American Minute with Bill Federer
The Liberty Bell is rung!
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The
Pennsylvania Assembly
ordered it to commemorate the
50th anniversary of Quaker leader William Penn founding the Colony in 1701
and writing the Charter of Privileges.
Quakers
were the first and strongest voices to
end slavery.
In 1751,
Pennsylvania's Assembly
declared a
"Year of Jubilee"
and commissioned the
bell to be put in the Philadelphia State House.
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Speaker Isaac Norris
read the
Leviticus chapter 25 verse 10:
"And ye shall make hallow the fiftieth year, and
PROCLAIM LIBERTY
THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a
jubilee."
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"Jubilee" in the
Israelite calendar was, after seven cycles of seven years - 49 years, there would be a
sabbath year of release.
Slaves would be
freed,
debts were to be
forgiven, and
lands were to be
returned to the original families who owned them, to demonstrate the mercies of God.
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Inscribed on
The Liberty Bell
is:
"PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE THE INHABITANTS THEREOF."
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The
Liberty Bell,
weighing over 2,000 pounds, was cast in England in August of 1752.
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The
Liberty Bell
got its name from being rung JULY 8, 1776, to call the citizens of Philadelphia together to hear the
Declaration of Independence read out loud
for the
first time.
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A copy of the
Declaration
was rushed to
General Washington
in New York, who had it
read out loud to his troops,
July 9, 1776.
Washington
then immediately appointed chaplains to each regiment, ordering that:
"Officers and soldiers
... attend carefully upon
religious exercises.
The
blessing and protection of Heaven
are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger -
The
General
hopes and trusts, that
every officer and man,
will endeavor so to live, and act, as becomes a
Christian Soldier,
defending the
dearest Rights and Liberties of his country."
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During the
Revolution,
as the
British
were
invading Philadelphia
in 1777, the
Liberty Bell
was rushed out of the city to prevent the British from
melting it down
to make
musket balls.
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Transported on a wagon covered under hay and manure to prevent the British from spotting it, the
Liberty Bell
was brought to
Zion Reformed Church
in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
The church's floorboards were temporarily removed to lower it into the basement.
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Finally, the British evacuated Philadelphia and the
Liberty Bell
was returned in June of 1778.
It was rung every
anniversary
of the
first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.
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The most common story is that the
Liberty Bell cracked
JULY 8, 1835, while being rung at the
funeral of Chief Justice John Marshall,
perhaps as a portent.
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John Marshall,
the
longest-serving Chief Justice,
began the trend of
increasing the Supreme Court's power
by using an expansive reading of the enumerated powers, thereby advancing the view of the supremacy of the Supreme Court through
"judicial review."
This pattern has been observed throughout history, where
good leaders
concentrate power
to be
more efficient in doing good,
but after they are gone,
ambitious leaders inherit the concentrated power
and use it
oppressively.
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Joseph in Egypt
helped
concentrate power
into the
hands of the Pharaoh
who used it for
good
, providing
food
for the
Children of Israel,
giving them the
best land of Goshen,
and even giving them
jobs
taking care of his cattle.
Then there was a
new Pharaoh
"who
did not know Joseph,"
and he used the
concentrated power
to
oppress
the
Children of Israel.
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Thomas Jefferson
had warned Mr. Hammond, 1821:
"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in ...
the federal judiciary ...
working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be
usurped from the States."
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Webster's 1828 Dictionary
defined "usurp" as:
USURP,
verb transitive. [Latin usurpo.]
To seize and hold in possession by force or
without right;
as, to usurp a throne; to
usurp
the prerogatives of the crown;
to usurp power.
To usurp the right of a patron, is to oust or dispossess him. Vice sometimes
usurps
the place of virtue.
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Thomas Jefferson
explained to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823:
"On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time
when the Constitution was adopted,
recollect the spirit manifested in the
debates,
and instead of trying
what meaning may be squeezed out of the text,
or invented against it,
conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
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James Madison
wrote to Henry Lee, June 25, 1824:
"I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to
the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified
by the nation.
In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.
And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable ... exercise of its powers ...
What a
metamorphosis
would be produced in the code of law
if all its ancient phraseology
were to be taken
in its modern sense."
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As the
Quakers of Pennsylvania
were
anti-slavery,
and the the Leviticus 25
Year of Jubilee
freed the slaves,
the
Liberty Bell
became an
anti-slavery symbol.
It was popularized by the
New York Anti-Slavery Society's
journal,
Anti-Slavery Record.
In 1839,
Boston's abolitionist society
Friends of Liberty
titled their journal
The Liberty Bell.
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Abolitionist
William Lloyd Garrison's
anti-slavery publication
The Liberator
helped promote
The Liberty Bell
as an symbol to
fight slavery in the Democrat South.
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At the
150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,
1926,
President Calvin Coolidge
stated:
"People at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the
Liberty Bell
as
a sacred relic.
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... That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear as only the outgrown meeting place and
the shattered bell
...
But to those who know, they have become consecrated. They are the framework of
a spiritual event.
The world looks upon them because of their associations of 150 years ago,
as it looks upon the Holy Land because of what took place there nineteen hundred years ago."
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Coolidge
added:
"The American Revolution
represented the ... convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving,
God-fearing people who knew their rights,
and possessed the courage to
dare to maintain them ..."
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Coolidge
explained further:
"In the great outline of its
principles the DECLARATION
was the result of the
RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS
of the preceding period ...
The PRINCIPLES ... which went into the
DECLARATION of Independence
... are found in the texts, the
SERMONS,
and the writings of the
EARLY COLONIAL CLERGY ...
They preached
equality
because they believed in
the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
They justified
freedom
by the text that
we are all created in the divine image ...
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... Placing EVERY MAN on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, WHERE
NO ONE POSSESSED ANY RIGHT TO RULE OVER HIM,
he must inevitably choose his own rulers through
a system of SELF-GOVERNMENT ...
In order that they might have
freedom
to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, WHOLE
CONGREGATIONS
with their
PASTORS
had migrated to the colonies ..."
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Coolidge
added:
"... In its main feature the
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
is a great
SPIRITUAL DOCUMENT.
It is a
declaration
not of material but of
spiritual conceptions.
Equality,
LIBERTY,
popular sovereignty, the rights of man -- these are not elements which we can see and touch.
They are ideals.
They have their SOURCE and their roots in the
RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS.
They belong to the unseen world."
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Sir William Blackstone
wrote in
Commentaries on the Laws of England
(1765-1769), which was the definitive pre-Revolutionary source of common law by United States courts:
"Of great importance to the public is the
preservation
of this
personal liberty;
for if once it were left in the power of any the highest
magistrate
to
imprison arbitrarily
whomever he or his officers thought proper ...
there would soon be an end of all other rights."
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Coolidge
concluded his address:
"UNLESS the
faith
of the American in these
RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS
is to endure, the
principles of OUR DECLARATION WILL PERISH.
We cannot continue to enjoy the RESULT
if we neglect and abandon the CAUSE."
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
[email protected]
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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