The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
—Frederick Douglass, in a speech delivered July 5, 1852 titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”1—
This article is part 3 of a 3-part series mining ten bedrock principles of liberty embedded in the Declaration of Independence. In part 1 we reviewed some of the events that led to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in early July of 1776, and in part 2 we highlighted and discussed four of the ten truths we are endeavoring to consider. These initial four are as follows.…
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Copyright © 2019 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image credit: Photo by Joe Richmond on Unsplash
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