Nelson A. Pryor: Guest Columnist
Our Declaration of Independence came about because of out ancestors’ toil and bloodshed. Liberty always costs much.
We are not descendants of fearful men. They were aware of their heritage. They were concerned about us, the yet unborn.
One of our historic victories, for liberty, was the impactful battle of Bannockburn. Read the part of the Declaration of Arbroath, of 1320, which brought Robert the Bruce and 300 years of freedom to Scotland: “For so long as 100 men remain alive, we shall never, under any condition, submit to the domination of the English. It is not for glory, or riches, or honors, that we fight. But for liberty, which no good man will consent to lose, but with his life.”
What a heritage
The early American colonists recognized that the British wanted to use the colonies as a doormat, just as they had earlier tried to do with the Scots. That the Colonists did not have the rights of Englishmen; and England expected to get away with that?
In 1689, the people of the Boston, Mass., area were described in “An Account of the Late Revolution in New England,” by Nathanael Byfield. The Bostonians protested the early usurpations of the king. They wanted to oust the imposed Sir Edmund Andross for his actions against their colonial forts and Charters. It will be remembered that Plymouth Colony was established in 1620.
Declaration of Independence
History would record that the second general Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, would announce a Declaration of Independence in the names of each of the colonies.
Not only would that Continental Congress declare that the colonies were supposed to be recognized as having the “Rights of Englishmen,” but recognition of other historical documents, as well, such as the “Magna Carta,” etc.
The main idea of the Declaration of Independence was the third part, which said: “That we united Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
By each of the 13 individual colonies, being officially declared States, something transformational had occurred. The document declared that the word “state” was also applicable to Great Britain or France. That is, the use of the word “State” was the equivalent of a country. That is, each “state” being a “sovereign” entity, an independent country.
Treaty of Paris
Of further importance of what the Declaration of Independence meant, and declared as states, were the words used by the British in their Peace Treaty ending the American-Revolutionary War. In suing for peace, the British listed each of the States they had been fighting. That listing of the parties to the war, of those States, had occurred before the passage of the “Articles of Confederation,” or the later Constitution.
Little recognized
The importance of the third part of the Declaration of Independence is hardly mentioned these days.