the Tea Act of 1773. To punish Massachusetts for their defiance of the Tea Act, Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts of 1774, which took away the right of self-governance in Massachusetts. In April 1775, the British sought to disarm the Colonists, by taking away their arms in what became the Battle of Lexington. Two months later, the Colonists built fortifications around Boston to prevent British soldiers from occupying the heights around the city, in what became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. By August, King George declared the American colonies to be in open rebellion.

The Declaration of Independence was a unified statement, based on the events that had happened in recent years. The declaration is aspirational . . . in soaring lofty language, it identifies what we want to be. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.” This aspiration is the idea that sets the United States apart, as the only nation in the world that was founded based on an idea. Although we may disagree on the methods of attaining these aspirations, Americans agree on the aspirational idea. President Lincoln reinforced the idea in the Gettysburg Address, where he wrote “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

On July 4th 2021, I recommend you remember the words, the sacrifices, and the ideas, that formed our nation, and think how you can continue to help us reach towards the aspirational ideas written in the Declaration of Independence.

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