Today is Independence Day in America, the National Holiday. Like all great nations, America has committed great wrongs. Some of those wrongs, religion justified. Yet no country has been more generous to the victims of religious oppression. For centuries, America has welcomed people fleeing religious-based discrimination at home, including some of my own relatives; welcomed them, not as permanent minority communities whom it would tolerate if they kept their heads down, but as equal citizens and members of the American family. In this, America really has been what its Framers intended, Novus Ordo Seclorum, a New Order of the Ages. Happy Independence Day. God Bless America.
Letter of John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
Here’s a little something for the moment: John Adams’s letter to Abigail Adams dated July 3, 1776, concerning the resolution preceding the Declaration of Independence. Note the plentiful effusions of civil religion, which often mark Adams’s writing. And happy 4th of July from CLR Forum!
Yesterday, the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was, nor will be decided among men. A resolution was passed, without one dissenting colony, ‘that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which other States may rightfully do.’ You will see, in a few days, a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution, and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a few days.