From declaration to our nation

Sally Goldberg

Photo submitted by Sally Goldberg

Even though July 4th has come and gone, and all the hoopla has subsided, the idea now is to both keep our pride and build on it, too.

First of all, the big deal is the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson was the one who first wrote it. Then, afterward, five men did the editing: Thomas Jefferson himself, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston. Next, on July 4, 1776, it was approved and signed by 56 statesman (from the original 13 colonies), thereby creating the birth of our nation.

Maybe your home state is from one of those original colonies — New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Eventually, each one became a state. From one they got to 48. In time, two more were added late: Alaska and Hawaii. And now our country’s more than great.

However, as you may already know, just like with any major organization, it is a work in progress that must be maintained. Come back in time with me now to 1893. A professor from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Katharine Lee Bates, traveled across our land from Massachusetts to Colorado. So taken by what she saw she wrote a descriptive poem about it. In time, a well-known musician in the 19th century, Samuel A. Ward, set her words to music and made her very famous patriotic stanzas into our beloved song, “America the Beautiful,” that is sung today proudly by school children throughout our country.

As joyous as she was about our land, she was concerned, too. According to Melinda Ponder, her biographer, “Bates intended her poem to be a kind of prayer for a country that had lost its way.”

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