American Minute with Bill Federer
Patriots & Self-defense - "A people that legislate for themselves ought to be in the habit of protecting themselves"
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The sun never set on the
British Empire.
It was the largest empire in world history.
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Out of nearly 200 countries in the world, only 22 were never controlled, invaded or attacked by
Britain.
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In April of 1775, the British Royal Military Governor of Massachusetts,
General Thomas Gage,
sent 800 British Army Regulars, under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith,
on a preemptive raid to
seize guns
from American patriots at
Lexington and Concord.
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George Mason
of Virginia stated:
"To
disarm
the people is the best and most effectual way to
enslave
them."
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Noah Webster
wrote in
An Examination into the leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,
Oct. 10, 1787, (Paul Leicester Ford, ed.,
Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States,
1888, 1968):
"Before a standing army can rule, the
people must be disarmed;
as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe.
The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the
sword
because
the whole body of the people are armed."
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Machiavelli
wrote in
The Prince
(trans. L. Ricci, 1952, p. 73, 81):
"Among
evils
caused by being
disarmed,
it renders you contemptible ...
It is not reasonable to suppose that one who is
armed
will obey willing one who is
unarmed."
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James Madison
wrote (Letters & Writings of James Madison, 1865, p. 406):
"The advantage of
being armed,
which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprise of ambition ...
Kingdoms of Europe ... are afraid to trust the
people with arms."
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Supreme Court Justice
Joseph Story
wrote in
Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,
2nd Edition, 1833, p. 125):
"The right of the citizens to
keep and bear arms
has justly been considered as the palladium (safeguard) of the liberties of a Republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers."
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Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice
Thomas Cooley
wrote in The General Principles of Constitutional Law (2nd Ed., 1891, p. 282):
"The
Second Amendment
... was meant to be a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers ...
The people ... shall have the right to
keep and bear arms,
and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose."
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Patrick Henry
wrote (Elliott, ed.,
The Debates in the Several State Conventions,
1836, 1941, p. 378):
"Let him candidly tell me, where and when did freedom exist when the
sword and the purse were given up from the people?
Unless a miracle in human affairs interposed,
no nation ever retained its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse
...
The great object is, that
every man be armed
... Everyone who is able may have a
gun."
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Joel Barlow
wrote in
Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe, Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a General Revolution in the Principle of Government
(1792, 1956, p. 46):
"The foundation of everything is ... that the people will form an equal representative government ... that
the people will be universally armed
...
A people that legislate for themselves ought to be in the habit of protecting themselves."
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Jeffrey R. Snyder,
esq., wrote in "A Nation of Cowards"
(The Public Interest
, 1993, no. 113):
"Classical republican philosophy has long recognized the critical relationship between
personal liberty
and the
possession of arms
by a people ready and willing to use them."
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Marcus Tullius Cicero
wrote (
Cicero, Selected Political Speeches,
trans. M. Grant, 1969, p. 222):
"There exists a law ... inborn in our hearts ... that if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies,
any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."
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Montesquieu
wrote in
The Spirit of the Laws
(trans. T. Nugent, 1899, p. 64):
"It is unreasonable ... to oblige a man not to attempt the
defense of his own life."
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The Massachusetts Provincial Congress of Massachusetts,
October 26, 1774, organized their defenses with one-third of their regiments being
“Minutemen,”
ready to fight at a minute’s notice.
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They got the idea from the Bible, where in is Ancient Israel every man was
armed
and ready to defend his family and community:
"They
all hold swords,
being expert in war:
every man
hath his
sword upon his thigh"
(Song of Solomon 3:8);
"Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Put
every man
his
sword by his side"
(Exodus 32:27);
"Every one
with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with
the other hand held a weapon.
For the builders,
every one had his sword girded by his side
(Nehemiah 4:17-18).
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E.C. Wines wrote in
Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews
(NY: Geo. P. Putnam & Co., 1853):
"Moses’ constitution made no provision for a standing army ... The
whole body of citizens
... formed
a national guard."
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David B. Kopel wrote in "Ancient Hebrew Militia Law" (
Denver University Law Review,
July 15, 2013):
"New Englanders
intensely
self-identified with ancient Israel
... Thus,
ancient Hebrew militia law
is part of the intellectual background of the
American militia system,
and of the
Second Amendment ...
