I
heard the Declaration of Independence read in the streets yesterday.
It
was proclaimed in a loud voice that:
“When
in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among
the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
The
town’s crier went on to read that “all men are created equal;” that governments
are meant to serve the people and to get their power from the people they
serve, not vice versa; and that whenever a government grossly forgets its place,
“it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it” and to create a new
one.
The
Declaration was greeted with a lot of “Huzzahs!” though there was some definite
skepticism and even disgust expressed among the crowd of listeners.
Some
people didn’t think the effort necessary. Others believed the king was in the
right; to say otherwise, they snipped, was absurd and offensive. And while I
didn’t take any polls, chances are that a majority of those assembled were
sunshine patriots who would slink away or shut up as soon as it became too
difficult.
Yes,
they recognized they were being treated unjustly, but they didn’t want to
suffer any further than they absolutely had to, and so they would submit to
whoever they needed to. They just required a reminder or two that they actually
belonged with the first group of people in the crowd: the ones who thought
freedom was too much of a bother.
I
sat on a modern bench in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, taking all of that
in. It begs the question of what my historical fiction heroine Abigail
Carpenter first felt on hearing those words up in Princeton, New Jersey.
That’s
not detailed in Maiden America. I actually
never considered whether she cheered the news with every ounce of her being, or
whether she felt an immediate fear at the thought of breaking free from
everything familiar and of what she would have to sacrifice to do so.
Perhaps
I’ll touch on that in Designing America,
which I hope to officially start writing next month. Yes, that story takes
place years after the war began and The United States was declared its own
country, but Abigail must have thought about it all the same.
Perhaps
she even doubted the cause of liberty a time or two.
Huzzah!
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