[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16709-16711]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            INDEPENDENCE DAY

  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, the Senate is poised to adjourn, but 
before we adjourn, I want to call us away from the onrushing press of 
Senate business and impending airline schedules to pay tribute to 
Independence Day. Next Friday is the glorious Fourth of July, that most 
patriotic and star-spangled of holidays. With the Fourth of July 
holiday, summer is at its Halcyon best, with temperatures still 
enjoyable, skies richly blue, and trees and lawns still lush and green, 
and gardens coming into bewildering abundance. In fields and along the 
roadsides, wildflowers bloom in profusion, and wild blackberries earn 
our forgiveness for their thorns by offering the tender treasures of 
their glossy berries.
  It is a golden period of enjoyment for students on summer holiday, 
the respite still feels luxuriously long, full of golden days of 
enjoyment.
  The Fourth of July this year falls on a Friday, easily making a long 
weekend for summer pleasure. With luck, the Fourth will be clear and 
cooler, comfortable for marching bands and hometown parades, bathed in 
glorious sunshine for family picnics and perfect for evening symphonies 
and fireworks to compete with the glittering stars above.
  If the weather is sweltering, however, then we might be better able 
to empathize with the Delegates to the Second Continental Congress, who 
met in Philadelphia in the spring and summer of 1776. In hot and muggy 
summer weather, clad in heavy styles that were designed for a cooler 
European summer, the Delegates debated and amended, reportedly fending 
off flies from a

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nearby stable that swarmed the Hall and bit the Delegates through the 
silk hose on their lower legs. But they persevered in their momentous 
task.
  On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a motion to 
declare independence from England. His resolution declared:

       These United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and 
     independent States.

His resolution passed on July 2 by a 12-0 vote, with New York 
temporarily abstaining.
  The next day, on July 3, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, 
rejoicing over the decision to secede. To Abigail, he wrote:

       The 2nd of July will be a memorable epoch in the history of 
     America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by 
     succeeding generations as the Great Anniversary Festival.

He further suggested that it ought to be commemorated as the day of 
deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.

  This is John Adams speaking. This is not some rustic boob like I was 
when I came to the House more than half a century ago. Listen to him 
again:

       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, shows, games, sports, 
     guns, bells, bonfires, illuminations, from one end of this 
     Continent to the other, from this time forward, forever.

  How remarkably prescient. Adams was off on the date, as we celebrate 
the approval of the Declaration of Independence rather than of the 
adoption of the motion, but he certainly knew how Americans like to 
celebrate. As well, he accurately predicted the explosive growth of an 
embryonic nation into a continent-spanning colossus.
  That vision took great courage, coming as it did on the eve of 
putting his signature to a document that could easily become his death 
warrant. Every signer of that Declaration of Independence committed 
treason against England, against the King of England, against the 
crown. Every signer could have been arrested, put in chains and sent by 
boat to England; tried, convicted, and hanged. The delegates to the 
Continental Congress had, with this act, committed treason against the 
crown and set their nascent nation-state on the road to war. After the 
failed Jacobite uprising against England in 1745 under Bonnie Prince 
Charles, only 31 years before the delegate met in Philadelphia, the 
Scottish leaders had been beheaded in public ceremonies.
  One Delegate to the Congress, John Witherspoon, put it thus:

       There is a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time. We 
     perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to consent to our 
     own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, that 
     insures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this 
     very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not 
     respond to its accents, and strain every nerve to carry into 
     effect its provisions, is unworthy of the name of free man. 
     For my own part, of property, I have some; of reputation, 
     more. That reputation is staked, that property is pledged on 
     the issue of this contest; and although these grey hairs must 
     soon descend into the sepulcher, I would infinitely rather 
     that they descend thither by the hand of the executioner than 
     desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country.

