Morally confused and civically disengaged, we have lost our cultural balance. Let us remember who we are.
To say the least, he was irritated.
Frustrated with a capricious sovereign and forced (on principle) to take a life-altering stand, Thomas Jefferson’s quill scribbled furiously. The English crown, he fumed, could not expect a people to suffer such indignities. Oppressive taxation. Obstructed commerce. Second-class citizenship. It was enough. And so he wrote. With every careful word, there widened a breach. In every thoughtful idea, there confirmed a rupture. And when the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence (publicly reading it four days later amidst the toll of the Liberty Bell), they had arrived at the point of no return — de facto and de jure rebellion. For the American experiment, July 4, 1776, proved both a bitter end and a glorious beginning.
