Volume 18 , Issue 26

1888 - Independence by Arthur Chapman

The Fourth of July, 1776, saw one of the greatest events that ever went into history. Thirteen colonies. without money, without friends and with only the common ties of justice and liberty to bind them together, dared to oppose a rich and powerful nation, a nation that acknowledged no superior.

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While this nation was hiring a foreign, brutal soldiery to crush the colonies the tide of patriotic feeling was rising like an angry river, and, at last bursting the bonds that held it, it swept on its way, carrying the pride of England with it.

While the tyrannical king was plotting the submission of his subjects his effigy was burned in public and his leader likeness was cast into bullets to kill his mercenaries. His plots were outputted, his generals were outgeneraled, and defeated, humbled and angry, his remnant of troops sailed back to their native shores.

The hope of liberty animated the breast of every American; he fought with energy and desperation, and with the noble Washington to lead them the American colonists, poor and half-starved, defeated the well-disciplined troops of the British army.

When the old bellman at Independence Hall sent the clear notes of liberty resounding upon the air, the winds caught up the sound and carried it to every corner of the earth. Cuba heard it and was nerved for the fight for her independence. France heard it and a kingdom was overthrown. Russia heard it and the Czar is never safe. England heard it and it told her that her supremacy was lost and the lion had to bow to the eagle.

All was misery and privation, darkness and despair, but it was truly said that "'Tis the darkest hour before the dawn." Then the bell of Independence ushered in the dawn of liberty, the gloom was dispelled and the sun shone bright and clear on the birthday of the youngest nation.

When England, by acts of oppression goaded the colonies into assessing their independence, she little thought what a country she was losing, with gold to pay her debts, with coal to run her furnaces, with cotton to make her clothes, and she little thought that one hundred years later sh should send commissioners over to take part in a grand display of the manufactures and industries of different countries of the world, in which America, her despised and ill-treated colonies, stood at the head. She little thought that her ambassadors would show the inventions of her countrymen almost within sight of the place where the greatest general in the world, with his ragged troops, disheartened her best army.
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