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| Eric Slauter |
Three lifetimes. Laid end to end.
Not so very long, in those terms. Between Saturday, July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, and the event being celebrated.
Take an 83-year-old — about the life expectancy of an American woman — and go back to her birth, 1943, the middle of a global war against fascism, aptly enough.
Tag another 83-year old. Trace back to his birth — talk about ironies — in 1860, the brink of our epic Civil War, fought to extinguish slavery, the devil’s bargain hard-wired into our Constitution to draw slave-holding Southern states into a risky new national enterprise.
One more lifetime — 84 years — puts us back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, an empire-shattering document that echoed around the world, and down to this day, with its still-stirring assertion:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
And that is only the second sentence. The Founders hadn’t yet gotten to the point.
“We’ve become obsessed with the second paragraph,” said Eric Slauter, the University of Chicago professor who curated an exhibit on our nation’s foundational document at the Newberry Library, standing before an enormous blow-up.
“What we know is most contemporary readers glossed over that. They cared a lot about the charges against the king. This is an indictment. The real meat of the declaration, what made it a declaration of independence and not a declaration of rights, was this part. You can tell it was important because it’s in capital letters.”
The part, toward the bottom, declaring, in all-caps, that the now former colonies are “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.”
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Thank you Neil for this reminder that the fight for freedom requires resilience and commitment. I hope and will work for the day when we can tell our children how we overcame MAGA Facism and restored our democracy.
ReplyDelete"Three lifetimes" is a fine example of how close we are to our history. It's right there, staring us down. The least we can do is acknowledge it.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes think about the fact that in 1954, the year I was was born, there were people walking around who were alive during the Civil War. Think about that. It would be possible that as an infant, I had been held in the arms of a woman who had been held in the arms of Abraham Lincoln. Most of you reading this could say the same thing.
Thanks for a valuable history lesson.
ReplyDeleteWhat exactly is anyone doing let alone Us in this comment section to "fight" against the tyranny of our current administration?
ReplyDeleteThe people who overthrew the king fought they used every method at their disposal some sacrificed their lives.
We can't compare ourselves and our desire for a democratic form of government to the Patriots of the revolutionary war.
Tom
I disagree, Tom. Those who opposed ICE in Minneapolis put themselves in harm's way, and two laid down their lives. Most Americans were not in the Continental Army, yet the Thomas Paines still had a role to play. You're being too literal, and more than a little defeatist.
DeleteYes. More than a little.
DeleteOf course not everyone took up arms to defeat the kings army .
Some refused to pay taxes
Others engaged in sabotage
We can do more
From the looks of the midterm primaries the Democrats are sabotaging themselves
The usual low voter turnout and candidates like one I just read about running for governor in Wisconsin is a Democratic socialist.
We fight amongst ourselves
Tom
No question there. It seems more than a few Democrats would rather do virtue signaling related to the intractable Palestinian situation than keep their own country from becoming an autocracy.
DeleteThe two who died in Minneapolis did not give their lives.
DeleteTheir lives were taken from them.
Yep.
DeleteHard to vote for that.
Very hard for centrists and independents
Tom
What are you doing, Tom?
DeleteEven though life expectancy was much shorter in the Forties than it is today, a child born just before the start of the Civil War could easily have still been alive to witness the end of World War II in 1945.
ReplyDeleteAnd not only would they have experienced all the technological advances we take for granted today...the telephone, cars, planes, radio, TV...as well as new and more efficient ways to kill human beings in large numbers...machine guns, poison gas, aerial bombardment, nuclear weapons.
Plus, they would have witnessed TWO world wars, the rise and fall of fascism, and the deaths of FIVE presidents...three of them by assassination.
The 85-year-old geezer of 1945 would have seen the world transformed even more than an 85-year-old sees today. And would have been too old to fight in any of the wars. O, lucky man!
My grandfather was born before powered flight and saw the Apollo 11 moon landing. Probably the fastest change of any era in history.
DeleteAge is a game of numbers. One of my best friends as a child, George Perry, was a man born in 1878 who taught me how to use power tools when I was ten. The most amazing age related story I've ever know is about President John Tyler. He was born in 1790 and served as U.S. President from 1841-1845 (20 years before Lincoln). His son born in 1853 had a son born in 1928 who died last year on May 25, 2025 at the age of 96. Neil's 3-life-span concept is not at all far fetched. In my lifetime, I have known several people whose grandfathers fought in the Civil War. And here I am, from the generation of Boomers, to share my story with my granddaughter. Neil, I hope you will be around to tell your tales to your grandchildren so they can pass them on for the next 250 year cycle. Do not despair, better times are ahead of us.
ReplyDelete