Every male
'from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able
to bear arms'
... were obliged to fight, to go forth
'armed
to battle." Men who failed this duty "sinned against the Lord.'"
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Aristotle
wrote in
Parts of Animals
(trans. A. Peck, 1961, p. 373):
"Animals
have just
one method of defense
and cannot change it for another ... For
man,
on the other hand,
many means of defense are available,
and he can change them at any time ...
Take the
hand:
this is as good as a talon, or a claw, or a horn, or again, a
spear, or a sword,
or
any other weapon
or tool it can be all of these."
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Aristotle
wrote in
Politics
(trans. T. Sinclair, 1962, p. 274):
"Those who possess and can wield arms
are in a position to decide whether the constitution is to continue or not."
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Cesare Beccaria
wrote in
On Crimes and Punishment
(trans. H. Paolucci, 1963, p. 87-88):
"False is the idea ... that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it ...
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature.
They
disarm
those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most scared laws of humanity, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity ...
Such laws ... serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for
an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
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Roman historian Livy
wrote (trans. B. Foster, 1919, p. 148):
"Formerly (during the reign of Rome's 6th king, Servius Tullius, 578-535 BC) the
right to bear arms
had belonged solely to the patricians.
Now plebeians were given a place in the army ...
All the citizens
capable of
bearing arms
were required to provide
their own swords, spears, and other armor."
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Thomas Paine
wrote
(Writings of Thomas Paine,
Conway, ed., 1894, p. 56):
"The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of
self defense.
The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand,
arms,
like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order."
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Thomas More
wrote in
Utopia
(trans. R.M. Adams, 1975, p. 71):
"Men and women
alike ... assiduously
exercise themselves in military training
... to protect their own territory or to drive an invading enemy out of their friends' land or, in pity for a people oppressed by tyranny, to deliver them by force of
arms
from the yoke and slavery of the tyrant."
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Machiavelli
wrote in
On the Art of War
(trans. E. Farnsworth, 1965, p. 30):
"Citizens,
when legally
armed
... did the least mischief to any state ...
Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their
citizens were armed
all that time, but many other states that have been
disarmed
have
lost their liberty
in less than forty years."
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Machiavelli
wrote in
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius
(trans. L. Walker, 1965, p. 492):
"If any city be
armed
... as Rome was ...
all its citizens,
alike in their private and official capacity ... it will be found they will be of the same mind ...
But, when they are not familiar with
arms
and merely trust to the whim of fortune ... they will change with the changes of fortune."
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Jefferson
wrote to George Washington, 1796
(The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia,
John P. Foley, ed., New York & London, Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1900, No. 2138, iv, 143; Paul Leicester Ford, ed., vii. 84):
"One loves to possess
arms,
though they hope never to have occasion for them."
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Machiavelli
wrote in
The Prince
(trans. L. Ricci, 1952, p. 73, 81):
"An
armed
republic submits less easily to the rule of one of its citizens."
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Adam Smith
wrote in
The Wealth of Nations
(ed., Cannan, p. 309):
"Men of republican principles have been jealous of a standing army as dangerous of liberty ...
The standing army of Caesar destroyed the Roman Republic. The standing army of Cromwell turned the Long Parliament out of doors."
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Earl Warren
wrote in
The Bill of Rights and the Military
(37N.Y.U. L. Rev. 181, 1962):
"Our War of the Revolution
was, in good measure, fought as a protest against standing armies ...
Thus we find in the Bill of Rights, Amendment 2 ... specifically authorizing
a decentralized militia,
guaranteeing
the right of the people to keep and bear arms."
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Jeffrey R. Snyder,
esq., wrote in "A Nation of Cowards"
(The Public Interest,
1993, no. 113):
"Political theorists as dissimilar as Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau all shared the view that the
possession of arms is vital for resisting tyranny,
and that to be
disarmed
by one's government is tantamount to being
enslaved by it."
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The Texas Declaration of Independence,
March 2, 1836, stated:
"The late changes made in
the government by General Antonio Lopez Santa Anna,
who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers, as the cruel alternative, either abandon our homes acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny ...
It has demanded us to deliver up our arms,
which are essential to our defense - the rightful property of freemen-and formidable only to tyrannical governments."
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Mahatma Gandhi
wrote in
An Autobiography of the Story of My Experiments with the Truth
(trans. M. Desai, 1927):
"Among the many
misdeeds
of the
British rule in India,
history will look upon the Act
depriving a whole nation of arms
as the blackest."
