Kevin Dayhoff: The Rights and Responsibilities that Come with July 4th
Time Flies column for Sunday, July 6, 2025 by Kevin Dayhoff, kevindayhoff@gmail.com
Last Saturday was the 4th of July. In the history of the world, July 4th 1776 marks the beginning of a series of events that can only be accepted as the providence of a higher being and a true testimony that as Americans; we have been tested and blessed.
With that blessing, come equally great responsibilities and purpose. “God did not bring us this far to drop us on our heads” and we must understand that in the memory the great sacrifices and hardships endured by the Fathers and Mothers of the Declaration of Independence and this great nation, we are required to accept even greater responsibilities.
So many folks these days want to talk about their “rights”. So many do not seem to understand that these rights have been as a result of enormous and unimaginable sacrifice and hardship and that, what we ought to be preoccupied with, 229 years later, is our responsibilities.
The American Declaration of Independence and the ensuing American Revolution are events in history, whose success was forged by unparalleled heroism and an indomitable spirit, which has carried the United States to unmeasured achievement against all odds. However, it is only a wonder that our great experiment with Freedom and Democracy did not fail - almost as it began.
Perhaps it is because the Fourth of July is a part of our nation’s collective historic Zeitgeist which commemorates the shared common experience of a great nation surviving against overwhelming odds.
Interestingly enough – 2025 is the 250th anniversary of the Army on June 14, 1775; Navy on October 13, 1775; and Marine Corps on November 10, 1775.
History is written by the winners, and it is often sanitized and romanticized to an extent that the events portrayed by historical accounts, would be unrecognizable by the participants.
This great experiment we call democracy, freedom and America, should have failed any number of times in history and yet we prevail.
After the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress, which was only a revolutionary government in formation since September 5th, 1774, immediately set about the struggle to form a national government among states that did not get along, delegates that did not like each other and regions of the colonies that had diametrically opposed interests.
On July 3, 2005 historian George Will wrote that when General George Washington “arrived outside Boston in July 1775 to assume command of the American rebellion, he was aghast.
“When he got a gander at his troops, mostly New Englanders, his reaction was akin to the Duke of Wellington's assessment of his troops, many of them the sweepings of Britain's slums, during the Peninsular War: ‘I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.’
“You think today's red state/blue state antagonism is unprecedented? Washington thought New Englanders ‘exceeding dirty and nasty.’”
And so began the American War of Independence.
Meanwhile, the Continental Congress had adopted a resolution for Independence on June 7th, 1776. After the fact, Congress asked Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and two other delegates to write up what a “Declaration of Independence” might look like; which Jefferson essentially wrote in one setting.
After the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress, a revolutionary cabal in formation since September 5th, 1774, immediately set about the struggle to form a national government among states that did not get along, delegates that did not like each other and regions of the colonies that had diametrically opposed interests.
Congress proposed the Articles of Confederation (a firm league of friendship between sovereign states) on June 11th, 1776. It managed to adopt them on November 15th, 1777. Most of the States signed the Articles right away, except Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. New Jersey signed in 1778, and Delaware signed in 1779. Maryland continued to hold out until Virginia and New York ceded their western lands. Maryland did not sign until March 1st, 1781, and then, only after Virginia had proposed to leave Maryland out of the Confederation.
The American Colonists should have, by all measurable accounts, never ever won the American Revolution. The war was not supported by a majority of the colonists. Graft, corruption, desertions and traitors were rampant. European historical accounts reflect that the English essentially gave up fighting because the English public and government were financially exhausted and public sentiment did not support the war, much less Englishmen being killed by a bunch of ungrateful “rebels and terrorists” in a far distant land.
Between 1775 and 1783, England’s national debt had almost doubled fighting the war.
After about a hundred years of what was practically a world at war, Europe’s finances were collapsing. Spain and France had joined the war against England; and France was pouring thousands of troops and the power of its navy into the American Theatre. Cornwallis was left high and dry on the Yorktown peninsula, mercifully surrendering on October 19th, 1781.
After the Revolutionary War, the American colonies were essentially bankrupt and devastated. Immediately after the war, the only thing that kept the Continental Army from revolting in a military coup was the influence of George Washington.
If it were not for Adams convincing Holland to loan us millions of dollars, we may have never made it. The United States was in debt to the tune of $42 Million Dollars by 1783. $8M was owed to Holland, France and Spain. Congress had no power to levy taxes. It could only “ask” the states for money.
In the following four years, the states only gave the Continental Congress approximately $2.5M a year and America was about to fall in arrears on repaying its debt. After the war, fighting broke out among the states and between the states and the territories. States began to refuse to send delegates to the Congress and for a while, Congress could not even get a quorum in which to as much as ratify the peace with England.
In 1784, the French minister reported to the French government that America had no government, no President, no administration and appeared to have dissolved as a union.
It is indeed, only by divine intervention that we made it. I hope that you spent the 4th of July with your families and enjoyed the fireworks. Hopefully you reflected upon the fact that yes, we have rights and freedoms, but with those rights come responsibilities as individuals - and as a nation.
Although we may enjoy the rights and freedoms to disagree among ourselves we have a responsibility to our men and women in uniform, to the world, to freedom and to Democracy.
The 4th of July has always been one of my cherished holidays. As a student of history, I have accepted July 4th as the celebration of the American Spirit. I have written about the 4th of July innumerable times. Much of this discussion has been published before. Happy 4th of July.
WordPress: Dayhoff Time Flies: https://kevindayhoff.wordpress.com/2025/07/07/kevin-dayhoff-the-rights-and-responsibilities-that-come-with-july-4th/
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Kevin Dayhoff for Westminster Authority Caroline Babylon, Treasurer.
