By Jonathan Tobias

EDITOR’S NOTE: This speech was given at the July 4th Celebration sponsored by the Edenton Tea Party Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution at the Historic 1767 Chowan County Courthouse Green.

Good morning, Edenton, and happy 250th birthday, America!

Welcome to this celebration of the semiquincentennial of our Independence Day!

Why. Are. You. Here?

Why am I here? Why are all of us here?

That is the question I have been asked to begin with to day. And it is a good question. Why are you here, standing on this Courthouse Green, on the 250th anniversary of American Independence?

Maybe you are here because this is what your family does every Fourth of July. Maybe you are here because you love this town, with its history, its water, its old streets, its bells, its memory. Maybe you are here because you believe that the Declaration of Indepen dence should not only be preserved behind glass, but spoken aloud, in public, by living voices, to living people.

Maybe you are here because you know that freedom is not automatic.

It was not automatic in 1776. It is not automatic now. Right here in Edenton, we know that history is not far away. It is under our feet. It is in this Green. It is in the courthouse. It is in the church yard. It is in the names we remember and the names we have forgotten.

Behind me stands the monument to Joseph Hewes — Quaker by background, vestryman of St. Paul’s, early member of Edenton’s Unanim ity Lodge, Signer of the Dec laration of Independence, and, despite his native pacifism, one of the first great builders of the American Navy.

He was a man, as Robert Leath will tell you soon, who understood that the words of liberty sometimes demand sacrifice, courage, and public duty.

But we are not here only because of famous men.

We are here because ordinary people, too, chose to stand against tyranny and injustice.And this celebration has been shaped for more than 20years by Mrs. Beth Taylor, who is here today in her final year directing this great event. Her own family story reaches back to Charles Worth Blount, Revolutionary War veteran and business partner of Joseph Hewes.

I am here because people like my great-great-great great-grandfather, a native of Edenton, decided that enough was enough. He signed up to fight under General Nathanael Greene and served through the Revolutionary War for the hope of a free country.

My forebear was not a summer soldier, He served for four years in summer and winter, wind and rain, snow and mud, with the ever-present knowledge that tomorrow’s battle might be his last. He knew intimately well what Thomas Paine called “the times that try men’s souls.”

He was not signing up for comfort.

He was not signing up for certainty.

He was not signing up be cause victory was guaranteed.

He was signing up because some things are worth risking yourself for.

So I ask again:

Why are you here?

I hope you are here because you know that Independence Day is not merely a birthday party for a nation. It is a yearly examination of conscience.

The Declaration of Indepen dence is not light reading, as my friend retired Senator Bob Steinburg will soon tell you. It is not sentimental wallpaper. It is a dangerous document. It says that governments are not divine. It says that rulers are accountable.

It says that human beings possess rights that no king, no parliament, no president, no party, no mob, and no majority may rightly take away.

It says that government exists only by the consent of the governed.

It says that when power becomes destructive of liberty and justice, the people have not only a right but a responsibility to say no. 

That is why the Declaration still matters.

Not because America has always lived up to it. We have not.

Not because the Found ers were perfect. They were not.

Not because liberty was complete in 1776. It was not.

The Declaration still matters because those words gave us a standard by which America itself could be judged, corrected, challenged, enlarged, and made more faithful to its own promise.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

That sentence still calls us.

It called patriots to resist imperial tyranny.

It called those denied liberty to expose the terrible contradiction between American promise and American practice.

It called the 51 women of Edenton to sign the Edenton Tea Resolves.

It called soldiers to battlefields.

It called marchers across bridges.

It called citizens to voting booths, schoolhouses, courtrooms, town halls, churches, newspapers, and public squares.

And it calls us here today.

Because freedom is not inherited like an antique chair. It must be received, repaired, practiced, defended, and handed on.

So why are we here?

We are here to remember.

We are here to give thanks.

We are here to honor the courage of those who came before us.

We are here to admit that the work is not finished.

We are here to say that tyranny is still tyranny, injustice is still injustice, and liberty still belongs to every single human being made in the image of God.

We are here because a republic is not maintained by spectators or summer soldiers.

A republic needs brave and civil citizens.

It needs people who can argue without hatred, disagree without violence, remember without pretending, and love their country enough to tell the truth about it.

It needs people who un derstand that patriotism is not partisanship, patriotism is not worship of power. Patriotism is love of the common good.

It needs people who will not trade liberty for comfort, or justice for advantage, or truth for applause.

It needs us.

So today, on this Courthouse Green, in this town of Edenton, on this 250th anniversary of Independence, let us listen again.

Let us hear the words as if they are not dead words from a museum, but living words ad dressed to us.

Let us hear them with gratitude.

Let us hear them with humility.

Let us hear them with courage.

And then let us go from this place resolved to be worthy of the gift we have received.

My friends, welcome to Edenton’s celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this unprecedented gift of a free republic: God save these United States!

Jonathan Tobias is a a NC Press Association award-winning columnist.