Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

As posted on www.JensPen.com on 7/4/09...

Since this is Independence Day, it's a good time to look back and think about the founding of the United States. The more I look back to that time and those people, the more impressed I get.

Give me liberty or give me death.

I think about those men who signed the Declaration of Independence. I wonder what were they thinking as they crowded around to sign, as the quill pen scratched across the paper, as they held the pen in their hand, bent over the desk... and signed their own name? Were they thinking about the lives, fortunes, and sacred honor they were pledging? Were they thinking about their families, their homes? Were they afraid, with cold, sweaty palms and churning stomachs? Or was it only a formality, a final step along the road to the Revolution that they had been travelling toward for so long? After all, the war had already begun. Shots had already been fired at Lexington and Concord.

Give me liberty or give me death.

But I don't just think about those brave men who signed onto the Declaration of Independence. I also think about all the men who answered the call for Minutemen, nameless and faceless thousands who left the safety and familiarity of their homes to go and face a brutal war - a war they knew would be fought with cannon and shot and bayonets - a war that would be fought in the fields they farmed, the towns they grew up in - a war against the greatest military on the earth that dominated the globe - a war they were going to fight with only their muskets in their hands and the fire in their hearts - a war from which many would never return, and which would change the history of the world...

Give me liberty or give me death.

And I think about the women who sent those men. Women who packed up their food, mended their clothes, comforted the frightened children ... and watched as their husbands, fathers, brothers walked off to face unknown dangers. Women who carried on with the work so it would be in good shape when their men came back - women who lived with the fear that their men might never come back - women who smiled bravely and said, "Good-bye and God Speed, dear", trying to keep the tears out of their voices - women who fell on their knees every night and prayed with all their heart that God would send their men home safely...

Give me liberty or give me death.

Those were the people that made the sacrifices that brought about this great Republic - this Republic that has seen people more free than they have ever been before. Those were the people that actually believed those words: Give me liberty or give me death. Those weren't just words to them. It was a way of life.