As the Fourth approaches

As we prepare to celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, there are a few things we need to keep in mind, especially under the current circumstances with American troops deployed on foreign soil and under fire. I know the “hostilities” supposedly ended on May 1, but I don’t think you could convince the families of the soldiers killed by hostile fire since then.
This nation was founded by honorable men who did not always see eye to eye. They were not super men of demi gods as history books sometimes portray them. They were ordinary men forced by circumstances to perform extraordinary tasks.
We can be thankful that these ordinary men had enough cumulative wisdom to understand the situation in which they found themselves. Specifically, they understood they were forming a new nation in which honorable men, such as themselves, could disagree and still remain under one government by reconciling and compromising their differences.
Prime examples were John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and John Adams of Massachusetts. Adams went on to become the second President of the United State and one of the most celebrated of our Founding Fathers, but history has all but forgotten Dickinson. The two men were equally prominent among their peers in the Continental Congress and in their individual ways equally worthy of our respect for the roles they played in the initiation of our country.
Adams was a Boston lawyer who owned a farm in Braintree, Massachusetts, where his family lived. He was a notorious Firebrand, the name given to a group of early radical proponents of independence from England, and was widely acknowledged as one of the most difficult men to get along with in the colonies. In his letters to his wife, Abigail, he made frequent mention of how much he was disliked by his colleagues in the Congress.
Dickinson, on the other hand, was a wealthy Philadelphia land owner who enjoyed the respect and even admiration of most people. Surviving documents of the time describe him as congenial and friendly.
Yet, Dickinson was so opposed to the separation from England that he could not bring himself to sign the Declaration, even though the colony of Pennsylvania, by majority vote of its three representatives in the Congress, supported independence.
It is important to understand what a startlingly unique document the American Declaration of Independence was in 1776, and how radical it was in terms of eighteenth century politics. For the men who signed it, the Declaration was an open admission of treason against the English Royal government and, therefore, an invitation to the British to “Come hang me.”
But this was not why Dickinson refused to sign. He firmly believed that it was in the best interests of the people in all 13 American colonies to remain under the British flag. The New World was a pressure cooker of international tensions in the 1770s, reflecting the blood-lusting hatred that existed among the colonial nations of Europe. It was not uncommon for several nations to claim ownership of the same patch of the Western Hemisphere, and to be willing to back up their claims with open warfare.
England was one of the major players in this drama, and Dickinson believed that an independent America, without the backing of the British army and navy, sooner or later would fall under the control of one of the other colonial nations. But his opinion failed to hold sway because most other Congressional delegates believed an independent America could rely on the friendship and support of France, a shaky political philosophy even in the eighteenth century.
Even though Dickinson could not bring himself to sign the Declaration of Independence, he did enlist in the Continental Army and fought in defense of the fledgling country. He survived the war, but died, all but forgotten, in 1808. Adams never bore arms, but remained in the civilian government throughout the Revolutionary War. He was lionized as one of the heroes of the Revolution. and died in 1813, a few hours after his fellow signer of the Declaration, former President and long time political rival Thomas Jefferson.
Adams and Dickinson never managed to agree on what course America should take, but they developed a respect for one another. Today, politicians who disagree on a question tend to characterize their opponents as foolish, stupid or even disloyal. But then, we live in a less civilized age.