[angkor]

An important and interesting followup to the July 4 adoption of the Declaration, and one rarely discussed anywhere else.

"Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts."

[Sherman Logan]

Lovely sentiments.

However, it is greatly embellished at best and just plain untrue at worst.

The story of the American founding is dramatic and inspiring enough that it does not need to be “supported” by half-truths and untruths.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp

[Sherman Logan]

John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

First, common mistakes in John Hart histories:

John Hart's father did not come from Connecticut, his grandfather came from Long Island, but may have been born across the Sound in Connecticut. The signer was born in Hopewell township.

John Hart did not have to hide for months from the British. They were not in the area but from December 8th. 1776, when Washington retreated into Pennsylvania, until at most December 26th, when he captured Trenton. In reality, the actual time was a few days when troops were in the area. They damaged his house and farm, but it was not destroyed. As the outline shows, his wife died in October, so the British did not drive him from her side. Most of his children were grown, so he did not lose them. The two minors went to family nearby while he hid, then everything went back to "normal" after a few days. He did not die a "broken man" from losing his family- he did not lose them, he died of kidney stones after a long, very painful illness- surrounded by family, in his intact home, on his large, still working, farm."

http://www.doublegv.com/ggv/JHart.html

[Mygirlsmom]

Wow. And while we have been relinquishing our hard-fought freedoms bit by bit it now seems many are prepared to glibly throw it all away in the name of “Change”.

[LomanBill]

[There is no more profound sentence than this: "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..."]

 

Profound, but profoundly impotent without a means by which to secure those rights.

 

"To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men"

 

A principal over which the tyrant British Crown and the writers of our Declaration of Independence seemed to differ.

 

A principal which those who presently suckle upon government's various collective appendages - seem to have forgotten or ignored.

 

The function of government is not to serve itself.

 

Government's function is to secure the rights of the Individual.

 

"To Secure These Rights"

 

Remember?

[Biggirl]

The most important lesson is that these 56 men TOOK A HUGH RISK AND AGAINST THE ODDS got this country started.

Happy Birthday America, God Bless America!

[Biggirl]

Remember at the time, what we Americans would call patriots, the British viewed them as being rebel insurgents.

[Sherman Logan]

a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings.

This would have paid for 50 to 75 meals in a tavern. Hope it was a nice one.

[American Quilter]

Thanks for posting this stirring and patriotic speech, angkor. Our country is the greatest in the history of the world, and anyone who doesn’t fully appreciate it should live somewhere else.

[La Enchiladita]

Thank you for posting this stirring speech by Rush Limbaugh Jr., a true patriot who begat a Great American, and who took the time to learn our history and revere our Founders.

There was a time when FReeper Patriots would all demonstrate honor in their responses to a post such as this.

The Spirit of the founding of our Nation is quite clear, and those who choose to quibble over the recounting of the original Independence Day signers, based on one third-or-fourth-hand source, I suspect of having an agenda in doing so. But then, some people are never going to "get it:" The phrase and reality of Sacred Honor is the most important point in this speech and the basis of this Great Nation.

[sport]

Bump

[Jo Nuvark]

Under duress in a British prison, Richard Stockton
of New Jersey had the singular misfortune to become
... THE SIGNER WHO RECANTED.

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1975/4/1975_4_22.shtml

One signer, following capture by the British and under pressure of a harsh confinement during what was without question the darkest hour of the Revolution for the American cause, did then defect, by taking an oath of obedience to the king and pledging that he would take no further part in the pending struggle.

It was probably the harsh treatment suffered while in British confinement that had broken Richard Stockton’s spirit to the point where he would renounce every principle he had espoused for over a decade. We have no way of knowing whether he had also been subjected to psychological pressure, such as daily recitals of the military reverses being suffered by the Continental Army. But it is evident that the physical regimen imposed upon him had broken his body, too; it took him three full years to recover his health.

[Vision]

bookmark

[KTM rider]

My grandmother whose maiden name was Morton, had written documentation of her heritage descending from John Morton who signed the declaration of independence. Her grandfather was a riverboat pilot on the Ohio River.

IIRC the story she told was that John Morton was a wealthy plantation owner who was recruited into the revolution and led a militia, he parlayed his entire fortune and property on supplying the army, after the revolutionary war he was scorned by the british loyalists and others in his area who lost their sons in the war, and threatened and harrassed. Poor and outcast he headed west and settled in the ohio region and lived out the rest of his life hunting and trapping in the wilderness out of a small cabin. He died poor, harrased by indians. His sons and their sons went on to learn to navigate the Ohio river and became a generation of Riverboat pilots.

I was born on july 4 and my grandma insisted my middle name be Morton.

I am proud of my heritage and the people of this great nation,

, but I am bitterly ashamed of our Congress and government of today in the USA, who stab us all in the back, piss on the graves of all those who fought for this great nation, and squander our heritage for greed and a legacy of glitter

all in the name of "progressive democracy" and environmental salvation

[clee1]

Bump for later archival

[US_MilitaryRules]

Btt for the 4th of July