This Is the Way..."When in the Course of Human Events..."
by Robin Webber
It's a muggy and sultry afternoon as I sit down to write this column. The feel of the air and the time of month take me far back to a long-ago summer when others gathered to write in these same last weeks of June.
In the sweltering heat of colonial Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman were crafting a document that would revolutionize Americans' social contract with one another. It would come to be known as the Declaration of Independence. How important was its message? Abraham Lincoln would later call it the "sheet anchor" of all American liberties. Its theme? Freedom!
America's republican experiment exploded on the world stage in that summer of 1776, but it had been simmering over a decade, as the British crown, parliament and the colonials could not agree on the colonies' future. But events didn't just hit a flash point on July Fourth. Freedom never simply just happens. It has to be envisioned, considered and, yes, at times given birth through great sacrifice. Before one can reach a destination, the course must be laid out.
As the time of full fruition had now come, the chief drafter, Thomas Jefferson, would throw down the gauntlet in penning the now-famous words, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary..." The founders of the republic would securely wrap themselves in the rightness of their cause by affirming their position and timing in relationship with the "laws of Nature and Nature's God."
Proclaiming liberty throughout the land
But is such a phrase now lost to history past? Have you considered when else in the course of human events it will become necessary for an even greater revolution to occur? Consider what we find on another piece of iconic Americana that was used to summon the citizenry of Philadelphia to hear the first public reading of this revolutionary document on July 8, 1776.
