What will you celebrate today?

Pictured: The British surrendering their arms to Gen. Washington after their defeat at Yorktown in Virginia October 1781 / drawn by John Francis Renault ; engraved by Tanner, Vallance, Kearny & Co. and Wm. Allen. Courtesy of Wikicommons. 

By Will Russell

Today, we will gather to celebrate our freedom.

We will get together with family and friends. We will watch parades. We will eat hot dogs and hamburgers. We will watch the kids play with sparklers and make s’mores. We may finish the day with a fireworks show in one of our larger towns.

But what are we really celebrating?

I admit, many times in my life, especially as a younger man, I got swept up in the pageantry of the day. I remember hootin’ and hollerin’ on Bagwell Bridge about “my freedom” as we watched the fireworks show Onancock once put on.

But as I’ve aged, while I may not be much more mature, I think I may be a tad wiser. It has dawned on me that I probably once thought King George was telling the colonists they couldn’t walk to the post office or something.

What was the disagreement really about? The 13 colonies were distinct from one another, with cultures and customs of their own. In many ways, that remains true today. Why did they band together to throw off oversight of the motherland?

The main schism with the colonies occurred not solely because of King George, but because of Parliament. The monarchy had chartered the colonies, and they had always held a veto power over any acts passed by the colonial assemblies. “The Old Dominion” had a history of siding with the monarchy. But when the French and Indian War left Britain deeply indebted, Parliament began passing laws and levying taxes that threatened more than 150 years of local control by colonial legislatures. Parliament also decided to use a harder hand with implementation; colonies would be punished if they resisted the laws and levies. Think the closing of the Port of Boston after the Tea Party, for example.

Taxation was the occasion of the Declaration, but it was really about who was going to call the shots: the colonial legislatures or Parliament. No legislation without representation.

As M.E. Bradford wrote, the freedoms so often spoken of by the Founders “were part of the warp and woof of an established way of life.” These liberties were rooted not in abstraction, but in inherited laws, local customs, and self-government. The Founders believed they had the same rights as their English cousins across the sea, being fruit of the same tree.

The American political experiment, and perhaps the human political experiment itself, is a long tug of war over power between competing centers of authority. The American War for Independence was a war over power.

Jefferson’s language in the Declaration on the balance of power, adopted 250 years ago today, is clear: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

The Declaration led to war. Through the brilliant leadership of General George Washington, a Virginian, the Continental Army won at Yorktown the simple right of local control.

That is what we should celebrate today.

As Frank Sinatra sang in “The House I Live In,” America is found not merely in a flag or map, but in the house, street, neighbors, town hall, school, church, and people around us. In other words, in the local place we call home.