As the holiday draws near, I begin to think about why we celebrate this day and how America has come so far off the beaten path in the soon to be 234 years that our country has been in existence. Yes, 234 years! On our nation's day of birth, she will be 234 years old. Quite young if you think about all of the countries that have had their own sovereignty for many more hundreds of years. We are actually a very young governing body.
Our country began in simple beginnings with the colonists developing the eastern shores of what they called the New World over 400 years ago. 1587 saw the first group of actual colonists come to these great shores though many all male explorations had taken place here before then. The first colony was located in my own state of North Carolina. You may have even heard a blurb about it in your history books while growing up. Roanoke Island and the mystery of the Lost Colony. Yes, the Lost Colony and the birth of Virginia Dare, the first child to be born on these shores (other than the natives of course). No one knows what happened to this colony when hardships came upon it, though that is a completely different story.
Many other colonies were developed after the first, thirteen to be exact, and they thrived through the hardships that came upon them. Families grew, towns grew, and people flocked from England to come here for a chance at a better life than the one they had in the "Mother Land". We grew, and for 100 and some odd years, the people of the colonies thrived as best they could under the oppressive weight of England.
And then, people began to be unhappy with the excessive taxation that was pressed upon them over the years by the English government that did not even know what America was really like. As the colonists began to think, the government was a whole ocean away and had no idea of the realities of America. Eventually after many issues (which I will refrain from naming all!) such as the "Boston Massacre" and the "Boston Tea Party", the colonists gathered together many prestigious persons from each colony and developed the Declaration of Independence. This document was considered treasonous and, if we had lost the war that waged after this document was sent to King George III, those brave men would have been given the death penalty.
We waged a war on our own turf, the Revolution, and won our Independence; that same independence that we celebrate each 4th of July. The Constitution was developed and America became a sovereign government in her own right. Peoples from around the world of many nations and languages flocked to this land because of the bright beacon of hope.
That hope, begins at the hearth. That hope, begins with the children of our homes understanding what it means to be American. To be American isn't just to wear a title or speak a certain language. It is be the beacon of hope to those around the world who live under the same oppression most of our original founding families (my ancestors did not come to these shores until after the Revolutionary War but before the Civil War) lived under when their "Mother Land" told them what to do. I have hope in my heart that we can become the country our founding fathers envisioned when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and put their lives at risk. I have hope that we can be the country they envisioned when writing our Constitution. No one governing body should have more power than the other- words written by men over 200 years ago. Hope is what America is. And I dearly hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July as well as a safe one. Remember all of those men and women who put their lives at risk to help create and shape our country and honor those today who continue to serve.