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Islamic Sharia law
forbids non-Muslims from possessing
arms, swords or weapons
of any kind.
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Adolph Hitler
acted similarly with his Edict of March 18, 1938:
"The most
foolish
mistake we could possibly make would be to
allow the subjected people to carry arms;
history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected people to carry
arms
have prepared their own fall."
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German Firearm Act of 1937
stated:
"Firearm licenses
will
not
be granted to
Jews."
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Richard Munday reported in "The Monopoly of Power," presented to the American Society of Criminology, 1991, the
Nazi order regarding arms, SA Ober Führer of Bad Tolz:
"SA (Storm Troopers), SS (para-military adjunct of the Gestapo), and Stahlhelm ... Anyone who does not belong to one of the above-named organizations and who
unjustifiably keeps his weapon
... must be regarded as an enemy of the national government and will be brought to account without compunction and with the utmost severity."
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Jefferson
wrote in the
Declaration on Taking Up Arms,
July 1775
(The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia,
John P. Foley, ed., New York & London, Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1900, No. 2152; Paul Leicester Ford, ed. i, 476):
"We ... most solemnly, before God and the world declare that ... the
arms
we have been compelled to assume we will use with perseverance,
exerting to their utmost energies all those powers which our Creator hath given us, to preserve that liberty
which He committed to us in sacred deposit."
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Democrat Vice-President
Hubert Humphrey
was quoted by David T. Hardy,
The Second Amendment as a Restraint on State and Federal Firearms Restrictions
(Kates, ed.,
Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out,
1979):
"The right of citizens to bear arms
is just one more
guarantee against arbitrary government,
one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which
historically has proved to be always possible."
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In 1775, on April 19th, "Patriots' Day," the British continued their march to
Lexington and Concord
intent, not only on seizing
arms,
but to arrest
Boston Tea Party
leader
Samuel Adams
and Massachusetts Provincial Congress president
John Hancock.
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On there way to
Lexington,
the British passed through
Arlington, Massachusetts.
They stormed the inn where lodged the patriots
Elbridge Gerry, Azor Orne
and
Jeremiah Lee -- America's largest colonial ship owner
and the wealthiest man in Massachusetts who was using his ships to smuggle in supplies for the patriots.
The three fled the inn wearing only their night clothes and hid, laying on the ground in a cold, wet cornfield for hours.
Jeremiah Lee
caught a pneumonia and died a few weeks later.
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John Hancock,
who had previously experienced
British tax collectors
confiscating his merchant ship
Liberty
in 1768, led the
Massachusetts Provincial Congress
to declare, April 15, 1775:
"In circumstances dark as these, it becomes us, as men and Christians, to reflect that, whilst every prudent measure should be taken to ward off the impending judgments ...
(a day) ... be set apart as a Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer ... to confess their sins ... to implore the Forgiveness of all our Transgression."
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Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull,
whom Washington called 'the first of the patriots', was the only colonial governor at the start of the Revolution to support the patriot cause. He proclaimed a Day of Fasting, April 19, 1775, that:
"God would graciously pour out His Holy Spirit on us to bring us to a thorough repentance and effectual reformation that our iniquities may not be our ruin;
that He would restore, preserve and secure the liberties of this and all the other British American colonies, and make the land a mountain of Holiness, and habitation of righteousness forever."
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On April 19, 1775, the sun rose with 800
British regulars
approaching the
Lexington
town green.
There they were confronted by Lexington's militia, comprised of 77 men who were mostly members of the Church of Christ, pastored by
Rev. Jonas Clark,
whose wife's cousin was
John Hancock:
Captain John Parker
told the militia:
"Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have War, let it begin here!"
It is disputed who fired first, but the
British opened fire
and
killed or wounded eighteen of Captain Parker's men.
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In his sermon preached a year later, April 19, 1776,
Pastor Jonas Clark
described:
"Under cover of the darkness, a brigade of these instruments of violence and tyranny, make their approach ...
They enter this town ... like murders and cut-throats ... without provocation, without warning, when no war was proclaimed, they draw the
sword
of violence, upon the inhabitants of this town,
and with a cruelty and barbarity, which would have made the most hardened savage blush, they shed INNOCENT BLOOD!...
And the names of
Munroe, Parker,
and others, that fell victims to the rage of blood-thirsty oppressors, on that gloomy morning ...
