My father was born on Independence Day 1910, if he were living today, he would be 100 years of age. We never celebrated his birthday, we were all too busy working, middle of summer, crops in the fields, gathering and gardening, too many responsibilities, schooling for children in the fall and college in the future, the needs of the church, putting something away for old age.
As far as I know, even though I know they paid their social security taxes including the excessive taxes on the farm land, neither of my parents ever collected a social security check. My mother died at 62, two weeks before she would have received her first check and two weeks after her last child had graduated from college. Besides, Senator Bailey had told my father that there was no money in the social security trust fund, just a big IOU. Both believed that Christians taking anti-Christian money caused an anti-Christian country.
My father had too much pride in his family ancestors, his work ethic, to ever take anything from the government. It was a matter of integrity, two of my ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, Robert and Lewis Morris, founding Morristown, New Jersey, that side of the family moved north, my side moved south to North Carolina. Robert Morris wrote the preamble to the Declaration of Independence and later served as an ambassador to France. During then fighting there, he saw naked mens bodies dragged through the streets of Paris. He wrote of the uncivilized acts of man, man's inhumanity to man, such as in Mogadishu, Somalia (American soldiers pulled through the streets of this war-torn city, see the movie Black Hawk Down).
Every time I pass the home place of Dr. William Hooper of this city, I think of what he risked to sign the Declaration, the beautiful view from his home of the Atlantic ocean. All 56 signers having risked life, wealth and sacred honor. Lewis Morris lost everything and died in prison.
The oldest signer of the declaration, or at least the longest-living was Charles Carroll who died at 95. He was a lawyer, but was never allowed to practice law in this country because he was Roman Catholic. In spite of the inequities, then as now, they knew, and we should know, that as Dr. Franklin said, “Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Three things my parents, grandparents, old people in our large farming community talked about their entire lives, and until they died, the Great Depression, Hurricane Hazel of 1954 (I was away in the military at that time), and the Fourth of July picnic. Across from the great home where my mother, her father before her, and his father before him were born and raised was a large, 4-room schoolhouse where my grandfather's sister, Aunt Cattie was the school teacher. Every fourth of July, the entire community would get together at the school for a big picnic. There was a large ball-field at the rear of the school building where they played ball all day. Under the trees in the front of the school, this building this setting is still there to this day, they put up tables for the meal of the year. My great uncle, who had never married, slept every night of his life in the house in which he was born, drove a team of mules into the nearest town and brought back a very expensive block of ice. This at a time when electricity was unknown ,was the only ice these people had all year. (Before electricity, ships would go to the Arctic and bring back loads of ice, the ice was stored in thick buildings, once such building is here on the river, just a block from my house. Wealthy families in the community had a refrigerated “icebox”. After electricity, ice was made from ice factories, by freezing water) He would shave the ice, for iced tea, milkshakes, and hand-churned ice cream.
Often, a politician would come by and make a speech, choirs from the local churches would sing. Everyone came, regardless of skin color, rich/poor, young/old, this is where many romances started. Each family had it's own flag which they brought to the picnic.
Now, there was segregation, discrimination, inequity, but these people, several denominations, separate schools, came together on such occasions, it was the same in the church. I still remember the divider which came down the center of the church building. The women sat on the left side of the divider, the men on the right side, the black people who worked on the farms, sat on the balcony. After couples reached a certain age, there was one section next to the pulpit, the “amen corner” where these old couples sat. The only service were men and women sat together, along with the blacks, was a funeral. They all came together at a time of sorrow, and they all came together at a time of joy.
They came together during the great flu epidemic of 1918 because they had to care for one another, the living had to bury the dead. The country doctor, Dr. Hayes, came with his buggy to care for them until he died of the flu, then they were on their own. People outside the community did not come into the community, because they could not afford to take the “bugs” back to their family and friends. Aunt Cattie died, along with several of her sisters, my mother's youngest brother died. This was the hard life of our ancestors, independent, hard-working, god-fearing, taking on the responsibilities of life, they knew what later generations have forgotten.
Next to creation by God alone, is the procreation of individuals, a man and woman coming together to produce one made in the image of God...completely different from any other individual who has ever lived. Even with identical twins, same DNA, there are different fingerprints, different flex in the iris of the eye, different voice patterns. God's chief creation, given with his freedom, ours to defend and enjoy (John 8:32-36).
Abraham Lincoln's Independence Day Address (July 4, 1963)
Fellow-citizens: I am very glad to see you to-night. But yet I will not say I thank you for this call. But I do most sincerely thank Almighty God for the occasion on which you have called.
How long ago is it? Eighty odd years since, upon the Fourth day of July, for the first time in the world, a union body of representatives was assembled to declare as a self-evident truth that all men were created equal. That was the birthday of the United States of America. Since then the fourth day of July has had several very peculiar recognitions.
The two most distinguished men who framed and supported that paper, including the particular declaration I have mentioned, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the one having framed it, and the other sustained it most ably in debate, the only two of the fifty-five or fifty-six who signed it, I believe, who were ever President of the United States, precisely fifty years after they put their hands to that paper it pleased the Almighty God to take away from this stage of action on the Fourth of July.
This extraordinary coincidence we can understand to be a dispensation of the Almighty Ruler of Events. Another of our Presidents, five years afterwards, was called from this stage of existence on the same day of the month, and now on this Fourth of July just past, when a gigantic rebellion has risen in the land, precisely at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow that principle “that all men are created equal,” we have a surrender of one of their most powerful positions and powerful armies forced upon them on that very day.
And I see in the succession of battles in Pennsylvania, which continued three days, so rapidly following each other as to be justly called one great battle, fought on the first, second and third of July; on the fourth the enemies of the declaration that all men are created equal had to turn tail and run. Gentlemen, this is a glorious theme and a glorious occasion for a speech, but I am not prepared to make one worthy of the theme and worthy of the occasion.
I would like to speak in all praise that is due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the Union and liberties of this country from the beginning of this war, not on occasions of success, but upon the more trying occasions of the want of success. I say I would like to speak in praise of these men, particularizing their deeds, but I am unprepared. I should dislike to mention the name of a single officer, lest in doing so I wrong some other one whose name may not occur to me.
Recent events bring up certain names, gallantly prominent, but I do not want to particularly name them at the expense of others, who are as justly entitled to our gratitude as they. I therefore do not upon this occasion name a single man. And now I have said about as much as I ought to say in this impromptu manner, and if you please, I’ll take the music.
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