This is a little late but I have been thinking about the 4th of July and how its meaning has changed for me.
Until several years ago, I did not pay much attention to it ... the best celebration I remember was in 1969 when some friends and I went to Ohio to teach in the headstart program. Our host gave the us rides in his Model T and then watermelon and fireworks filled the rest of the day. It was fun, but not a political thought went through my head. Mostly, it involved family picnics and fireworks. It did not seen to have much meaning to me although I have always followed politics closely and tend to active about it.
I am from the Southwest and that history has always been more alive to me than the Revolutionary War. When I was young, "the War" meant the Civil War. later it came to designate Viet Nam. That changed when I lived in New Jersey several years ago. Each place has its own history and stories to go with it.
Several years ago, I was privileged to serve as the Interim Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth, New Jersey. It is a church that was first founded in 1664 and has worshipped continuously in the same location since then. It is called Old First or the Mother Church. (Physically the church has been restored to looked somewhat like the Old North Church in Boston.) But that is a different story. Across the street is St. John's Episcopal Church. In the 1770s. both pstors were staunch in their opposing beliefs.
What I have really been thinking about is the wonderful stories that are part of that history ... stories that are rarely told ... and certainly are not in history textbooks. They are small stories about ordinary people, but they made the war real and the politics about human life, at least for me.
During "The War". the pastor of Old First was an ardent patriot and "hammered hard on the point that the common man had a dignity before God and that oppression from earthly powers was not in accordance with God's law." It is said that during the war, he preached with a gun next to his Bible; and, at one point, he offered the church hymnals for use with the cannons since the soldiers needed paper to ignite the cannons. When the war broke out, the congregation had somewhere between 80-90 men who went to war, including several generals: William Livingston, Elias Boudinot, Elias Dayton, Jonathan Dayton, William Crane and Philemon Dickinson. All of these people have fascinating stories. Most of them deserve a diary all to themselves.
But the stories I find most fasinating are about Hannah Arnett, a good church woman with a strong character.
In November of 1776, the British occupied Elizabethtown and offered to protect the lives and property of any civilians who would declare themselves peacable British subjects. Some of the local men found the idea interesting and held a meeting to discuss the matter in Isacc Arnett's home. The group was leaning toward taking the offer when Hannah Arnett, who had been evesdropping, walked in and made an impassioned plea for them not to give in.
An old account of the incident (Dr. Tuttle's Revoluntionary Forefathers of Morris County) quotes her as saying:
"What greater cause could there be than that of country? I married a good man and true, a faithful friend and loyal Christian gentleman, but it needs no divorce to sevar me from a traitor and a coward. If you take the infamous British protection which a treacherous enemy of your country offers, you - you lose your wife and I - I lose nt husband and a home."
The men decided to continue supporting the Revolution.
At another time, in 1779, the British burned down the parsonage and the Academy (school that sat by the church and which both Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton attended). Hannah Arnett and another church woman who lived nearby, nabaged to roll out 26 barrels of flour which were stored ther befor the fire was consumed by by flames. Thus they saved flour for food and kept the fire from becoming an explosion.
When I hear the insipid right wing church claiming the "Revolutionary Fathers", I want to claim Hannah Arnett and all the other women who made such a difference.
My source was a local history published by the church on its 300th anniversary: Church of the Founding Fathers of New Jersey: A History of First Presbyterian Church Elizabeth, New Jersey 1664-1964