And from the nineteenth of April, 1775, we may venture to predict, will be dated, in future history, THE LIBERTY or SLAVERY of the AMERICAN WORLD, according as a sovereign God shall see fit to smile, or frown upon the interesting cause, in which we are engaged."
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The American militia retreated, growing to number 400, and took a stand at
Concord's Old North Bridge.
The
British fired first,
wounding four and killing two.
Patriot militia commander
John Buttrick
yelled:
"Fire, for God's sake, fellow soldiers, fire!"
Taking many casualties, the
British
began a hasty retreat 20 miles back to Boston, being ambushed along the way by
John Parker's militia
in
"Parker's Revenge."
Thus the
Revolutionary War began
with
an attempt by government officers to seize citizens' guns.
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The poem,
"Paul Revere's Ride,"
written by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
described how the warning sent from
Boston's Old North Church
that the
British
were coming:
"Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of
Paul Revere,
On the 18th of April, in 75;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
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He said to his friend, 'If the
British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the
North Church
tower as a signal light ...
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through
every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk
to be up and to arm ...'"
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Though
Paul Revere
was captured along the way,
William Dawes
and
Samuel Prescott
continued their midnight ride.
"Through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight."
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Another rider that night who carried the warning north to
Medford, Massachusetts,
was 29-year-old
African-American Wentworth Cheswell
of New Hampshire.
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A similar situation occurred on the night of April 26, 1777, when 16-year-old
Sybil Ludington
mounted her horse, Star, and frantically rode to alert the American militia in Danbury, Connecticut, under the command of her father,
Colonel Henry Ludington,
that the British were approaching.
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After
British
captured
Charleston, South Carolina,
on May 12, 1780, 19-year-old
Jimmy Blair
was an "express riders" who, though shot in the chest, successfully alerted Americans prior to the
Battle of King's Mountain,
being memorialized in a poem written by
Thomas Trotwood Moore titled "The Ride of the Rebel":
"The race of the rebel, wilderness run, ...
The race for a nation just begun, ...
You will find it not on the gilded page, ...
But on King's Mountain's starlit stage, ...
Over the Border the
British
came,
Their jackets red as the sun,
City and hamlet had felt of the fall,
From the flash of the
Red Coat's gun.
Over the border
Ferguson
rode,
He never rode back again,
For
Jimmy Blair
his horse bestode,
And galloped with might and main.
To Cleveland and to Campbell's tent,
O'er hill and o'er valley he sped,
And roused the patriots as he went,
As Gabriel would rouse the dead.
Go! For your country's life, he said,
And away like a ghost he was gone,
Riding from morn to midnight on to morn.
Oh, never was a race like that,
Since gallant steed was born!"
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Another rider was 27-year-old
John "Jack" Jouett, Jr.,
the
"Paul Revere of the South"
who hurriedly rode the night of June 3, 1781, to
warn Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson
that the British cavalry led by
Colonel Tarleton
was
headed to Charlottesville to capture him.
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
continued his poem, describing how American patriots confronted government troops on
Lexington Green
and
Concord's Old North Bridge:
"You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the
British Regulars fired and fled,---
How
the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And
only pausing to fire and load."
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Longfellow
ended:
"So through the night rode
Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
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In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of
Paul Revere."
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Two months after the
Battles of Lexington and Concord,
the Continental Congress, under
President John Hancock,
declared, June 12, 1775:
"Congress ... considering the present critical, alarming and calamitous state ... do earnestly recommend, that Thursday, the 12th of July next, be observed by the inhabitants of all the English Colonies on this Continent, as
a Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,
that we may with united hearts and voices, unfeignedly confess and deplore our many sins and offer up our joint supplications to the
All-wise, Omnipotent and merciful Disposer of all Events,
humbly beseeching Him to forgive our iniquities ...
It is recommended to
Christians of all denominations
to assemble for public worship and to abstain from servile labor and recreations of said day."
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Though it took eight years, Americans won their independence.
A century later, on April 19, 1875, at that same
Old North Bridge,
American patriots were honored by the dedication of the
"Minute Man Statue" designed by Daniel Chester French.
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On the statue's base is a stanza of the poem
The Concord Hymn,
written
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
April 19, 1860:
"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And
fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
And time the ruined bridge has swept,
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.
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On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
O Thou
who made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid time and nature gently spare,
The shaft we raised to them and Thee."
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
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