Editorial: July 2 and the spirit of 1776
There is something about time and the change it brings that constantly mesmerizes and fascinates us.
We are, in actuality, avid students of history, and it should come as no surprise. Newspapers record history, after all. You might even say it's in our blood; one of the second generation Paddocks, Jeannette Paddock Nichols, daughter of our founder Hosea, became an accomplished historian at the University of Pennsylvania.
So on this day, the second of July, we can't help but pause to marvel at the pedestrian, fireplace era of 1776, a world not just of revolution but also a world before photographs and telephones, without automobiles and jet planes, unprotected by penicillin and pasteurization, yet to create central heat or central air.
It was a world of outhouses and chamber pots. Even the zipper had yet to be invented!
News from America couldn't reach Europe until a month after it happened. Given that reality, no wonder Britain lost the war. What a strategic disadvantage for the crown to require a minimum of two months - two voyages across the Atlantic - to respond to colonial tactics.
Just imagine what the world was like. And then imagine what it may be like two and a half centuries ahead. Enticing and frightening at the same time.
History teaches us that today is the anniversary of our country's birth. Today, not Tuesday.
Tuesday is Independence Day; it commemorates the July 4 signing of the Declaration of Independence.
But independence itself, well, that actually arrived on July 2 when the Second Continental Congress approved a motion by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia to withdraw the 13 colonies from British rule.
"The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha in the History of America," the legendary John Adams wrongly predicted. "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."
How vastly the world has changed since then. How vastly our nation has changed.
In some ways for worse. The size of government and the scope of entitlements have grown beyond control. The power of political parties has expanded immeasurably. Our discourse has erupted into cynicism.
But in so many ways for the better. Slavery has ended, glass ceilings have been at the least cracked, civil rights have been recognized and cherished. We are a prosperous nation guided by moral principles.
Over 241 years, our nation has relentlessly, sometimes painfully, evolved.
As that evolution continues. let's vow to work together to move our country, our liberty and our kinship forever forward.