A Soldier in General Washington's Army Hears a Reading of the Declaration

     from Bootmaker to the Nation: The Story of the American Revolution

     At six o'clock in the evening of July 9, when the companies of our regiment formed an open square on the worn grassy common in front of our barracks, we could only guess how Congress would formulate our break from Britain.  Would Philadelphia take into its hands the power formerly held by Parliament?  Would the thirteen colonies each go their own way, with little but the war to unite them?  Would some powerful landowner assert his rights as our new king, in the guise of some title such as President?  And would we, the soldiers, continue to fight and die so that ship owners and merchants could return to the old days of profits untroubled by taxes?
       We assembled on that warm July evening, as the sun disappeared behind the rooftops and chimneys along the Broad Way, not to hear the latest list of resolves.  We wanted to know why we were fighting this endless war.
     As a lieutenant read with a voice loud enough for all to hear, we realized that the lawyers and landowners gathered in the assembly hall in Philadelphia had truly understood us.  They seemed to have sat with us around our campfires night after night, to have listened to us, down to the last humble farmer and cobbler, as we spoke of our fear and our hopes, of our anger and our dreams.  They seemed to have cast the old dusty history books into the flames, then to have penned something entirely new.  Aye, they signed their fine names to that document in defiance of the King, but what they wrote, every soldier among us would have been willing to sign as well.
     The soldiers interrupted the reading with frequent and hearty cheers.  We felt emboldened, indigent, and vindicated: our defence of our American rights was justified by every phrase that we heard, and our mission on behalf of mankind was laid before us.  The best minds in America believed in us, as did the Creator Himself.  Every soldier among us felt a bit nobler, for our work would reach down through the ages.

     John Slade
     Bootmaker to the Nation: The Story of the American Revolution
     Woodgate International
     http://www.woodgateintl.com/