  What beautiful words. The signers knew full well what risks they were 
running.
  The first anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of 
Independence took place in a nation at war, with our battle fortunes at 
low ebb. But Americans still celebrated in Philadelphia, U.S. ships of 
war were decked in red, white, and blue. At 1 o'clock, each ship fired 
a salvo of 13 cannons to honor the 13 States. Members of Congress dined 
in state with other civil and military dignitaries and made toasts to 
liberty and to fallen patriots. After dinner, the Members and officers 
of the Army reviewed the troops, followed by a ringing of bells and a 
show of fireworks.
  In 1788, Philadelphia was serving as the U.S. Capital. On that year, 
not only was the Declaration of Independence celebrated, but also the 
U.S. Constitution, which had recently been ratified by 10 States. This 
July Fourth celebration included another new feature--a parade with 
horse-drawn floats. One float, that of an enormous eagle, carried the 
Justices of the Supreme Court in lieu of today's beauty pageant queens.
  In 1826, the Nation achieved a milestone when the 50th Independence 
Day celebration was being planned. The mayor of Washington wrote to 
invite the surviving ex-Presidents and Signers of the Declaration to 
attend the festivities. The five men, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, 
James Madison, James Monroe, and Charles Carroll, were unable to 
attend. Why? Because of age or infirmity, or other reasons. Indeed, at 
10 minutes before 1 o'clock on July 4, 1826, Thomas Jefferson, 
principal drafter of the Declaration, passed away.
  John Adams, too, breathed his last on the same day. In his 90s and 
gravely ill, he had determined to hold on until the 50th anniversary of 
independence. That morning, he roused long enough to confirm to a 
servant that he knew that ``it is the glorious Fourth of July. God 
bless it. God bless you all,'' before fading into unconsciousness. 
Rousing later that afternoon, he confided unknowingly as he passed on 
to that other shore that ``Thomas Jefferson still survives.'' He did 
not know that Jefferson had died earlier that day.
  James Monroe, who fought in the Revolutionary War and became the 
fifth President of the United States, also died on July 4, in 1831. 
James Madison, the fourth President, died a week short of the 60th 
anniversary of Independence Day, on June 28, 1836.
  The last living Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles 
Carroll, performed one of his last public acts on July 2, 1828. He 
participated in a ground breaking ceremony initiating construction of 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, the first important railroad in the 
Nation. He died in 1832, at the age of 95. Also in 1828, President John 
Quincy Adams led an unusual 4th of July parade, up the Potomac River 
and the old Washington Canal to the site where construction was to 
start on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. These two acts underscore the 
vital link between the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution 
which followed it, and the vibrant economy which has made and kept the 
United States economy vibrant and strong for so many years.
  Our Nation is a union of disparate States, each of which has 
considerable power within its boundaries. But across those boundaries, 
linking the Union into a seamless web of bustling commerce and economic 
might, is the national infrastructure. Just as the Constitution 
provides for the common defense, so it promotes the common good by 
linking markets and people across States. Over the years, Federal 
support for great infrastructure projects, from the Chesapeake and Ohio 
Canal to the National Highway System, have woven the Nation into a 
unified economic structure. Federal support for rural electrification 
and rural telephone and Internet access have spread opportunity and 
progress from border to border and coast to coast, just as John Adams 
foretold in 1776.
  This 4th of July, as we all visit national parks, tour Federal 
monuments, drive on interstate highways, call friends and family around 
the country, and buy picnic goods grown all over the United States--as 
we celebrate a national Federal holiday under the protective watch of 
the U.S. military and Federal law enforcement agencies--we 
unconsciously enjoy the benefits of the Federal Government and of 
belonging to a union that is the United States.
  Each star on the flag, the flag beside the Presiding Officer's desk, 
we salute so proudly represents a single state, but only when they are 
aligned together in the constellation of 50 do we feel the strength and 
the glory that were won for us, beginning on July 4, 1776. This 
Independence Day, we would all do well to read and cherish the 
Declaration of Independence. Even more, we would do well as a Nation to 
study and cherish our Constitution, by which our freedom, so dearly won 
and so costly held, lives on.
  Too often in recent years and months have I seen unwise attempts to 
erode the checks and balances of the Constitution, unknowing or 
unthinking efforts to dissolve the institutions and

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practices established to make our Nation the free and representative 
government by our Founding Fathers. Attacks on the United States from 
without are met with instant, unhesitating defense by all Americans, 
but we are not so knowledgeable vigilant against the insidious 
weakening from within, even within this Chamber. We are all of us, with 
our voices and our votes, the last, best guardians of American freedom 
and independence. We lack only the weapons of knowledge and awareness.
  I close with a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, entitled ``O Ship 
of State.''

     Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
     Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
     Humanity with all its fears,
     With all the hopes of future years,
     Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
     We know what Master laid thy keel!
     What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
     Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
     What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
     In what a forge and what a heat
     Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
     Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
     'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
     'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
     And not a rent made by the gale!
     In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
     In spite of false lights on the shore,
     Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
     Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
     Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
     Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
     Are all with thee--are all with thee!

  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the 
quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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